My Broken Language

by Quiara Alegría Hudes

  All these literary patriarchs paraded their woe like it was some main event. Hamlet brooded, Romeo beat his chest, Willy went mad. Why didn’t they dance like the Perez women? Were they so above the fray? No billboards or sitcoms had declared my Perez cousins queen, and I now saw freedom in this. No false thrones, just the shitstorm of life. Grab a shovel and sing a work song. Build a throne that’s real.

  The classroom phone rang, a TNT detonation. I was to report to the principal’s office. “Bring your backpack, too.” I closed Salesman and stuffed it in my bag. My cowboy boots echoed in the cinderblock corridor. How strange, these empty hallways. Most kids were in class. I passed charcoal portraits of Langston Hughes and bulletin boards showing who’d made JV. The main office was filled with smoke, which haloed around the principal and obscured his bearded face. A rack of pipes stood on the desk, small wooden saxophones hung out to dry. He suggested I call home.

  “Do you have a quarter?” he asked.

  “No.” He handed me a coin and sent me on my way. Outside the main office were antique wooden phone booths. The folding door clattered, sliding shut. My first quarter was returned: no answer at home. On the second try, the coin was swallowed and the call went through: it was Abuela’s house. Screams rang out in the background. Mary Lou was dead.

  After school, the SEPTA platform was an adolescent carnival. But midmorning, with me alone by the subway tunnel, it was a limbo world, cavernous and moist as a grotto. Water traced mineral outlines on walls, pooling by the tracks. Though SEPTA rides were prime reading time, Death of a Salesman remained in my backpack. Instead my jaw clenched, biting on a question. Central High was a magnet school. It enrolled kids from all over the city. Why did classmates from other zip codes have a lower funeral count than me? How come the Birkenstock set from Mount Airy and the South Philly headbangers shook their heads when I asked if they’d seen open caskets? Moments before, I had wondered at our Perez resilience compared to the Willys and Romeos. Now I catalogued our disappearances. What was wrong with the Perezes? What were we dying of?

  Tía Toña’s losses were now complete: Husband and son dead. Flor still off on an extended drug jag. Nuchi spiraling to a skeleton. And Mary Lou gone. Tía Toña had graduated to accomplished mourner. She could school Pavarotti on vocal projection. It’s all I remembered from the first funeral I’d attended, that of her husband, Guillo. Upon arriving at the church and passing through its marble foyer, Tía Toña collapsed in a fit of wailing and chest-pounding. The awful scene made me wonder if I’d felt a real feeling ever and made me doubt whether I wanted to. I took her cries as an essential form of womanhood: powerful, dangerous, grotesque, steeped in the tragedy called love. Nothing repulsed me more than the possibility of myself laid so bare. Please never let me be that way, I had prayed, as men surrounded her and attempted to peel her from the cold church floor. She violently kicked them, took their concern as a provocation. God deserved to hear her scream.

  Now, stations passed as I neared Toña’s fresh batch of wailing, alongside others’ whispered prayers, and an inevitable barrage of guests bearing flowers and cigarettes. This loud-soft whiplash would continue till midnight, then start up at the next day’s rosary session. A routine we knew well.

  At Abuela’s house I sat in the stairwell, beholding the mourner’s parade. Ritz crackers went untouched, Gouda cheese grew waxy. A pot of café had been brewed hours earlier and sat half-full, cold on the stovetop. The Brooklyn cousins arrived, mascara smeared, passing tissues. The tabletop was crowded with bouquets. Enrobed in cellophane, a field of carnations. The screen door slammed in constant announcement: neighbors and family cycling through, having a smoke on the porch. December air kept pouring inside but no one cared. Toña wailed and hollered upstairs. When Ginny arrived with the boys, little Danito took my hand and looked me in the eye. “I’m sorry for your loss, Qui Qui.” Only in elementary school, he was already an experienced griever. Kid had fucking grace.

  Through it all Ashley slumped on the sofa, eyes glazed and cast toward the linoleum. Eight years old. No doubt she was replaying the scene from earlier that day: she heard a weird scream, ran downstairs, and discovered Mary Lou on the kitchen tiles. A cereal box in her hand. Some Cheerios littering the floor. Everyone patted Ashley’s head or scooped her into embraces until her dad showed up and carried her away unceremoniously. “Let’s go.” She slumped over his shoulder, a rag doll of loss.

  Years earlier, Mary Lou had selected me as miniature bride. Hers would be the real thing, a church ceremony with handwritten invitations. Mom sewed me a white gown to replicate Mary Lou’s. Beneath a thick white ribbon at the waist, the skirt flared out, an explosion of tulle. Beadwork covered the bodice. Opal sequins were hand-sewn onto gloves. For months mom hunched at the sewing machine, peering through a monocle. She was a portrait of devotion in the soft lamplight, her palms guiding the fabric through the machine’s steady current. The dress was complicated and ambitious, requiring weeknight work, too, despite mom’s standing-room commutes. She was the image of constancy, sewing the wedding dress, in miniature, she’d never gotten to wear with dad.

  The day before the wedding mom trimmed my bangs. She took an iron to my hair and curled the bottoms inward, just above my shoulder. Then she pooled the gown in a circle on the floor and said, “Step in,” before tunneling it up over my body. Slowly I fed each arm through a delicate sleeve. It took her many minutes to button each pearl up the back, and she hummed to pass the time. Then we went outside. We still lived on the horse farm and she eyed our expansive surroundings. “By the circle garden, so I can get the trees behind you and the hills to the left.” The woods next to the pasture burst with reds and yellows. “Tilt your head like this,” she instructed, then took my picture. Beneath a huge autumnal sky, I posed resplendent and pensive.

  We repeated the process the following morning before driving into the city. I stood in the corridor of St. Ambrose Church, hiding in a foyer beside Mary Lou. Our dresses matched perfectly. The only difference was her high heels to my flats. My older cousin was smiling and nervous, bouncing at the knee. She marked my cheek with a red lipstick kiss, then smiled a crescent of mischief and snapped open her clutch. In that quiet moment, as she dug through her purse for makeup, I felt wildly alive. I loved how the lid clicked open, how the pink stick emerged like spiral steps. I loved the waxy wetness as Mary Lou patted a bit of color onto my lips. Her touch was Creator, turning me human. I had always disliked the itchiness of gowns, the clownishness of makeup. But the ceremony of dressing up meant touching older women, and that made it worthwhile. Mary Lou’s fingers trembled as she held my face still. “There! Your mom’s gonna kill me!” Then I walked the aisle. At the altar stood her sweetheart, a tall Boricua with indio skin. He was handsome and confident like Mary Lou, and only slightly less goofy. Afterwards, one big sloppy kiss later, they ran outside to the North Philly curb, church bells a-ruckus, and dove giddily into an honest-to-god limousine. It had the whiff of importance, which I mistook for permanence.

  Soon I would return to St. Ambrose Church, dressed in black head to toe. Soon we’d drive the streets of North Philly, a motorcade of orange funeral stickers. Slow-going, a wending path, horns honking toward the cemetery. But tonight, the rosary must be started.

  * * *

  —

  Mary Lou had come to babysit one summer evening. I was twelve and had been a latchkey for years, but I think it was mom’s excuse to give Mary Lou spending money in tight times. And to me, it was a welcome way to hang with her and Ashley. Ashley walked in with a Big Gulp the size of her torso. Her long hair was tangled and cute and she was acting like that soda was Dom Pérignon so I helped myself and made a real show of it.

  “That’s mine! Don’t finish it!” Ashley blurted. Mary Lou went postal. They’d barely arrived and she was already screaming at her daughter.

  “Your soda? Abuela ain’t teach us about no yours and mine! S
ih’ down!” Mary Lou pulled her hard to the floor. “You, too, Qui Qui. Sit. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble, but she is and I’m gonna teach her a lesson.” I sat. “Now we’re gonna share this soda and if you complain, Ashley, if you so much as think about complaining, you ain’t coming back to Qui Qui’s house EH-VER. Me entiendes?” Now Ashley pushed away the Big Gulp, wiping tears with a fist. “Drink. It.” Finally Ashley did. My turn was next, and I didn’t even like Mountain Dew. Shit, even Cola Champagne or Black Cherry Wishniak—real bodega gold—wouldn’t be worth all that. But we kept going in a circle, drinking the stuff. It was a bummer and took forever, sip after sip. We got full but the Big Gulp was only half-drunk. Our bellies bloated. Ashley kept puffing hers out extra big till we couldn’t stifle the giggles. Finally, Mary Lou removed the lid and chugged half the Big Gulp without stopping to breathe. My and Ashley’s eyes grew wide until Mary Lou slammed the cup upside down on the floor. Empty. She paused for a moment. And then from her mouth came what started as a burp but grew to an injurious audio event. It was a Jurassic, cavernous belch and as it continued she began reciting the alphabet. In pitch. She made it to M before running out of burp. We were rolling, all three of us, crying and kicking. “I peed my panties,” Mary Lou said. “Me too,” Ashley chimed in. I hadn’t peed. “Then you weren’t having enough fun,” Mary Lou said.

  * * *

  —

  The first night’s rosary ended before midnight. Mom had an aura of calm, driving through empty streets. Philly had gone to bed. She took the long way home, forgoing the expressway, weaving through residential blocks, lingering after traffic lights changed. “Mom, it’s green, you can go now.” Fifth and Girard, even under veil of night, was an event horizon: wealth and want converged right at this intersection. Just north of Girard, blight. Just south, brownstones and burglar alarms.

  Mom’s vaguely westbound route deposited us on Mt. Vernon Street, a purposeful detour. Mt. Vernon was her old stomping ground, where she lived after arriving in Philly as a preteen. Back then the area had been a Puerto Rican enclave, but no more. The block had always been nice—I remembered when Abuela had a floor-through—but it was full-on dignified now. American flags hung above doorways, with the stripes sewn on rather than printed. Spotless brickwork, polished brass. Bankers and judges had moved in, restoring the homes to their original single-family design. The Perezes had joined a Puerto Rican migration deeper north into smaller row homes made of less sturdy goods.

  Mom slowed the car and looked around, before continuing onto the diagonal Parkway. Behind us, City Hall’s clock was a midnight moon. William Penn balanced atop the tower, the night’s bronze sentinel.

  “Mom, what’s an aneurysm?” I hadn’t dared ask at Abuela’s.

  “A blood clot in the brain.”

  “What causes it?”

  “Genetics.”

  “Was it preventable?”

  “Mary Lou’s brain was a ticking clock, and none of us had a clue.” The answer brought some small relief. An accident of fate, a genetic marker, seemed a death that might happen in any city or suburb, to any family, rich or poor, white or Brown, Spanish or English. It was a tragic way to go, but not sociologically complicated. Mary Lou: age at death, twenty-seven.

  Maybe in mom’s fatigue, she would let a little truth slip. Maybe midnight was the hour of answers. I risked a second question, this time about a different cousin.

  “Mom, what did Big Vic die of?”

  “Kidney failure.”

  “Why did his kidneys fail?”

  “Dialysis doesn’t last forever, sweetheart.”

  “What put him on dialysis in the first place?”

  “He took too many ibuprofens.”

  “Like, Advil? Why?”

  “He was a big guy, he took more pills than he needed.”

  “But he wasn’t big at the end, he was skin and bones.”

  Mom paused. “Big Vic might’ve had AIDS.”

  “Might’ve?”

  “Your Tía Toña gives me a different answer every time.”

  “How did he contract AIDS?”

  “The dialysis, probably,” she said.

  “Mom! Mom.” Unsure if she would answer or if the truth was forever dammed up in her, I realized: there are words that have willpower, that compel you not to speak them aloud. “Was Big Vic shooting up? Was he using dirty needles?” She didn’t respond. Big Vic: age at death, twenty-four.

  “What about Guillo? Did he OD on Advil, too?” I asked. She was unmoved by my sarcasm.

  Mom sighed. “If you ask Toña, she’ll say liver failure.”

  “Liver failure due to what?” I said.

  No response came. Guillo: age at death, forties. Whatever it was, this plague that hit us hard, it would remain unnamed for another night. My evidence for a universal conspiracy against the Perezes was anecdotal at best. Nonetheless, I vastly preferred how Mary Lou had passed—in a manner no one was ashamed to speak aloud. I rolled down the window, letting the breeze hammer my palm. The river beside us reflected a black sky and the twinkling lights of Boathouse Row. The radio remained switched off. So this was the soundtrack to our soundtrack. This was what DJ Circumstance spun in the background, behind all that Juan Luis Guerra: silence.

  “Should we drive to the art museum?” mom asked, flicking the turn signal. She U-turned and drove the curving roadway up toward the monumental sand-colored pillars. At the top of the parking lot she rolled to a stop. I knew what to do—get out and unhook the chain. Mom lurched forward, I rehooked the chain in the car’s wake and got back in. We pulled slowly onto the museum’s grand upper plaza. The fountains were off for the night. Floodlights uplit the Grecian friezes. No pedestrians, no tourists. Just mom and me.

  “Guillo probably died of AIDS,” she said, switching off the ignition.

  A few times a year we’d end up here, after the security guards had gone home, atop the famous steps. It was a favorite late-night rebellion of mom’s. Sometimes in celebration, others to kill time. There beyond us twinkled the City of Brotherly Love. Somewhere in that cluster of lights, a founding father had written about self-evident truths, but I had no faith in self-evidence of any kind. Linda Loman’s warning swirled in the darkness. “Attention must be paid.” I missed my cousin.

  Things Go Unsaid Long Enough…

  Because they were not my mother or father, because mom drove me out of North Philly at the end of each funeral, the deaths felt only half mine. I imagined siblings and parents cleaning dishes after the rosary, trashing wilted carnations a week later, pouring murky flower water down the toilet. Meanwhile, my mom would still be there in the morning, brewing coffee. I would still hear the steam-hiss of the iron as she prepped for work. Our daily routine would proceed undisturbed. The gaps left by these deaths were two neighborhoods over, a car ride away. The truth was I had never wept for a cousin’s death. Not one tear. I cursed myself for that—what casket-side teen doesn’t need a Kleenex?—and I feared that not crying meant I hadn’t loved them enough. Perhaps weeping and dancing live in the same place within us, and I had shuttered that part of me away. The part that touches grief, euphoria, and god. Without tears, I could never legitimately call them my losses, only ours.

  Ours meant the Perez family. The Hudeses had mourned, to be sure, amongst the mightiest griefs in history. A generation before dad’s mom died too young, the death camps, the six million. When the name Hudes got a typewriter’s close-up in Schindler’s List, I ran home and called dad. “Tell me, tell me.” And he did. As a seven-year-old, he’d seen the tattoos on a few relatives’ arms. My bewilderment and sorrow in that moment found solace in context. English teachers had already assigned me Elie Wiesel’s Night, Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. Those books had title pages and final paragraphs. Spielberg’s film had an opening sequence and final shot. The horror of history, made slightly less unbearable thr
ough the telling, the forensic understanding, the bearing of witness.

  But whatever beast stalked the Perezes was present-tense and its appetite was peaking. No title pages or final paragraphs to name it, no opening sequences or final shots to help me see. This reaper nipping at our heels, pulling up a chair at our Thanksgiving table. In Compagnola Funeral Parlor on North 5th. At Riehs Florist on Girard Avenue. We had accounts there, we bought funerals on credit, first-name basis with the staff. I had no sociological study diagramming the crack and AIDS epidemics, nor an evidentiary grasp of the human cost of residential segregation. I had no sense that we were living and dying through a discrete dot on the American timeline—the eighties and nineties. I had only a handful of funeral cards featuring blond angels with Latino names looped beneath them.

  Sadness was not quite the feeling. A bitter pebble tossed in my stomach. Churning, polishing its bitterness with every toss. The unfairness of it. Because for every birthday dad didn’t call, for every pair of socks not bought, there was a bendición from Titi Ginny, a packet of bodega chicle from Cuca. The Perezes did so much heavy lifting and yet racked up funerals like baseball cards.

  * * *

  —

  I look back and think maybe mom explained Big Vic’s and Guillo’s deaths quite clearly that night at the art museum steps. Maybe I filtered out the truth and retained only the confusion. I’m forty now and thought if I asked how Big Vic died today, mom would at least spit out one fact, maybe two. It seized my mind on Thanksgiving. Stuffing the turkey is when you inquire about AIDS in the family, right? Or is dusting off the gravy boat the more respectful moment? As the question left my mouth I was certain of my fraudulence. Vic had probably died of MS or stomach cancer, and dramatic me had blown things out of proportion. Things go unsaid long enough, the silence becomes all you got.