The Afterlife

by Gary Soto

  I sat next to her on the couch.

  "Rachel," I whispered.

  She began rubbing the soft area under her eyes. A small mirror rested on her knees.

  "Rachel," I called. "Its me. Your novio who never got home."

  I had to reflect on that piece of truth. Was that really my status—a novio? A boyfriend? I was claiming a title I hadn't earned. We hadn't even danced together, let alone walk hand in hand at school.

  She stopped fussing with her looks when I blew a coldness on her throat. When I blew on her ear, she felt a presence. She put down the jar in her hand and stood up, the mirror flashing as it fell to the floor. She touched the top button of her pajamas and buttoned it. The girl was modest.

  "Rachel," I mouthed. "I never even had the chance to hold your hand."

  She wet her lips with the bud of her tongue. "Oh, Chuy" she remarked absently. She was thinking of me after all.

  "It didn't hurt that much," I lied, touched that she thought of me. I closed my eyes and shuddered at the pain of the knife in my lower back. That had hurt. And it hurt to watch my blood spill and pool in the corner of the restroom. I opened my eyes because I had seen enough.

  Rachel crossed the living room and stood over the floor furnace. She was cold from my presence. The cuffs of her pajamas fluttered from the wavering rise of heat.

  I looked down at the mirror on the floor. I couldn't see myself, only a crack in the ceiling.

  "Rachel," I said in a pleading voice. I wanted her as my girl. My loneliness was deep as that mirror. What could I do but feel self-pity because the one life I had was gone?

  I sat on Rachel's couch, and using all my will, I snapped off the television set. The monster truck had been climbing onto the back of a Chevy Nova Super Sport, the kind of car that I would have gotten if I had lived. The destruction disappeared in an egg of light, and the television screen went black.

  Rachel put a hand to her mouth. She brought the hand from her mouth. "Chuy?"

  "Yeah, it's me," I answered. I could see that she was beginning to shiver, in spite of her position over the furnace vent.

  "I'm sorry, Chuy."

  And she was. Tears formed in her eyes and spilled in a long line down her cheeks. I noticed that more tears were coming out of her left eye and was troubled that I couldn't ask my biology teacher, Mr. Knight, about tears, why one eye would tear more than the other. Then again, I could have asked why some people cry over romantic movies while the guys I ran with watched the screen dry-eyed, their hands buttery from the popcorn.

  "Chuy, you shouldn't have gone." She rubbed her index finger under her nose. She reached into her pajama pocket for a Kleenex.

  "It's okay," I said. "I'm still getting around."

  Then I saw how that would soon change. My left foot was gone! It had disappeared, and this frightened me. I touched the place where my foot had been. "Man, it's gone," I whispered. I looked around the living room, as if my foot had just walked off. Maybe it's in the kitchen. Who knows? It could be walking down the street right now.

  "Jesus," I moaned. "I'm dying after all." But I realized that I was already dead, though my spirit, it seemed, was going as well. First this foot, then the other?

  "Chuy" Rachel cried, her face pinched with lines. "Jesús, Jesús."

  Jesús, I wondered. Was she calling for Christ, or for me, a seventeen-year-old ghost disappearing one body part at a time?

  She cried over the floor furnace, and, with her face smeared with mascara, pushed away from the wall. She walked down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, but I didn't follow. I then heard water running in the bathroom. The shower went on, and it was time for me to leave the house. It was time to see my parents, two souls who were crying, maybe in front of the muted television, over the loss of a son.

  Chapter Four

  I FELT THE NEED to say good-bye to my parents and to my uncle Richard and cousin Eddie, plus friends, distant friends, and every kind soul I had met on the street. Then there was my track coach, Mr. Morales, who was just out of Fresno State and could run faster than any of his distance runners. Maybe I could find out where he lived and run over there. Until now, I never understood what "good-bye, adios, see you later, alligator" meant. I always assumed that I would go to school in the morning and come back in the afternoon, and things would be the same. Now I knew different.

  I left Rachel's house, disturbed because my foot was gone and because I knew that in time—three days? four days?—I would disappear. I felt lighter—the wind picked up and, like it or not, I was tossed westward again back to downtown and the Fulton Mall. I peered into the boutique that I had visited earlier, and the girl—what's her name?—was still reading People en Español, a different issue, but still speeding along and taking in the fashions. There were no customers; she had to find ways to kill time. I guess she could think about how to prop up those drooping candles or put a little color back in those plastic flowers.

  I straddled a splintery bench and listened to the spines of water splashing from a fountain. Sparrows flew through my ribs, and a pigeon the color of cement pecked at the sidewalk. I realized that I was neither hungry nor thirsty, and that the Mexicano pushing a paleta cart didn't draw me to his tinkling bell. Two children were hacking away at plates of peanut brittle. That sweet candy didn't tease me either.

  In the distance, Saint John's Cathedral's mighty clock bonged one o'clock. Its single note absorbed all the sounds in the air, and then vanished. I felt a sadness for myself, but had to grin. I suddenly remembered Rachel. I could have followed her into the shower and got an eyeful. Chihuahua! To watch her undo one button after another, and step out of her pajamas. Sin vergüenza! Still, I wagged my head and told myself, You had your chance.

  I brooded as my thoughts swung from the image of Rachel soaping her body to the image of my casket. I had a sense that my funeral was going to be at Saint Johns, where I was baptized, had my first holy communion, and was confirmed in my primo's hand-me-down suit. If I had not grown too tall, maybe I could be buried in that suit. No sense wasting money on clothes no one would see, I figured.

  How many days does it take to dress the dead? I wondered. I buried my face in my hands and scrubbed my face. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare. Pitched in that darkness, I had to wonder about what follows death. Do we come back? Once you've lived, is that it? Does heaven exist? Hell with its thermostat turned all the way up? I shivered at the thought of always having to stay in a grave, your own private jail.

  Enough, I told myself. Get those images out of your head!

  I watched the few shoppers in the mall, none of them happy about what they had bought, and headed westward, my shoulders slumped. I walked painlessly through a train that was hauling new cars. Where was the train headed? Oakland? Sacramento? I considered hopping one and going and going until I was in Oregon or even Canada. But I hesitated. I followed its red light until it disappeared on the horizon.

  Now that I was dead, I had to grow up. I had to confess my first real sin. My grandfather was buried at a cemetery on East Belmont, where the vineyards and orchards started. I took long, bouncing strides toward the cemetery. My grandfather had died six years ago, of cancer they told me, though it could have been anything because what did I know? At the time, I was eleven, a mocoso kid who just loved to play and eat candy. I was determined to repent to my grandfather about something I had stolen. It was a cigarette lighter, which I had snagged from his pants pocket and traded for ten dollars in dimes with a kid across the street.

  I located Grandfathers grave immediately because I remembered that he had been buried near a diseased tree that had been cut down. I perched myself on the tree stump and said a little prayer over his flowerless grave. His headstone read simply: maria Jesús chavez, 1931–1997. A single rose was etched into its polished granite.

  "Grandfather," I called. "Its me—Chuy."

  A distant tree rustled an answer for him.

  I swallowed.

  "I stole your ligh
ter," I confessed.

  Somewhere a gardener was starting up a mower. "I also snagged some pennies, Grandpa."

  The mower stopped, but a mower in the next cemetery started up. I floated off the tree stump.

  "You probably knew that I took it," I added.

  I clearly remembered going through his pocket and pulling out not only his cigarette lighter but also ten pennies dark as his work-weathered skin. I remembered running outside the house and meeting up with the neighbor kid—Jonathan Something-or-other. He liked the lighter so much that he went inside and stole two rolls of dimes worth ten dollars. He stole the dimes, I think, from his dad, but he lied and said they were his. All I remember was the weight of those rolls of dimes and how slowly I peeled the paper off like they were Life Savers. I bought candy for two weeks and ate it alone in a tree in my backyard.

  Grandpa, I'm the one, I confessed in my heart. You know—the lighter, the pennies.

  I recalled how Jonathan used the lighter to start a small fire in his backyard. We were both eleven, selfish beyond words, and guilty. How many candy bars smudged my dirty face?

  "Grandpa," I whispered. "How is it down there?"

  I smoothed the grass in front of his tombstone and told him that I was sorry and that I was dead and maybe I would be with him. If I could have cried hot, dime-sized tears, I would have. But what could I do but trace his name with my finger? I put my hands through his headstone and dipped my right arm all the way to my shoulder into the moist lawn. This scared me. I thought that I might touch his bony chest, shredded to almost nothing from years and years of rain.

  "Ah, Grandpa," I sobbed. I could swear that I felt his hand tugging mine. Was Grandpa trying to bring me down?

  I noticed at the next grave a bee trying to suck on an artificial flower. It seemed real, the flower. I floated over to an open grave. It was dark, and a few roots showed from the sides of the wall. I jumped into the grave and looked skyward, wondering if this is what the dead see for eternity. A bird flew past, then another.

  "I'm sorry, Grandpa," I whispered. Dirt from the sides of the grave crumbled.

  From the graveyard, I returned to town, pushing hard because the wind was blowing against my steps. It was getting dark. Some headlights of passing cars were on. And it was by this light that I noticed my other foot was gone, and a portion of my left hand, the one I had used to trace Grandfather's name.

  Nah, I thought. I held up my hand as if it were something foreign to me.

  I tightened my stomach and forced myself to continue. Wind or no wind, I was going to see my parents.

  MOM AND DAD weren't home, though the living room and hallway lights were burning brightly. Were they leaving the lights on for me? Did they leave a plate of cookies and milk on the kitchen table? I went into the kitchen. Our cat, Samba, was cleaning herself on the table. If my mom had seen her, she would have glared at that ignorant cat and chased her from the house with an open palm. Samba gazed at me, her back leg in the air. The cat sensed me, and stood up, arched her back, and jumped off the table. She went over to her water bowl, but just stared.

  Where were Mom and Dad? I wondered.

  They were probably at mi abuela's house, breaking the news of my death not once but two or three times. Grandma was hard of hearing, even when she was hearing well! She was stubborn, just like my mom, and wouldn't listen, in either Spanish or English, to anyone if it was something she didn't want to hear. Poor Grandma was a mother of three sons. Two were already dead from the same car accident. These two sons—the uncles I hardly knew, except by their Christmas presents—had been returning home from a fishing trip in the Sierras and their car just went off the road. No explanation, no theory even. The car, the sheriffs wrote, plunged down a ravine.

  The telephone started to ring and I watched it for fourteen rings until it stopped. Who was calling? Who was curious about my death, or should I say murder? Until then, it hadn't really occurred to me that I had been murdered. But three stab wounds in three places? What else could you call it?

  I sat on the couch in the living room, then stood up with a jerk. I would have cried if I'd had tears inside me. Mom had brought out a dusty photo album. She had it turned to a page of pictures from when I was about eight. In one, I was sitting on Grandpa's rickety lap.

  "No," I whispered.

  In the photo, Grandpa's cigarette lighter was on the coffee table. Grandpa was caught off guard; his eyes were half closed. And me? I was looking at the lighter, not at the camera, and I could tell by my devilish eyes that I wanted badly to possess it. I had the look of greed.

  "You were so bad," I muttered, shaking my head.

  There were other photos of me at Disneyland. My face was all orange and my teeth, it seemed, were really huge in my face. I then spied the news clippings of my murder. There were three of them—one from our newspaper and the others, I suspected, brought over by family and friends of the family. The news clippings were already ragged.

  Samba pranced into the living room and leaped onto the coffee table. I petted her with an invisible hand. I tickled her chin. When I blew my cold breath on her collar, she jumped away and hurried back into the kitchen.

  I heard a car pull up in the driveway, and the living room brightened from the headlights that cut through the heavy curtains.

  "They're home," I said to myself.

  I brought my hands to my face. I cringed at having to observe my mother and father with their faces wet from the deep sorrow of their only son's death. I had seen Mom cry maybe three or four times, and my dad once. But that was when the Raiders had lost a playoff game that would have sent them to the Super Bowl. Dad was a funny dude. Crying over a football game! Maybe now I would see him crying a second time.

  The key worked in the lock of the front door, and the door pushed open. My parents, followed by Uncle Richard and my mom's comadre, Carmen, entered with their faces lowered. They were ghosts themselves, white in spite of their Mexican-ness. They had stopped crying, but their eyes were red. Then others came in, some of them family, and a guy who worked with Dad. My primo Eddie followed, brushing his feet against the carpet. His eyes were red, too.

  When the telephone began to ring, they all turned their heads. My mom pushed past Uncle Richard.

  Nah, Mom, I thought. It's not me.

  She answered the telephone. She listened, but didn't say anything until she hung up and then said to the crowd, to no one, really: "Mary's making a cake."

  A cake for my funeral?

  After I was buried, they were going to have a little gathering. There would be more than a cake, I realized, and a lot more crying than what was going on now. Carmen was dabbing her nose with a Kleenex. Carmen was always dabbing her nose with a Kleenex; her life's complaint was something about always having a cold. Maybe she had one now. Then again, she could be crying for my mom and dad, and me.

  Uncle Richard went into and returned from my bedroom. He was holding up a couple of cross-country ribbons. All of them were second or third place. I was never good at track, just some lanky kid who ran for the fun of it. If I medalled, great. If I didn't, pues, I could at least get a T-shirt and a squeeze bottle for my Gatorade.

  "Are these the ones?" Uncle Richard asked. He held up the ribbons like nooses.

  My dad nodded his head.

  The two examined the ribbons. Where was the neck that they hung from? Where was the body that brought them home?

  "I can get them mounted." Uncle Richard rubbed the faces of the coin-shaped medals, and I wiped my forearm against my eyes. But no tears would spring up. I broke away from the two of them and went into the kitchen, where someone had plugged in the coffeepot. The brown liquid was slowly filling up the pot.

  I can't believe it, I thought. I hadn't even lived long enough to drink coffee.

  Then Mom appeared, pulling anxiously on Eddie's sleeve. Mom's tears were gone, and replaced by angry fire. It was the look she had on her face whenever I was bad and she'd step quickly into the bedroom for Dad'
s belt.

  "I want you to do it!" she snapped.

  Eddie looked away.

  "Come on, mi'jo, you can do it."

  Do what? I wondered.

  "I can't—it's wrong," Eddie answered. He flapped his arms at his side.

  My mom let her eyes fill with tears. She pouted and produced lines around her nose.

  "It won't solve anything," Eddie explained vaguely, looking up and challenging Mom with a hard gaze.

  When the first tear rolled down her cheek, Eddie turned and left the kitchen by the back door. Mom, sniffling, glared at the coffeepot as if she hated it for not brewing fast enough. She brought out a coffee cup and, strangely, a single tear fell into the cup. Coffee and tears, plus a single spoonful of sugar. It was going to be one of those evenings. I had to get out of there.

  IT HAD BEEN an embarrassing year for football at our high school. By late October, we were 2–5 in our conference. Everyone, including our players—who hid their shame behind face masks—joked that our two wins came because the other team hadn't shown up. Luckily, basketball season was kicking in, and I was friends with some guys on the team—Jamal Baines, Jaime Rodriguez, Jonathan Koo, and Jared Mitchell. The four Js, I called them, and they called me Mr. Lean because I was a distance runner. There was not a pinch of baby fat on my body. God, if they could see me now! I was so skinny that you couldn't see me anymore!