The Afterlife

by Gary Soto

  "The wind," I said. "It'll blow you around. You have to tighten your stomach muscles, get really low if you want to stay in one place." I considered raising the front of my shirt to show her how to tighten those stomach muscles, but I was afraid that she would grimace at my knife wounds.

  "Who are you?" she asked.

  "Chuy" I answered. I hesitated, but went ahead and boldly asked: "How did it happen? How did you die?"

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned her face away. She didn't want to tell me.

  But I was sure that her death had not been violent. She didn't suffer through a car wreck or a gunshot. She was whole and—I had to gulp—beautiful. Her face had the shape of a valentine heart. You little wimp, I scolded myself, are you falling in love or what? Truth is, that's how I am, or was. I was known for falling in love at the sight of both good-looking and not-so-good-looking girls. I wasn't very choosy. Once, when I was ten or so, I fell in love with a track star on the back of a Wheaties cereal box. She was my dream girl. I even cut her out and taped her to my bedroom wall.

  "My name is Chuy," I said again. I was suddenly embarrassed because I had no visible hands, and my feet were gone. However, she didn't appear frightened.

  "Mine's Crystal," she said, then asked, "Did you hear me? Crystal, my name is Crystal."

  "Yeah, I heard," I said. "I understand." It appeared that we ghosts could talk to each other.

  We stood in the middle of the street, shy as ponies. When a car turned down the corner and headed our way, weaving because the driver was drunk on whatever, Crystal hurried to the sidewalk. But I stood my ground, chest slightly pushed out, in fact, and let the car go through me like I was fog. Yeah, I was showing off. I admit it, me all macho as I stuck out my chest at the approaching headlights. But I also wanted to show her what we ghosts could do. The whole world could smash through us and nothing would happen. A jet could fall on our heads and we would just walk away singing "Cielito Lindo."

  "You're not hurt?" Crystal asked as she approached me.

  Hurt? Me? I had already seen the worst in my life. A car traveling through me was painless.

  "Nah," I said.

  Show-off me! I leaped into the lower branches of a tree. Crystal, giggling, bent her knees and shot upward and past the tree. She smiled, formed the word "oops" on her lips, and slowly descended, holding her dress to her sides so that it didn't parachute out and reveal what was underneath. Devilish me, I considered taking a peek up her dress, but I liked her too much. Why be like that?

  In the tree, her legs swinging, she told me that she was from Selma, a town outside of Fresno. I had once picked grapes there—my dad wanted me to know what it meant to labor under the sun surrounded by the wasps that buzzed through the vines. She was seventeen, a senior in high school, and vice president of the school. She was even a cheerleader.

  Dang, I thought. Vice president of a high, school! A cheerleader!

  "What about you?" she asked I couldn't say that I was cheerleader. But I could have easily been elected vice president of the lonely boys on campus. I told her that I was in high school, too. I told her that I ran track. I swallowed before I lied about the blue ribbons hung on my bedpost at home.

  She gave me a squint as if she didn't believe me.

  I shrugged my shoulders and giggled into my arm. I confessed that I wasn't that good at long-distance running, that I ran because it was something to do and was the only sport that I could letter in. I was too small for football and basketball. And wrestling? I had a gap-toothed girl cousin who once pinned me in seventeen seconds.

  "I run track, too," Crystal said.

  "No way," I argued. "You can't do everything!"

  She nodded her head. "I'm good," she declared. She wasn't bragging but telling me how it was.

  Mouth open, she gazed openly at where my hands should have been.

  "They're gone," I said. "So are my feet."

  "We're dead, huh?" she asked innocently.

  "Yeah," I answered. This was weird. The two of us talking about being dead and neither of us caring, really.

  "Are we going to be like this?" she asked.

  I knew what she meant. She meant whether we were going to be ghosts for a long time or—she was inspecting the stumps of my arms—or if we were just going to vanish.

  "I don't know," I lied. How could I tell her right away that we were slowly going to disappear?

  "You're not telling me the truth!" She smiled at me because I was such a bad liar.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer about what happens to us. But if she had asked me if I had liked her, I would have stuttered, "Baby, I'm for real." Or some other silly come-on line.

  In turn, I was sure that she liked me, a little bit at least. But what good was this now? Beyond her I could see the night sky and the stars giving off their icy energy. I felt like crying. How could I explain to her that I was disappearing, and that it was going to happen to her? I figured that she had died that evening, and by tomorrow, midday, maybe later, her hands would be gone along with the feet that brought her all those first-place ribbons in track. That is, if she was telling the truth and ran track. I had heard that the girl runners of Selma were better than good—great, as our coach hollered at our sorry-ass team.

  "Yeah, I'm disappearing," I admitted, with a shrug of my shoulders. "It's just the way it is."

  Her eyes lost their innocent luster. She frowned and examined her own hands. She was wondering whether she was going to disappear in time.

  "It just happens," I explained lamely. My sorrow for myself and Crystal was as deep as any river. We were ghosts, and what happened later when we lost our ghostly bodies was a big mystery.

  I told her how I had been killed at a nightclub all because I stupidly commented that I liked this guy's shoes. The shoes were yellow, really different. I told her that he killed me with a knife and lied when I said it hardly hurt at all. I bit my lower lip and hesitated about asking again how she had died.

  Crystal pulled her hair behind her ear. She jumped down from the branch, and I got a sense that she didn't want to discuss her death. There was something she didn't want to share.

  I jumped down, too. "Follow me," I said.

  I took long strides, and she followed, almost skipping. She liked how her hair lifted, and how she could stay in the air churning her legs. She was feeling beautiful, I'm sure, and looked beautiful at that hour of night when barking dogs had shut up and were bedding down on army blankets. When the wind pushed against us, I told her to tighten her stomach muscles.

  She rubbed her stomach, giggling. She blew off course for a second, actually flew up to tree level, but soon descended.

  "Tighten up," she sang as she remembered what I had explained about anchoring yourself against the wind. "I got to tighten up." She laughed with a hand over her mouth, and I liked that gesture a lot. I could tell that she wasn't scared of being a ghost.

  I led her down the street and in the direction of Fausto's house. I wanted to see if I could do something about his bike-stealing scam.

  The lights inside his house were off.

  Crystal made a face that revealed her snobbery. She didn't like the neighborhood, with its junky cars and houses leaning crookedly on their foundations. The apartment buildings were hideous. Laundry the color of defeated nations hung on lines. The screens on the windows were torn.

  "It ain't that bad here," I said, though I had to admit the neighborhood was dilapidated. I climbed the steps and walked through the wall and then back out.

  Wow, Crystal said through her expression. Her snobbery disappeared.

  I held up the stump of my arm, beckoning her to follow.

  She floated up the steps and, by my side, entered the den of nickel-and-dime thieves.

  Chapter Six

  FAUSTO WASN'T home, and neither was my punk killer in yellow shoes. I could live without either of them, and so could all of Fresno. Truth is, I had the suspicion that Fausto didn't really live in there, but cons
idered the run-down place a warehouse for the stuff he ripped off. Perfect—an export business that would leave the neighborhood children crying. I could change that.

  I had learned a thing or two about my body. When I touched the hinges of the front door with the stubs of my arms, the coldness of death made the hinges snap. I was providing the bikes with an escape route, though I knew they were not going to start pedaling on their own. ¡Imposible! But I was acquainted with run-down neighborhoods. When a door was open, the street kids, spitting sunflower seed shells, would climb the steps and holler, "Hey!" maybe three times. If there was no answer, they would enter like bugs, antennas tuned to the sound of someone home. But unlike ants that carry away crumbs, these kids, praying to the Saint of Breaking and Entering, would tiptoe in like ninjas and take what pleased them.

  Straddling a lowrider bicycle, Crystal watched me freeze the hinges. Together we breathed on the door until it collapsed at an angle—what was death but a cold wind, after all? She watched while biting the ends of her hair and clapped as the door fell when a draft pushed against it. The things that go knock in the night went unnoticed in this barrio. Not even the dogs barked.

  The clock on the wall read 2:45. We were wide awake in the heart of the night. The moon had already carried itself westward and, in time, the night would shed its darkness. By five o'clock the eastern horizon would be rubbed with the pink of a new day. Fausto, a night thief, would not return until the afternoon. Or maybe not at all. He could be sleeping with some chica who didn't know better.

  "Let's go," I told Crystal.

  Crystal got off the bicycle and approached me. She grimaced at me as if I didn't make any sense. "What do you mean?"

  "I have to go home," I said. Jokingly, I asked, "You want to meet my mom?"

  The words home and mom had the strands of hair falling from her mouth. As we left the house and bounced down the front steps, I recognized the longing inside her. She wanted to go home herself and to say good-bye to her parents.

  Still, I asked, "What are you thinking?"

  "Nothing," she answered.

  Nothing? The way I figured, the mind was always swirling one thought or another. It was impossible not to think something, even in sleep. But in sleep they called your thoughts dreams—or nightmares.

  "Come on," I begged as I drew close to her. "Tell me."

  Crystal was unafraid of the stumps of my arms. She gripped them and murmured something about disappointing her parents. About what, though? I examined her face for a clue, but found none. "What are you thinking?" I probed.

  "Just something," she answered. She nervously undid the top button of her blouse.

  I was aware that she was picturing her family, mom and dad, and maybe her bedroom, and her brothers and sisters, if she had any. That was what I had pictured on the roof of Club Estrella—home with Mom and Dad in front of the television. I gritted my teeth as I remembered something else. Dawg, I thought. I kept a three-pack of condoms under my mattress, and none of them ever got used! In a week or so, my mom would come in and straighten up my bed and discover that box. I could see her rattling it against her ear, then start crying as she realizes that she would never have grandchildren.

  Crystal lowered her face. Her beauty had me pressing my body to hers. I hugged her, and she hugged me back. Her face rested against my neck. God, how come I hadn't met her when I was living?

  "I need to go back home," she said, and pushed me away gently. Her eyes had a sorrowful look that spread to me. I felt my own sorrow, which deepened when I saw that my calves were vanishing. For me, time was running out.

  She moved away from me and stood in the street. She faced south toward Selma, and I could tell that she had much to say to her parents. But she didn't have the words to tell them. She was dead and a ghost, and her parents, for all I knew, were unaware of her death. She had been dead only a few hours. Perhaps her body hadn't been found yet.

  Crystal, I beckoned with my eyes. Boldly, I asked, "How did you die?"

  "Pills," she answered, after she searched my face for trust. I suppose she found it in my eyes. She bit her lower lip and punished it really hard because when she let go I could see the teeth marks in her lip.

  Wind whipped around her, and her long hair flowed. Her skirt also flapped like wings.

  A dude, I figured. A dude was involved. Why else would she kill herself? I pried and asked, "What was his name?"

  She turned and started walking up the street. She intended to get back home.

  I was torn whether to go back to my family or go with Crystal. She began running without a good-bye. Pitifully, I swallowed my loneliness. I couldn't stand losing her, and, nearly crying because I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it back to Fresno before disappearing altogether, I chased after her.

  "Crystal," I yelled, and joked, "Let's do breakfast in Selma!" The town had no more than ten thousand people, and maybe two thousand cows and an equal number of chickens and pigs. In fact, in Selma there was every chance that your best friend was a fly-speckled pig that you fed daily from a dented pail.

  I was soon running at her side, me, a perennial third-place long-distance runner. We galloped in time, left leg and then right, twin gazelles leaping in the darkness of night. I was keeping up, stride for stride, and observing the quiet street where I imagined poor families sawing logs of sleep. I imagined the warm beds and the blankets rising on each snore. I imagined a mother stumbling from bed as her baby began to kick and cry.

  Crystal smiled at me, and I had to smile, though there was no happiness in my heart. I was no longer thinking of myself but of Crystal—her body lay somewhere in Fresno, maybe unclaimed because it had yet to be discovered. Right then, I poked her shoulder with the stump of my arm and got her to slow to a walk.

  "Crystal," I said. "I've got to ask something."

  She pulled her hair from her eyes, which were luminous in the night.

  "Where did you die?"

  "Don't ask," she whimpered. When her eyes narrowed, some of their brightness disappeared.

  "I got to," I answered. I had to know whether her body was found, or if some stray dog was circling it. She could be in a ditch, the passenger side of a parked car, or half-clothed in a shallow grave. She was dead, I realized, but I wanted to protect her body. Maybe I could be the first to show my respect, like I'd seen on TV People will put teddy bears, flowers, and balloons where a friend got killed.

  "Why?" she asked, rocking on her heels because I was close enough to kiss her. I thought of making that kind of move, but my question was serious. Just where was she—her body? We stood like that, eyes level on each others. Just then a car turned onto the street and both of us watched it approach, picking up speed. Crystal took my arm, squeezed her eyes shut, and we let the car pass through us.

  "That's a funny feeling," she commented as she turned and watched the car continue down the street, its brake lights a sinful red as the car turned another corner. The tires squealed, but just barely.

  I continued to probe. "Come on, girl, where?" I repeated. "Where did it happen?"

  She pointed vaguely. "In my car."

  "And where's your car?" I had to brace myself because the wind was picking up. Crystal, however, a new ghost, blew halfway down the street. I flew to her and asked again.

  "At Roeding Park," she confided. She faced southward, her hair blowing and her skirt flapping, revealing thighs that were muscled from running.

  Of course, I knew the park. Teenagers like us shared our loneliness in that park, where at night peacocks howled like witches. I had been one of those teenagers, me and my carnal Angel, both of us sitting on top of benches as we took turns complaining about life, which, for us, was mainly school, maybe parents if they were jacking us up about our laziness. I recalled the rush of wind through the eucalyptus and how that mighty tree dropped leaves. We tore those leaves like movie tickets, leaf after leaf that kept our hands busy. We went there to talk about school and about our parents and how they didn't
know us because they were always working. What was Dad anyhow except a man who worked and came home to watch television? And Mom? A gossiper whose mouth was a bud of lines from dunking donuts into creamy coffee and talking too much. How I was wrong. That's just how parents were. My mom had warned me not to go to Club Estrella, while Dad, his hand on the remote control, offered up only his hangdog eyes.

  Soon we were entering Roeding Park from Olive Street. An unseen peacock howled.

  "Spooky," I remarked.

  Crystal had to laugh. "Like us, huh?" She laughed with a hand on her belly. "We're ghosts!"

  The wind rattled the eucalyptus and bent the thinnest branches. Leaves fluttered in the dark as they fell. Somewhere a swing squeaked. The door of a utility shed banged like a hammer. Though it was dark and the homeless were sleeping on cardboard the length of coffins, we weren't scared. The ducks weren't either. Some were quacking and waddling around, though they should have been asleep at the edges of their muddy pond. In a few hours, the ducks would be poking their bills into their feathery shoulders and riding the mossy water in search of food.

  We flowed over the wet lawn and, for the fun of it, rode a merry-go-round that was pushed by the wind. Crystal's hair flowed and her face was a blossom of happiness. I loved her. I wanted to say as much, but what good would it do? A lot, for me at least. But the time was not right; after all, we were in search of the place where she had died, for her body.

  We flew from that merry-go-round across the park. We stopped and hovered near a homeless man propped against a tree, shivering. A dirty blanket covered him up to his throat.

  "What's wrong with him?" Crystal asked, worried.

  The man was sick with fever and more than sick: He was a homeless guy who was dying.

  "He's dying," I answered.

  I stepped back, scared. His ghost was starting to peel away from his body. It started to rise, but I quickly got down on my knees and applied my stumps to cool the man's fever. Don't die, I begged. Please don't die. I touched his face with my stumps, pulled them away, and applied them again.