The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  * * *

  We’ve been driving for over an hour, and if I’m going to keep listening to my tío and his amazingly ridiculous stories, then I’m going to need a beer. There’s still three left. Fuck it, I grab one and pop it open.

  “¡Ah, no que no quería el muchacho?” my tío is quick to remark.

  “Just this one,” I tell him, already regretting the fact that I hadn’t been able to keep up my resistance.

  “That’s fine, nephew, enjoy,” he says, encouragingly, while also giving me a look that says he’d known all along that I was a Silva just like him, and that it’d be only a matter of time before I showed it. And maybe this is why he now feels free to ask me the following question:

  “Do you do drugs?”

  A junkie has no limits, no grain of shame. I take a swig from my beer and shake my head no. But I’m lying of course; because at the time there was nothing I enjoyed more than a fat fucking joint. I was smoking a little more than an ounce of pure chronic a week those days, real stoner-like. In fact, I’d smoked two joints right down to my fingertips in the car on my way down to see him. Nevertheless, this isn’t something I want him to know about me, at least not this soon. I don’t trust that easy. He, on the other hand, has no scruples telling me about his own drug problem. “I like speed and rock—¡piedra!” he informs me real super-enthusiastically, as if he were about to bust out a glass pipe or piece of radio antenna with burnt Brillo wire pushed into it and start smoking from it right there in front of me. But he doesn’t. Instead, he droops a little. Then, with a shake of his head, as if to free himself from a dragon: “I’ve been hooked on it for a little while now. Like for two years. I’m still trying to stop, but it’s hard. That stuff’s the Devil—¡hiiijole! When it gets you, it gets you. It doesn’t want to let you go—¿sabes?”

  “Yeah, I know.” I take a long fucking swallow from my beer.

  * * *

  The sun’s gone down. My tío’s at the end of his fifth beer and I’m at the end of my one and only. We’re pulling into the parking lot of his apartment and all I want to do is get back home. I’ve done what I’d come here to do. It’s now time for me to be on my way and find my road less traveled. Our goodbyes are short and dulcet, nothing less than tender. He tells me how great it is for him to have finally seen me again and to have had this opportunity to get to know me a little. I tell him, “Yeah, I feel the same way.” We hug, we lament, and we finally depart. And as I roll away toward my car he tosses in one last question:

  “Hey! Do you have a gun?”

  Perplexed by its randomness, I stop and turn to look at him with a what-the-fuck-did-you-just-ask-me expression on my face, and I remark, “A gun?”

  “Sí, una pistola. You got one?”

  “No, not on me,” I tell him.

  I don’t have one at all, but I want to see where he’s going with such a question. “Why, you need one?”

  “No. I just wanted to know if you had one. Be good, nephew, maybe I’ll see you again.”

  Crazy is as crazy talks. My tío Mundo was fucking crazy.

  * * *

  The next time I’d hear from him would be a couple of years later when he’d call me from a hotel in Los Angeles to ask me to come out and see him there. “I’ll only be here for one night. I leave tomorrow back to New Mexico after I pick up what I came here for,” he said in the same overly excited voice he’d had when he called me from San Diego. But oh no, I wasn’t going anywhere this time. As soon as he said he was in Los Angeles just to pick something up, I instantly knew what that something was, and I wanted no part of it. So I played it cool and told him that I couldn’t make it, but maybe on another occasion. “Can’t do it, tío. I got shit to do over here. Maybe next time you come around.”

  But there was no next time. The months passed and eventually the years, and not another peep from my incredible tío Mundo. That is, until now.

  Here he is in Chihuahua like me, to say farewell to my father. But he doesn’t look at all like the crackhead I’d met in San Diego. Not in the least. The man has aged quite a bit and, more importantly, has cleaned up nicely. He looks healthy. He’s put on a few pounds and has grown his hair out, which is completely gray like his thick mustache; and he’s dressed decent, too. Has on a crisp, short-sleeve, button-down shirt with white and brown squares and clean light-blue jeans. And while his eyeglasses once added to his freakishly junkie look, they now make him look more like Geppetto than anything else. Teeth eight and nine are still missing though. I guess there’s no helping that.

  “¿Cómo estás, hijo? Don’t you recognize me?” he asks.

  I don’t. There’s no way for me to tell it’s him. The man is a miracle in the flesh, a modern-day Lazarus. He’s sober now—as I’d later learn—and glowing with life. Will you look at that, I think to myself, my dad’s dead and my tío Mundo’s more alive than ever.

  * * *

  I begin to fade away as more faces arrive and their eager smiles call for my attention. The red sky melts into a purple acid dream and everything and everyone around me turns into one black shadow. I’m off to another world, one made of a pretty face and dazzling moonlike eyes.

  7

  “Obed! Obed!”

  “Yes. Yes. How are you?”

  “I’m all right. And you? Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”

  “Yeah. I did. I just spaced out for a second.”

  “She’s pretty, huh?”

  “Who?”

  “That girl you were staring at.”

  “What girl?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. I was just watching you stare at her.”

  I laugh but say nothing.

  It’s my sister Cecilia. I’d seen her earlier sitting alone on the concrete bench on the side of the parlor when I first arrived. I’d meant to go talk to her but the others had prevented me from doing so. All I could do then was offer her a semi-sympathetic smile, which she kindly offered back. She understood. But I’m happy to have her standing in front of me now. She’s a breath of fresh air, a cup of cold water to my parched soul. She brings something new to the scene, a little bit of Uncle Sam, some brightness to this gloomy portrait of disparaged Mexico. Fuck the Spanish, I could speak English with her, take myself back to my mean Orange County silver streets and talk up a lively mess of uncensored nonsensical bullshit in my un-native language. I see the United States in her face, my newly elected Black president and the red, white, and blue, wars and fast cars and just as fast-moving people, of all colors and tongues. She takes me away for a moment: no funeral, no Mexico, only the “gleam of the morning’s first beam.” I’m transfixed by the spark in her speak and sent spiraling into her dainty heart. I pull her in to hug her and tell her that I’m so very happy she’s here.

  “I’m glad you’re here, too,” she says, wrapping her warm arms around me. “I feel like I don’t know anybody, and I’ve been feeling really lonely ever since I got here.”

  My poor little sister, not knowing how dark night can get, too, had followed the sun south to wish her dead father farewell.

  * * *

  Sister, you’ve come to watch your father’s last act and can barely understand a word from the blizzard of words being spit at you from all these mouths. But let me ask you: What is there to understand? Do you wish to learn more about your father from those who knew him best? I’d sit at the back of the class and pretend I didn’t exist if I were you. Truth is dangerous enough to kill your spirit if you don’t know how to use a smile and how to dance around pain. See, Papá was a rolling stone and hated having to love; it was too heavy for his heart and so he fought against it to the end. And now he laughs from his little box, knowing that all his offspring have gathered today to weep for him. So wipe away those terrible tears, what purpose do they serve? Look! the sun is setting and there is a red blaze upon your face. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, my little sis, but your daddy’s probably going to hell! No, not probably. He is most certainly going to hell. />
  * * *

  I call Cecilia my half-white sister because her mother’s a straight-up gabacha from Albuquerque, New Mexico—All-American pan blanco, with, I’ve heard, a little bit of some type of American Indian. I don’t know how my father pulled it off, but he did. Must’ve been his ever-flourishing romantic sensibilities. Bullshit! Who am I kidding? My father simply found himself at the right bar in the right state in the right country at the right time, inebriated, overcome by lust, and without a condom. And the white girl—though it doesn’t speak well of her taste in men—must’ve liked what she saw in the chapito. Daddy probably played it cool, told her a joke or two, maybe even told her she was beautiful in his paisa English and bought her a beer, just enough for him to get his foot in the door, and then his—well, a child was born.

  * * *

  Cecilia was born on October 13, 1985, but I didn’t meet her until she was sixteen. Before then I didn’t even know she existed. One day, however, in 2001, when I was twenty-two years old, while I was home doing God knows what, the phone rang, and when I picked it up I was greeted by a woman who said she had something important to tell me, that there was someone with her who wanted to speak with me, and when I asked her who, she, very casually, said, “Your sister.”

  “My sister?” I remarked with surprise, thinking she was talking about my sister Samantha, who at the time was twelve and in middle school. “What happened, is she all right?” I asked the woman, thinking she was either a teacher or the principal from her school calling to inform us that she was in some sort of trouble. “Samantha?” I eventually said, seeking confirmation that it was actually Samantha the voice on the other end was talking about.

  “No. I’m talking about your sister Cecilia, who lives over here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.” It now became clear to me that the woman was talking to the wrong person.

  “Oh no, you got the wrong number, lady. I don’t have a sister named Cecilia who lives in Albuquerque. My sister’s name’s Samantha, and she lives here, with me, in California.” I felt confident the woman would recognize her mistake and hang up, but she didn’t. And the reason she didn’t was because she’d made no mistake. She was cool and continued on the line.

  “You’re Obed Silva, right?” she said with that added confidence in her voice that one gets when one feels absolutely certain about something. I, on the other hand, upon hearing my name come through the speaker, felt my own certainty that she’d mistaken me for someone else slowly diminish. As a result, I had to force my response, forbearingly pushing out each subtle syllable of the word: “Ye-ah.”

  “Then no, I don’t have the wrong number, Cecilia’s your sister. She’s your dad’s daughter. Juan, he’s your dad, right?”

  ¡Puta madre! When I heard her say the viejo’s name I felt like someone had slapped me across the face after telling me a cruel joke and was now encouraging me to laugh. What the fuck! You’ve got to be kidding me. But there was no kidding. The woman was telling the truth. My dad, my sneaky little dad, was guilty.

  “Juan, yeah—of course, that’s my dad.” And I’m his son, the pendejo you’re talking to.

  “Me and your dad, we were together sixteen years ago and I got pregnant with your sister.” She came out with it just like that, like it was no big deal to her. And though the shit was surreal to me, it wasn’t all that unbelievable. This was, after all, my father she was talking about. Of course he’d been with her and gotten her pregnant all those years ago and had never bothered to mention to me that I had another sister this side of the border. It all made perfect sense after a few deep breaths. It was in my father’s character to hide his mistakes. In this case his mistake was not that my sister had been born, but that he, for whatever reason, had exempted himself of all responsibility as a father to her from the moment he’d found out she’d been conceived.

  * * *

  The last time I’d seen Cecilia was a couple months after I’d received the news about her existence, which was also the only time I’d ever seen her before now.

  I drove to Albuquerque to meet her and I bought it right away. She had our father’s face, from his passionate cheekbones to his large, round, dark eyes, and wide mouth. There was no disputing it. She was a Silva all right: the product of a man who’d never care or provide for her in any way. A phone call every few years was all she’d ever get from him. And now, here she was at that man’s funeral, doing the most decent thing a child can do for their parents when they die—show up.

  * * *

  Don’t count on me to give you the rundown on dad, little sis. He was how he was and died because he lived the way he did: loving his drink more than he loved his children. All I can tell you is welcome to the family. This is it. Look around you; befriend the misery and you’ll be able to make a star out of every tear, music out of every cry. Grab someone by the hand and laugh with them until you understand their plight, until you know from whence their sorrow comes. It’s a beautiful thing once you recognize it, like the sweet and insatiable fragrance of dark chocolate as it shoots endorphins straight up to your brain and arouses the senses. You then not only open up to it without fear, but embrace it like an empty couch on a lonely night. It all becomes a sickly joke that belongs to all of us and that keeps us all the same. For better or for worse, you are your father’s daughter—you, too, are a Silva.

  * * *

  There is grief in Cecilia, but it has nothing to do with our father’s death. Her grief is one born of an ignorance imposed on her; for here she is surrounded by people who carry the same last name as she, yet she barely knows any of them. She’s the secret that was never meant to be revealed. But here she is now, all alone, looking shocked and confused, as if having finally found her way back home after being lost in the wilderness for many years, making note of every face and wanting every face to make note of her.