The Death of My Father the Pope

by Obed Silva

  But February 3 has come again and there is no phone call from my father, nor will there be, ever. I’m awake early in the morning and staring at the ceiling from my bed, realizing that something will be missing today. “Such is life,” I say, “and life is sad as such.” I take my cell phone off the charger and I hold it in my hand. It’s cold. He isn’t going to call today, I remind myself, he’s dead, my father’s dead. In this moment, however, I can’t kick him out of my head. Right now I love him more than ever. He’s there and he’s playing. He’s there and he’s smiling at me. He’s there and he’s not drunk. “Happy birthday, hijo,” he’s saying. “Te quiero.” I wish I could cry, but I don’t; I remind myself that everything that happens is a result of something else. And still, in this moment, right now, I love him more than ever.

  I raise my phone and I go through my contacts: Pops—this is the name I have for my father’s number. It’s still there. I haven’t changed it.

  I called my father a lot during the last five to six years of his life, and most times I’d be drunk. I’d be at bars, clubs, parties, or just drinking with friends at random places, and as soon as I’d be drunk, I’d get this melancholy urge to call my father. “¡Qué onda, jefe?” I’d yell into the phone. “Do you miss me?”

  “Claro que sí,” he’d say, often shaking off his sleep.

  “Yeah, me too, and guess what, viejo?”

  “What?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Yo se.”

  Of course he knew. Why else would I be calling him at one, two, three, and sometimes even four in the morning if not to share with him my joy of being drunk. Our conversations almost never went on for much longer than this; he’d have to go back to sleep and I’d have to go back to getting more drunk. Sometimes, however, before hanging up, I’d pass the phone to some of those around me and say, “Here, it’s my dad on the phone, say hi to him, he’s a great man!” I’d take a lot of pleasure in having my drunk friends talk to my father on my phone. “¡Q-vole!” they’d say. “Yeah, I’m your son’s friend. He’s a helluva guy, and he’s told us a lot about you.” Then there’d be a pause, and then: “Okay, it was nice talking to you, too. We’re going to drink some more and get real fucked-up before the night ends, and don’t worry about Obed, we’ll take care of him. Okay, bye-bye!”

  * * *

  I take it death can’t be so bad, on account that we all must die. So why is it that we make such a fuss over life? Don’t know. Seven times I’ve almost died, and I’ll probably have a few more encounters with death by the time I finish telling this story. The first on account of me crawling through the rails of a second-floor balcony and almost falling to my death at the age of one. Would’ve made the trip down had my mother not leaned over the railing and snatched me up. The second on account of me being in a car with a bunch of other kids that my cousin Armando drove off a cliff at Big Bear Mountain after the car’s brakes went out—I was eight then. The third on account of me getting shot for being a jackass—seventeen then. I’ll include here the other numerous times I was shot at but never hit. The fourth on account of a meth overdose—was old enough to know better. The fifth on account of a cocaine overdose, which led to the discovery of gangrene on my small intestine, which led to the removal of a foot of my small intestine—again was old enough to know better. The sixth time again on account of an overdose, of a mixture of cocaine and meth—again was old enough to know better. The seventh time on account of choking on a dry and stale McDonald’s fry. My brother Roberto performed the Heimlich maneuver on me and the grain-size piece of fry came rocketing out. Would have been a most embarrassing death. Really glad I didn’t go that way. Seven times—and probably other times that I just don’t remember on account I’ve been jumped and had my head pounded on with fists and stomped on with boots on more than one occasion. I almost became nothing more than a tiny memory in the minds of a certain few. But here I am still, for now.

  But even after so many close encounters with the reaper, I still don’t know how to go about accepting it, accepting that we all must die, and that death can come at any moment. People die doing ordinary, everyday activities, like riding their bikes on the street, or making a wrong turn during a blizzard, or marrying the wrong person, or getting on a roller coaster, or eating too much or smoking too much or drinking too much or doing stupid shit like jumping off cliffs with a parachute or fake wings too much or wanting to know too much about nature too much, shit, you can even up and die for drinking too much water. You can just die. That’s it. It’s the law of life. All that lives must die and there is no telling when your day is going to come. But wouldn’t it be so serene, so peaceful, so out of this world to just stop living? Victor Hugo once wrote: “All men are condemned to death.” Not one person has ever been granted a reprieve from death, nor will one person ever be granted one. Straight to death we’re all heading, to that most perfect state from which there is no return. So why such sorrow over such beauty?

  * * *

  No matter how much I try,

  I keep returning to the Beast!

  Drink after drink and piss after piss.

  Life becomes easier—

  Hurrah! Hurrah! Hail to the Beast!

  And ajajaaaiiii! I’m loving it—

  Father, I miss you, and so much more do I yearn for death

  It’s a Beast, it’s a monster, it’s the Devil in disguise—

  I dance and laugh,

  I do the waltz with Vicente Fernández.

  Candles for friends and tequila for lovers—

  I imagine myself surrounded by mariachi

  Drinking and dying too slow

  With a cigarette and a drink.

  Father, do you remember

  How life was beautiful

  Before you made it ugly,

  A spell and a curse?

  I have to write this down, record it—

  Who else will tell our story, yours and mine?

  Drunk father

  Drunk son

  The leaf follows the leaf—and so it goes.

  The pain too real, the pain too good

  Bukowski was no genius,

  Just a drunk—

  He would’ve had fun with us,

  With you,

  With me,

  Would’ve screamed his guts out

  At the cry of Vicente—

  “Volver, volver … vooooolveeeerrrrr!” the drunk would’ve sung;

  “Me canse de rogarle,” he would’ve shouted to the world;

  And “El hijo del pueblo,” he would’ve proclaimed to be, just like us.

  I once heard a scholar ask why Bukowski was relevant,

  And I told her that only a scholar would ask such an irrelevant question.

  “How so?” she asked.

  “Because the scholar doesn’t know shit about shit,” I told her.

  And she cried and felt stupid,

  Inadequate and unworthy of being in my presence.

  Then she smoked a cigarette and smirked at my misery.

  I’m drunk,

  Can you tell?

  A mess,

  A hurricane!

  Destruction is my goal.

  Destruction of myself.

  No one cries

  No one laughs

  No one loves

  Like me.

  Victor Hugo was my friend,

  Knew me like a spell.

  Wrote about me—The Condemned Man.

  And he wrote and he wrote and he died!

  Boy! do I miss you! and my father—

  Do you drink with him?

  23

  “¡Impresionante—punto!”

  We made this exclamation our inside joke every time either of us saw or heard something worth noting. Didn’t have to be anything too amazing; the simplest things sufficed. Even watching Aarón and Danny bounce a soccer ball off of each other’s knees was enough to set us off. If my father saw them doing it before I did, he’d turn to me and say, “¡Impresio
nante—punto!” And I’d echo the expression, putting as much weight on each syllable as my father had done when he’d said it. Then we’d both turn to each other and smile at our own little secret, our own little joke. For more than a week, whenever we saw something that made an impression on us, we’d say this. From a kid hopping off a curb on his bike to a good-looking woman with big breasts and a big behind on a telenovela or an incredible Mexican shoot-out on a low-budget narco movie with the brothers Almada to a street dog taking a shit would inspire us to remark: “¡Impresionante—punto!” We worked as a team and we liked it.

  We started saying this after watching the Italian film Le Chiavi di Casa (The Keys to the House). Because in Chihuahua, if you don’t have a steady job, hobby, or anything productive to do to help you escape the mundane and drab redundancies of life, watching rented movies at home becomes somewhat of a great substitute. (Alcohol, though, is the preferred choice.) On one particular night, while everyone else in the house was asleep, my father and I decided to watch a movie we had rented earlier in the day.

  It was about the complicated reunion between a father and son—just perfect for us. From an old blanket and sheetless mattress on the living room floor, my father and I watched as the father in the film, after having abandoned his son at birth because of his mental and physical disability, returns to reunite with him, which, on account of the son’s disabilities, is difficult to do, but that in the end, because of love, becomes easier. Father and son eventually bond over what had initially separated them. It is love that triumphs.

  “¡Punto!” the son keeps repeating in one scene in the film as he dictates a love letter, meant for a girl he likes, to his father, who is typing it out on a laptop.

  “¡Punto!” I begin to say after my father says it.

  “¡Punto!”

  “¡Punto!”

  “¡Punto!”

  We both laugh at ourselves without looking at each other. We’ve found something that is equally amusing to the two of us and we play with it like children play with new toys. “¡Punto!” We can’t stop saying it even as the movie continues. We go back and forth as if passing a ball to each other. “¡Punto!” he says. “¡Punto!” I say. “¡Punto!” we both say. And we continue to laugh at ourselves.

  What a moment. How beautiful it must have been to a stranger’s eyes: a father and son making fun of life, having fun with life, having fun with one word. Wish I could’ve been those eyes. But who would’ve known it would end so quickly?

  Van a decir que ese güey es un sabio bien hecho—

  Como un Shakespeare o un Cervantes,

  Pero, ¿quién se la cree? Ni el mismo.

  Pura locura. ¡Punto!

  Lo bueno es que el es el que cuanta el cuento,

  Porque si fuera otro el que lo contara—

  ¡Puta! ¡Que gran abuso de la verdad sería!

  * * *

  I prayed he would die. I wanted him gone, completely out of our lives, mine more than anything. I wanted peace. Silence. Moments of tranquility. I wanted a new beginning: “Die! Die! Die, good father—be gone forever! Disappear from this world!”

  But I was only angry.

  I couldn’t take the fights anymore, the hurt and the crying. I could no longer bear the image of the drunk. I’d see him coming and already I wanted him to be leaving. My father, a lonely shadow, depleted of all hope, walking toward me in the light of the moon provoked in me feelings of resentment. Here he comes, I’d think when he’d appear in the distance, and I wish he wasn’t.

  “¿Qué, hijo, no me quieres?”

  “Yes, of course I love you. But…”

  “But what? I’m drunk? I know I’m drunk. I was there, or didn’t you know?”

  My father would gather my head in his arms and kiss me, and then he would say, “This is how I am, son, this is how your father is—tu papá. I can’t hide it from you any longer.”

  This was life made simple, broken down to its most basic element: LA PURA VERDAD in capital letters so that there could be no misunderstanding.

  * * *

  There’s a knife on the table and the thought crosses my mind: I should kill this motherfucker right now, stick him right in the fucking heart and put him out, just like that. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me, laughing at me. I should just kill this motherfucker!

  We’ve been drinking sotol and tequila all day, and now we’re challenging each other from across the table. He’s already beaten me twice, sending me to the ground each time: “You can’t do it, son. You’re never going to beat me!” But I want to. I want to show him that he’s the weak one. So I place my elbow again at the center of the table and bring my arm up. “¡A la chingada, qué no?” I tell him with rage and hate in my eyes. “Let’s do it again!”

  “Bueno,” he says calmly, taking on the challenge. “If you want to, I want to.” He places his elbow next to mine in the center of the table and faces the palm of his hand toward mine.

  “Ya no,” Cokis says with concern. She’s sitting at one end of the table with us with a cup of beer in her hand. “I don’t like this,” she continues. “Somebody can get hurt.” But son and father don’t listen to the drunk woman. This is about manhood, and she doesn’t understand.

  My father clasps my hand with his. Our hands are firmly gripping each other. Mine thin and soft: young. His thick and rough: old. “Listo,” he says, squeezing my hand tightly. He’s looking into my eyes, smiling. He knows I can’t beat him. And he’s right. He’s too strong. His arms and hands are three times the size of mine, plus arm-wrestling’s something he’s had much experience in as a barroom sport. The last time I arm-wrestled someone was over a decade ago as a teen while serving time in juvenile hall. Plus my wrists are thin, like my fingers, meant more for typing than for a bout like this. But I’m drunk, and I don’t give a fuck. There’s no courage greater than a drunk’s. I fear nothing, and I hate this man across from me; I hate his fucking laugh and I hate the way he drinks. Maybe I’ll beat him this time and will be able to laugh at him in his fucking ugly face, to tell him that he ain’t shit, that he can’t fuck with me because I’m the stronger one.

  “¡Que no!” Cokis cautions again before we start. But no one hears her.

  “¡Vamos!” my father yells, and our hands stiffen up against each other. We’re looking into each other’s eyes, piercing each other’s spirits with fiery hostility. He never blinks. The fucker makes it all seem so easy. I’m giving it all I’ve got and he can’t hold back a smile. He’s smirking at me, at my vain determination, at the reason why I’m drinking even as I write this. I lose my eyes. I want to cry. I know it’s coming. I can’t win. Bam! The back of my hand hits the table and again I hit the floor; my legs are tangled up between the side bars of my wheelchair’s footrest. I’m broken, shattered, realizing the extent of my disability. My dignity is destroyed. I have none. I’m no man. I’m a thing. A broken fucking thing. And my father’s standing over me with his hand extended to me. I hear Cokis say, “Help him up, Juan. I told you this was a bad idea.” I want to kill her, too.

  * * *

  It all makes sense to me:

  My father, my beautiful padre. I can see him right in front of me, and he’s happy. He’s the man I love. He’s the one I cry for when he’s not around. And here he is, right in front of me. He’s on his knees with one hand on my shoulder and the other in his pocket. He’s digging for something, a few pesos. “Here, son,” he says, handing me a couple of crumpled bills. “Take this, it’s for you, for a couple sodas.” He leans in to hug me and he gives me a kiss on the cheek. The rough stubble on his face scratches against mine. Doesn’t hurt, just feels funny. “Te quiero,” he says to me in a soft voice, his eyes never turning away from mine. “You’re my son and I love you.”

  * * *

  “You see, Juan, I told you not to,” I hear Cokis saying again. “¡Ya no! ¡No mas!”

  * * *

  He’s walking away now, becoming nothing in the distance. “Papá! Papá!
” The little boy is crying out but no one hears him. “Don’t go, please!” The little boy opens his hands and two crumpled bills fall to the ground.

  * * *

  “He’s a man,” I hear my father say to Cokis. “We’re both men.”

  * * *

  The lights, the music, are each much brighter and louder when drunk. Even the beating of your heart is louder. It beats like a war cry. Beat after beat becomes pound after pound. The Beast is awakened and it wants more. From my chair I let out a loud roar: “Fuck you, puto! I could kill you if I want to. But I won’t, and do you know why? Because you’re already dead!”

  I reach for the knife and hold it in my hand by its wooden handle. I point with it at my father and I say one word: “¡Muerto!”

  * * *

  “Do you want another drink?” Cokis says to me.

  “Yes,” I tell her while reaching across the table for a lime, “and get one for him, too.” While she pours, I cut the lime right down the middle as my father looks on.

  “Here,” Cokis says, handing us each a shot glass filled with sotol, “drink and forget.”

  But there is no forgetting, at least for me. I can never forget this—never. It’s become part of me, much like my wheelchair. I can never say that it’s not there. This is Saturn eating his son.

  * * *

  My father walked out of the house and I rolled after him.

  “Where you going?” I asked him from the door.

  “Somewhere,” he replied without looking back at me.

  I hopped down the step and rolled down to the end of the driveway and told him that I was coming with him. By this time he’d made it to the front of the neighbor’s house where he stopped, turned to me, and said, “To where?”