by Obed Silva
“Come. Walk this way,” he ordered her, pointing to the end of the side of her house.
She did as he said, carefully closing the door behind her. The gun always pointed at her. When they got to the side of her house, he directed her into a dark space between her house and the one behind it. It was too dark for her to see where she was stepping, but she stepped into this dark crevice without a challenge. She could feel the dirt and gravel press into her feet, and the barrel of the gun press into her lower back.
All she remembers is shutting her eyes and clutching on to her gown in front of her. She had always liked how it looked on her mother. Bright. And she had always liked how it felt on her. Soft. Once, she had tried to name all of the flowers, but she was unable to. In Chihuahua, flowers were rare. It was mostly dirt. But she knew the daisy, and she knew the sunflower; she knew the daffodil, and she knew the lily; she knew the orchid, and of course she knew the rose. One day her mother would come back, and she would return her gown to her, and she would not have to be the woman of the house anymore.
* * *
When the child was born, she refused to touch it or see it. On the day of his birth, one of the nurses brought him up to her chest as an offering, and she turned her face away, her jaw tilted upward. Her eyes were windows to the afterlife. Black and dead. She was soulless. The child had sucked it out of her. She was only a body that breathed and pumped blood and felt nothing.
Outside of her everything was distorted. Faces had no features and nothing was defined by lines or edges or colors. It was a reality where nothing made sense, where everything became part of the same nothingness. It all flowed, and slowed. Fragments of a past life she didn’t recognize. And the child cried. Yearning for a purpose. Yearning to return into the womb of his mother. The lights were bright and his mother rejected him. There was no love, no touch. And he cried. And she turned away.
It was the same on the next day. The nurse brought him in. She came in with a different group of nurses at different times throughout the day. Some cared about the child. Others were only curious to see the woman who wouldn’t hold or even see her baby. How could any mother reject her child? What was wrong with her? What was wrong with the child? They wondered, and they talked, and the word spread, and she became the crazy woman who didn’t love her newborn baby, and he became the newborn baby that was unwanted by his crazy mother.
Her father, brothers, and sister visited and they, too, brought her the child. But it was the same. Not a glance, not a single touch. She looked away into her murky world. Sank there. No one could bring her out.
“Hija,” her father said, “¿estás bien?” No response. But she remembered the day she told him that she had a boyfriend and that she was going to marry him and that she was with child. And she remembered that he was happy for her. They all were: her brothers and sister, too. She had wanted them all to be happy. She had wanted them all to never know the truth. Her father would have killed him and been sent to jail for a very long time. Or her brother José. He was only fifteen at the time, but he was hot-tempered and it didn’t take much to set him off, especially since the day their mother left. If the father didn’t kill him, José certainly would have. And she would be the cause of all of it, for having accepted the boy’s advances in the first place. She should have known better.
And what of the child? How would they have looked at him, treated him? He was the stain, the thing that happened, the act, the night, the gun, the bare feet, the gown, the flowers hitting the floor.
Enfermera Luz, the head nurse of the hospital, however, would not give up. She was the one who had been walking into the room holding the child the last two days since he’d been born. She had been the one who brought the child to his mother’s chest and pleaded with the mother to receive her son.
Now, on the third day, as she picked up the boy from his hospital bassinet, she looked into his little black eyes, and told him that today was going to be the day. “Mi niñito,” she said to him, “I am not taking you out of that room until she has held you and sees how beautiful you are. Te lo prometo.” And with that promise and a prayer she walked into the mother’s room with the child in her arms.
“Mija,” the nurse, walking into the room alone, said to the mother, “look, I’ve brought you your baby again so that you may hold him.” But like on the previous days, the mother, without making a sound, looked away. The baby cried, and the nurse rocked him. “It’s okay, it’s okay, my little boy,” the nurse said to him. “Look, this is your mommy, and she loves you very much.” She turned the child to the mother but the mother remained immobile. “You have to see your son, mijita,” the nurse said to the mother. “You can’t keep pretending that he doesn’t exist.” As the nurse talked and rocked back and forth, the child grew silent. “He has all his little toes and all of his little fingers,” the nurse continued, “and you should see his eyes. They’re deep and dark. They look for you. Look, even now he opens them and they wander.”
Then it happened. The mother broke and tears began to rush from her eyes. His eyes had come to her like two fireflies in a dream, and she had stared into them and seen the presence of love. So she turned, slowly, toward the nurse, who grew still and silent like the child. “That’s it, mijita,” she told the mother. “Turn to your child. Look how beautiful he is.”
She looked on at the bundle in the nurse’s arms. She saw his little brown face and his black hair, then she focused on those black eyes of his, those fireflies in a dream that had been wandering, looking for his mama. They wandered no more. He recognized her right away, and she him. “Toma, mija,” the nurse said, handing the mother her baby. And she took him. And she brought him to her chest. And as she looked upon him and into his eyes, she continued to cry. But they were no longer tears of sadness or guilt or pain or sorrow. These were new tears. The mother was crying because she loved the boy, and she was happy. And the boy was happy, too, because he knew that his mother loved him.
Then the mother brought him up to her face and she smelled him, and she was full again, fully alive! Then she kissed him. And then she told him this: “You are my son, and I love you, and I will always love you, and I will always protect you. You are my son, my beautiful son. Eres mi hijo Obed.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dear reader, upon reading the pages within this book, you will notice that my mother, Marcela Mendoza, is absent from most of them. This is intentional. Per her request, I have made her presence minimal, writing her in only when absolutely necessary to maintain the integrity and flow of the story. Since he caused her much emotional anguish and physical pain throughout her early adult life, my mother would like little to do with anything involving my father. By the end of this book, you will fully comprehend why.
Nevertheless, it is my mother whom I would like to acknowledge first, to thank her for everything that she has done for me. For without her unwavering commitment to providing me with a promising and fulfilling life, I would either be dead or in prison serving a life sentence.
My mother was the first to introduce me to books, and she was the first to realize that the way to saving me from the streets and myself was for me to go to college and earn a degree. In short, my mother is the reason for everything good that has come about in my life, including this terrible book.
I also owe an abundance of gratitude to Christie Diep, my English professor at Cypress College. Before meeting her, I had failed various times at being a college student. But because of her strong belief in me, and her mentorship, I was able to graduate from community college and move on to a four-year university, where I would eventually earn a master’s degree in English. It was Professor Diep with whom I first shared the early pages of this book, and it was also she who first encouraged me to keep writing and to turn those early pages into a book.
Lastly, I would like to thank my friend, mentor, and now writing brother Héctor Tobar, who guided me all along the way in the development of this book, reading and rereading many of its mul
tiple drafts. His advice and notes have been invaluable.
A Note About the Author
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, Obed Silva immigrated to the United States as a toddler. After years in the gang lifestyle—which left him paralyzed from the waist down, the result of a gunshot wound— he discovered the power of book learning, earned a master’s degree in medieval literature, and became a respected English professor in East Los Angeles. The Death of My Father the Pope is his first book. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Act 1: THE WAKE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
INTERMISSION
Chapter 14
Act 2: THE BURIAL
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Act 3: THE BEGINNING
Chapter 27
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
MCD
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2021 by Obed Silva
All rights reserved
First edition, 2021
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-72270-8
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
www.mcdbooks.com • www.fsgbooks.com
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @mcdbooks
