The Affliction

by C. Dale Young

  “I just don’t have an answer for that.” As usual, when she said this, the doctor turned away from Leenck and refused to look him in the face.

  “What if I do nothing? What if I don’t do the chemotherapy?”

  “Then you’ll die.” The doctor said this with a matter-of-fact tone that seemed to Leenck almost graceful. There wasn’t even the slightest change in the expression on her face, which remained flat and virtually blank. She stood up from her chair and walked over to a sink and washed her hands. Leenck found this strange seeing as she hadn’t examined him while she had been in the room. But he knew it was likely just another way for her to avoid looking at him.

  “But even if I do the chemo I will eventually die, right?”

  “Well, we all eventually die. But you don’t want to die like this.”

  “Maybe the lab test is a mistake.”

  “It is not a mistake. We have gone over this already.”

  Leenck could hear the growing frustration in his doctor’s voice. He decided to simply agree with her. He would go to the chemo class. He would tell her what she wanted to hear. Leenck knew he was good at that, good at telling people what they wanted to hear. He had been doing that for his entire life.

  *

  From the boat, Leenck and I could see the darkness of the island in the distance, then the island itself. It had been six months since we first met at the beach in Santa Monica. Now, here we were sailing to the small island near Antigua I used to call home. There were too many shades of blue in the ocean between the boat and the island. Each seemed like a different possibility. I kept going inside the cabin to talk to the captain. I believed Leenck understood what we needed him to do. I wanted him to go see the old healer woman who could make different illnesses disappear. But Leenck was afraid. I knew he was afraid. He wasn’t afraid of the woman, but afraid of what she might do to him.

  As the ship pulled closer and closer to the island, I could make out the harbor and the various boats and small ships anchored there. There was the blue water and the white and blue boats. There were the houses I remembered, crammed together on one of the hillsides in a gaudy array of colors: flamingo pinks and crayon greens, odd teals and purples. As we approached the island, Leenck told me how his father cried in their house back in the old country. He remembered telling his father that he was not a carpenter and that he was not cut out to be a carpenter, that he was leaving the town and that way of life. And he remembered his father begging him not to do it, begging him to reconsider. His father told him that he would die from the inside out if he left their way of life. And now Leenck couldn’t stop talking about how that was exactly what was happening. He had blood cells going crazy in his body. The cells were moving all through his body. From the inside out. He kept saying that his father had been right, that he was dying from the inside out.

  Why does a man think this way at the end? Why does he see in the past the glimmers of prophecy that likely were never meant to be prophecy? It is hard to say why. But Leenck saw then in his father’s last words to him the overwhelming power of prophecy. And without even appearing to think about it, he kept saying them out loud: “dying from the inside out.” I wish, in retrospect, that all there was in the air was this “prophecy,” but there was more; there was me. Leenck knew I had fallen in love with him, loved him, and was deeply in love with him. He knew it. And I am quite sure he also knew he didn’t love me that way and could never love me that way. Sex with a man just didn’t seem like his kind of thing. And loving a man? That was beyond his comprehension. He would likely have had an easier time having sex with me than loving me. I was his friend, despite the fact he wanted no friends. And even then, it was clear Leenck could not decide if he even cared for me as a friend. But Leenck had to know. He had to know he let me love him, allowed me to fall in love with him. It had to be one of the few things Leenck could admit to himself. He allowed me to fall in love with him, and it was clear he had no idea why he had allowed that to happen.

  “Nickel for your thoughts,” I said while looking beyond him at the island coming into focus.

  “Nothing, really.”

  “We should be ashore within a half an hour. My sister has already arranged for Cassie to see us.”

  “Oh?”

  “She is a really weird old woman. Man, the stories about her are legendary.”

  “She’s still just a woman.”

  “Some think she is a god.”

  “I’m not sure I want to meet a god.”

  “Well, you’ll see when you meet her. That huge white house alone on that hill over there to the left is where she lives.”

  “I’m not going to meet her.”

  “Leenck, what the hell you talking about?”

  “I’m not going to meet her. I told you I would come with you, but I never said I would go see the old woman.”

  “Leenck, you’re getting sicker. You’ve lost twenty pounds or more since I met you.”

  “I wanted to see the island. I wanted to make the trip. I wanted to leave the U.S.”

  “You can’t come this far and not see her, man.”

  I turned away from Leenck then and walked back inside. As I entered the cabin, I saw myself in a mirror and suddenly wanted to laugh. “Who was the sick muthafucker?” I thought. “Who is the real sick one here?” As I stared at the mirror, I became more and more angry. The captain’s assistant was saying something to him, but I couldn’t hear exactly what was being said. Outside, the harbor was calm. There was almost no breeze skimming across it. The sky was overcast. And out the porthole window, I saw the mountain and trees that marked this place as my home, the place where I had grown up. I didn’t want to do it, but I went back up on deck to Leenck.

  “Please, just meet the woman. Talk to her. You don’t have to do anything else...”

  “Diego, I am already dead.”

  “Stop being crazy. Why do you always have to be crazy?”

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you see it? It caught up to me. It has been with me for so long that it has finally overcome me. I’ve been dying for my entire adult life. I just didn’t see it.”

  “Please, Leenck, the boat is docked. Stop the drama. Just come see the old woman.”

  “I won’t. I will not. I cannot leave the boat.”

  “Don’t do this, Leenck. Don’t...”

  “I have already done it.”

  The water was getting dark then in the harbor under the overcast sky. The clouds were gray and looked like dark dishwater. The air was unusually still. And Leenck waited for the tears in my eyes. But the tears didn’t come. Leenck knew I would cry. He wanted me to cry. And why he wanted this I doubt he could even explain to himself. But he wanted me to drop to my knees and beg him to go see the old woman, tears streaming down my face. I am quite sure he thought it would come to that.

  I don’t remember how I had the strength to do it, but I turned from Leenck and made my way on to the dock. I did not turn back. I did not look back. I walked away at a slow and steady pace. And Leenck sat there coughing while seagulls scurried around on the dock fighting and arguing over garbage. And then the wind picked up, the wind suddenly sweeping the crushed plastic cups from the dock into the water. And instead of thunder, all I heard was the sound of palm trees, the hundreds of fronds rustling in the distance, the too-numerous-to-count palm trees tilting their fronds like flags in the wind. Leenck could see me in the distance then, the tiny outline of me. I could feel him watching my outline moving away from him, watching to see if I would turn around to look for him on the boat. I bet he wondered if I was crying. Later I would hear how at that point Leenck felt tired, that he felt odd, that his chest was heaving more than normal. I know he watched my tiny outline get smaller and smaller. And I never turned to look back at him. The only tears were the tears that surprised Leenck’s own face. I am told the tears came quickly and frightened him. But I didn’t care to hear any of this. I am told that not once had he cried in the previous twenty years.
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  The harbor got darker then. And my own eyes stung. There was not a single rumble of thunder, just the breeze rustling the palm trees and the seagulls going mad over debris. The rain came down. It was forceful, cool and prickly as it hit all of us on our heads and faces. Did Leenck move inside the cabin? No. Supposedly, he sat there in the rain instead. He didn’t move. He was completely wet, the tears on his face indistinguishable then from the rest of his wet face. I want to believe his chest tightened in a way he had never experienced in his life. I want to believe that. What I know clearly is that the rain pelted everything, and the deck, the dock, the very earth between the boat and my father’s small house, suddenly took on the dark stain of rainwater, a stain not quite as dark as the heart, a stain not quite as dark as blood. And the trees in the distance seemed to be blurring into the landscape, everything bleeding together. And again, I thought of turning back to look for the figure of Leenck on his knees, sobbing. There are times when I believe he kept staring into the distance looking for the shape of me, but even if he had he couldn’t have seen me at such distance. Time and distance change everything. Years later, I am still trying to convince myself of that.

  VII. Jewels

  That Carlitos had killed his brother Pedro Blanco was never in dispute. Flora Diaz had predicted it. Javier Castillo felt a great amount of guilt about it. And I am somehow the one charged with remembering it. But what the Court could not decide was whether or not it was premeditated. It is never easy to believe a thirteen-year-old boy could plan his own brother’s death, but so much of what I have told you by now must seem difficult to believe. Not even Carlitos himself could tell you with any certainty whether or not he had planned the whole thing.

  What the Court knew was that one afternoon, a very ordinary afternoon, Carlitos struck his brother Pedro in the back of the neck with a branch from the stunted royal poinciana tree growing in his front yard, one with a sharp enough spike to puncture the right carotid artery. That his brother fell to the ground in the front yard with blood squirting from his neck, each beat of his heart propelling the blood across the dying grass in a thin arc, was never discussed. Not even the court knew these additional details. What they knew was that Carlitos struck his brother in the neck and killed him. The blood pulsing, the dying grass, the shak shak tree standing behind them witness to it all, Carlitos standing there holding the branch as if he were paralyzed, the sun disappearing from the sky then, twilight and shimmering, the way he kept yelling at his brother to get up, to stop this crap, to stop it, get up—the court knew none of that.

  “Carlos! Get up! I am not going to call you again. You need to get up and do your walk now!” Every morning at 10:30 a.m., the doctor’s assistant would come and fetch Carlitos. The walk lasted exactly thirty minutes, and the path was the same one used each and every day—always the same path, always the same route. This assistant, Bill, was a wiry Asian man who, to Carlitos, looked nothing like a Bill. He was clean, clean-shaven like a Bill, but a Bill was some white guy wearing a preppy shirt, one called Biff by his friends. Some Asian dude should not be named Bill. It wasn’t that the name Bill was too white but that to Carlitos it seemed like a fraudulent name. He, Carlitos, couldn’t escape his own name and the fact of how it marked him, preceded him. Carlos Drogón Blanco, son of Ricardo and Rosa, called Carlitos because he was smaller than he should have been up until about six years of age. Carlos Blanco was a name that one could not escape from the way Carlitos believed the name Bill allowed this Asian man to do. Carlitos wanted desperately to ask if Bill was a nickname, an English name. He wanted to know if fake-Bill had another name, a valid name.

  “Get up, Carlos! Get up! I know you can hear me. Doctor says you have to do this, and that is what you have to do.” The do at the end of the sentence went on and on: Carlitos heard it as do-oo-ooo-oo, the “o” almost endless through the plexiglass window in the middle of the inside door to his room. So Carlitos got up, went to the door, looked through the plexiglass at fake-Bill and then watched as he unlocked the door. Fake-Bill had been helping take care of Carlitos for about six months at that point. Carlitos knew it was only a matter of weeks before someone new would show up. These assistants never lasted more than seven months. Somewhere around the six-month mark, they would be promoted, or fired, or they would quit. Carlitos had lost track of how many assistants he had seen over the years. The constants were the doctor, the red-headed woman who dropped off his mail, and the dark-skinned man who appeared and disappeared outside his door, a man with grayish brown eyes for whom he had no name.

  Fake-Bill was not a constant, but at least he was consistent. He would talk to Carlitos in the same way, in a dull and almost patronizing way. Carlitos liked that. Fake-Bill didn’t try to understand Carlitos, didn’t try to glean something via his eyes or his expression. Many of the previous assistants would try to keep notes, try to decipher the expressions on his face or the way he moved his eyes. Each wanted to find a way of understanding this man who had killed his own brother. Each wanted a prize of some kind, a prize like Carter and others received for deciphering hieroglyphics on tablets from Ancient Egypt. One by one, these assistants would give up. But fake-Bill never tried anything like that. He just showed up and did his job.

  “You know the drill, Carlos. Hand, please. And yes, you have to wear the strap.” Strap is what fake-Bill called the leash that attached the handcuff he placed on Carlitos’ wrist to the belt around fake-Bill’s waist. Even though the grounds were fenced, this was a requirement. And fake-Bill was right; Carlitos knew the drill. But that day, Carlitos did not want to put on the handcuff. And maybe, in some odd way, Carlitos hoped that this would somehow get him out of doing the walk, a walk that time after time filled him with more and more dread. Carlitos could detail for you how many azalea bushes and how many hydrangeas lined the south walk. He could tell you that at the time of his walk, at that time of year, that the oak casts a shadow across the third concrete block from the end of the long sidewalk. He could even tell you that the jays would be there the following week and would be territorial and aggressive because of the newly hatched, struggling chicks. Carlitos knew all of this, but he would never tell a soul.

  After the walk, what the doctor sometimes referred to as a “constitutional,” Carlitos was taken back to his room. The door was locked. Fake-Bill said something about how he wouldn’t see him at lunch or at afternoon games because he had an interview or something. Carlitos was only half-listening. Fake-Bill continued rambling about an interview, and Carlitos could tell from the tone in his voice that fake-Bill was nervous about it, cared deeply about the outcome of it. But other than the tone of his voice, Carlitos didn’t pay too much attention to the particular words fake-Bill used. What registered were a few words: interview, important, school, and the one that stood out the most, psychiatry. When Carlitos looked back toward the door, all he saw was fake-Bill’s back as he exited the outer doors of the hallway that led to his single room with its single bed, its one chair, its one small table, and a sink above which hung an old mirror and a shelf with one coffee mug, one plastic glass, and his sad toothbrush next to one small tube of toothpaste.

  The red-haired woman would arrive in an hour or so, as she always did, and place his mail in the bin by the outside door at the end of the short hallway to his room. She never so much as waved or said a word. She just opened the outside metal door, held it open with her foot, dropped the mail in the bin, and then stepped back through the door. Within seconds there would be the deeply reliable sound of the door jam as she tugged the door to make sure it was locked. If he had mail, it wouldn’t be retrieved from the bin and given to him until after lunch. The caretakers and assistants knew that to let Carlitos read any of his letters before lunch might lead to a difficult meal. The letters often riled Carlitos up. They made him act out. They made him even crazier than everyone already thought he was. The one aspect of these letters no one discussed, not even the doctor, was the fact they all came from one person, his mother.<
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  11 May

  Dear Carlitos,

  Old Flora Diaz is dying. The old bruja is finally dying. I am convinced of this. She is ashen and her face sunken. She looks as if she needs help, but I would never help or do anything for that horrible old woman. Look at what she did to you and your Father! I know that as well as I know anything. I know she will be dead soon, will be in Hell soon. She never went to Mass, that Flora. She never went once in all the years I have lived here. And she should suffer in Hell for all of the evil things she has done. Not even Guadalupe can help her now.

  The doctor says you have been doing well lately. You know you need to do well, Carlitos. You need to learn to follow the instructions of the people there. It is for your own safety. You cannot be stubborn. You have to remember how lucky you are to be alive. God spared you so I wouldn’t have to cry more than I already do. God spared you death despite what you did. And you need to be thankful for that.

  I pray for you each and every day, mijo. And I pray you don’t end up in Hell. All we can hope is that our Pedro speaks to God on your behalf and reminds God it was an accident, reminds Him that you didn’t mean to do it, to kill him. Will you tell me that? Will you tell me, your only mother, that it was an accident? I know it was an accident, but could you tell me this? I know I ask a lot, but because of your carelessness I lost a son. Do you ever think of that? I lost one of my sons.

  Okay, I will close the way I always do, by telling you I love you and by telling you I am praying for you. Be good for the people there. Please mijo, be good.

  Rosa always ended her letters to Carlitos with “amor y besos.” It was the only time where her desire to use English correctly could not be implemented. Javier Castillo understood this, and I understood it. In that moment of closure, one returns to one’s original language. Each time Javier Castillo recounted this story, he always emphasized this point. “Amor y besos” was more than a term of endearment to him. It was a kind of quiet rebellion against English. But now, the more I think about this, the more I really think on this, the more even I believe closing in Spanish is just another kind of defeat. Original language? Which of us can remember that now? The Europeans came to steal from us. They came with their Spanish and then their English and, in the process, tried to erase all of our languages, so much so we cling to Spanish, the lesser of the two evils, the one we were forced to learn first.