“Why were you fighting?” I’d asked him, half-fearing I was the reason.
“Don’t worry about it,” he’d tell me, “it’s an old fight, something about an inheritance in Slovakia. One day I’ll have to go to claim it and you’ll come with me, it’ll be our second honeymoon.”
I had no desire to go to Slovakia. I imagined it frozen and desolate and lost in the past. In any case, it was probably best if I stayed out of those types of brawls. These are passing things between brothers, I thought. In the end, they loved each other, they couldn’t live without each other, and they even prayed together often, also in Slovak, or maybe in a language even more ancient, because they sang what seemed to be ancient hymns from far away, more, how should I put it, more warlike than religious, or at least that’s how they sounded to me. They’d do it every morning at six sharp. The Angelus, as the devotion is called, commemorates the Incarnation. A hell of a mystery, terrifying to me, according to which God, regretful of the errors he committed in the Creation, is incarnated and becomes man, descends to earth to suffer like any other man, to come to know in the flesh the suffering that he had imposed on humans, and to be humiliated and whipped and tortured on a cross in the most atrocious manner, to bear a suffering worse than any human, and in the end God is God and his pains are infinite because he is divine. What a mystery. But why, if he is almighty, doesn’t God return to his creatures, sparing the whole world from suffering and sparing himself as well? That’s what I asked Greg, and he said to stop talking nonsense, girl, that without suffering there’s no religion and no religion without suffering. That’s it. A mystery is a mystery and it’s not meant to be solved. In any case the two brothers prayed on the roof, never inside the apartment, which was small with low ceilings, cozy but tight, and according to Greg, the roof was a cathedral with the sky as the dome. That’s how my Greg put it. Sometimes he came up with the prettiest expressions. I don’t know where he got them. A cathedral with the sky as the dome. And he was right. When you’re up there, on the roof of our building, it seems as if the wind blowing in your face comes from some other place. It’s as if you left this devastated neighborhood, looked at it from above, and although it is only five floors high, you could see everything really small, way down there, because you’re in some other world up here, and you dream of escaping to strange and distant cities, and you dream you see the stars although you don’t, and then you’re hit with the smell of the country and the noise of the sea, I mean, although it’s not real you can dream it, that your life becomes wide and free, without a roof to crush you or walls to constrict you. I think that it was Violeta’s favorite place because it was the only one that calmed her down and where Greg and Joe prayed their so-called Angelus each morning and then all the days of Holy Week, Greg leading with the singing part because of his rights as older brother and Joe responding. I was the only one not so sure about the whole thing. The neighbors are going to think Muslims live here and are going to become suspicious of us, I warned the brothers, because aside from their chants and prayers they rang a little bell like in school, and I thought it would wake up the whole neighborhood, and then the icing on the cake was the lighting of candles and incense. But they didn’t listen to me; my warnings went in one ear and out the other. They just kept doing their thing, loyal to their traditions above all, rain or shine, because they put a lot of passion into their prayers and rituals. Sleepy Joe was more committed than Greg, who had been somewhat tamed by the years, while Joe was a fanatic, or as they say in the news, a fundamentalist. When he argues a point, he seems ready to kill or die for what he believes, and when he prays . . . when he prays it’s even worse. I have always been suspicious of the pious who pray all the time, those who adore God above all things. I get chills watching those that kneel and kiss the ground, those that self-flagellate, those who drag and sacrifice themselves for the Lord and revere his saints and angels. Sleepy Joe is one of those, and when the mood strikes him, he metamorphoses, the fever chills spread through his body and he becomes another person. That’s what he is, a violent and mystical man who knows how to combine those two elements without straining; either one of them flows through him spontaneously, sometimes at once. Greg wasn’t like that. He shared his brother’s religious fanaticism, that’s for sure, and they made plans to visit the Virgin of Medjugorje together. I mean they were those types of old-time fanatics, but at least Greg didn’t make that face of a transfigured lunatic when he prayed. Joe does, and I know, because as I told you I’ve seen him do both things, fuck and pray, and sleep and start a fight, that too, because there’s no doubt that the man has some bipolar issues, but above all, he likes to sleep, from dawn till nightfall. The truth is that I don’t think he does much else with his life. I got scared when he was overcome by one of his mystical fits, I swear to you, Mr. Rose. Imagine some Russian-looking guy, with his crazy tattoos and T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up, legs like pillars of stone, tough-looking from top to bottom, like Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises, that sturdy and good-looking, as some would say frighteningly masculine, too much perhaps, and also too white, aggressively Caucasian. I’m not sure if you understand what I’m saying, but now imagine him in concentrated form, ecstatic, reciting rosaries in Slovak to the one he calls the Most Holy Virgin Mary, mother and lady, queen of heaven and earth, like his own mother but to the millionth power, even more frightening and powerful than his mother and huge like the universe. If she only saw Sleepy Joe in one of his trances, the veins in his neck bulging and his eyes going back in his head as if he were an epileptic. Maybe not so much, but something like it. Veins bulging, the whitened eyes, and a shuddering throughout his body—such was the strength of his faith. I’m telling you, that’s the face Joe makes when he fucks, when he argues, and when he prays, and it’s frightening to look at him when he is doing any of those three things, as if eternally on the border of somewhere else, a step away from a psychotic episode.
Greg loved him like a father, in the good sense and in the bad. He spoiled Joe and put up with too much of his crap. At the same time he was always preaching to him wherever they’d happen to be as if he were a kid. I remember the craziness that came over Greg as we returned from Mass one Sunday and found Sleepy Joe seated at the kitchen table and playing with the meat knife, holding it with his right hand and stabbing the spaces between the fingers of his left hand, faster, faster, pricking holes in the table, and right when Greg said to stop the fucking game, Joe misjudged a move and stabbed one of his fingers. Not badly, but enough so that blood splattered on the table. And Greg screamed out, “You idiot, you moron.” What didn’t he call Joe? “You’ve ruined my kitchen table, you asshole,” he said. “Look what you’ve done, it’s full of marks.” But Joe took it and remained silent, sucking on the wound between his ring finger and pinkie.
They fought a lot because they’re a lot alike, I used to think and still think; I imagine that Greg became a cop just as simply as he could have become a criminal. And that Joe became a good-for-nothing just as simply as he could have become a cop. But perhaps I’m not being fair to Greg, who was a peaceful sort of guy, whereas Sleepy Joe had a rage inside him that was eating him alive and making steam come out of his ears. I have always thought that he never became a serial killer simply because he was too lazy. He told us he was a truck driver, and although I had never seen a truck, there was no reason to doubt his word, except for the sleepiness. If it were true that he was a truck driver, he’d have long before wrecked a vehicle by falling asleep at the steering wheel. After we were married and Greg moved into my place, Sleepy Joe began to visit us frequently, dining with us and sleeping on the sofa in the living room. He usually slept straight through the day. He had his beers, burped loudly and resoundingly, like a sated baby, lay spread-eagled on the sofa to watch TV, and fell asleep so deeply and for so long that it seemed he had died. An amazing corpse, if the truth be told. I took advantage of this to watch him, his face half-hidden by his folded arm and his powerful
body on display, barely stirred by a breath. A young lion in docile rest. Greg, of course, saw it differently. He thought that since childhood Joe was in a rage and cursing the world, fast asleep, or silently hatching some malicious plan. Deep down, I knew the truth about Sleepy Joe. It would be a lie to say I didn’t, but I never put it in words, and if I had, Greg would have jumped to his brother’s defense.
“Let him be, he’s young,” he’d have argued, “he can take life calmly.”
After the prayers at six, Sleepy Joe slept the entire morning. He’d wake up briefly to devour whatever was in the refrigerator, sleep again till midafternoon, and then he’d remain awake until the morning light, because, as he put it, a cautious man doesn’t sleep in the dark. I always thought it was something physical. In the darkness, his heart froze and he’d not dare close his eyes to confront whatever phantoms haunted him. I told him once, “Joe, you kill the nighttime hours with the sound of the television so you don’t feel lonely.” More than likely he responded with one of the filthy obscenities that came out of his purple mouth. I’m not making that up. His gums and his lips were of a purplish hue, identical to Greg’s. The brothers were those types of people with visible gums and thick purplish lips, or I should say with too much mouth in the paleness of the face, mouths that insist you look at them against your will. I can see the two of them as children back in Colorado, sharing a bed with the other siblings like sardines in a can, Greg sleeping like an angel, but Joe wickedly awake, a little Slovak punk with his eyes wide open under the coarse scratchy bedsheets, counting the thousands of minutes and millions of seconds that must remain till morning, not daring, in his need, to scream for his mother, that woman who never bathed them and who, as soon as morning came, sent them out to play in the backyard, whether it was winter or summer, and whether they were still dressed or in their underwear, so that they accompanied her in reciting the Angelus. Or maybe she was the source of the panic, the mother, it could be. I, for one, am glad we never met, and I’m heartbroken that I had to use her wedding band.
When Sleepy Joe was in my house he’d prepare for this nighttime sleeplessness by stocking up on Coors, Marlboro Lights, and the spicy Mexican candies he ate all the time, according to him so he could stop smoking. They were called Pica Limón and they were packaged in red-and-green wrappers; when I returned from work, it wasn’t hard to see if Sleepy Joe had come by, all I had to do is look for the ashtrays full of cigarette butts and the Pica Limón wrappers scattered on the floor.
“You eat hundreds of those to stop smoking,” I told him, “but you still smoke like a demon.”
“I eat the candy to stop smoking, and smoke to stop eating the candy,” he responded sarcastically, giving one of those looks he used to give me, one of those slow, pasty looks that would stick to my body.
From midafternoon till dawn, Sleepy Joe abandoned the sofa, which according to him he was keeping warm the rest of the time, to settle down in the best chair in the apartment, one of those Reclinomatics with faux leather that gave massages. He turned on the television and never took off his boots when he set his big old feet on the little glass coffee table I had bought for the living room.
“You’re going to break that, you pig,” Greg scolded him. “At least take off your boots, and throw them out while you’re at it. Crocodile-skin boots are for mafiosos.”
I, on the other hand, never said anything, not to be rude; I wanted Greg to think that I did everything possible to keep a peaceful home environment. I put up with almost everything Sleepy Joe did; the only thing that drove me crazy was when he fed Pica Limón pieces to Hero. The poor little mutt began to cough, drool, and grimace like a vampire, curling his lips and showing his teeth. I hastily went for a piece of bread to give him to quench the spiciness, while Sleepy Joe was bent over in laughter.
“What has that animal done to you for you to torture him like that?” I demanded.
“What has he done to me?” he responded, his eyes still teary from laughing so hard. “What has he done? Well, track that fucking cart all over your white rug. You have forbidden him to soil your rug and he pays you no fucking mind, so I’m punishing him for it, like he deserves. And besides, I get to laugh at him for a while, why can’t I laugh about a rat?”
“You’re afraid of dogs and that’s why you harm them, that’s what’s happening. You’re a shit, nothing more than a scared little boy. Even Hero terrifies you.”
“I’m not afraid of that filth of a half dog, I despise it. That thing should be dead. It pisses me off, you understand? The way it carries himself around with half a body bores me to no end. Who do you guys think you are? Good Samaritans? Can’t you see how absurd this is, you trying to save this thing, when the poor thing just wants to be dead? When that animal looks at you like that, straight in the eyes, it is begging to die with that half that remained alive by mistake. One of these days, I’m just going to do it in with a swipe.”
The worst part was that Sleepy Joe wasn’t bluffing. There was something in his tone of voice or expression that made you think he really did believe all that crap. His hatred for the most vulnerable always caught my attention. He simply abhorred them, maybe because they held up some kind of mirror to his life.
I met Sleepy Joe at the restaurant where Greg had invited him to meet his girlfriend who would soon be his wife, in other words, me. On first impression, he was ravishingly handsome but a bit dull. The guy who according to my husband was going to be my brother-in-law was a boring show-off. I didn’t like his habit of looking this way and that like someone who doesn’t plan to stay long enough to take off his hat, or when he made the bold assertion that he could swallow us all and spit out the seeds. And to finish it off, he barely spoke, and when he did, only to his brother in Slovak. He did not make a good first impression on me. A handsome man with holes in the head, nothing else. And that’s where it would have remained had I not seen a completely different side of his personality as the three of us left the restaurant. At the time, the streets were overrun with homeless people, a wave of epidemic proportions, homeless folk sleeping on the sidewalks, homeless drunks, homeless and playing a harmonica and begging for change. As we came out a particularly disheveled homeless person approached us, toothless, fetid, someone stripped of any dignity and barely alive, or I should say a scrap, someone who had been trampled upon by life and left in tatters. The wretch played the clown and had a sign hung around his neck that said, “Kick my ass for one dollar.” Greg and I passed by, trying not to look at him, but Sleepy Joe went right up to him to negotiate the kick in the ass for half a dollar. “I’ll give you fifty cents. You don’t deserve more, you piece of garbage.” That’s what Joe told him. The poor man accepted the deal, took the coins, and crouched, still laughing, or pretending to laugh. And then Joe delivered a brutal kick to the man’s hind end, a blow so outrageous it sent him face first into the asphalt. Greg and I were half a block ahead by the time it happened, but were still able to witness the scene. I started trembling. But not even then did it sink in what a pearl of a brother-in-law fate had handed me. Later, he began to come around our place, but in a more tranquil mode, with his A-game behavior plan, which wasn’t much, as noted above, but at least he restrained himself from assaulting the helpless. Although not without his words; he didn’t hold those back. He’d let out torrents of monstrosities, generally couched in threats against anyone who seemed vulnerable, or ignorant, or down-and-out, or poor, or crippled. “That guy has the face of a victim,” he said of an obese neighbor who could barely get up the stairs of the building.
“Drop dead of a heart attack already, you fat shit,” he screamed at him. “Do the world a favor and drop dead.”
Any class of persons with defects or problems drove him crazy and put him in an almost hyperventilating state. One time I went with him to get dinner at the Pizza To Go on the corner, and he called the cashier, a not-so-bright woman who did things at her own sweet pace, a damned bitch. Th
at’s how he was, out of control. He felt a blind hatred for all beggars and thought that they needed to be wiped off the face of the earth. When he expressed these ideas, he grew very excited; I remember once he grew red in the face, and his body shook, recounting how the Spartans tossed crippled newborns off a cliff. Another case in point: Sleepy Joe couldn’t help but be glued to the TV screen when they broadcast the Special Olympics, but not because of any admiration for those athletes who made such great efforts, but because he wanted to grab them, shake them, and make them pay, as if they were guilty of something. He even professed that babies were abhorrent. But of course, it wasn’t always that way. There were days when he seemed normal, even charming, seductive, now and then telling some good jokes and proving generous in his gift giving, which he ordered by credit card during the TV promotions of It Has to Be Yours. And there were other days in which he seemed frenzied, bewildered, even beside himself. I don’t know, maybe I judged him too harshly, and maybe he was just a stunted adolescent, full of aggressions because of his many insecurities and fears. I don’t know. In any case, I had started to look at him in a different manner in regard to what had happened with my friend Cori, that episode with the broomstick. And I couldn’t forget the warning that she had given me right before she left: “Open your eyes, María Paz, open your eyes and be careful. That boy is sick. I know what I’m talking about.” That’s what Cori had told me, her last words before she left, and I hadn’t forgotten them. And when Sleepy Joy began with his string of foul language, I’d begin throwing cushions at him until he shut up. Or I’d leave him there alone and lock myself up in my room.
“Come back out with that pretty ass, come back out to Papi. It was a joke,” he screamed from the living room.
But I didn’t think it was funny. If Greg was there, Joe never dared to give Hero a Pica Limón, or look at me, or talk to me in that tone; in the end, he was terrified of his older brother. And there was a reason. If things got out of hand, Greg would have probably ended up on top. Sleepy Joe was nothing but smoke and mirrors, while Greg, in spite of his deterioration and the indignities of age, was still a formidable two-legged beast. I noticed that one Sunday in which they decided to bet on a game of tossing bracelets on the kitchen table. Greg won toss after toss rather effortlessly till he had accumulated twenty dollars and left his brother with a sore arm.
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