Reply to Kleo

Dear Kleo,

Thank you so much for sharing your view and sympathy for my personal story.

I will tell you another story from a chapter of my experiences: A homeless child scratched the door of a car parked in front of the boardinghouse where I lived in São Paulo. The owner of the car arrived coinciding with the moment the boy practiced his crime. The boy ran. The owner of the car ran after him and caught the boy by his torn collar and then seized the boy's arm. The man dragged the boy to his car, his face and lips white with hate. The boy cried loud, his mouth opened and distressed. The boy could be ten, but the bad nutrition these children get on Sampa's streets made this boy look like seven years old. The owner madly shook the boy, and almost crying, screaming, asked the boy several times to see what he'd done to his valuable car, and then asked one of the people watchers to call the police. The police came and carried the little creature away. People said they'd kill the boy. Kill the boy? others asked. I know him; he wanders around, one said. I think he stole my mother's Swatch, another was sure. My feeble sister described a criminal like that boy who bumped her to the ground to steal her school bag from her back, another anonymous voice accused. Kill him! Kill him! they all agreed in whispers. I think the watchers talked in that tone afraid to expose their angry assassin instinct. A month later the boy errant showed up back in the area I lived. I have good memory. I'd never forget his dark face. I saw him at least twice before I learned he was executed with three shots, two in the heart and one in the center of his little head. Nobody cared to know the anonymous who killed the boy, and time brutally went on.

My past experiences however didn't make me disbelieve that somewhere there are still people like you, Kleo, who care for a triumphant better future for our children of this world.

Yours,
Regina Edelman

[Editor's note: Regina wrote this in response to a comment about the Edelman-Eggers Letters, Parts 1-10, the first ten posts on this almost year old little blog.]

Nobody to Denounce Papa in this House

by Regina Edelman

The old Municipal Civil Guard of São Paulo State was a corporation founded in 1906 to ostensibly patrol urban areas to protect citizens and their patrimonies. It was extinguished in 1964.

A door slammed. “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” a man half dressed in Municipal Guard uniform shouted. Broad back, arms strong as his long legs, Miguel Valente embroidered on the left breast pocket of his ultra-white shirt, his blue eyes drew taut with red little veins, his greased back hair the color of corn cob. A vapor of cheap aftershave exhaled off his enormous body. With one hand, he searched the pockets of his navy blue jacket with gold buttons. A suit and valise hung at his back by the forefinger of his other hand. Mouths slightly open, his daughter Inez and son Bruno watched him on the veranda.

“What are you mites looking at?” he asked fiercely, hands at his waist then, suit and valise slack at his side. Bashed by his angry volume, the two vanished inside the house. Satisfied his mites put their tails between their legs, he went ahead, jittery, his black shoes shining as much as the afternoon sun. His handcuffs clanked at his waist as he marched large strides toward his green ’57 Chevrolet parked in front of the three room home he was bitterly leaving. He opened the car door, slammed it, and shouted again, “I’m leaving you, bitch!” He turned the key in the ignition and the car roared, roared, roared, and finally took off coughing.

Deep sobbing came from inside the simple house. Sun rays intruded through a window and reddened the blue walls of the living room. The Great Dictator played on the mute TV. Diminished, huge Philomena sat sad on the edge of a sofa and held her discomforted head in her hands, fingering back her thin blond gray hair parted in the middle with a certain fury. Her small eyes like delicate rosary beads the color of the Mediterranean Sea were slick and red from tears rolling down her also inflamed cheeks. Her soft left arm was bruised from shoulder to elbow and both sorrowful eyes were in process of becoming plump and bruised too. A string of blood ran from her small lips down her shaking chin.

Inez and Bruno attended their hurt mother. Angry on her knees, seventeen year old Inez washed her mom’s face with a cotton cloth. Broad like her parents, her wide open marble green eyes betrayed no emotion. “You must let me go to Civil Guard quarters this time, mom, to report papa beat you because you ironed two shirts instead of three as he wanted. He can’t always beat you up like this. They’ll put him in jail,” she said.

“I know papa will find his way to kill you, mom, for denouncing him,” thirteen year old Bruno said shakily coming from the back room balancing a porcelain basin full of water with dancing ice cubes in his hands.

“I won’t denounce papa!” Philomena declared. She needed their father’s money every month because the trifle she made washing clothes for Palmeiras Soccer Team wouldn’t pay the bills and buy their food. “If papa goes to jail, who’ll pay the bills?” Philomena asked hopelessly.

Inez added some matters in her thoughts. “I have my first job as sales girl at Mappin Magazine Store. Little Bruno makes his wage packing food at the corner market. That and the money from your laundry business is enough for us to survive without papa’s income and violence. I’d give a fly’s shit if he rots in jail and drops dead in hell,” Inez said upset. “I’ll go with my fiancé to the precinct to report papa’s abuse and bring officers here to witness the bruises he left on your body, arms, and face, mama.”

Bruno shook his head in contempt and said, “Papa really terrorized me, but deep inside my heart I love him like I love delicious food. He shouldn’t be behind bars.”

“No, he shouldn’t!” Philomena agreed, grasping her dignity on Bruno’s words to get her mother strength back to protect her family by not sending her man to jail. “I can’t be the author of sending him to hell, or make him lose his job he’s proud of.”

Inez looked incredulous to her mother and brother. How dare they? He could not care less about her, about them. “Mom, the wino is angry. He beats us and fights wherever he goes. Nobody can talk or have any idea but him. Everyone’s afraid of him,” she declared, her eyes wild, immense, mysterious like all eyes of all beasts known on Earth.

“Nobody will denounce papa in this house!” was Philomena’s final verdict. “I’ll dry my tears and wait for him to come back for me when he feels like it. I hope he’ll come back like every other time.”

“I can’t understand this sick love. He has more women around town,” Inez said weakly.

“I don’t care. What my eyes can’t see my heart don’t feel so I don’t feel jealous.”

“Stubborn! Have some pride, mom! Have some pride! Have a woman’s pride!” Defeated and disgusted, Inez dropped the cloth she used to wipe her mother’s face in the basin and walked outside to wait for her fiancé.

Miguel Valente left to work a forty-eight hour shift that day, and on the evening he got off, he knocked on his concubine’s door on the other side of the city. Violet perfumed the air when the door was opened by a long haired brunette with Spaniard looks grinning seductively, chubby breasts squeezed in the V neck of her super tight pink blouse. Waist waste fat overflowed around her tight short skirt, but the lady was younger than poor Philomena, and she jumped on Miguel’s long neck, wrapping her legs around his knees, her humid large red lips open for a kiss. He bent forward to sustain her body.

“O baby! You missed papa, yes?” his voice such a sweet low baritone, he seemed madly in love to cause to any female on Earth to be jealous. Kisses crackled and red lipstick smeared their lips, but suddenly, Miguel’s irritation rang loud in his neurons’ ears. My body is not a crane! He strained not to pronounce these awful offensive words to the woman, and shook her weight off him, forcing her steady to the ground. Repelled by her lewd public act, he was sure to never be accused of that crime, and shooed her, “Go inside woman! Go!” After they closed the door on his concubine’s house as simple as his and Philomena’s, he tapped and grabbed her big butt then passionately kissed the woman’s huge breasts.

“Mom, I’m hungry,” a boy’s peevish voice called as the lovers attacked each other behind the door. Seduction dropped from Miguel’s mind, replaced again fully with irritation, and waves formed in his forehead with a risk parting the middle like a cockroach’s shell.

“Rodolpho come to say hello to dad!” the woman exclaimed, recomposing her skirt and blouse.

“How many times I said I’m not Rodolpho’s dad? I have a vasectomy. No, no more children for me. His dad is someone from your past I’m not kin with.” Miguel didn’t like the little man who always looked at him in defiance.

“Do you have to talk like this in front of the boy?” the woman reproached. “I meant for him to come greet his uncle.”

“I’m not his uncle either,” Miguel answered sarcastically.

“Why you offend my boy?” the woman said unhappily.

The boy watched them with vindictive disgust. “I’m hungry mom,” he said with resigned sadness

“Wait for mom. I’ll be with you in a minute. Go to the kitchen,” she said to her son and he patiently obeyed.

Bitter, Miguel said he’d go to bed, he needed a good sleep, and would see her later when god helped him wake up, hope reinvigorated.

“You see what you did? Now you upset Miguel! You’re nine, you can perfectly serve yourself. Food is on top of the stove. You’re sick with jealousy of your uncle with your mom, aren’t you? I need to be happy. Don’t you understand? No, you don’t understand!” the woman cried to her son after they went alone to the kitchen.

It was a severe lesson to the boy to realize he was rejected and hear his mother and that man talk about him like he was absent, like he was a big pile of shit. His hurt little ego directed his mind to a macabre desire to kill both of them and himself after.

“Shut your trap up or I’ll go back out to the same door I came in to get some moments of relaxation!” Miguel thundered.

The boy listened biting a leg of fried chicken, and peevishly said low for the old man to please do him that favor of leaving.

“What did he say?” Miguel asked angrily.

“Nothing, go sleep,” the woman said, fearing Miguel would have one of his five minutes of craziness in which nothing in this world would appease the man’s mind and he indeed would go away after his promising arrival. She needed some warmth and was sure he needed some they’d give to each other later.

Miguel, too tired, decided he’d take the provocation of that pintinho. He needed to sleep and stay where he was, and didn’t want to see that old loose bag Philomena for at least fifteen days.

The woman’s cheap nightgown was tight, laced, red, short, and see-through, her breasts stretching to rip the synthetic silk. She put on makeup waiting for Miguel to wake, but turned into a sleeper in sensual frustration. Her sleep restless, she dreamed of running naked on a promenade under dark trees. She couldn’t see right but shadows, and her heavy body couldn’t run, a creature after her. She woke and slept again so many times, and so many times dreamed of running under dark trees, and waking every hour or so, vainly dabbed her hair to fix it in place, and looked at the time shining at the bottom of her TV box. She anxiously exhaled her breath between her hands, peeled a mint drop, and shoved it to her mouth.

At four o’clock in the morning, Miguel dreamed his shiny shoes had power to carry him to the marble stairway of a courthouse tower sustained by gray pillars. Guards with chained lions stood hostile under the arc of the entrance. He sat at a defense table. IN ZEUS WE TRUST big letters spelled out above the judge. Men in black gowns and curly white wigs laughed scornfully at Miguel. Humbled, he waited. His proud cap, a detail of such immense dimension, lay on the table. Dizzy, he waited to be judged for a crime he didn’t know about. He was innocent! He felt melancholic when the men in wigs doubted his sanity. His insanity was a sort of key to his crime; he couldn’t tell exactly. He didn’t feel insane, and who was sane anyway? He had to defend himself on this question. The judge, a man with a long curved nose and a chin like a vagina judged him guilty and reckless in a too fast language Miguel had heard before but couldn’t decipher, and then intelligible words came clearly sentencing his death: ten strokes of a dagger in his heart. Jackals surrounded him, and assaulted his kingly body out of respect, extracting the gold buttons of his proud blue uniform with their teeth. Looking closely at the jackals, he saw they only had heads of jackals, their bodies human and female, opulent seductive bodies, and libidinous, they licked Miguel’s hairless chest. Miguel wanted to run way from his unjust condemnation; the women would help him, but with this thought the jackals immediately transformed into men, frightening big men.

Sweaty, thirsty, and with a hard on, Miguel woke free of his sentence. The pretty smile of his submissive woman was his first sight back to waking life, his partner there for him, and he sighed. He got up to piss and came back in bed. On the bedside table, a bottle of uncorked red wine and two half glasses of wine sat next to a candle quivering light on the pale walls. Marijuana smoke wafted toward the nose of the boy they assumed sleeping deeply on a mattress in the other room.

After a morning of satiated love, the woman took Rodolpho to stay at her mother’s house. She argued with her mom that the boy needed to stay with her for at least fifteen days. The old woman didn’t want the boy, and quarreled she head no strength to deal with kids anymore, and the boy once more listened to the turmoil of compassionless heads who god determined to be masters of his shit flesh on Earth.

If that boy grew to become one more slave with kids and a job in an factory, or a marginal, or a compassionate genius who might improve humanity’s ideas and organization somehow, I don’t know, because this story isn’t about the unloved child. This story is about Miguel who spent an idle vacation day with the woman who called her boss for a sick day to be in bed with him.

At five that evening, Miguel got up, showered, dressed in his Civil Guard uniform and declared with his valise in hand he was taking off.

“What do you mean, you’re taking off?” the woman asked, melting in love’s desperation.

“I meant what I said!” Miguel replied, already irritated with that stupid question, and annoyed added, “I need to go now if you want to see me ever again.”

She didn’t understand what he meant and tensed her forehead to ask incredulously, “All this passion I feel for you don’t mean anything to you? I have so much more to give” She prompted her breasts while talking and walking toward him in the middle of the room.

He smiled perversely and stepped back as he looked to her pair of tits in disdain. “Too much of the same food is abhorrent.”

“But you said you’d stay for fifteen days,” she cried.

“Hey! No! I didn’t! I said I’d give a lesson to Philomena and want to be away from home for fifteen days. I didn’t say I’d be under your skirt, I mean butt, fifteen days.”

“But I convinced mama to keep the boy at least fifteen days!” she shrieked then.

He armed his fists. “You bore me. I didn’t tell you to bring the boy anywhere, and he, hell, he annoys me; nobody dares tell me to leave from the place my flesh is present and breathing. The scoundrel took advantage I was too tired to have a-tête-à-tête. I hate that boy of yours and have had enough of your breasts and ass!” Miguel screamed.

“But Rodolpho won’t be home for fifteen days!” she screamed back, but Miguel stepped to the living room and the front door.

“No! Don’t go! I love you,” she cried and fell on his knees, grabbing the man’s legs to immobilize him to not walk out. She breathed wearily to hold her man with all her strength, but he twisted his body and angrily bit his tongue in a gesture to show he was the strongest. He stood the shameful crying woman by her vast hair, and beat her face with his palm. Degraded, she fell to the floor sobbing, saying she loved him, she loved him, but he slammed the door.

“Bitch from hell! You won’t see me alive ever! Demon! Demon, damn it!” His car hummed away.

Hot headed Miguel couldn’t settle in peace that evening. Maybe a bowl of old Philó’s chicken soup would restrain that sensation of a ball of fierce worms perforating his lower abdomen inside. Philó is what he called Philomena when he longed for her care and unconditional love she felt for his well being. Secretly encrusted in his soul, he suspected he was madly in love with his old darling Philó, for what else could be the reason he badly cared for a bowl of hot chicken soup with soft bits of carrots and seasoned with fresh cilantro, that soup a balm to his heart that pounded that night as as if mastering his end. In this load of thinking he recklessly rolled a cigar in his mouth as he slowly drove his old Chevrolet, puffing smoke hazing city lights, but Philomena needed a lesson, what lesson exactly, he didn’t know. Cars of anxious drivers fighting to be ahead in the evening honked nervously, so many exacerbated horns in the metropolis of heavy traffic.

“Hey! Who the hell think you think you are, Orléans-Braganza? Get the fuck out of my way with your old can, you old fart!” a driver behind Miguel’s car shouted, so slow Miguel drove down Avenida Angelica.

Wait a minute; a true man don’t treat old Miguel without dignity like that! His rage overwhelmed his pounding heart and the worms swirled furiously in his belly. Miguel focused his ill blue eyes in the mirror and spotted the driver’s head crowded by a thick beard and dark curly hair. Miguel pondered: that boy Rodolpho told me to leave his home and putana mama. He’s a baby chicken, no, no a lice, in fact! It’s why I let it go; now this one in my rear isn’t a pintinho, but an ape I say, and I’ll give this imbecile ape a lesson. Miguel braked his car abruptly before the crashing thunder of a car wreck followed by more impatient horns that rose in the confusion of the evening traffic. The guy in the rear realized the size of his problem when he sighted the giant Municipal Guard swinging handcuffs and a rubber baton, a gun on his waist, striding impatiently to his car. The conundrum took at least two hours to clean up.

Miguel then resumed his drive to the Bar do Alemão to play poker as intended before that idiot, idiot, messed with him. What kind of a driver ape doesn’t know a rear end wreck is always the fault of the driver ape in the rear? The fact that Miguel ape stopped to make that other idiot ape crash into his rear was a matter of no rational consideration to Miguel, and the tense episode extended the worms perforating his gut to perforate the bottom tip of his heart. His breathing couldn’t feed his soul.

In an emerald green dress, naked back and front, breasts dropping firm out of her collar, Negra Anita, Miguel’s favorite, greeted him at the door of the Bar do Alemão. He didn’t smash the palms of his hands on her butt while kissing her lips. No older then twenty-one, snow white teeth adorned her small delicate mouth drawn like a heart-shaped student leaf colored dark purple.

“You’re sick today, Doctor Miguel?” Negra Anita asked femininly slow and low when she could speak. She respected the man so dearly to the point to call him Doctor even though his uniform told her he wasn't a doctor but an ordinary bottom level civil guard of the city. “Maybe you need a warm bath,” Negra Anita offered submissively. She was a skinny woman with dark night-blue skin and long perfect legs to balance her curved hips.

“Not tonight Nega. I badly need water and wine. Stay on my side, yes? But no sex,” he said gravely in her ear.

“Yes, Doctor. Do you want me bring you to my home? I can care for you better there. Are you losing your personality, god’s creature?” Negra Anita asked delicately, keeping a tone of panic afar, her eyes melted by compassion, such small eyes in dark primitive waters, so deep in love with those colorful blue eyes of Miguel’s.

“Lost my personality? Who me? No, no, bring a jarro de vinho. That’ll cure everything, and say to all Miguel is on the second floor to drink and play poker tonight!”

All loved Miguel. “Saúde!” everyone cheered to a tintinnabulation of glasses. Ronda played on the jukebox. Miguel downed his first glass of wine in a gulp. Laughs filled the red lit room full of men, and sparkling young ladies in minuscule spandex dresses hung in bands around each man’s neck. Cigarettes, cigars, and marijuana smoke carried the sane atmosphere long away.

They sought happiness, satisfaction, and nirvana on Earth, but one man had his blue eyes fixed on Miguel’s hands enlaced on his Nega’s waist.

Miguel thought that confrontation seemed inevitable with that melancholic gentleman sitting far from the party in the farthest darkest corner of the room without any lady on his lap, around his neck, or at his table. A young version of Miguel by thirty years and as handsome, the melancholic fuck wore a white suit and didn’t stop staring at him and his Nega.

Depressed, the youth knew he meant nothing to Negra; she even told him she wouldn’t attend him nights Miguel showed up, and now he finally saw Miguel with his soft bodied woman of dark night-blue skin. He’d kill both with bare hands if courage was his virtue, but it wasn’t, which was why he agreed to be Negra’s second, third, fourth, or any number the beggar for her attention would be allowed at her convenience. Why he placed himself so low, why, he couldn‘t figure out. His woman, a tropical fruit juice delicious to suck had been taken from his hands and given to that old king he earnestly wished dead in a fulminatory heart attack, now god, please, now. But god didn’t attend him. Two hours went on. He drank his fourth Wild Turkey and ordered his fifth.

How many glasses of wine had Miguel? Five! All his inside worms quit and his heart palpitations disguised in sincere happiness jumbled with more anger for the intruder who didn’t take his narrow eyes from his skeleton, from his Negra. So now, clear for everyone to see, they eyed each other with clear hate. Ideas stormed lightening out of their magnetic brains indecipherably accusing each other until finally Miguel thundered for all to hear and clearly understand their force to communicate the same language “What the fuck you staring to my shell for? Huh?”

“Shell? Indeed, you’re ugly like oyster-shell! Ugly!

“Bernard! Bernard, shut the fuck up! Where’s Marina?” Nega Anita shouted to Bernard and called her colleague Marina embracing another man at another side of the table. “Marina! Can’t you please Bernard?”

“I don’t want to fuck that whore Marina! I want to fuck you whore Nega!” dizzy Bernard yelled while Miguel thought, he’s dead meat!

“What did you call my woman? Whore?”

“She didn’t tell you she sucks every other man’s dick anytime for ten bucks?” Bernard asked bravely, a courageous man, but didn’t know he was until then.

“Your bravery has cost you broken legs!” Miguel yelled.

Bernard trembled, and worse than trembling, sat and waited until his nose was punched and blood gushed all over his white suit.

Bernard became cowardly again and ran to the head of the stairway, the only exit. He stood there, blood gushing from his nose and once more provoked the beast, shouting bravely instead of leaving.

“You man! You! My nose is bleeding! I’d break your old bones if you weren’t in a police uniform. You beat me because you abuse your authority. Everyone is scared of you because you’re not man enough to come to Bar do Alemão not dressed like an officer carrying a gun, rubber baton, and handcuffs. I only carry my fists or I’d beat the crap of you!” the young man cried vexed and red.

“Bernard! Bernard! Go home! Go home!” Nega Anita yelled to his reason once more.

But the innocent younger devil punched his fists right and left, striking the air suggesting he’d fight Miguel if only the old man didn’t have his Civil Guard Uniform on.

In a jump, Miguel grabbed the fellow by the collar, dragged him to the middle of the saloon, and leaned him over the table. Glasses and bottles chimed out, and the crowd formed a circle around them while Miguel striped out of his uniform with one hand, his clothes and weapons in a mound behind him like unintelligible old belongings of savage aliens from a remote uncivilized space.

“Stupid Bernard! I told him to let Marina take care of him! God please don’t let Miguel kill Bernard!” Nega Anita prayed out loud.

“What is this a Romeo and Julieta love story between you and this scarecrow? How romantic!” Miguel mocked Bernard and Negra, then naked, beat the crap out of poor Bernard.

“Should I kill him?” Miguel asked the crowd that didn’t say yes or no but whistled to harass the violence. How ridiculous was outraged Miguel naked in striped boxers? He didn’t want to kill the boy, but left him blooded, bruised, and weeping on the floor, then dressed and hastily left the bar.

Miguel drove back to his Philó, and she was the happiest of Earth’s creatures when she saw her Miguel back. He did not say where he’d been for the past three days, and she didn’t ask. He showered, laid in bed, and asked if Philó would be so kind to cook him his favorite soup.

“Sure!” she rejoiced, and content, she cooked her famous chicken soup with bits of carrots and fresh cilantro for her lover. He said the smell was so good that he felt healthier already.

She arranged a tray with a portion of her magic soup in a white porcelain bowl, salty crackers, a glass of water, wine, ventured to pick a red carnation in her small garden, arranged the single flower in a skinny vase, and served her lord and beloved man, Miguel Valente. Satisfied, he turned and slept for eternity.

©2009 Regina Edelman

painting by Berndt Savig

The Visitors

by Regina Edelman

Mom came home from church after ten o’clock in the morning. Spiritually comforted, she sat on the edge of wounded grandma’s bed, and for some seconds pensively watched me feed the old lady bread soaked in warm milk when somebody knocked on our door.

“Mom, there’s someone at the door,” I said.

“Who’d knock on our door?” mom asked.

“I don’t know. You need to check to know.”

“Don’t start; I’m in peace with my Jesus.”

There were claps. “Is anybody home?” a husky woman’s voice shouted from outside.

Grandma’s neck struggled up alertly. Mom searched fidgety for a cigarette inside her bra.

“O, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the factory sold this house,” she said. “We’ll live in the streets. Should I answer? If I don’t answer, she might go away. I’m not going to give up my house that easy.”

More claps. “O, Hello! Hello! Anyone home?”

Mom was stuck in the middle of the bedroom with a firm plan not to open the door, and so I went to answer the caller.

There stood a senior man, dark skin, bald, his remaining gray hair pulled back, a long gray moustache twisted at the edges, and mysterious blue eyes under a thick brow. He wasn’t tall or short, but skinny and his belly made his profile resemble a rattlesnake digesting a toad. He wore a brown suit and tie and carried a black briefcase in his left hand. A heavy gold ring adorned with a square stone on top like ice sparkling under the sun attracted me.

Beside him stood a short middle-aged woman with short thick black hair and lively gray eyes like the ones grandma had in the past. A wart on her chin grew two long gray hairs. Her body was the same as other widows I’ve met, sweet potato-like, and she dressed in a plain black dress printed with minuscule white flowers. On her neck sparkled a thick gold chain with a gold cross incrusted of emeralds and rubies. She grinned, her small teeth stuck inside her lips.

“Hi,” she said, calmly waving her hands. “We came to visit our sister,” she said, her Portuguese with an accent from Portugal.

Mom introduced herself as the daughter of their sister and said she was pleased to meet them in flesh for the first time. “And this is my daughter,” mom introduced me.

The woman seemed pleased to meet me, but the man averred to look at me. The wrinkle in the bridge of his nosed deepened, severe and prejudicial, however slightly he bowed.

The party settled in grandma’s room. He solemnly grieved for the invalid, and made the sign of the cross. I lingered there too at the edge of my bed next to hers.

“Sister,” the man said, “I thought often of you.”

“Me too!” the woman said. “I missed you so much, sister. I swear on the lives of my children, I’ve missed you.”

Why does she have to swear at all that she missed her sister? I instinctively felt sorry for the lives of her children, and I was right to feel that way because her statement will prove untrue ahead in this story.

Mom listened at the foot of the bed, not understanding the visitors’ purpose, but smiled pleased.

Grandma suddenly perked up. “Did mama die quick as she always said she would from her mysterious disease with no medicine in all heaven or hell to cure her?” she said suddenly sarcastic and sneered as she talked.

“No, no, no,” her brother nodded, clearly doubting her words, exchanging glances with the woman on his side.

“Our mama died two years ago. She was ninety-three,” the woman concluded conciliatory and in a calm voice.

“You know, I always knew she wasn’t sick at all. And papa, what was made of papa?” grandma asked as a little girl would for her dear dad after a day in school.

“Papa just died,” the brother said and sighed. “That’s why we came, because of his will.” As he talked, he put his briefcase on his lap, pushed the zipper, and opened it. The woman blushed and smiled to hide her shame, but her smile only made her uglier.

“O, I see, a business visit,” grandma said. “We’ll go through this business, don’t worry. I’m not going to die this minute. First let me learn what became of the ones I deeply loved.”

The couple looked startled to each other.

“Why didn’t you ever write to me?”

“Well, I moved back to Portugal. Papa sent me a letter calling me back to help him on the grape plantation. His business finally succeeded, and he bought back the house we were born in. He expanded and bought three more farms for grape plantations and started to produce his wine. Business was good afterwards. I administrated business for him, and was so busy with work that I had time for nothing else. That’s why I didn’t write or ever visit,” he excused himself.

“And now you find time to come?”

“Mom,” my mom said. “Aren’t you being a little harsh with your brother?” She patted her mother lightly on the feet.

“What’s your understanding of being harsh?” grandmother asked.

“Well, the noble couple came after such a long time from far to see you, mom. I think it’s kind of them,” my mother said with a neat smile to the couple.

“Thanks, ma’am,” the man finally addressed his attention to my mother, “but I understand my sister’s inquisitions.” He turned back to his sister in bed. “I was only able to come now because I’m quite retired. My three sons are in charge of the business. I work as a consultant when they need me.”

“And are you here as a consultant?” grandma asked.

The couple danced uncomfortably where they sat and exchanged glances of conspiracy, and then she took the conversation from there.

“No! No!” the woman said. “We came to see you too, my dear sister.”

“What about you, my dear sister, did you go back to Portugal as well?” the moribund sister asked, dragging out energy to speak.

“No, I live in São Paulo. I married, but I’ve been a widow for ten years. I have four kids, two boys, and two girls. They’re god’s blessing, my kids, all married and successful, thank god, and I have ten grandsons all together,” the sister gaily summarized her life, and then an uncomfortable silence fell on the room for a few moments.

My mother smiled like an Indio in the Amazon in front of a civilized white man for the first time. Sullen, I watched the strangers.

My great uncle grunted his patience over and put his white head inside the briefcase on his lap. Sun came through the narrow window to light the room. He took some minutes to put his papers together, and even had a palm sized pillow of ink to take fingerprints. “Just in case she doesn’t know how to sign anymore,” he mumbled. “I brought some papers for you to sign, sister” he said louder like a man in power well entitled to his business, and placed the papers on top of his black briefcase that served as his desk.

Mother’s eyes became curious when she heard that there were papers to sign, and she bit her bottom lip in expectation.

“What are the papers for?” grandma asked in a business manner like the strangers spoke since their arrival.

Long lost brother and sister exchanged more uncomfortable glances. He cleared his throat. “Our father didn’t forget you and left a small piece of land in Portugal for you in his will. Its small land, Arminda, very small, very small, indeed, small.”

Did he know that he emphasized the word small too much?

He sighed and went on. “I know you can’t go there to take possession of the land, and money is what you need, right?” he said, grunted, and sketched a smile to my mother.
“Right, right,” mom replied as he wished.

“These papers are authorization to give me the power to sell your small land there. I’ll send you the money as soon we can sell it.”

“Sign, mom. We need money so badly. Jesus sent him to save us,” my mother said in agitation.

“So that’s what was made of my beloved ones who forgot me,” grandma said, and her eyes died a bit more at the moment.

“We all love you, sister, very much so. We didn’t forget you for a single minute of our lives, but your husband was too violent. Mama forbad us to contact you because we knew he enslaved and beat you. She couldn’t stand his ignorance and your insistence to stay with him. We didn’t want her to cast us out too,” the woman said.

Mom knew that what the woman said was true, because grandpa was cruel, and mom grinned trusting her aunt and uncle.

“You guys punished me even more—because of my husband’s temper?”

“You’re going to sign the papers, right mom?” my mother cut short what to her were the old woman’s senseless emotions.

“Daughter,” grandma said to my mother, “try to see through your fantasies at once. I beg you!” grandma managed to clasp her hands to beg her daughter’s attention.

Mom blinked. I couldn’t tell if she listened, and grandma went on.

“I don’t have anything to lose, daughter. If you tell me not to sign these papers, I won’t. My weak mother’s heart tells me that you’re the one who’ll lose if I sign these papers. The beautiful blue eyes of the couple you see ahead of you aren’t smart and have no compassion the way they look like they have. This is my last chance to give you anything in life. Signing or not signing these documents is entirely your decision. Are you sure you want me to?” She put in check her daughter’s desire.

My mother looked up and asked heaven what she should do. Doubts shook her mind. The couple smiled to captivate their foolish thinker.

“If your option is to sign, the money will be in your hands in two to three weeks at the most,” the man said in a desperate tone.

“Nobody sells land in three weeks,” grandmother said.

“We have the buyer, sister,” he countered steadily.

“You can deal with the buyer directly, daughter, or keep the land if you wish. Make some effort,” grandma said.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. The buyer will trick her and underpay her for the land,” the man said.

“You have to go by airplane to Portugal in order to deal with the buyer. Have you ever traveled by plane?” the woman asked.

Mom was a simple person and not courageous. She never got close to an airplane in her life, and without pondering, she decided in frights, “No! Airplane to Portugal? No! Sign the papers, mom.”

“O, sister, you were always the slyest of us,” my grandmother said. “You’re still the same, I see. You easily see the weakness of your prey.”

The woman stirred uncomfortably in the chair. Her soul was ashamed.

“Daughter, don’t you want to go through the papers to see what you’ll lose?” the moribund insisted.

“No, I believe my uncle and aunt are good people and have Jesus in their heart. They wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

They shook their heads anxiously.

“See, I trust them. I don’t need to go through the papers. Sign the documents, mom.”

“Well, at least I’ll die knowing that I attended my only daughter’s last wish.”

A commotion followed to collect signatures and fingerprints from the moribund in bed.

"I'm going to need a notarized copy of your father’s obituary certificate,” the man said to my mom who nodded and went to another room to get the document in order to trust it to him.

“Don’t you worry,” he said, taking the paper carefully from her hands. “I’ll pay the expenses to notarize a copy and bring the original back to you tomorrow.”

“All set,” mother said and kissed her uncle’s hand on top of his brilliant ring. “Bless me, uncle.”

My grandmother, forgotten, sank weary in her bed. The two relatives stood up and prepared to leave.

“Sister, I’ll come back tomorrow to see you again,” the man said. My grandmother remained silent, and neither knew what to do.

“Mom,” my mother said, “they’re saying goodbye to you.”

My grandmother’s lips didn’t move.

“Well, I understand she needs to rest,” the woman said.

“God bless you,” he said finally, making a sign of the cross, and they folded their grins mischievously.

My mother, of course, was thrilled with the agreement, and expected a small fortune from Europe soon.

“Wooh hoo! I’m going to buy this house,” she planned, and sang parading back and forth in a good mood inside revolting clouds from her cigarette.

When my brother arrived from somewhere sometime in the middle of the afternoon, she rushed to tell him the good news.

“Son, we’ll be filthy rich!” she said, and explained everything that happened to him.

“Really? Will we have steak every day?” he asked.

“Of course we’ll have steak and bread and cheese and chicken and cake. Whatever you want to eat, my son.”

“Mom, can I have Coca-Cola every day too?” he asked.

“Of course, son.”

“Hurrah!” my brother shouted, licking his dry lips and opening wide his gluttonous eyes.

The moribund sunk quiet in her bed.

Next morning, a boy knocked at our door and delivered grandpa’s death certificate with a note, which my mother read aloud in a trembling voice.

Dear Sister,
I apologize for not going back there today as promised. Business made me fly immediately back to Lisbon

Thank you for your attention yesterday. God bless your sweet home.

Sincerely,
Antonio Maria

PS: Minerva sends her regards with love and God’s blessing.

Grandmother died and mom never got a penny.



©2009 Regina Edelman

We Only Eat Life

by Regina Edelman

Many living bodies will pass through the bodies of other creatures. That is to say, uninhabited houses will pass in pieces through inhabited houses, giving them something useful, and bringing with themselves their own harm. This is to say, man’s life is made up of things which are eaten, and they bring with them the part of the man which is dead.

–Leonardo da Vinci

I read to Daryl for him to approve my writing:

Yesterday I fasted and went to the doctor for a checkup. My doctor is Chinese, but grew up in São Paulo where I came from, and practices here in Chinatown where I live now. The Chinese markets here display tables full of food propped outside their storefronts onto the sidewalk, and even sell live turtles for soup. I think they’re for soup. I only have vague knowledge of how to cook a turtle, and I don’t even understand eating them in the first place. Once Daryl’s old roommate told me that he saw a party of diners in a Chinatown restaurant cooking a turtle in a pot over sterno in the center of the table. Alive, the poor beast tried to run away from death, which is certain we all know, but closer to that turtle. The poor thing tried to climb the hot walls of the pot, but how could the innocent run from the cowardice of her condemnation? The Chinese party pushed her back down to the bottom of the pot with its water close to boil. They laughed until the poor turtle died. Horrible! Cruel! But is it any different than the killing of cow, chicken, pig, fish, the poor sheep, or how many other lives in other places and times we don’t know of on Earth? It’s not a question of who eats what, no matter what hemisphere. The fact is that we only eat life. The only difference depends on whether we kill in sophisticated form, fast with no crying, or brutally like worms do. The sun, father of colors and lights showed clear and tinted the fruits in the Chinatown market: fresh vegetables covered in spines, green leaves that we know, that we don’t know, strange roots, ducks hung upside-down, chicken feet, testicles, and ribs of cow or pig, intestines hard to define if pig’s intestines or what are exposed for sale in the butchers’ and restaurant windows. Dried and salted strange little creatures like cockroaches are merchandise too in the exotic markets. A scenario in the pasture of man on my way to the doctor’s office on Canal Street filled with children yelling playing running, and old ladies who told fortunes. A shoe repairman squatted on a stool with his tools laid out on the sidewalk, busy with his customers waiting for their shoes. Clumps of men and women played dominos at tables in Columbus Park. Women fed the pigeons in spite of sign plates that read, Do Not Feed the Pigeons, on the park fence. If I was a pigeon, I’d like to raise my family in Manhattan, easy food here, for man, squirrel, rats, and cockroaches.

A fish at least two feet long jumped from a table. He twisted on the hard sidewalk, despairing without oxygen. With a spear, the fishmonger hooked the fish’s head and put him back on the sale table where he belonged now.

Daryl stopped reading and looked seriously at me. “This is beautiful, Gina,” he said. “What are you going to do with this?”

“I’m going to write a novel.”

“You can write a novel. We have a lot of work to do,” he said.

©2009 Regina Edelman

Handsome in America

by Regina Edelman
“You don’t look fifty, Joey, such a slim body and beautiful skin,” my friend Americus said as I stepped out of my black Beetle that sunny and humid summer day in Fairfield, Connecticut. A mild wind hissed through the sycamore, pin oak, and magnolia darkly shading our way, and willows hissed ahead.
My friend Americus did the best thing in his life not bringing a child to his world. Single, fifty-two, Italian background, short, ball-bellied, his face was wax yellow-green at the time, seriously concerned, bags of flaccid skin under his wide green eyes almost jumping outside their sockets. His lips stretched straight in a small trace. In the past, his lips weren't normally like that; the trace of his mouth used to draw like a Chinese bowl in a good mood, talking, talking, loudly joking, laughing at his own jokes, but lately the man was overwhelmed in misfortune, and had called me once more to cry out his miseries. He only called me when he thought things were too wrong for him to bear alone.
I felt some sort of gratitude to this man because when I emigrated from São Paulo to New York he gave me a job and shelter in his tiny office where we worked as agents representing a paper manufacturer in the Amazon. He gave me the job because he couldn’t stand the Brazilian mentality of doing business. He was tired of losing, and was headed to bankruptcy. “Jesus! Brazilians can’t import a container without being late at least twenty days,” he’d say, he the one who had to pay for the losses or lose the customer. When I came to work for him, I put order in that confusion, and worked my ass off to meet time tables. I made good enemies and did a good job while Americus spent his time playing Solitaire on his computer. In two years, I accomplished his wish to have a million dollars. I worked for him until the day my first book was published, a work I did in silence, on the side, on my own, because I dearest dreamed to become someone with voice in this crude world. Americus cried heartily when I announced my victory. He didn’t want me to leave. I said I wanted to be a star. He said I was too old to be a star, said I was a traitor, said that if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t know English to write any book, which isn’t true. I learned English because I always wanted too, and because I read and read, and paid attention to everyone speaking in the city, went to free English as Second Language classes twice a week night times, the only days I stopped working at eight in the evening. Then I met my adorable husband. On the day we met the first thing he said to me was, “The best way to learn English is to have a native speaker for a boyfriend.” We’ve been together for eight years.
“I can’t let you go!” Americus sobbed when I quit, but I had to go. He knew there was nothing he could do to stop me, so I went, and promised he would have my friendship forever. Without me, he closed his business, scared he would lose his millions of dollars I worked so hard to earn him. Now the man called to tell me his pain, to complain about his mother’s huge underwear he had to launder. On account of that, he lost his appetite for having sex with women, not that he was looking for any women. “Women in America are the most expensive cold bitches!” he usually moaned. His sexual preferences were wild; prostitutes from Brazil he liked the best when he used to travel there thrice a year. With his mother bedridden, he hadn’t traveled for two years in a row.
“Joey, there's no sadder thing on this earth than to find out too late you’re pretty fucking stupid,” Americus Rindo cried his sad confession. I answered he was right in a manner to cheer him up, but his eyes crossed mine, blank and indecipherable. He walked down the porch through the backyard and stopped at the margin of the pond, throwing rocks to shoo the geese, which, squawking, flew weary to the front of the house, a million dollar house he earnestly dreamed to own. His mother promised it to him if he’d take care of her until her last breath, and he had sworn he’d take care of her.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“Joey, you’re the cruelest friend ever!”
“Why?” I asked, and wanted to add that cruelty is throwing rocks at the geese, but I didn’t say that because I was a visitor, and the man was already so depressed with the latest news about his hepatitis c. Before this latest news, when he found out he had the dread disease, he panicked for the end of his life, then his doctor told him he could be cured with new medications, but it would eat a couple thousand dollars from his fortune if his insurance didn’t cover the treatment. He said he couldn’t afford such expensive medicines. What is a couple thousand from your millions to save your life was my question. I don’t know, my money is invested, was his reply, greed glinting in his immense mysterious eyes. It took a month for him to find out his health insurance covered the interferon injections and ribavarin pills needed to eradicate the virus eating his liver, and until then the man called me at least three times a day to tell he couldn’t sleep or eat so anxious scared of death he was, and now that his chances to die of that disease diminished to twenty percent, he had some other trouble not yet quite clear in my mind.
“You confirmed I’m stupid!” he cried, his tales of misery filling my head.
“No, I just said that what you’re saying is absolutely right. I remember being pretty stupid myself, and the older I get, stupid I remain. Now, come on, cheer up. Isn’t it wonderful you don’t have to pay for the medicine that can cure your liver?” I asked, walking down the stairs to be close to him. He wrenched to get his pack of cigarettes in the pocket below the knees of his cargo-shorts, lit his menthol, put the lighter back in the cigarette pack and wrenched again to return it to the far pocket. He belched gray smoke, pacing around, one hand in the pocket of his cargos, silent, sad. I respected his silence and pain and patiently waited for him to speak up. In the interim, I compared his lawn, trimmed but rare, dried, weedy, bare-spotted here and there, with the other houses’ lawns, tender, hydrate, dark green and full. Birds ate in a seeder swinging in the sycamore on the edge of the road. A wind-bell tinkled somewhere. His cigarette long gone, Americus continued to pace, but now dabbed at the bundle of hair at the back of his neck as he’s done since I met him in Brazil, a mania he has every time he thinks someone’s looking at the plugs of hair on top of his head, not that I was looking at his gruesome scalp, red and irritated where the fake hair was planted.
“I’m sorry, Joey, I shouldn’t of called you and worry you with my fucking dilemma.”
“Where your dilemma lies wasn’t much clear to me so I came to talk in person with my delightful friend, Americus.”
“You call me delightful sarcastically. I bore you to death. I’m sorry. I felt so lonely today I wanted someone to talk to over the phone. There was no need for you to come from Manhattan to spare any time with me. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a burden and ruin your Saturday.”
“Look, you’re not a burden. You don’t ruin my Saturday. Your mood worried me. What’s a friend for? I came to talk to you, so talk.”
“Well, the insurance covers the medicine as you know. The doctor guarantees eight percent the medicine will work for me. After a year, we’ll see how my body reacts.” He stopped talking to light another cigarette. “Doctor warned the counter effect of the drugs will put me in an ill mood, lazy to the point of not wanting to get up from bed, and it’s possible I’ll lose my hair.”
That's his latest worry? Losing his hair?
“I don't want to lose my hair, Joey!” he cried and shook his head so hard that I thought it would roll in the pond to fulfill the vengeance of the geese.
Suddenly, an impatient buzzer cracked the air.
“Mom, mom’s calling,” Americus said and checked his watch. “Two o’clock. She needs her bladder medicine and food.”
I followed Americus to the house to attend his bedridden mother. In the kitchen, he chose a pill bottle among an ocean of other pill bottles set on a round tray on the counter. He picked a glass inside the cabinet, filled it with water from a Britta pitcher he took from the fridge, then picked a glass jar with some sort of baby-papinha with vegetables in it, set the microwave to hit it, picked salt crackers from a jar on the counter, and after all, set everything on a tray and hurried to his mother’s bedroom.
I waited in their large living room decorated with cat bibelot and white china on top of a caramel-colored credenza that matched a wood dinner table and six chairs; pillows in five tones of hibiscus from pink to faint red adorned each seat, and the same hibiscus pattern colored the huge couch in front of the only modern thing in the house, an immense HDTV in the corner of the room. Clean white lace drapes fell nicely down the four floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto the lawn in front of the house, which was greener and fuller than the backyard.
“Americus, I heard voices in the house. Do you have visitors?” I heard his mother say in a low, tired, thick, and groggy voice.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to see anyone!”
“You won’t.”
“Don’t go anywhere. My blood pressure medicine's due at four. Fix the clock!”
“Yes, mother,” Americus said, came out the bedroom, closed the door behind him, and walked quickly to the living room. “Do you mind going back outside with me? I need to smoke. Mom doesn’t know I smoke. O! I’m sorry; you’re sitting comfortably on the sofa. Let’s stay here in the fresh air-conditioning.”
“No, no. Let’s go out,” I said and stood from the sofa, patting my skirt on the butt. He protested again that there was no need to go out in the heat and humidity, but the truth was that he badly needed to talk and couldn’t do without his cigarettes. “Forgive me…” He went ahead, unloaded the tray on the counter, filled a glass with diet coke, and asked if I wanted anything to drink. Prejudice of their glasses, afraid I’d catch his or her disease, I declined and then I followed him back to the backyard. He shooed the geese once more, and once more they ran mad from the lake, from him.
“What does your doctor say about hepatitis c and cigarettes? Are they compatible?” I asked.
“Doctor knows I smoke, said I have to quit. He gave me drugs to quit, but I’ll start the tablets when I start the liver medication the end of next week.”
“Good! Seems everything's under control then for better health and your future.”
“My future?” he considered, head cocked left. “My freedom is gone. I may die before mom, and my dream to inherit this house all for myself, only a winged illusion,” he muttered, nerves blooming out of his skin, head cocked right.
“How old is she now?”
“Ninety-two. The woman has a lust for life. She might live at least ten more years and I’ll be fucking sixty-five,” he said, gazing gracelessly to the sycamore, then turned to me and must have read in my forehead that I thought his mother a burden to him. “O, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want mom dead. I love mom!” he excused himself, shame appearing red in his flaccid cheeks. “The woman's strong…,” he continued enigmatically low, almost to himself, and tapped the bundle of hair at the back of his head.
“What’s the deal with your hair?”
“Curing my liver might be a disaster to the rest of my natural hair. You ever notice I have hair plugs?”
I nodded slowly and he looked shocked that his gruesome head was obvious to anyone. Who knows what he thinks? I’d known the man for nineteen years, and I noticed the plugs when my eyes first landed on top of his head, moreover, there's a certain pleading look in the eyes of a man with hair plugs, as if begging everyone not to look at his scalp. “I think you shouldn’t worry in anticipation,” I said, “and if the worst happens for sure, shave your head.”
“I can’t shave my head, no,” Americus said, nervously shaking his head, “for two reasons,” he paused, pensive, “one, plastic surgery to smooth my scalp the way it used to be costs a fortune, and two, there're holes in the back of my head. Plastic surgery may not resolve a thing at first, so more surgery, more money down the drain. If my scalp can ever be repaired is a question mark, surgeons say. I’ve investigated.”
“Too expensive? Holes in the back of your head?” I asked helplessly.
“Yes, the reason why I said lately I found I'm sooo stupid!” Americus said, his big eyes revealing suffering with no end.
What could I say to that man? “O! Don’t worry with your hair. If hair was a good thing, it wouldn’t grow in the asshole for us to shit on top of it.”
The man cocked an eyebrow and carried his thumb to his mouth, then bit the edge of its nail, pondering my dumb saying. Witless, indeed sad, a captive cockatoo picking on its fleshy foot is a happier picture. He went on, “To be handsome in America, you ought to keep your hair no matter if hair grows in the asshole.”
Madonna mia, he considered himself handsome! “Well, that’s a strange opinion. I rather my man bald than with fake hair, toupee, or those hair-do’s where they comb all the hair over the bald spot and harden with spray not strong enough to support a light breeze, and the hair lifts, floating like a strange satellite attached to the gravity of a strange vain head. For God's sake, who in hell says fake hair is handsome? What devil blew this in your ears?”
“O! It’s a long story. Do you wanna know? I’ll tell ya the whole thing,” Americus said, his eyes encouraging me to let him reveal the depth of his pain.
I nodded for him to him go on, and then heard a revelation.
“I didn’t need to get hair plugs. I was too young, twenty. I had hair, Joey! I swear I had fine hair, thin, but just fine. I did it all because of a girl! A girl! She turned out to be a turn-off like mom’s huge underwear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. I dearly loved this girl. I was so horny for her. She was so cute, nineteen, blonde, blue hypnotic eyes, short hair, tiny cute ears, skinny, small bulbs I fantasized sucking till she orgasmed and I came. She promised hot sex, teased my cock and I had wet dreams for months. One day, an elderly man, late thirties probably, walked past the two of us in our college cafeteria. He had thin hair on the sides like mine, but was bald on top, and she said, ‘I'd never go out with a bald man. Your hair is just like his and falls out fast. It’s getting thinner and thinner. If I were you, I’d get a hair transplant now before your hair’s gone.' Madly in love with her, I fretted about what she said for days, figured she meant we’d be lovers if I wasn’t damn bald. It was all in my head, but it sure seemed my hair was falling out faster than ever. I fantasized about having a rich infallible crop of hair and considered getting a transplant to win over the girl who consumed my thoughts with sickening desire night and day. I requested several hair transplant clinic brochures by mail. They didn’t convince me, and the prices were high. The hair in every picture seemed unnatural, but then one shiny morning the TV announced a fair-priced transplant service. It could save my life, I reckoned, and the clinic was located conveniently in a town seven miles from here. The process was something new at the time. They took shanks of natural hair from the back of the head, and implanted them on top of the bald spot. I drove there and they put me in a room to watch videos of men. I was so impressed, those men with no hair and then with hair after the surgery, perfectly handsome, natural, and smiling.”
“The male models convinced you?” I asked. What a simpleton, I thought.
“They did, Joey. I went home happy, took more videos with me of the surgery procedures, and saw more models, each happy with the result. The pictures in the new brochures suited me better than the others I’d seen. I called for an appointment for the surgery, and didn’t tell mom or my two brothers I was about to get a hair transplant.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want nobody to convince me not to do it.”
“So you already knew your foolishness, didn’t you?”
He nodded bizarrely. “On the day of the surgery, the nurse called me outside to the front yard to hide from the surgeons. She told me if either of the two doctors saw her, she would certainly be fired. She badly needed to support her two kids. She told me to give up of the surgery. ‘You have just perfect hair,’ she said, ‘and it will be twenty years at least until your hair falls out.’ Until then, she hoped I was mature enough to decide not to get a hair transplant, but I was suspicious of the blonde woman, maybe in her middle-forties with a voice hoarse from cigarettes and beer. You know the kind I’m talking about?” I nodded. “She looked crazy with her weary fast talk. I barely understood her. I thanked her, and went inside the clinic. She came after me, embarrassed.” He stopped to light another cigarette.
“Do you understand that nurse risked her job to give you a good piece of advice?”
“Now I do. Now I know I clearly heard every word she said. Now I know my indomitable, vicious libido. Now I know I forced myself to believe she was crazy, but I was crazy, now let me finish,” he pleaded with one hand on his chest, the other up front in the air. “So, after the surgery, which took four hours, they put me in front of a mirror, disappointment hazing my thoughts, the top of my head red and swollen. Then I had even less hair on top, and holes in the back from where they took the hair to put on top. I was told that my head would be back to normal and my hair handsome in three or four days. Shit! Shit! I fucked up was all I could think, and could say nothing. When I got home, and mom saw it, she ran after me to beat me. My two brothers said I was loony. I ran outside the house to the fields, but had to come back home at some point, so end of the day I came back home. Mom moaned in grief, gave me a mirror and a recent picture of myself, then asked me to truly compare, and I admitted to her I fucked up. Mom cried for a few more days, but time put everything back. The shock healed in a week or two, and my family accepted to live in peace with me. So that’s the story of my implanted hair.”
“Hold on, what happened to the girl of your dreams?”
“O! She dumped me!” Vexed, he lit another cigarette. I couldn’t hold myself and started to laugh. “Are you fucking laughing at me?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t…mean…to laugh…. but your hair story is the most absurd story I ever heard… she fucking dumped you…”
“She did, the minute she saw me she fled like I ported some contagious disease. I don’t know. I’m cursed to kill everything nice I have, and I’m not talking about trifle nice things like bones dogs bury. I’m talking about nice big things of heavy importance, of real value, like youth I wasted for want of this house, like my hair, like my liver, it’s only all my holy fucking fault.”
“How did you get hepatitis c?
“I don’t know, too much unsafe sex, cocaine excess. Who knows? I ain’t a saint. I kill nice important things like I even killed this lawn.” Pensive, he looked to the dreary lawn under our feet.
“What? The lawn? Why?”
“Because I’d be fined and in financial trouble if I didn’t clean the bottom of this pond, accused of being responsible for sand and mud clogging the neighborhood pipes somehow, this pond the very cause of the last flood. The town argued with mom and me. We had a month deadline to clean the pond and present the documents of service done to the town. The correct thing to do would have been to clean the bottom of the pond and dump the gunk some place around town. Ten G’s to do the work, but my Mexican gardener tossed in my head he'd do the work at night while nobody's looking, for 3G’s, and he’d spread the dirt from the bottom of the pond on my back lawn, then roll a machine after to set the dirt in the ground, so ditto, my lawn never grew anymore. Who’d a thought grass is a sentimental thing? Now my lawn is like this, sentimental.”
“Pretty much like you hair," I said, holding my laughter to not hurt poor Americus’ head even more.
“Like my hair, yes, yes. Am I old and stupid?”
“Well, yes, but, but that don’t mean the end of the world. If you can look into all this with regret it means you can chart a different destination for a better future. You have the force to move, to change directions, and there’s always time to change if you wish to.”
“You talk philosophy.”
“What isn’t philosophy in the human universe—gods, money, Aristotle’s ideas, million dollars skyscrapers that wind or fire can knock down one minute to the other? Our intelligent world comes from our superstitious small heads; everything meant to fit us humans are only ideas of other humans, old ideas that aren’t necessarily ideal any more.” He conceded my words with a nod. “Can’t you have your life independent away from this house? You can go any time you want to, just manage things right before you leave.”
“Yes, but who’d care for mom?”
“Pay a nurse to be with the woman, Americus.”
“Too expensive! Mom don’t trust strangers!” he said exasperated.
“Look, don’t you have two brothers? Didn’t they come out through the same womb and sucked her same nipples? Talk to them. Make a new plan. Maybe they can alternate with you to take care of mom, and you could travel off for two weeks to Brazil for fun. Don’t you think you deserve a break?”
“Mom’s will is that I take care of her in order to have this house. I agreed. I can’t blow off a million dollar house. My brothers and their wives would fight me in court to sell the house and split the money with them, but mom already gave them their portions. Mine is the house if I take care of her.” His dismal face snarled greedily.
“Americus, look, I think your well being is worth more than a million dollar house. If the house is so much more important to you, then I don’t know how to tranquilize your troubles. Meditate.”
He cocked his head to understand and look at me. “I’d like to die if I lose my natural hair,” he cried.
I didn’t think he heard or believed a thing I said, so I reassured him. “You see at this moment how much more important your hair is to you than the house? Wouldn’t you give up the house if you could have your hair back with no menace of it falling out?” I think he sketched a nod, but cocked his head again with no answer for me. “Look, you must calm down and wait for real things to happen in the right time, then you’ll see what attitude to take to remedy whatever afflicts you. Don’t precipitate any act that you may regret later or make some loved one cry for you. Didn’t you learn from your past? Enjoy this backyard. Sit on the ground. Close your eyes and breathe. Think of nothing, think of yourself as a piece of the whole universe, a sacred important piece. Hold in this position for three minutes at least. That will calm you and help you to go through hard time or not. Today you’re not sure if you will lose your hair, so don’t worry with that at this moment,” I said, looking at the time on my cellular. 3:30. “I have to go, Americus. Follow me to my car.”

Three days later, the phone rang. “Hello, Joey? This is Ignacio. How are you?” I heard an urgency in Americus’ brother’s voice.
“O! Hi, Ignacio. I’m doing great. You?”
“Terrible! My brother was found hanged this morning. When mom buzzed for her six o’clock kidney medication, he didn’t come. She sensed something terrible could happen to her if her medication was not perhaps administered at the usual time, so she called 911. Americus left a note for you:
“I couldn’t take it, Joey, and sent myself to oblivion. I precipitate against my life too. One thing I learned in this life, I was coward to live, but not coward to die. You talked so deeply true when visiting me three days ago. I meditated. I was calm for a while, but the old anxiety took me, and I felt peace isn’t for a tired and vicious soul like mine unless you’d be around me night and day, for your voice pretty much comforted me. I know you were tired as hell of my nonsense through this life. Forgive me whatever I did to annoy you. I also know of your loyalty to me. I was glad I encountered you. You’re right. A million dollar house is not worth any exchange for well being.”
©2009 Regina Edelman