The Jew and the African King

by Regina Edelman

“This is a cemetery of Spanish and Portuguese soldiers,” my husband told me about the ground framed below our third story window on Saint James Place in Chinatown. “Seven soldiers and a general who fought in the American Revolution are buried here, Portuguese Jews from Recife, Brazil who came to the new world hunting for easy gold as the Dutch did. New Amsterdam became famous because everyone thought that free gold littered the ground for the taking.”

“I kind of know what those early immigrants thought,” I said. “When I first saw New York it seemed bathed in gold; the sunlight seemed brighter, oranger here than in Brazil, but I know that the sun is what deludes and fabricates a mirage of fresh water and coconuts to a mind lost in the Sahara, and in truth, it isn’t easy to find water in the Sahara or gold in New York. I came from Brazil to get that idiotic dammed delusional gold, and for that I have to battle like our Jew fellows buried here did to be part of human history.”

Smiling, my husband listened to me and said, “When I lived in Berlin a girl friend said the same thing about how the sun seems to shine brighter here. In search of brighter sun, the Jewish soldiers ended dead here, their graves out our window. What I don’t understand is if they came from Recife, Brazil, why don’t people say that Brazilians are buried here?”

“I don’t think they were Brazilians, amore. They were European exploiters of new lands, and Brazil was a colony of Portugal at the time. They only passed through Recife. The only people in Brazil at that time were natives just cheated by a mysterious god to them, and they had no knowledge of the existence of the European Universe or North America. Those old natives were trapped in huge trouble with intruder warrior assaulter Europeans who came to procreate in their land to give power to a king of a Catholic empire, not Dutch, but Portuguese.”

“You always surprise me, amore, and teach me something new.”

I chuckled, smiling with the good words of my adorable husband and said, “It’s you who enlightens my mind so I can teach.”

We kissed goodbye, and he hefted my bicycle on his shoulder and carried it downstairs from our walk-up to the street so that I could ride through East River Park to and from work on 28th and Park. He locked my bicycle to a gatepost in front of the brave soldiers buried in the Jewish cemetery, and from the window, I blew him kisses as he headed uptown to work.

Later when I stepped outside to also go to work, I observed a young man no older than twenty perhaps standing in front of the cemetery gate. Dressed in an immaculate white shirt, well-tailored black pants with long strings hanging over his pockets, and a black velour-like yarmulke, the young religious Jew, braces shining on his small teeth, his eyes clear blue as the Manhattan sky that day, was reading about the deeds of his ancestors on the bronze plate attached to the fence.

Girls’ laughter caught my attention. Three young ladies jeweled in brilliants and gold, dressed in silk embroidered in gold vines, fancy in molds of African couture I’d seen in magazines, stood along the spiked iron fence. Beautiful and well treated, their cheeks were rosy and their lips carmine, their soft dark skin like fresh blueberries. A tall handsome man also dressed in gold embroidery took a little while to organize his ladies for a picture. I fantasized that he was a king from Africa who owns them. So romantic was the king to his princesses that I envied them while I took the chains from my bike. I didn’t understand their African tongue.

The African king snapped the picture of his sexy princesses hugging each other in front of the historical cemetery, and then he looked around, obviously wondering who could take their picture all together. His eyes landed on me already perched on my bicycle to go, then on the immaculate Jewish boy visiting his dead forefathers. The young Jew promptly offered to take their picture.

“How much is it?” the king-sized African man asked with a submissive smile, resigned to pay any price to be in a picture with his sexy princesses in Manhattan.

“Nothing,” the young Jew answered awkwardly, innocently startled, uncomfortable, perhaps guiltily, and not understanding.

“O, thank you, thank you so much!” the dark king exclaimed, grinning, honored, and handed his camera to the young Jew.


©2009 Regina Edelman

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

The Bicycle Basket Thief

Saturday around ten in the morning, two months after the September 11th tragedy, my husband and I stepped out onto Saint James Place to head for breakfast. I turned to check on my bicycle chained to a post in front of the old Jewish cemetary.

Another bicycle was parked next to mine on the sidewalk. A skinny shaved-head white man in black loose clothes bent busy over the handlebar of my bicycle, wire cutters in hand.

“Hey! This bicycle is mine!” I shouted. Daryl and I walked toward the suspicious man who turned red, but didn’t run from us.

“What're you doing?” I asked seriously.

“Nothing,” he said.

“You’re stealing my wife’s bicycle basket, ass wipe, that’s what you’re doing!”

“Are you stealing the basket of my bicycle?” I asked, squinting in disbelief.

“Look, I need a basket. I’ve been watching this abandoned bicycle since eight this morning. This is the third time I came to take the basket. The first time, I didn’t have any tools. The second time, I had the wrong tool, and all that time nobody came to claim they owned the bicycle,” he said with a Spanish accent.

“We're the owners. This isn’t an abandoned bicycle, and if you need a bicycle basket, buy one, asswipe,” my husband said.

“Yes, I paid only five dollars for this basket at K-Mart for pity’s sake,” I said, not understanding the absurdity of the theft.

“Hey, word to the wise! Keep your eyes on your belongings. This is New York City,” the burglar said sarcastically, perched on his bicycle next to mine, then made his splendid and furious getaway.

“Idiot! Loser! You failed three times to steal a bicycle basket,” Daryl yelled and unlocked my bicycle to carry it upstairs.

“Unbelievable, we engaged in conversation with the failed burglar of our bicycle basket!” I said. “I tell you, amore, his advice isn’t bad.”

“He's a low thief! Idiot!” Daryl said and carried my bicycle upstairs. "Look! The basket is still attached! He cut the wrong wires!"

©2009 Regina Edelman

The Anonymous Driver

by Regina Edelman

Once I watched a show on National Geographic about dolphin life. The narrator dramatically explained that the ocean is a dangerous place to be, but what about danger on land?

The weakest is the first to die, and that man ahead of me is the strongest, at least in muscles. He’d easily kill a woman to satisfy any sick passion he may have.

I scrutinized the size of my trouble. The killer was taller than me by four large palms. He concentrated on the wet ground and carried a small closed black umbrella. He could attack me with that. He put his head up! He saw me! He fucking grinned at me! Calm down. I couldn’t really tell if he saw me and cared for the easy prey I thought myself to be. Did he really grin at me or not? He quickly put his head down again, guarding his steps as he ploughed through the water next to the Delancey Street Bridge. Drops of rain fell again, and with them, doomed thoughts induced me to fear: he’ll see my breasts through my wet blouse, and that'll bring his devil out. Nobody was there to save me but the drivers on FDR Drive who wouldn’t see me, listen to me, or care for me, in such velocity they rushed. Maybe I could climb the road fence and escape that way; I had to be very quick if my fate was to escape my near future under the bridge.

Bad souls aren't the only kind of souls in the park after the rain. I was there in my innocence and my ignorance of nature’s creation, though my soul is connoisseur of how perverse the nature of ignorant humans can be, and I truly believed the man ahead me the most perverted I ever encountered. Sweat seeped up on my skin. To escape, the only way was to go ahead and confront the perverted monster no matter what. I may have to fight to save my skin. I watched the man walking, he and I getting closer and closer.

I’d escaped several times from men running after me, but never from a man ahead of me. I remember a bolt heaven sent to mock my smallness at eighteen.

I knew I was in a dangerous zone, so I walked home fast, turning my head every two seconds to make sure no one was following me, nobody…but then I saw a man coming after me ten blocks behind, walking faster than me, but he could just be a product of my imagination and turn off any street. To validate this hypothesis, I tested my luck and ran.

The man ran too and his strong legs stroked faster than mine. I panicked! I couldn’t be strong then, especially after a beer. My legs shook cowardly and I kept looking back to see how he outraced me, already four or three blocks behind. Only a miracle could save me and I had no idea what to do when that man would put his hand on my shoulder. My brain put all its strength to my heart to go ahead no matter what, total concentration if I wanted to escape from a man in the dark. My strength was no competition for that wild beast getting closer, two blocks, and closer, one, until I could hear the stroke of his legs and his anxious breathing. Only a miracle could save me from his murderous hands, and faith that a miracle could really happen kept me steady on. I ran. A silent car came from an alley. I didn’t shout for help. I thought no one would possibly care for a girl who ran dark streets from a man, a street famous for junkies after ten at night. My hunter may be a junkie. I wasn’t a junkie, I wasn’t. I wished the driver saw the lunatic chasing me. I wished whoever drove the car wasn't more trouble for me, and that the driver could see my true honest simplicity. I was just coming from meeting a friend for the pleasure of laughs and talk about boys. It’s true we betrayed her family’s orders, for her mother forbade our relationship. She lived next door to my house, but we met around town. To follow my friend’s rules, I had to hide from her mother and go the worst way back home to arrive a few moments latter than her to disguise from her mama that we were together. Believing myself a dirty girl, a man running after me as proof of how dirty, and not sure I was the strongest to live, I ran.

Hey! Hey! The anonymous driver shouted. My hunter halted immediately. Stop! The driver shouted again and pushed the back door of his blue automobile ajar, which I entered gladly and sat wearily.

A voice in the dark reached our ears: I swear to our lord god in heaven I just wanted to talk to her!

The anonymous driver glanced to inspect me terrified in the back seat. There’s no need to run after anyone just to talk! This girl is terrified! Anyone can clearly see that she doesn’t want talk to you! I’m going set the law after you right away! Stay where you are, scoundrel!

But my hunter’s legs pumped in the opposite direction and disappeared in the dark. Breathing, breathing, slowly my senses returned to life.

*

Rocks? It’s a brilliant idea! That’s it! I’ll throw rocks at the man ahead. My arms are strong. I planned, hoping to find rocks in easy reach on the accidental ground covered with water, but I didn’t quite like this miraculous idea. Did I plan to kill the man to defend my right to live? What a strange feeling.

O my goodness! He stopped under the bridge, waiting for me! Whoever ambushes doesn’t have good intentions. O, my goodness! He saw me and waited for me, but then walked from under the bridge with a lit cigarette between his fingers. Strangely, it seemed he couldn’t care less about my existence, and only a few inches before our fatal encounter, the man turned left and crossed above the cars on the FDR, smoking.
©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

Soul Spy

by Regina Edelman

Bad energy rebels surf in waves of time to devour young universes. We good energies found Earth full of such young universes in development. We don’t know if the animals on this farm will have time to grow for good or bad. I’m in charge of studying the minds of human beings, and send messages of goodness.

Humans are fearless. They fear death, don’t fear to kill. They drink alcohol. They’re dangerous animals eating other animals. They attack in order to pleasantly survive , but nothing pleases them. The power and weakness in their mind can damage the mind system of the universe, or not, but time slides away and they are yet to see their ideas are combustible gas and their buildings and heroes catch fire. We good gods of the universe want to help, but prejudiced by old ideas, humans don't hear because they fear death. They don’t hear time and can’t see it will drive them forever out of time and space, but we good hope to save the mind of humankind so we also study their books, for people's minds are also gracious and intelligent. From here where I spy, I study these families to see what good could come of them.

“Eh, Tudé, you can’t eat sugar. You’re diabetic.”

“Who said I am?”

“You know you are. Why you think the malign varicose wounds in your chins don’t ever heal? Now cataracts attacked your right eye. In hope you’re not diabetic, you refuse to go to a doctor because they’ll put you on a diet, but you can’t stop eating, can you? You don’t want to feel better because you’re a rare stubborn primitive species who don’t care about nobody and nothing but your selfish pleasures, do you?” Grandma said.

“What doctor am I going to go to in the public hospital? They’ll give me midnight tea to feel better, and in fifteen minutes I’ll be walking through the gates of heaven, my pain surely dead with me. Where’s my coffee, Elga? Put lots of sugar in my coffee,” Tudé said willfully.

“I’m coming, Papai,” my mom said, test tasting his coffee, pouring more sugar, stirring it fast with a spoon, then trying it again.

“You must be highly intoxicated to think you’ll walk through the gates of heaven,” Grandma needled.

“O, Mama, Papai deserves heaven,” my mom said, bringing coffee to her father at the table.

“Arminda, I’m getting very angry with this conversation about me being diabetic, a disease you know nothing about. Is my fried polenta ready? I’m hungry,” old Grandpa complained.

“Here, suffer more,” Grandma said dragging her feeble body carrying another plate of fried polenta to the table.

Grandpa’s soiled nails fumbled to pick a slice from the plate in front of him. Anxiously, his tongue flicked right and left. He ate half a slice in one bite, and pleased, swallowed a large gulp of coffee. “Ah! Now it tastes right!” he said.

Delighted flies landed on his plate.

The church bell tolled four times and Grandpa’s bedroom door screeched open. Lying at the foot of the bed in front of the doorway, I could see Grandma limp across the living room to the kitchen, carrying her chamber pot. She opened the kitchen door to the backyard, stayed outside for a while, and soon came back inside, starting the day moving by blowing the first fire in the stove.

Her moves came clear to my ears over the unfinished wall only three-quarters to the ceiling between bedroom and kitchen. I heard her old lungs fill with air and slowly empty her breath across kindling. Nervously, she scraped the tray of the chimney damp to and fro for the smoke to go, but smoke billowed inside our house again as she blew, blew, blew. “Thank heavens!” she murmured with a sigh, tiles in the roof aglow. The wood cracked hot and the smoke stayed inside the house, suffocating lungs and burning sane eyes. Mom next to me in bed and my two brothers in their bed next to us snored loudly. Smoke apparently didn’t disturb their lungs or sight, and they didn’t hear the crickets, crows, cars, and radios outside.

The church bell tolled five times. Slowly, the sun lit our smoky dark rooms pale silver. Grandpa crossed my sight, bare-chested in ragged flannel short pants, shins wrapped in grimy bandages. He limped from his bedroom to the kitchen with the help of his imaginary spyglass, a fist wrapped in front of his eye. He coughed pacing from his bedroom to the threshold of mine. “When do you think this disgraceful smoke will leave my lungs alone? All I need is to have an asthma attack,” he said disappearing from my sight to the kitchen and then reappearing in the living room. “Damn, how many times I told you to start the fire earlier since I have no more strength to clean the clogged chimney?” he demanded, his feared dark figure darker, detached in the gray smoke once more in the living room.

“I got up as the church bell tolled four and I won’t get up earlier! Bet on it, pest! And stop feigning coughing! I know you very well!”

“Four? Then smoke should not be suffocating my lungs now. You didn't start the fire like I taught you. Did you blow it slowly and patiently?”

“Yes, Tudé.”

“I don’t think you did. You have to blow kindling like an oboist blows a long soft note in an orchestra solo. You can’t blow too slowly, or harshly in a hurry. A real musician understands the importance of time to not spoil the beauty of a composition of art. Fire is the same. The softer you blow, the faster the flame will grow vivid, belo, and the faster the smoke will go away. There's no need for smoke to accumulate inside. If there’s smoke after five o’clock, it’s because you impatiently started a lousy fire.”

“Look here, Tudé, things are not always as easy as for an oboist in an orchestra blowing his solo thousands of times into the head of someone before the concert like you've done in my head for years. Our wood is wet. This house is on top of a rotten bog. The wood gets humid and don’t burn as fast as you wish, master.”

“Whatever!” he trumped and went on to the next subject that disturbed his nervous system. Do you think the breadman is on the way?” he asked, and not waiting for a reply, he limped to the front door.

I was excited to have bread.

“Damn dogs don’t shut up! I need to focus my ears to hear a signal the breadman is on his way.”

“Why you want to hear that? You just lectured me about time, but seemingly your lecture isn’t exactly clear in your old head. The breadman will be here when it’s time for him to be here. We won’t miss him. We hear his trap half a kilometer away besides the commotion of others waiting for fresh bread, impossible not to notice him.”

I heard the breadman far away.

“Warm bread! Warm bread!” he rang his bicycle bell. “Warm bread! Warm bread!”

“Thank heavens the man is on the way! Arminda, go fast! Be the first customer. Get the warmest loaf, the biggest. Here, take the money! Run! Run!” he shouted anxiously, and Grandmother ran from the kitchen as fast as her feeble legs allowed.

“Jesus, Is that as fast as you can run? You took almost an hour to get less than ten steps from the kitchen to the front window. O, Jesus lord, we won’t have the warmest and biggest loaf!”

“Quit the illusion! The man passed at least twenty streets before ours. The bread won’t be so warm; and the biggest loaf was first to go.”

“Just run! Do what I tell you!”

When Grandma returned to the kitchen, Grandpa followed.

“Let me touch the bread,” he said, unwrapping the paper. “That’s it? The biggest loaf you could get is this small one? I should make you go back and change it for bigger!”

“Tudé, they're all the same size. Don’t make mental trouble!”

“Reinforce to your daughter Elga then that I buy fresh bread Saturday. Her sprouts are allowed to have a slice then and another slice Sunday. The rest of the days, they eat corn flour flakes. The bread is for me, a sick man. In addition, till Elga’s junk husband gets out of jail, I’m the only breadwinner here. God knows what I went through to earn my monthly retirement check, struggling ten to eleven hours Monday to Saturday over fifty-five years in that English cotton mill. The owners there and all around here are filthy rich, and what did I get? Open wounds in my shins, turned into a miserable slave that has to pay the mill rent every month. I deserve to have more bread than everybody else.”

“Yes, Tudé, food is your motivation, right? What you mean is don’t touch the bread or you'll belt them!”

“You know what I mean! True, food is the only motivation. You didn’t boil water for the coffee yet? Jesus!”

“Fire makes water boil, not me, creature."

“My Saturday will be delayed because you started this lousy fire.”

The smell of coffee warmed my spirit.

“Aw! Finally coffee is ready! Pour it for me in the big mug, the one I made out of a preserved figs can, with lots of sugar,” Grandpa instructed.

“You can’t eat sugar, Tudé.”

“O, there we go again. Who said I can’t?”

“You have diabetes, man.”

“Who said I have?”

The salvation is with the girl. I’ll invest in her.

©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