thanksgiving
My brother Cris and I are hanging out in my sisters room. We are supposed to be playing guess who. He wanted monopoly originally, but we don’t have the game I think. He is looking through Cristina’s cd collection for a remake of a pink floyd song. I have no clue what he is talking about.
We sit in that room for hours…
He asks me if Eddy is my boyfriend and I say yes. He thinks he’s cool people.
Do I want children one day? I don’t know, and if I did, I would have to give up Eddy. I see now how I feel so unloved at times. I crave more attention and reassurance than what if offered. If I had children, it would kill me to have them feel the same yearning. The same disappointment.
He tells me I have to speak with my mother again, that he will help me out if I am mad about the money issues. He’s a good boy J
He tells me that him and mom spoke, that he told her everything. He told her all the drugs he has taken. He told her what his life was like and for his openness. She was grateful.
We hung out most of the night, not talking every moment…. But it felt good.
Cristobal told me about a memory of his. He was younger, maybe 13 and my dad hits him over and over, maybe more than 20 times. He hits him so hard that Cris is worn out. No strength to do anything but hurt. He ends up with a black eye and my mother is upset because he can’t go to school for a few days. He tells me this and it doesn’t hurt. Not compared to the love I feel of communicating with him. Its not easy you see. It is rare in my family. Cris tells me the memory because he remembers how I tried to help him, I tried to stop my dad.
I don’t remember. It intrigues me that I don’t remember. How bad was life?
I don’t know anymore….
Sunday morning my mom calls and tells us my dad has been in a car accident. The truck is totaled and my dad was drinking when it happened.
There is a place I go to. Like the island in pinnochio. There I find my pleasures but they do not come the way they should. They are evil just because of the way they are presented. In this place my mind takes a break. I am not happy, but I am not as sad either. It is as if though I sedate myself before I take a look at the wounds again. This place is evil though and the more I linger, the less I believe that in the end I am a good person.
I didn’t speak much on Sunday.
Monday I get a call from my sister Cristina. Her and my sister Angie hitched a ride from an uncle while my mother and the baby stayed to look after my dad. She needed to tell me what happened.
I am driving home from work, stuck in traffic as I listen to the story:
Apa went on a drinking binge for the trip. He started off by just drinking at the summer house, then he went to town and made my mom stay in the car all day while while he hung out at the bar. On Saterday he just kept drinking and drinking from the days before and was just being …..drunk. In the meanwhile, my mother is talking about how she is fed up with him and is finally going to leave him.
My uncle’s family is also at the beach for the weekend, and him and my aunt decide to go for a walk. My father wants to go too so he tells my mom, but she refuses of course. Next he tries to get Cristina to go, but she is also not in the mood to be around him so as he is trying to physically force her to go she escapes to go hang out with her cousins.
<font
face=”Times New Roman”>My dad has had enough.
No one loves him, no one cares.
Not even his own daughters show him compassion.
Well, its final.
Someone must die, so it’s either going to be them or him.
He runs to the car as my mother catches on to what is happening. It’a too late, he beats her to it.
He gets, in this HUGE GMC luxury black truck that does not even fit into the garage because it is so big. He goes racing after my sisters who are walking talking on the beach. He aims at them, makes eye contact (that f*in bastard!) and tries to run them over. They literally run for their lives to avoid getting hit. When he misses and has to swerve to get a good shot again , he just takes off.
My sisters are so….
I don’t know….I wasn’t there….
But they cry, everyone cries…..
My uncle swears to kill him when they come back.
He doesn’t come back that night. Instead he goes to his business in town, gets drunk. Goes to a bar and gets drunk some more. Later that night, he goes flying off the road crushing his car like a can of soda. He crawls out of the car and goes in and out of consciousness for a few hours and manages to call the red cross on his cell phone.
The next morning, they start looking for him. Who cares where in the meantimes. They finally find him when they decide to look at hospital beds. He has broken ribs, a broken hip and a swollen heart.
He is very very sick, he must not be aggravated.
My sisters go in and they want to yell at him, they want to ask him how he could be so stupid. My mother counsels them before they go in the room.
She tells them they cannot yell at him. They cannot tell him ANYTHING negative. They are to go in there and give him kisses and hugs and tell him how much they love him.
On my end of the line….my mind is breaking…
This is not real. This cannot be so real. These are circumstances that you invent to make the story more heart wrenching….
In real life I think it is just PATHETIC!!!
He tells them he will change, he will never drink again.
Why can’t I have a heart condition? Why can’t I say that it hurts too much and it might kill me, the things they ask of me.
The moments they want me to forget, the person they want me to be, the things they want me to feel.
She is calling me also to let me know that he is hurt since I have not called yet. Everyone else has called him but me…
I say goodbye and pull into the grocery parking lot and just try to deal…
No I did not call him
No I have not spoken to him since
To be continued….