by Rebecca Huggins
It was not long after the flood that Padre became sick. His sickness had begun as a simple aversion to some of the meals that my mother prepared, but slowly progressed into what the people of Iguitos, Peru have referred to as the Great Sickness. When the medicinal woman, Isidora Ortega told us that there was little she could do for my father in his progressed stage of illness, our family mourned him as if his life had already been lost. Madre spent the days in sorrowful contemplation, while AbuelaAdela held her silent vigil over her bead working. My younger brother, Hernan, was too small to truly understand the sudden dark cloud that had been placed over our lives, and Tia Consuela was the only one who managed to keep a cheery, though artificial disposition during that time. Without resent, she cooked, cleaned, and maintained the household singlehandedly, allowing Madre the opportunity to mourn the loss of her husband in peace.
On the Sunday following, I was helping Tia make manjar blanco to help brighten the otherwise somber mood of the home. Hernan was busy playing in the sugar and licking his fingers happily, while I stirred the large pot of milk. Tia was bustling about, giving us orders, and sticking a chubby finger into the concoction to test it occasionally. When I was certain that Hernan was not listening, I asked Tia a question that had been bothering me as of late.
“Tia, why are we mourning Padre? He is not dead yet, and still, we act as if his spirit has passed.”
Tia Consuela made a sorrowful face and wrapped one of her strong arms around me. “No tears, Carmen. Your father was a great man, but has lived his life. Sometimes things happen we can’t control.”
We ate our manjar blanco and laughed for the first time since my father had contracted the Great Sickness.
Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
--G.K. Chesterton
You meet your parents at a restaurant one night for dinner. They've driven up to your college on their way to your aunt's, a christening or something, a baptism. You don't remember. It's late, 8:30 already, and you're starving. You merely smell the alcohol and you're drunk. You're so fucking lightweight it's sickening.
Your father looks darling. He wears his hair bald in the middle now, or for the past forty years. You sometimes forget important details like this. You remember when he had the mustache, or when he didn't have the mustache. You forget, even, this detail sometimes, it's so natural to you it's like whether or not he has two eyes. But you look tonight to make sure—and yes, it's there, simple as math. Black and straight and ordinary as those two little equal sign lines.
Your mother gets more beautiful each time you see her. Older too, and somehow she still manages to pull this off. You feel ugly next to her and you're the twenty-one year old, you're the one with the tight thighs, while she is in her mid-fifties. But she is all sorts of other beauty you won't credit yourself with, can't credit yourself with, like bossing around tons of people who still love you or being able to replace parts of yourself with the lives of your children. But still, she wears her earrings, she is beautiful.
“Have a good day!” I said cheerfully, waving another regular away. An elderly woman moved up next, she’s smiling and tottering, her hands shaking fiercely. “How are you?”
Death moved into my line of sight, joining the queue of customers. He had his shopping trolley at the ready. Why did he choose now, of all times? My heart pounded in my throat, announcing that something wasn’t right here. I served one last customer, when Death finally banged his goods on the counter. They ranged from a frying pan to bleach. What surprised me though wasn’t either of these items. It was the fact that he had a skeleton mask from our Halloween range.
“I said I’d meet you after work,” I said, glaring at him. My eyes swivelled over to the mask. I gripped it and swiped it through, before he could change his mind. What was he, insane? Anger flooded through me. Please tell me it wasn’t more of this blending in crap. Death nodded meekly, his bony fingers reaching for the EFTpos machine. “You take credit cards?”
I sighed. Of course we took credit cards. How could we not take credit cards, the large establishment that we were? But Death couldn’t be expected to know that, and in all honesty, I didn’t know why I gave him the time of day.
