Status: Updates every other day.
Keeping On
Uppercut
The hospital was always quiet at night.
I was never allowed to stay long enough to hear it really get quiet, though, since visiting hours closed at nine at night, and I was barely old enough to be potty trained. Dad would just hold me up to Mom’s bed while I kissed her goodbye and goodnight, and then Abuela would drive me home.
Dad stayed at the hospital all night, every night. Sometimes he came home to sleep, but it was only about once or twice a week. When he didn’t stay for overnight visiting hours, I got to sleep in his bed with him, which I thought was awesome – I didn’t see him a whole lot in 1998, and getting an extra eight hours under his arm was enough to keep me in one piece.
One night, he came home right before Abuela was going to tuck me into bed for the night.
I knew something was strange in the way he lingered at the front door, slowly closing it behind him while hiding his face. It was like he had sucked out all of the noise coming from the TV, the Spanish chitchat from Abuela that I could hardly keep up with, and the buzz of the air conditioner in the early summer warmth.
“Papá!” I smiled, happy to see him, despite the oddness.
Abuela asked him something in Spanish that just prompted a grunt from my dad.
Then he looked down at me. His eyes were tired like they usually were those days, but that night, there were bloodshot veins alongside his glazed-over brown irises. Before I could ask him what was wrong, he had slowly stepped forward in front of me, and then he kneeled down.
Dad took one of my hands and held it between his own. He was always a mechanic, even when he lived in Mexico years before I was even a thought, and so his fingers were rough and calloused. I still never minded holding his hand.
“Oshie, mijo,” he whispered, jaw locked, “tu mamá…your mother did not make it.”
I didn’t immediately understand. There was still a leftover smile on my face, but I was only four years old. Some things just didn’t ring through to me yet.
Abuela just put her hand on my back and mumbled, “Ohhh…”
“What?” I said. “What happened?”
Dad squeezed my hand again, this time with one of his hands on my face. “She has passed…away.” He read the confusion still in my face and released a tight sigh before repeating himself. “She is dead.”
There was no trace of a smile on my face after he said that. The night had never felt so quiet.
The battle between static, silence, and coherent noise had gone on for months, for most of 1997 and all of 1998 up to that point. That early summer evening, the war had been won by silence. Something discernible would fade back into our lives in a little while, but right then, as the moon cut through windows and tried to be clear in a muddy sky, my tiny brain was having trouble making sense of anything.
I was never allowed to stay long enough to hear it really get quiet, though, since visiting hours closed at nine at night, and I was barely old enough to be potty trained. Dad would just hold me up to Mom’s bed while I kissed her goodbye and goodnight, and then Abuela would drive me home.
Dad stayed at the hospital all night, every night. Sometimes he came home to sleep, but it was only about once or twice a week. When he didn’t stay for overnight visiting hours, I got to sleep in his bed with him, which I thought was awesome – I didn’t see him a whole lot in 1998, and getting an extra eight hours under his arm was enough to keep me in one piece.
One night, he came home right before Abuela was going to tuck me into bed for the night.
I knew something was strange in the way he lingered at the front door, slowly closing it behind him while hiding his face. It was like he had sucked out all of the noise coming from the TV, the Spanish chitchat from Abuela that I could hardly keep up with, and the buzz of the air conditioner in the early summer warmth.
“Papá!” I smiled, happy to see him, despite the oddness.
Abuela asked him something in Spanish that just prompted a grunt from my dad.
Then he looked down at me. His eyes were tired like they usually were those days, but that night, there were bloodshot veins alongside his glazed-over brown irises. Before I could ask him what was wrong, he had slowly stepped forward in front of me, and then he kneeled down.
Dad took one of my hands and held it between his own. He was always a mechanic, even when he lived in Mexico years before I was even a thought, and so his fingers were rough and calloused. I still never minded holding his hand.
“Oshie, mijo,” he whispered, jaw locked, “tu mamá…your mother did not make it.”
I didn’t immediately understand. There was still a leftover smile on my face, but I was only four years old. Some things just didn’t ring through to me yet.
Abuela just put her hand on my back and mumbled, “Ohhh…”
“What?” I said. “What happened?”
Dad squeezed my hand again, this time with one of his hands on my face. “She has passed…away.” He read the confusion still in my face and released a tight sigh before repeating himself. “She is dead.”
There was no trace of a smile on my face after he said that. The night had never felt so quiet.
The battle between static, silence, and coherent noise had gone on for months, for most of 1997 and all of 1998 up to that point. That early summer evening, the war had been won by silence. Something discernible would fade back into our lives in a little while, but right then, as the moon cut through windows and tried to be clear in a muddy sky, my tiny brain was having trouble making sense of anything.
♠ ♠ ♠
Well, here we go! I've been dragging my feet with this little thing for a while now, but yesterday I finished it up. It's gonna be a short novella and it only has about 7,700 words in total spread across eight chapters. I've been trying to be more concise with my writing while still being able to tell a full story, and plus I wanted to flesh out Oshie and his dad a little more.