miyako73
05-01-2014, 01:00 PM
This is an old excerpt of a bigger story that I turned into a short story with an "autobiographical" feel? Is this a short story? Thank you for reading.
Grandma's Pieta
Lola Adela must have died from exhaustion. Prolonged praying and repetitive kneeling caused her heart attack. She prayed too much even when she was in the bathroom. It took her a couple of hours when she had a bath. I could hear her mumbled Hail Mary’s undisturbed by the noises, drips, and flushes. Her murmurs were holy. I wondered what sin she had done that asked for a great atonement. Not an exaggeration, her rosary beads made of pearls had never left her fingers. Thick and coarse, the calluses on her fingertips glowed pink as if they wanted to be noticed. Her friends teasingly said they were from making and counting too much money. I thought so too; Lola Adela owned a huge store that overpriced everything.
In private, many had suspected that the death of Tito Bernard, my mother’s only brother, had something to do with my grandmother’s fervid penance even the town priest, who had been rumored to have fathered a stillborn, could not rival. On his twentieth birthday, my uncle drank paint thinner and suffocated himself with a plastic grocery bag. He put it over his head and tied so tight around his neck that he asphyxiated. Lola Adela just could not easily forgive herself. She had hoped her endless praying could cleanse her guilt and her son’s transgressions. Tito Bernard dated someone his mother vehemently opposed as if the world would end had he continued seeing him.
I knew how much my uncle loved Raul, a disinherited son of a rich family, who sold fish at the wet market for a living. Sitting with him on the bench under the mango tree that afternoon, my legs resting on his lap, I asked Tito Bernard about the tall, handsome man who kissed him on his cheek the previous day. What I saw did not really shock me. Well, Belle falling for the Beast did not shock me too. Waiting for his answer, I got curious why he and the man, whose big arms made my uncle’s neck and shoulders look lean and fragile, hugged and whispered secrets in each other’s ear behind the tree.
I had never doubted my uncle. There was never an instance in which he did not tell me the truth. He used to babysit me at his beauty parlor all afternoon and tell unbelievable stories that had taught me early to keep on hoping. He had never lied to me. He told me the truth about Santa, my father. He had never hidden even the smallest of truths from me. He exposed the lie of “happily ever after.” He was honest, too honest—he opened my eyes to the truth that I was not a girl and to the lie that I could never be one. That afternoon too, he tried to tell me who I really was and what I should not be.
“He’s a friend, a very good friend who makes me happy,” he said, letting loose a giggly smile with abashed lips.
“I wish to have a good friend like him too.” Eight years old then, I thought it was really hard to find one.
“Why?”
“I also want to be happy like you.”
“That’s very nice. It’s nice to know what you want. But are you happy now?”
“I am, but I want to be very happy like when you giggle in front of him.”
“Listen.” He held my chin like he felt sorry for me.
“I'm listening, Tito Bernard.” I scratched the itch on my leg, while he thought of appropriate words to use.
“Someday you’ll find someone who’ll wet your cheeks with the moist kiss of his lips. Don’t be scared. Ask him to whisper you something. Let him hear your giggles. Go with him into the dark. Wilt in his embrace. Never regret about the night you spend in his arms. Love in our forbidden hearts is crazy like that. You don’t need to fear it. Just feel what he feels.”
I did not know he could say those beautiful words; he cut hair and applied makeup for a living. Although he confused me, what he said rang in my ears like a premonition of what I should expect in the future. He must have known me already even at my very young age. Maybe he had observed how my stubborn pinkies would not curl with the rest, I thought.
It suddenly rained. He carried me on his back towards Lola Adela’s house where my mother was waiting and ready to go home. That was the last time my uncle and I had a chat about happiness, about giggling, about life.
The night before Tito Bernard died, he asked me to give his letter to Raul. I told Lola Adela about it. She took the letter from me and burned it with her altar candle while she prayed the rosary as though a curse had to be broken. I had cried for that and promised I would forever pay for it. Somehow I blamed myself. Had Raul gotten the letter, he would have known about my uncle’s desperate plan, and he could have saved him.
The saddest thing I had seen was more intense than Michelangelo’s Pieta. The agony was alive, and the sorrow real. Raul knelt and squatted on the floor with Tito Bernard’s lifeless body on his unyielding lap and in his embrace that cradled and clasped like a cotton hammock. As still as an altar statue with a forlorn stare, speechless and immobile, crying without sobs and sniffles, his tears slowly falling to linger on his cheeks, he watched the contours of my uncle’s dead face the plastic bag failed to obscure.
I could not really put all the blame on Lola Adela. I could not blame Raul’s unrestrained affection either. I could not also blame Tito Bernard’s selfish act. The word for what my uncle had with his lover that could not speak for itself had not yet existed in our language.
Grandma's Pieta
Lola Adela must have died from exhaustion. Prolonged praying and repetitive kneeling caused her heart attack. She prayed too much even when she was in the bathroom. It took her a couple of hours when she had a bath. I could hear her mumbled Hail Mary’s undisturbed by the noises, drips, and flushes. Her murmurs were holy. I wondered what sin she had done that asked for a great atonement. Not an exaggeration, her rosary beads made of pearls had never left her fingers. Thick and coarse, the calluses on her fingertips glowed pink as if they wanted to be noticed. Her friends teasingly said they were from making and counting too much money. I thought so too; Lola Adela owned a huge store that overpriced everything.
In private, many had suspected that the death of Tito Bernard, my mother’s only brother, had something to do with my grandmother’s fervid penance even the town priest, who had been rumored to have fathered a stillborn, could not rival. On his twentieth birthday, my uncle drank paint thinner and suffocated himself with a plastic grocery bag. He put it over his head and tied so tight around his neck that he asphyxiated. Lola Adela just could not easily forgive herself. She had hoped her endless praying could cleanse her guilt and her son’s transgressions. Tito Bernard dated someone his mother vehemently opposed as if the world would end had he continued seeing him.
I knew how much my uncle loved Raul, a disinherited son of a rich family, who sold fish at the wet market for a living. Sitting with him on the bench under the mango tree that afternoon, my legs resting on his lap, I asked Tito Bernard about the tall, handsome man who kissed him on his cheek the previous day. What I saw did not really shock me. Well, Belle falling for the Beast did not shock me too. Waiting for his answer, I got curious why he and the man, whose big arms made my uncle’s neck and shoulders look lean and fragile, hugged and whispered secrets in each other’s ear behind the tree.
I had never doubted my uncle. There was never an instance in which he did not tell me the truth. He used to babysit me at his beauty parlor all afternoon and tell unbelievable stories that had taught me early to keep on hoping. He had never lied to me. He told me the truth about Santa, my father. He had never hidden even the smallest of truths from me. He exposed the lie of “happily ever after.” He was honest, too honest—he opened my eyes to the truth that I was not a girl and to the lie that I could never be one. That afternoon too, he tried to tell me who I really was and what I should not be.
“He’s a friend, a very good friend who makes me happy,” he said, letting loose a giggly smile with abashed lips.
“I wish to have a good friend like him too.” Eight years old then, I thought it was really hard to find one.
“Why?”
“I also want to be happy like you.”
“That’s very nice. It’s nice to know what you want. But are you happy now?”
“I am, but I want to be very happy like when you giggle in front of him.”
“Listen.” He held my chin like he felt sorry for me.
“I'm listening, Tito Bernard.” I scratched the itch on my leg, while he thought of appropriate words to use.
“Someday you’ll find someone who’ll wet your cheeks with the moist kiss of his lips. Don’t be scared. Ask him to whisper you something. Let him hear your giggles. Go with him into the dark. Wilt in his embrace. Never regret about the night you spend in his arms. Love in our forbidden hearts is crazy like that. You don’t need to fear it. Just feel what he feels.”
I did not know he could say those beautiful words; he cut hair and applied makeup for a living. Although he confused me, what he said rang in my ears like a premonition of what I should expect in the future. He must have known me already even at my very young age. Maybe he had observed how my stubborn pinkies would not curl with the rest, I thought.
It suddenly rained. He carried me on his back towards Lola Adela’s house where my mother was waiting and ready to go home. That was the last time my uncle and I had a chat about happiness, about giggling, about life.
The night before Tito Bernard died, he asked me to give his letter to Raul. I told Lola Adela about it. She took the letter from me and burned it with her altar candle while she prayed the rosary as though a curse had to be broken. I had cried for that and promised I would forever pay for it. Somehow I blamed myself. Had Raul gotten the letter, he would have known about my uncle’s desperate plan, and he could have saved him.
The saddest thing I had seen was more intense than Michelangelo’s Pieta. The agony was alive, and the sorrow real. Raul knelt and squatted on the floor with Tito Bernard’s lifeless body on his unyielding lap and in his embrace that cradled and clasped like a cotton hammock. As still as an altar statue with a forlorn stare, speechless and immobile, crying without sobs and sniffles, his tears slowly falling to linger on his cheeks, he watched the contours of my uncle’s dead face the plastic bag failed to obscure.
I could not really put all the blame on Lola Adela. I could not blame Raul’s unrestrained affection either. I could not also blame Tito Bernard’s selfish act. The word for what my uncle had with his lover that could not speak for itself had not yet existed in our language.