Choose Me (41 page)

“Talk to me,
mijo,
” I crooned.

He stopped crying long enough to squeeze out, “I can’t,” before his voice broke again. I held him tighter and let him cry
for about a half hour or so.

“Ma …” he started again just as I was drifting off to sleep. “I played dead. After he … I got shot, I played dead. Tony came
out of Rain’s room when he heard the shooting. I could’ve yelled to warn him, but … There were all these people … bodies on
top of me, and somebody started screaming … I heard more shooting above me … on top … Everybody on top of me was dying … so
I played dead.”

“Oh, baby. It’s not your fault.”

“I should’ve yelled but I didn’t want to get shot any more. I just kept praying that I didn’t die instead of yelling for Tony
to go back.”

He started crying uncontrollably again and all I could do was hold him and repeat over and over, “It wasn’t your fault.”

As his body shook, my own tears fell onto his back. My heart ached for him, all he had gone through and kept inside, for everything
he would always remember.

“I miss him so much,” he finally said, his voice congested and shaky.

An avalanche of memories washed over me as I pressed Eli’s body closer. I remembered how I used to tell the boys to love each
other after pulling them apart from a fight, their chests heaving, their eyes ablaze with contempt. I thought of how Tony
had more than once declared,
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
whenever I asked him to keep an eye on Eli. And I remembered them holding hands before pre-adolescence dictated it wasn’t
cool, how they would laugh covertly at me when I did something old-fashioned or what they considered “Hispanic,” like when
I dressed in eccentric outfits or started speaking Spanish out of the blue.

“I know,
mijo.
I miss him, too.”

Early the next morning, I awoke to find Eli gone from my side. After checking his room, I found him snoring, the covers around
his head like a hajib. I drove to Montrose Harbor, parking outside the barricades that now sealed off the closed beach, not
caring if I got a ticket. There were a few runners out, a couple walking their dog. A fresh dusting of snow covered everything
and the bitter wind quickly cut off the circulation to my bare hands, head, and ears. My car-length leather jacket and fashionable
boots were not sufficient protection, more suited for early fall than midwinter and my teeth were involuntarily chattering,
but I ignored them. It was so savagely cold, it hurt to breathe. But looking out across the harbor, for one brief moment,
I forgot to breathe and overlooked the freezing temperature. The lake was dazzling, awesome in its simplistic beauty, the
waves closest to the shore frozen in midmotion, resembling icebergs like fabulous sculptures only God’s hand was capable of
creating. I stood on the top revetment, watching the horizon in muted fascination, trying hard to clear my mind.

For just a little while, I didn’t want to think about anything. Before long, my mind started numbing and I could feel my heartbeat
throbbing in my head, which felt too heavy for my neck. I didn’t have my migraine medication with me and this suited me fine.
More pain. I wanted to feel as much pain as possible, just on the brink of death. I didn’t want to die; death was too easy.

Suddenly I felt weak and began to sway on my feet, so I slipped to the ground and sat down. I realized I hadn’t eaten the
day before and couldn’t remember when I had, only that I had drank coffee.

A memory crept into my mind, of the winter when I was ten, playing in the snow with Maya and my father as my mother watched
us from the window. I had been so excited about making a snowman with the fresh wet snow that I hadn’t bothered to put on
my boots. Even when I couldn’t feel my feet, I kept playing until my mother had to drag me indoors. When I pulled off my gym
shoes and socks, my feet were red and painful, the air making the pain worse. I didn’t start crying until my mother placed
my feet into a bucket of warm water, which felt like a million pins stabbing me. My parents thought I was exaggerating but
they didn’t realize I had early frostbite until they took me to the hospital. Later that night, after my mother had safely
tucked me into bed, and kissed my bandaged feet, I had a dream that the doctors had cut off my feet. I woke up screaming.

The memory of that night was so vivid, I could still hear my screams. Then I realized that I was screaming. At first, I cried
sounds of bilingual frustration, “AHHH!” and
“AYYY!”
Then I yelled to drown out a plane flying overhead, so I could be heard in the heavens above. I screamed until my voice gave
out and my throat was hoarse and raw. Suddenly, I realized I had forgotten to visit my mother’s grave on her birthday, hadn’t
thought of her in a long time. Would Tony also “slip” my mind in a few years? The thought made me cry out harder.

Looking out across the lake, I remembered the day Tony had asked,
“Is that heaven, Mommy? Is that where we go when we die?”
I could hear his animated voice in the wind, could see his cherub face, too serious for a four-year-old. I tried to remember
what my reply had been. Had I said,
“I think so,”
or
“You’re never going to die, baby”!
I couldn’t remember.

I knew my face, hands, and feet were on the verge of frostbite, vibrating with hypothermia. But it felt justified, the ultimate
punishment for finally succumbing to my temptations while my sons were under attack. I imagined someone finding me frozen
solid in a sitting position like an archaeological discovery.

God never gives you more than you can bear.
I had been hearing that saying all my life.

“I can’t bear this, Lord, I can’t,” I said, my voice inaudible and ragged.

I didn’t want to understand my son’s death, or accept it, I just wanted the pain to be over, once and for all. Maybe one day
I would find peace with the fact that Tony was chosen because he was the saved one. Perhaps Eli was left behind in order to
provide him with another chance to give his life to the Lord. If it had been the other way around, if Eli had died, I had
to believe Tony’s somber demeanor would have made it more difficult to handle his younger brother’s death. And then I heard
my Father’s voice:
He’s going to be alright He’s with Me.

“You’re going to be alright,” I heard the voice say louder, a voice that was gentle and tranquil, a voice that belonged to
a nurse. Dazed and cold, I couldn’t turn around right away. At first I thought I was hearing voices because I had heard that
that’s what happened when one went into shock. Then I knew it was God, that it had to be God talking to me. I knew many people
didn’t believe hearing God’s voice was possible, and immediately labeled you crazy, a Jesus freak, a fanatic. But He talked
to people all the time, through others, through signs. I heard the same voice again, louder, a voice that filled my body with
warmth and comfort like a moving gospel song that gave me chills.

“I said, ‘are you alright’?” the voice asked, and I realized I had misunderstood the first time.

Shivering, I turned and saw a woman in a sweat suit, running shoes, mittens, and a hat—all in white. The first thing I thought
was,
You’re not supposed to wear white after Labor Day.

“Do you need help?” Before I could answer, she crouched down to my level, her strange muted eyes benevolent, full of concern.
She handed me her mittens. When I didn’t take them, she slipped them on to my hands as I watched like a child who didn’t yet
know how to tie her shoes. Then she put her skullcap over my head. I felt God’s presence in her, His fatherly hands trying
to heal my wounds, mend my heart.

“No,” I said, finding my voice, though it was barely there. “I’m alright.”

Slowly, my body warmed up as heat flowed into my extremities and through my head like new blood from a transfusion. On the
outside, I trembled, colder than February, but inside I was warmer than August. With the woman’s help, I got up and walked
sluggishly back to my car, anxious to turn on the heat. I was eager to get home, to Eli, my son who awaited me.

LONG BEFORE MY
father got sick, I had accepted the fact that death was as natural as life. When I was eight, my favorite older
cousin, Steve, died suddenly on the football field of an undetected congenital heart defect. Four years later, my grandfather
was killed in a car accident. And when I was fourteen, my mother’s only sister, Violeta, who had been unable to conceive,
finally became pregnant at age forty only to die in childbirth, something I thought had gone out with polio and scarlet fever.
Death was something that came suddenly, angry like a fist, silent like the night. It could happen to anyone, any time. No
one was immune.

It wasn’t until my father’s death that I was a witness to how calculating and cruel dying could be. I watched my father disintegrate
from a two-hundred-pound retired navy man and police sergeant to a one-hundred-twenty-pound skeleton. One day the doctors
told my mother there was nothing more they could do for my father and sent him home to die. The rest, my mother said, was
up to God.

In a way, I always knew that some day I would make peace with my demons—or rather the one demon that had dogged me for almost
twenty years. Only I always thought I would be older, in my fifties or sixties, wiser and docile, the anger finally gone out
of me like air from a flat tire. I figured I would be more optimistic, closer to the end of my life, when the things that
had mattered when I was young and foolish no longer held any value. I would be able to look back on his memory and see
him,
not as a stereotypical man, aka a dog, but a real man, a human being with faults, born to err. And I would be able to forgive
him, finally.

And so, on a very sunny and frigid March day, I walked over the dead grass of St. Michael’s Cemetery, past monuments, tombstones,
and markers that men erected in honor of the dead, much like the material possessions they coveted in life. Only the stone
and marble blocks with all their fancy proverbs and epitaphs meant nothing to the dead, only to the living.

Two years ago, my life was divided into “before” and “after.” Before cancer and after cancer. Now, it was “the first time”
and “the second time,” and I hoped, the last time. I remembered thinking how invincible I felt after surviving the first time,
how I feared nothing after enduring cancer. Now, I took it back. I had always feared its return. And now that it had, the
possibility of my dying scared me to the point where I found myself praying not only at night, but throughout the day, more
times than the most devout Muslim who prayed five times a day.
Did God listen to the prayers of sinners?
I wondered.

That morning when my mother called to ask me if I wanted to visit my father’s grave, I gave her the same answer I had given
her for the last nineteen years:
No, ma’am.
It wasn’t his anniversary and I didn’t understand why she was going, but I didn’t ask. She was silent for a moment, and I
waited for her usual line of questioning, expecting her to plead with me given my current circumstances, but she simply replied,
“Alright, Love,” and hung up. She went alone, according to my sister.

I followed the directions I had received from the cemetery office and found his gravesite in the veterans’ section without
any problem. The closer I got, the slower I walked, not only with reluctance, but with fatigue. All morning long and on the
drive to the cemetery, I kept reminding myself of all the things I wasn’t going to do: talk to him, say a prayer, cry.

But as soon as I saw his name—Nelson Charles Black—followed by his birth and death dates, and the inscription:
Beloved Son, Husband, and Father,
my eyes started tearing and I had to choke back a sob. I tightened my jaw and squeezed the bridge of my nose where a permanent
bump now resided, thanks to Brandon Cho, and momentarily regained my composure. Self-consciously, I looked around the cemetery,
grateful I was alone. On his grave, there was a small bouquet of carnations, undoubtedly left by my mother. Although we didn’t
talk about it, I knew Jade visited his grave the most, not only on his death anniversary, but on his birthday, Father’s Day,
and the patriotic holidays. Quite unexpectedly, I felt guilty for coming empty-handed, but the feeling passed just as quickly
as it had appeared.

Squatting down with my elbows on my knees, I tried hard to think of something to say. Mama told me that when the other woman
found out about her, she refused to let her children visit my father, their father, in the hospital during his illness. It
was Mama who called to tell the woman about his death and the funeral arrangements, and it was Mama who made amends. Now,
I wondered if “his other kids,” as Jade referred to them, visited his grave. Before that day, I hardly thought of them at
all.

There was a time when I didn’t hate him, and I tried to concentrate and build on that. I tried to remember the happy times,
the family things we did together, the nights I’d wait up for him when he was on second shift, before I knew about his other
life. Still no words came. I then tried to think of an appropriate prayer and the only one that came to mind was Psalm 23,
which I had memorized for a Sunday school competition years ago.

“The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not want
…” I began, my voice a monotone.

Before he died, my father accepted Christ as his savior. I was there when it happened, in the living room, which had been
converted into his temporary bedroom, complete with hospital bed, IV, and the shark cartilage pills he was convinced were
going to cure him. I listened as my mother’s pastor asked him to repeat the words that transformed him from sinner to saint,
“Lord Jesus, I repent of my sins. I believe You died for my sins. I ask You to come into my heart. I make You my Lord and
Savior.”
My father could barely speak, and each syllable was an effort in itself. I had expected some miraculous vision, some kind
of change to come over his face, like peace, something immediate and different. I had expected him to be saved from death,
to live. But afterward, my father looked the same, pallid and pain-stricken, and a week later, he died.