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[av_heading heading=’MY LIFE AS ART’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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XXXVI. CEMETERY
Why do we have heroes? Because heroes are part of what is most noble in the human heart. We all have the potential to be heroes. The storyteller did not set out to be a hero. She simply met whatever came her way with every bit of herself. That made her a hero.
*
Nothing is more dead than a cemetery on the days of the island’s summer festival.
Dulce, and Matt, who was carrying the baby, offered prayers before Mercedes’ unkempt grave.
My grandmother raised me on this island, Matt said as he pulled away some weeds to clear the headstone.
She sang lullabies to me, invented stories.
*
She’d tell me stories in the afternoon so I would fall asleep.
She’d tell the same stories at bedtime.
Even if she told the same stories again and again, I never tired of listening to them. There was something special in her voice.
I’d bet she could have read the dictionary to me, and to me, that would be a great bedtime story.
*
You must miss her a lot, said Dulce as they walked to a nearby mausoleum.
I became an insomniac after I left my grandmother.
I couldn’t sleep at night unless I worked myself up, until I got so tired.
I guess that’s why I looked for a night job.
Why did you leave her? she asked as they entered the empty mausoleum.
They sat down on the benches.
Dulce took the baby from Matt.
*
I wanted to have some success as a musician outside this island.
But also, grandma disapproved of my first girlfriend.
So I ran away at sixteen. Teenage rebellion.
But it was really more than that.
Pinky, the girlfriend, was a bad influence.
She took Matt away from his grandmother, made him lie to his grandma on account of her.
*
The lying hurt Mercedes more than the arguments, like when Matt tried so hard to convince his grandmother that Pinky was innocent, not the flirt that people said she was.
But somehow he knew that Pinky was two-timing him, maybe worse.
Pinky was the island’s walking scarlet letter, wore her badge of shame shamelessly, with pride even.
She was a player.
Matt spent his school allowance on her, and still she wanted more.
*
When Matt confronted her about rumors of other boys, she would do the sexy routine, would purr like a cat in heat, a cat on a hot tin roof, then, the defensive stuff, then, the oldest trick of feminine crying without tears.
She would ask Matt, Do you really love me?
Why do you doubt me? Why can’t you trust me?
Do you believe them more than me?
Oh, no one understands me! No one can ever love me as me!
And Matt would be stupid again, forgive her, caress her, be with her even if it broke his grandmother’s heart.
*
No wonder good old Mercedes never liked Pinky.
Where is she now?
Matt looked at Dulce, he froze because he did not know for sure.
Duh! I mean, the girlfriend.
I’m sure your grandma stays in her grave.
She took Matt’s momentary pause for confusion about the question.
*
Pinky? I saw her once in Iloilo.
She married a Japanese businessman.
I think she lives in Japan now. Are you jealous?
What?
Matt just shrugged his shoulders. (To be continued)/PN
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