Marilyn Isabel Ramirez

Maybe a Wake

It was the annual repentance, the eyes of the devout closed while a hum of sorrow exhaled into the sky. Before leaving the house, Cecile had the impulse to close her bedroom door and hide under her bed. It was still light outside. The afternoon rain cleared for a sun that knew nothing of death, and she wondered if dying was allowed during Lent. Her parents moved through the house, gathering themselves and the food to be politely eaten in the evening. Would Jesus be angry that the family’s mourning was not for Him, for His suffering, but rather for a grandpa she never spoke to? It all felt wrong to her, the time of promises not to do bad things while she had to pretend to care for a man who never learned English.

An hour later, she and the rest of her family piled out of their cars into the parking lot of Funeraria Del Ángel, an unavoidable destination for the people of Pico Rivera. It was a shapeshift, once a fast food chain, and those who lived in the city long enough could recognize the front sign for what it once was: a chicken bucket with an over-enthusiastic man’s face beckoning patrons inside his kitchen. Cecile walked behind her parents toward the parlor.

Because she was only eight, she was allowed to dress in a white long-sleeve shirt under red overalls—a stark contrast from the propagation of black dresses and suits, she was a painter’s last minute stroke of pigment to a gloomy landscape. Her father had on his black Levi’s jacket, faded by a decade of Cecile’s mother’s requests for an upgrade, and his hands were in his pockets. Her mother held onto the box of pan dulce, greeting her family. They walked past the front lawn on a tiny gravel path, and Cecile glanced at the windows. They reflected the fountain that wasn’t running, but its lights were on, and the concrete glowed against the dark minerals glissading down the white edges.

Cecile’s hands were sweaty. On the way to the funeral home, her mom had explained it was going to be “a wake,” and Cecile was confused. What was going to be awake? Her grandpa’s ghost? Is that what the pan was for, a breakfast for him with nasty café de olla?

While they waited for the ceremonial director to unlock the doors, Cecile asked, “Ma, what’s going to be ‘awake’?”

“¿Qué pasó?” Her mother, Martha, was listening to her oldest tía, an 80-something-year-old who claimed to have known where Amelia Earhart was hiding. The aunt claimed new evidence proved the pilot was in Honolulu, and they should all take a trip to the island to meet her.

“Awake, you said something is going to be ‘awake,’” Cecile said.

“Pregúntale a tu papá,” her mother said, shifting the box of pan dulce from one arm to the next.

Cecile’s father looked at her, then at her mother. She ignored him. They hadn’t spoken in the car, or even at the house.

“Pa, what’s going to be a—”

“It’s just a word that means we’re going to see your grandpa ‘awake’ one more time,” he said. One hand lingered inside his jacket while the other rubbed the skin of his forehead down to his cheek. Cecile’s mother stared at him. She waited for a softer explanation, perhaps joined with a gentle caress that emulated a kind father who could handle parenthood while her own father lay in a casket. She knew better than to wait too long and went back to Earhart’s biographer.

Cecile’s mouth opened, but she decided against pressing on. Her father didn’t look good. The hand inside his jacket kept twisting and untwisting the neck of a flask, the one he snuck into the car last minute while her and her mother got ready. But to his daughter, she thought it was because of a cold, or even the flu, and she planned to go through her mother’s purse later to find him some medicine. Behind her, adults were murmuring, some out of criticism of those who were laughing. Rufino was old for a long time, for a lifetime, and the family was only aware he was dying when he stopped eating his six daily meals cooked by Cecile’s grandma. His stomach hurt, but instead of the usual passing gas that so often happened, the pain lingered, and soon he was bed bound with pancreatic cancer.

The Funeraria Del Ángel’s doors opened, and by the doorway, there was a basket full of purple ribbons that matched the purple drapes of a small chapel in the corner. Cecile didn’t like purple, but today didn’t feel like the right day to mention that, so she placed it in her pocket. Her favorite color was yellow. Not the bright yellow that hurt your eyes when you stared at it too long, but the more subdued yellows, the canaries and bumblebees and dandelions that matched the jaundice of Rufino’s face the last time she had gone to see him.

The parlor enveloped its new guests, holding its breath while presenting the best it had to offer. There were no cracks or stains in the tile. There were dustless pleather couches with plastic covers. There were paintings of calm beaches and quiet forests—not the paintings of Fernando Botero that Rufino hung in his own home, their robust figures that he enjoyed because he never could hold in a smirk around rotund women. There were two large stained glass windows that let in the first signs of dusk, their orange irises smoothing out the edges of the room. Rufino’s siblings, Cecile’s great tíos and tías, were, to her, ancient and their faces, usually stony and sunbaked, cooled and softened with the setting March sun as they made their way inside.

Cecile’s favorite aunt, Nati, helped her mother set up the coffee and pastries while their father’s body lay in the blue velvet coffin behind them.

“That son of a bitch better not have left the East L.A. properties to Pedro,” Nati whispered to her mother. Pedro was her and Martha’s brother. “The last time he had to walk more than 10 feet, he nearly broke the kitchen tile.” They looked behind them, where one of the couches was being flattened by a sobbing Pedro. He was said to have met a woman who stole from his soul and left with it, so he ate to fill the void within.

“Ay, Nati.” Cecile’s mother rolled her eyes. “Of course he did. Es el único hijo, el probrecito Pedrito.” She pressed prayer hands to her chest, looking up to the ceiling. She mimicked their own mother who argued Pedro was a good son and needed to live under her care. He claimed to be a vital witness for a court hearing involving an MS-13 member and would be killed on the spot if he stepped out of the house without Mexico’s coveted protection of viejitos and viejitas, a rule that even the cartel abided by. His family had yet to find out the court date.

Cecile fidgeted by her mother’s hip. She waited for her cousins to shuffle in, watching the door. Her father was leaning against its frame. Weeks before, as Cecile’s mother sat her down in the kitchen and told her her only living grandfather was no longer alive, her father had stood the same way, a sculptor’s combination of man and wood that stared into a room longing to feel alive. Martha explained to her Rufino was sometimes good, sometimes not, and Cecile went to her own father, reaching up for him to carry her. “You know,” he said, “ it happens, stuff like this, parents having to go. It’s, uh, just what happens.” He groaned while picking her up, and she thought he only joked when he said he was getting too old to carry her, but maybe he wasn’t and she worried.

Her mother and aunt continued assembling the food when Cecile chimed, “Ma, do you have medicine?”

“Mi linda.” Her mother ran her hair through one of her black pigtails. “What do you need medicine for?”

“Well, when I talked to dad—”

“Ay, he’s fine,” her mother said. “Now help me put these on the tables.” 

“But dad—”

“Don’t listen to his mentiras, not today, okay?” A couple more people came in, and she smiled at them, thanking them for coming, before looking back at Cecile. Her daughter cared too much about the wrong things. She sighed.

“Okay, help me first and I’ll find something for him, okay?”

Cecile smiled and took the stack from her mother’s hands. They were little envelopes filled with a picture of Rufino, a small Spanish prayer in cursive, and a map of the cemetery for the burial the next day. She flipped it over, hoping for the English version, but there was none and she suddenly wished she could hear Spanish from a page, too.

As she set down the envelopes on all the small tables she could find, the room slowly filled with people Cecile had never seen before. They were an assembly line, greeting her family first, then peeking into Rufino’s casket, followed by grabbing a plate of food, then finally finding a place to sit and pick up where old memories ended. Other than her and her siblings, Cecile’s mother’s relatives were not close. They were distanced by where they could afford to live in southern California and who had the best luck in becoming naturalized before circumstances sent them back to Juarez. They told Cecile they were sorry, and she replied with it’s okay, and when they told her it was okay to be sad, she told them she really wasn’t sad, and that made them cry even more. The parlor seats were set up like a theater, Rufino’s viewing as the opening night, and Cecile finally spotted a few of her cousins on the couches and floor, squirming and failing at whispering that they were bored and wanted to go outside. Her favorite cousin, Noah, was riling up the group of children even more.

“It’s going to last for TEN hours,” he said with both hands held up and fingers spread wide. “And then, it’ll take ANOTHER ten hours for them to put Grandpa in the ground where he’ll stay FOREVER.”

“Noah!” Cecile’s grandma was not surprised to hear him. She stared into her own eyes, wondering who explained to him how the funeral would work.

“¿Por qué dices esas cosas? Ya, quítate y vete afuera con los chiquitos.” 

“I can go with him too,” Cecile said. “I’ll help watch them.”

“Ay, si, mi amorcito,” her grandma said. She looked at Cecile, her first granddaughter, and hoped she would never be where she was now. No one believed her when she said Rufino stole her from the convent in her hometown, León, only to stone-skip from Juarez to East L.A. to Pico Rivera with a man who never learned to read, let alone love. When she was 15, he rode into town on a black caballo, she would say, and its saddle was engraved with the names of men Rufino killed, their blood still fresh in the slits. But today she was without him, and she watched the eight- and ten-year-old take the little ones by the hands and speed-walk toward the door.

Cecile passed her father who was sitting next to another man. In muted voices, they were betting on who would be the next to go and how much more money they would have to “donate” to their services.

“Pa, I’m going outside with Noah, okay?” Cecile stopped in front of him. The little boy’s hand she was holding was pulling her toward the door, a restless puppy ready to play in the grass. Her father looked at her mid-sentence with a wave and went back to his conversation. He predicted Pedro would be next.

Cecile and Noah reached the back of the funeral parlor, passing by and being shushed out by adults who were offering consoling tears and laughs in between bites of conchitas. After a half hour of Noah leading his legion of luchadores to a few rounds of victory, the duo took a break from regulating the toddlers’ game of wrestling and found a pillar to rest against.

“His face was pretty wrinkly,” Noah said. “And his eyes could see you, but they couldn't see you.”

Cecile nodded. Noah lived with Rufino since he was born, the only son of the only son of Rufino, and he missed him. But not too much because that would make him a maricón, and that was something he was made quite clear he was not. He hadn’t seen, and maybe didn’t want to see, his grandfather there, lying in the casket lined with white satin and under a Virgen de Guadalupe patch that was duct taped by Pedro. Noah slumped on the floor before laying on his side, an imaginary blanket tucked up to his chin while he narrated the final days of his grandfather. His skin was not only wrinkly, but it changed colors, and as the months veered closer to his death, Rufino could no longer yell at Noah to stop kicking the soccer balls at the windows.

Cecile’s suspicions were confirmed. Her father was not only sick or old. He was dying. She imagined him lying in his Lazy Boy chair in front of the living room TV, unbothered by the movements of the house while another movie full of burly men and blaring weapons played before him, day after day, week after week. He was also wrinkly, lines shooting from the sides of his eyes and mouth before converging with those on his cheeks and neck.

“When my dad tried talking to him,” Noah said, “he wouldn’t really talk much. He’d just kind of shake his chin. Sometimes, he’d start crying. Sometimes. Other times, he’d close his eyes. Maybe my dad was being too loud.

“But when I went to see him,” Noah said, smiling, “I made sure to whisper every time and ask if he wanted another cobija. He seemed to like that.”

Cecile watched as Noah gripped the memory blanket in his hands before he jumped to the rescue of a tiny cousin who was being swallowed under a mound of more small limbs and faces. She laughed when Noah scolded the toddler on how to properly achieve a chokehold. The city’s light pollution allowed the day to stay long, and their bodies slowly became silhouettes succumbing to the limits of their energies. Her craving for ice cream kicked in, a small sacrifice to make for the expunction of a historical sin and, as she imagined the taste of pistachio between her lips, she remembered the medicine her father needed. Would it even make a difference, she wondered? Worse, Cecile remembered the medicine her grandfather needed, the wheat weevil bugs that failed at eating his cancer. The first time she saw them, no one told her what they lived for, but she knew where they came from and dreamt of their travels from TJ in the cramped tupperware filled with sand. Maybe they were hidden underneath the seat. Their nictitating eyes would adjust to the darkness before someone decided it was safe, and they could be seen again.

They lived on the cramped kitchen table, stretching their heliotropic bodies toward the sun while crawling next to the ripe bananas and half-eaten cuernos. She felt only a little sad when she found out her grandfather had to eat them alive because that was how they would save him, but she had an aversion for bugs that crawled, so she was okay with it in the end.

“Noah,” Cecile said, “I think my dad is dying.” 

“Really? Why?”

“He doesn’t talk a lot, too, and he doesn’t yell at me anymore when I make a mess on his chair. You know, the big one in the living room.”

“Hm. That could be it. Do you wanna give him the medicine grandpa was taking? My dad says Tía Nati was gonna take some for her headaches but then he wanted to keep some for his blood to stay in his arms. Did you know that your blood can get harder and harder and cause your heart to explode? I didn’t know that, but then my dad said—”

“I need to find my mom.” A small panic rose in Cecile and she left Noah, the tiny bodies, the wheat weevils, to pick through her mother’s bag. Noah shrugged and went back to the mini luchadores.

Cecile ran inside the parlor. The small room was packed.n the hallway, there were people fanning themselves in front of an air conditioning box. Its ribbons glimmered and crackled between the conversations. She wandered among the blend of wrinkled black suits, faded baggy jeans, dark dresses, and sports jerseys. Rufino was an avid sports enthusiast, and Nati had the idea to encourage her family to wear their favorite teams’ jerseys to celebrate Rufino’s interests. Not everyone was in agreement, especially his remaining siblings and first cousins, so there was the uncomfortable greeting between the old and the new, the traditional and the nonconforming. There weren’t enough seats, so side tables and low cabinets became benches to rest on. The family spoke loudly to each other, their voices a conduction for more stories — more often than not without mention of Rufino, but instead of themselves and each other.

Their voices amalgamated with the chatter of the room. Cecile’s dread grew. She was certain, at any moment, her father would collapse. She thought of his recliner and its brown suede stained with glitter glue, beer, pizza sauce, none of which could be cleaned out anymore but had no chance of being concealed. Her heart raced. As she failed to unclip one of her overall straps, she worried she would need to ask her Tío Pedro for Rufino’s unused medicine. The room suddenly became loud. It was full of dual-sided tongues lolling in the lingual contest of who could understand who less. Laughter came from a corner, and she heard a high-pitched snort from Nati. Cecile’s grandmother forced a string of sobs for her in-laws, and the room quieted for a moment, but a giggle broke out mid-story, uncaught, and the room went back to its cacophony.

“Ma!” Cecile found her and her father. They were behind the last row of parlor seats.

Cecile looked for the bag, but it was hidden underneath the table of pan dulce and café. Her mother overheard her husband’s response to a woman who had lost her own purse (“Did you check over there?” he replied as he pointed to Rufino’s coffin), and her whispers bit into the air.

“¿Por qué dices cosas como esas, Arturo? Don’t you know how to behave?”

“No mames, Alicia,” he said. He left his jacket on, despite the warmth, but he grit his teeth. “You hadn’t gone to visit Rufino in months. You’re happy. Everyone’s happy.” He gestured to the guests behind him, only a few still exaggerating their crying to show how much Rufino meant to them. “What difference does it make if I say un chiste? It’s funny.”

“Vas a ver,” Alicia said. This was the first time her own eyes welled. “He wasn’t your father. You don’t know when to stop. If you’re not being rude, you’re drinking, if you’re not drinking, you’re being rude. ¿Cómo vives sin vergüenza?”

“Otra vez con eso—” 

“Pa?”

They both looked down at Cecile. Her tears hung on her lashes. All she needed was the medicine to make him, to make them,better, but it was too late.

Arturo sighed.

“¿Si, chiquita? ¿Qué pasa?”

Cecile squeezed her eyelids tighter.

“She thought you were sick, so she’s trying to give you medicine to feel better,” Alicia said. “Right, mi cielo?”

They both looked at her and she couldn’t stop crying as she tried to explain what Noah told her, and her mother’s medicine probably wouldn’t work because the bugs didn’t, and now her father was dying.

“Dying? Who said your father was dying? He’s not dying.” Alicia turned to her husband. “Did you tell her you were dying?” Alicia asked, almost yelling.

“Who’s dying?” someone asked from the row in front of them.

 “No, no one’s dying,” Alicia said. “Cecile just said she thought Arturo is going to die—”

“¿Arturo se va a morir?” someone yelled. It was the man who waged with Arturo earlier about the next death, and he felt fooled that he had known the whole time.

Conversations slowed as everyone tried to figure out what was said or who Arturo even was. Alicia shook her head as she swallowed any sobs she was about to shed for her father. She called over Nati and explained what happened. Her sister moved around the room like a dancer, stepping from one group to another, either consoling the weepy (“Perdon, señores, mil disculpas”) or joining the judgemental on an outburst about death at a memorial (“Estos niños no saben como portarse bien, sí, yo sé”). Once Nati made it to her mother, she rushed to the front of the parlor where her former husband’s casket was. She began a small speech to thank everyone for joining her and her children. Pedro rushed outside to bring in the “noisy chamacos” who were screaming again about who the true winners were.

In the language of her home, Cecile’s grandmother strung together light stories about Rufino with pain in her heart––out of nostalgia or resentment, she couldn’t tell. Her hand gripped Pedro’s’ when he returned. She was the only one to care for him now, and he felt it deeply in that moment, his mother by his side while his father lay alone under La Virgen. Nati and Alicia translated and entangled one another in her banter, which closed Rufino’s family’s speech and allowed for others to speak their own versions of the deceased.

Watching her grandma, mother, aunt, and uncle, Cecile felt ashamed and shoved her hands in her pockets. She walked alongside the main parlor seats, away from the viewing.

“Cecile!” Noah’s attempt at whispering was futile, and adults hushed him and Cecile to the back of the room. “Did you get the medicine to your dad? He’s not dead yet, right?” Noah looked over her shoulder, preparing himself for another man who would need a blanket.

“No,” Cecile said, “he’s not dead. But I’m not really sure he’s okay.”

“I’ll sneak some of grandpa’s medicine from the house the next time we visit, okay? He’ll be okay. Maybe when the wake is over—”

That word again. “This is ‘awake’? Why is it called ‘awake’?” Cecile asked.

“I dunno, something about seeing him look ‘awake’ one more time. My dad said grandpa would still be with us, so maybe like an angel?”

It still didn’t make any sense to her. She didn’t want Noah to see her cry, so Cecile muttered she needed to use the bathroom and walked past him. No one stopped her as she made her way to the outside of the parlor, and she sat next to the fountain. Someone had turned it on, and she was suddenly thirsty. She ignored the tears that touched her lips.

After a few minutes, she stood up. She looked back at the parlor and realized she never saw her grandpa awake. She realized it must’ve been a lie, all of it. An illness so serious or a pain so great could not be cured by insects or medicine. No one was coming back to life. She could not save her father, her mother, anyone, and she connected the memories that proved to her this was the truth she should’ve known the whole time.