Back in the room, after the phone call. The room dark. Our new room. The room downstairs on the first floor with the unbroken screen.
"They killed my sister," I said. It was hard to say. Those words, the sounds of those words getting stuck in all the places in my throat and mouth that words can get stuck in. All the places words catch on and cling to because they don't want to come out. They don't want to come out because once they are out then they are real and true and mean something hard and solid and unchangeable. Before the words come out, they could be anything at all. They could be 'There goes a butterfly' or 'I think I'll have red beans and rice with my fish tacos.' or 'I heard it's going to be sunny again tomorrow.' Before they come out of your mouth, those words could be just something you thought about in passing, like when you were a kid imagining what it would be like if your dog died. When I was a kid I would get myself all worked up imagining the dog died and how sad that would be and how I'd feel, and I'd almost cry and then I'd remember that the dog wasn't dead and I would feel really great and happy that the dog wasn't dead and grateful to have a dog. I could think things like that when I was a kid and even when I was older but I never had to say it out loud because it was never true.
But when words like that are true, then they are hard dry scratchy things with thorns on them like dried up rose stems. Words made out of splintery old wood and busted glass and rusty nails. Words that rip up everything they pass on the way from your diaphragm past your heart and lungs through your throat the back of your mouth your tongue, bloody teeth gums lips stabbing up into your eyes on the way out. Those words in me came out like they were taking a raw bloody chunk of my insides out with them and when they finally got all the way out they put a red haze in the air. All around me.
"Oh no, bunny," Darlene said, "I'm sorry." I'm sure she said something like that, but I wasn't really listening. I was putting my arms around her and holding on. Holding on, body shaking and mouth open and sounds coming out. Sounds that have no words for them but are like breathing made solid. Like breathing thick chunks of stuff out, solid chunks of air that make sound. Sound like pain and sound like coming. Sound that means more than words can say. I put my face down and stopped my mouth with Darlene's soft shoulder. The sounds were quieter then, but I couldn't put them away. There was nothing going on in my head. Just the big hollow sound of empty.
When I stopped crying, I was tired. I wanted to sit on the bed. Held on to Dar and started to sit down and she sat down with me. I had to touch her. Had to hold on to her.
"Now," Darlene said. "Who did this?"
"They don't know," I said, "I guess the police are investigating."
My voice was not coming out right. All those ripped up raw places inside, my voice came out sounding like someone else's to me.
"The service is on Sunday." I said. Somewhere I had heard this. My father must have told me. It was Friday evening. Friday evening when I got the phone call.
"You have to go back." Darlene said.
"I don't know," I said. How could I go back? How would I get to the airport. How would I get a ticket? I was all the way in Mexico.
"What do you mean, you don't know," Darlene said, "How can you not go back?"
"Come with me," I said. Darlene would know how to get back there. I couldn't do it on my own.
"I can't go with you," Darlene said, "That wouldn't be good, your sister dead and here's this woman they've never met before. I can't go, but you should."
"I have to think about it." I said.
"You have to think...?" Darlene said. Her voice was hurting me. My ears were raw and bleeding from the words that she pushed through them, and each word she said now hit my ears like a hammer wrapped in foam rubber, my left eye went out of focus and that side of my head was hanging down.
* * *
Once I saw a fight on TV. A boxing match. I was young. Don't remember if it was a real match or a movie or what. It was in black and white. The two fighters looked about the same size and weight, when they started, two guys in shiny shorts, one pair shiny black and one pair shiny white doing the fighter dances around each other. Each holding one glove up over his nose, head down, looking over the top of that glove while the other glove stayed out in front, waving around, looking for openings. They swung at each other, both connecting, but the one with the black shorts was better than the one in white shorts, and got more hits in. Every round the one with black shorts would get more hits in. The one in white shorts started spending more and more time backing up, and didn't bounce around as much on his toes after a while. The one in white shorts got a cut over his eyes. Then in the next round the same guy got his lip split open. The one in black shorts moved in and threw a bunch of punches, real fast, to the other guy's stomach and arms and chest and head, but then the bell rang and they both had to go sit down. The next round the one in black shorts was just hammering on the white shorts guy, punching him twenty, maybe thirty times, but the white shorts guy wouldn't fall down. He stayed on his feet. The black shorts guy backed him into the ropes and started punching away, and I thought the referee might stop it, might break it up, but he didn't. Finally the one in black shorts backed off a little, gloves still up, still dancing on his toes, still making little air jabs in the direction of the white shorts guy. The white shorts guy, he had his gloves up over most of his face and he was hunched over, left side of his head down. His face was all red from the blood and sweat and you could see his eyes were swollen almost shut and his knees were turned in and just about touching. His arms kept falling a little, like it was hard to hold them up, but he kept flinching, like his muscles would flick and his whole body tense up every time the black shorts guy moved a glove or a foot. When the ref came close, the white shorts guy flinched, too, and when his handlers came up and tried to take him back to his corner, he kept throwing those gloves up in front of his face, body jerking away. His body was telling him this; everyone is an enemy, everything wants to hurt you. Signals going in the eyes and ears and bypassing the brain and going directly to the muscles, action and reaction, no processing in between.
Darlene's words were hurting me like that.
* * *
"I need to lie down," I said. "I need to sleep. Can you stay with me?"
"Sure, bunny," Darlene said, "You just lie down."
Darlene got up off the bed.
"Where are you going?" I said.
"To the bathroom," Darlene said. "I'll be right back. Go to sleep."
I put my head down on the pillow. My arms felt wrong, they didn't know where to go. Darlene came back and stretched out on the bed next to me. I moved up close to her. She put her arm out and my face found that soft spot where the shoulder connects to the arm, just above her breast. I put my face in that soft spot and put my arm across her belly and she put her hand that was attached to the arm under my cheek on my side and her other hand over my hand on her belly. My face hurt, all the muscles, from the inside. My stomach hurt, all the muscles. I fell asleep.
* * *
"I think I should come back." I said into the phone. Don't think I sounded like I really thought I should go back. I looked past the white plastic tables out to the dirt street. Omar was sitting at a table near the street, talking with a beach bum looking guy.
"Oh, don't come back," my Mom said, Her voice sounded far away on the phone. "There's nothing you can do. The memorial service is tomorrow..."
"I can't get there before tomorrow," I said. My stomach was hurting again. Darlene was looking at the home bottled liquor on the plywood bar. Roberto wanted her to try some.
"I know, honey," my Mom said, "By the time you get here, it'll be all over, it's better if you stay there. The service is at two. You should remember her somehow, then."
"That's eleven o'clock, here." I said. The sun was shining. People in Bermuda shorts and straw hats went by on the street. They looked at Omar and the hotel like it was some attraction at DisneyWorld.
"I'll do something.” I said, “Flowers in the ocean."
"That'll be nice," my Mom said, "I have to go now, sweetheart, I'll talk to you later. Love you."
"I love you, Mom." I said. I hung up the phone, but I held on to the handset. There was a war going on inside me. I wanted to go and I wanted to stay. If I go it means packing up and getting a taxi back to the airport and trying to get a different flight from there back to La Guardia or Kennedy and then getting a taxi out to Joyce's and getting there at like three in the morning. If I go it means leaving Darlene and Mexico and this magic place and this woman I wanted to be with and maybe never getting back to either.
If I stay it means I would not be there. Not be home for my sister's funeral. Not be with my family, with what was left of my family. How could I live with that? If I stay it means I could be with this woman I wanted to be with so bad I'd miss my sister's funeral for her. It means I'd be spending the rest of the week in this sunny place with the water and the surf and the sand and the shops and the food and the Spanish speaking and the getting sunburned and the lazy days and I could pretend that I'd never got that goddamned phone call. I could deal with it when I got back. Except of course it would all be over when I got back. There's that pain again, like indigestion or something and my head, and things are not looking very clear, everything, the bar the tables the umbrellas Darlene Omar the street are all looking out of focus. How could I not go back? How could I not stay?
"Bunny," Darlene said. Said it kind of sharp.
I jumped. Not really jumped, just all my muscles spasmed. I was standing there with my hand on the phone just standing there looking at the wall and the sunshine the pattern the sunshine made on the wall the corner of the roof making a darker blue vee in the light blue paint of the wall and How could I stay here when my sister is dead and there's going to be a funeral tomorrow? How could I go when I wouldn't get there in time and if it was the other way around, if it was me dead and her in Mexico, she wouldn't go back. She wouldn't have gone back, she would have stayed, I know she would have stayed there in Mexico and had her own private service for me. We were never very close, anyway. I mean there was always a kind of tension between us, not like me and Joyce. Joyce and me, we were really close. Not Betty Jeanne. Betty Jeanne and me, we weren't that close but fuck, how could I just not go back, what would people think about me. Stayed in Mexico, his sister murdered and he stays in Mexico with his new girlfriend. What a jerk. I had to go back, but I couldn't pick up the phone. There was my hand, resting right on the phone there, I could have picked it up and called for a taxi. But what if there isn't a flight out until way later? Like the next morning? It's a small airport and they might not have flights out all the time.
"Bunny!" Darlene said. "What's wrong, you're like, frozen."
"I'm not going back." I said. Hand on the phone.
"How can you not go back?" Darlene said.
"It's okay," I said. "I'm just not."
"Well," Darlene said, "If you're sure. Its your family."
"I'm sure," I said, "I need a drink."
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