People loitered at the double doors.
They had buried Braulio through this place. And Grandpa Antonio. They had a relationship with it—it was their tradition. They felt oddly at home here and chipper in some inexplicable way. Regular attendees knew where the coffee urns were, and the cardboard cups and whitening powders. It was like their own Disneyland of death.
Outside, on the main drag, a half block from the driveway, a watcher lurked. The legendary Yndio. Alone, dressed all in white. His arms were muscular, and he had a tribal tattoo of hummingbirds and vines on his left biceps. Aladdin Sane on the other. A line of Bowie lyric down that arm: THROW ME TOMORROW. Across his left collarbone, above his heart, a name he had never explained and had no intention of explaining: SWEET MELISSA. That was the problem with these people, Yndio thought. They didn’t ever let anybody have a secret, but they were hiding things from one another every day of their lives. Little Angel had given him that Bowie record a hundred years ago. From his choker, a single black enameled feather dangled. He slouched in a white Audi A6 with a pearl paint finish. The car’s interior was all ebony. His shiny black hair spilled over his shoulders and down his chest. And he crept along the block with Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” on the deck, watching them through twelve-hundred-dollar sunglasses.
He hadn’t seen many of these people in years. Not since Braulio’s funeral. Well, he’d seen his mother. Moms and Minnie. Somebody had to make sure their hair was presentable. He had a good facial man who kept them fresh. Waxed away those sideburns Moms had started growing. It was their secret.
It irritated him that the family kept acting like Braulio had been some teenager when he died. Fucker had already served in the army, for God’s sake. He’d been thirty-five! They diminished the boys even in death. He blamed them all for being so stupid.
Damn—there went Tío César, the middle uncle. Dude was tall—he hadn’t remembered how tall César was. And his notorious wife—as tall as he was. They seemed like giants among Hobbits. She was some Mexico City chilanga. He’d never really talked to her, so he didn’t care who liked her and who didn’t. He knew they didn’t like her; Minnie had told him. They didn’t like outsiders anyway. The family suspected everybody of being an invader. He didn’t like most of the family, to be honest. He didn’t see either one of the Angels.
“Cabrones,” he said aloud.
He revved the engine. It snarled like some jungle cat. Just the way he liked it. He wasn’t about to join them. He ripped into a U-turn and vanished north.
* * *
1:20 p.m.
The big Crown Victoria slouched at the back of the parking lot. The funeral home had a fake Germanic facade and stood across the street from a taco shop, a gas station, and a Starbucks. The street smelled of carne asada. The stained-glass windows were plastic. Pigeons flocked all about the alpine roofline, moving neurotically from palm trees to mortuary to taquería and back again, frantic that one of them might have found an onion ring that had been overlooked by the others. Little Angel got out of the car and walked into the building.
Inside, the family was arranging flower wreaths, some of which looked like displays for championship high school marching-band competitions. Banners with glitter spelling out condolences. Pictures of Mamá América in better years stood on easels around the central altar. “What a babe,” one of the grandsons said. They all smiled. The girls had hot-glued white Styrofoam-and-feather doves to the frames of the pictures. It was quite lovely, everyone thought. Little Angel sipped his skinny caramel latte and tried to look comfortable in his sports jacket and black tie. Women he didn’t remember hugged him and left smudges of makeup on his lapels.
Love and sorrow wafted across the chapel like perfume.
So did the perfume.
He didn’t see Minnie. He watched for La Gloriosa. No sign of his big brother either, whom he was scared to see.
The funeral director hid in his back office, watching golf on his phone. He paused it and stirred himself and came out and plugged in a laptop that started playing a slide show of Mamá’s life to a soundtrack of her favorite singer, Pedro Infante. The pictures began to cycle through: Big Angel as a boy, some weird little black dogs, babies, old houses with flower vines on the walls, a desert, Big Angel and MaryLú and César as jug-eared kids with thick eyebrows and skinny bellies, more kids in black-and-white photos taken with a Brownie camera. A motorcycle. A filthy fishing boat. A stack of clam and oyster shells taller than the children. No pictures of Don Antonio.
Mourners started to file in, stunned by the extravagance of the funeral the family had arranged and looking around for Big Angel. Forty-five minutes of embraces and ostentatious arrivals and all the siblings arranging themselves in the front row and the rings of descendants, like shock waves of a meteor strike, radiating back through the room. Paz, the controversial chilanga sister-in-law, cast angelic glares of disdain at everybody she felt was not dressed properly. She watched them as she spread gold lamé sheets over the altar. César’s third trophy wife. Dressed in leopard spots, and her hair in a fancy spiky bob with purple tips. Little Angel stepped up to him and they embraced.
“My sexiest brother,” César said and reached back to grab Little Angel’s ass.
Little Angel looked around to make sure nobody saw that. This seemed inappropriate on so many levels.
Paz sneered.
“Happy to see you too, Carnal,” Little Angel said.
Paz stared at him. He had aged, but not enough. He thought he was so special. Living with hippie gringos far away. No troubles at all. Why would he age? Though he had some gray showing at his temples, she was happy to see. And César, squeezing his brother’s ass. He’d hit on a hole in the ground if he thought there was a gopher in it.
“Let go of my butt.”
César’s sad face crinkled into its first smile in seven days. “Did you miss me?” he said.
“Always.”
César watched Little Angel as his eyes roamed the crowd. He looked at every face as if he didn’t know any of them. He was exactly like Big Angel, César thought: always watching.
Grandchildren were holding obstreperous great-grandchildren on their hips. Americanized teen chicks lurked around the far edges, looking at their cell phones. Everybody had dressed up as best they could, except one old knucklehead in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.
Big Sister MaryLú came into the room, somber and elegant in her black dress. Little Angel loved her smell—she was all Chanel No. 5. Hugs, air kisses.
“Baby Brother,” she said.
Everybody speaking English.
“Is everybody coming?” he asked.
“Pos, chure.”
“Even El Yndio?”
They looked at the door as if he’d appear.
“It’s complicated,” she said.
The awkward pause felt long enough for a dandelion to germinate.
Finally, Little Angel said, “Where’s the patriarch?”
She looked at her tiny rectangular watch with utter ferocity. “They must be making him late.” There seemed to be a sadistic satisfaction in her smirk, like the face of a teacher who had just caught a kid cheating on his pop quiz.
She took Little Angel’s hand and led him to the pew. They formed a little line there, brother-sister-brother. And Paz—who was MaryLú’s greatest enemy on Earth. Each of the women elaborately ignored the other. César nobly constructed a border between them with his body.
MaryLú opened her pocketbook and produced clear mint Life Savers. Little Angel accepted one and a folded Kleenex just in case. He took a small notebook out of his pocket and clicked his pen.
“You’re going to write?” she said. “Now?”
“No.” He leaned into her and showed her the pages. “I’m taking notes. I don’t know who anybody is. It’s my cheat sheet.”
“Paz,” it said, surrounded by black circles. A squiggly line extended to César. On the facing page, César’s exes were in their own circles, with o
utriders radiating—various kids. A grandkid or two. These were fractal pages.
MaryLú made the family’s I-know-what-you-mean face. “Mm-hm,” she intoned. “Tell me about it.” She tapped the offspring page. “You missed Marco.”
“Who’s Marco?”
“Satan.”
César leaned around his sister and held his fingers straight up from the top of his head. “Hair,” he said. “Es mi hijo!”
Little Angel added Marco to the pattern, with erect hair atop the little circle.
Meanwhile, the priest, in full regalia, skulked behind the curtain at the front of the room, like Liberace. He checked his watch. He didn’t care if Big Angel was there or not. He burst forth exactly on time, raising his arms and cracking a toothsome grimace. He seemed to lack a theme song. He began shouting straightaway, as though demons were being blown out the back windows. He pointed above the heads of the mourners toward the distant and blessed greeny shires of heaven. He ignored the siblings and their children, firing his evangelical rockets over them. People were shaking their heads and wondering, Is he yelling at me?
They had seen this before. Lately, it seemed Mexican funerals were being reimagined as last-ditch chances to terrorize the survivors into converting. It had happened at Don Antonio’s service and had disrupted Braulio’s funeral as well.
“We mourn Doña América!” he said. “We miss Mamá América! You all claim to love her? Then why have more of your family not come to her service? Nearly a hundred years old, and the rest of you are what? Watching television?”
The general thought, among the mourners, was a version of Oh shit.
The priest was revved up like some kind of Elysian dragster, about to pull religion wheelies all the way down the track. They were in for it now with no way to get out.
“She gave you nearly one hundred years of motherly sacrifice! Good mother, good grandmother, good Catholic, good neighbor! The lines of mourners should be out the door! Shame. Shame. Shame.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
* * *
Big Angel’s minivan was just pulling up outside.
“Ahora, sí,” he said. He rubbed his hands.
Lately, his anger often manifested itself in a wicked good mood. The shorter his time on Earth, the more convinced he was that he was invincible. If only everything would comply with his plans. What was it Little Angel had said when he was in college, reading all those European books? “Hell is other people.” Meds worked all right, but his own ability to outsmart and outmaneuver everyone and everything—even death—was his secret superpower. Screw death.
Dying was for worms and chickens, not angels.
Bone cancer? He had found herbs and minerals that would make bones rebuild like coral reefs! Vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin A. Chaga tea. Tumors in his organs? Turmeric! Selenium, by golly.
I am invincible, he told himself. I am not invisible.
Even in his wheelchair, Big Angel believed he could kick the ass of anything that came at him, and everybody else believed it too. They needed it to be true. Even when the kids thought they were fooling him by lying about some ghastly eruption of malfeasance and moral rot, they secretly relied on his infallibility. Big Angel would always catch them, but he would forgive.
I am the patriarch, he told himself for the thousandth time as they wrestled him out of the minivan and got him folded into his chrome chariot. That made him so mad he smiled at his wife and son and daughter. It scared them all.
He heard the wails coming through the door in florid Spanish: “Mother América wanted nothing more than to keep you out of hell! You generation of vipers!”
What kind of squawking was this?
“Yeesus krites.” Big Angel pointed at the double doors of the chapel as if leading a cavalry charge.
He sure as hell had them bang open the doors as loudly as possible. He directed them to roll him down the aisle, front and center. He was taking over. After all, he was named Miguel Angel. Who else in the family was named after the archangel Michael? He wished he had a flaming sword.
Goddamn it. Sorry, God.
His smile grew wider. He was pretty well persuaded that he could outsmart God too.
Perla leaned into the chair and kept him moving. Hungry Man marched behind, bearing the walker. Big Angel made plenty of noise. He coughed. He kicked his footrests a couple of times so they clattered, adding to the percussive cadence.
Poor Minnie stared at the floor and tried not to laugh. Oh no—there was Uncle Little Angel. No way. No way was she gonna look at him. She would pee herself laughing if he looked at her. Everybody was turning around. She avoided Little Angel’s eyes.
Big Angel let his left brow rise and gave them his most ironic glare, letting them know that the sheriff was back in town. The kids and grandkids called him Pops, and that magic word flowed down the gathered clan.
“Here comes Pops.”
“Pops in da house.”
“Check it. Pops is low-riding.”
The elder members of the family never failed to marvel at the attitude of the kids, how Big Angel was a rolling laugh riot to them, arbiter of bad jokes, spiritual insight, ice cream money, and shelter when they were bounced out of their houses or were let out of jail or rehab or needed to come in off the streets at midnight.
He nodded to them, making eye contact with every single one of them, and raised one finger at his favorites, which seemed to each person to be her- or himself.
“Go slow, Flaca,” he told his wife. “Roll me right down the middle. Go slow.”
“Ay, Flaco,” she said softly. “Don’t make a scene.”
“Just watch me, Perla.”
She shook her head and smiled at the gathered faces: I am married to a willful man, she was telling them all with her eyes.
He was as fierce as a falcon in his chair. He could smell the priest’s breath shooting up the aisle like a secret weapon. Big Angel, pointing at his thousand nephews and granddaughters and children. His brothers and sisters were the old generation now. Sitting in a grim line up front. All of them looking at Mamá’s urn and realizing the same thing at the same moment: We are now the oldest generation, and we are the next to die. They looked back and were shocked at Big Angel’s appearance, even though they saw him daily.
Big Angel craned around in his chair to nod at Perla’s sisters. There was steadfast Lupita with her American husband, Uncle Jimbo. In shorts! And there she was, La Gloriosa. As tragic and magnificent as he had ever seen her. He couldn’t remember her real name, just her nickname. He couldn’t remember if he had ever heard her real name. She had always been the Glorious One. Alone. Lost, as always, in the cool meadows of her own thoughts. Shiny black hair with a supernatural silver streak spilling down the left side of her face. Her shades were impenetrably black. He didn’t know if she was looking at him or not.
Her hands smelled like warm, sweet spices. He thought of the side of her neck. Orange peel, lemongrass, mint, cinnamon. She nodded slightly. He looked away.
Perla watched this. She had been noting their shenanigans for decades. She squinted at her sister. La Gloriosa made a Qué? face back at her.
Big Angel was excited to see his youngest brother sitting in the front row. The great lost soul. English teacher who had gone off to Seattle and lived in the rain. Big Angel felt like he had built his little brother from some kind of model kit. Little Angel. His namesake.
i broke my little brother’s nose and it felt good
* * *
Little Angel sat at the far end of the sibling row and grinned at his big brother.
Big Angel waved at Little Angel—he could raise his hand only a few inches off the armrest, but he held it up as if giving a benediction.
Little Angel whispered to his sister María Luisa, “Hey, Lu-Lu—Big Brother has become the pope of Tijuana.”
Everyone still called her MaryLú. It had been so kicky in 1967. When she wore go-go boots and pinned falls in her hairdo. She had never worn jeans or a T
-shirt. She used to have a bright pink rattail comb and a jar of some hairstyling phlegm called Dippity-do.
Even seated, brother César was taller than the rest. Everyone joked that Mother must have had a secret lover because nobody could explain his size. His Valkyrie wife sat on his far side, making sour faces. Poor César was utterly crushed by his mother’s death. He was sixty-seven, and his mother had still ironed his shirts for him. She had given him a chocolate orange every Christmas. Always had menudo for him and her old Spanish Reader’s Digests. Being without her made him feel like a child lost in a rainstorm. His hands shook. He could not even consider the details of his big brother’s illness. He reached out for Big Angel’s hand. Their fingers touched. Big Angel’s were as cold as the grave. César clenched his own hands and held them before his lips.
The priest, sensing his grip on the crowd slipping away, suddenly shouted: “Sinners buy ten million condoms for Mardi Gras every year!”
If Mamá América were alive, she would have slapped him for talking about condoms in front of her urn. The two Angels locked eyes and started to laugh. The wheelchair loomed in the aisle between the front pews, about a foot from the priest.
“Aquí estoy,” Big Angel announced, settling a little more comfortably in his chair.
The priest stopped and stared at him.
“Carry on,” Big Angel said. “I give you permission.” He opened and closed his skinny legs and held his hands in his lap. “Go on.”
The good father collected himself.
Big Angel smiled like Saint Francis. He gestured impatiently. Tapped his watch.
“You’re on Mexican time, Padre. We’re working people. Vámonos, pues.”
“I…gave up television,” the priest preached. “For forty days. Not because I had to. But because I wanted to offer it up as a sacrifice!” He was catching his stride again. “Protestants want to take away our saints! Our blessed statues! Our Virgin! And they want to have unmarried sex. Sodomy is the law of the land! And you, the cursed generation, turn from God and the values of your matriarch, who rests before you now! The least you could do is sacrifice! Sí, mi pueblo! Sacrifice TV!”