Sixteen Small Deaths (14 page)

I opened the door to her room and immediately felt a rush of awkwardness grip my body. A large silver cross hung just above the headboard of the bed, the lone decoration in the most bare of rooms in the house. The small window opposite from Judi’s bed was closed. Pieces of leaves were stuck to the glass, slowly falling down as the rain came down. Judi was sleeping.

Tiptoeing over to her against my better will, the wooden floor creaked with every step. To me, she already looked dead. What was left of her gray hair was pulled back, her face skeletal, cheekbones stretching her skin. My eyes were locked on the cross above her bed.

A few minutes passed, and I left the room. A dull moan echoed through my mind as the door shut behind me. It could have been the rain, or could have been Judi. I did not want to
know. When I was seven years old, Judi told my mother that I was not on the path to righteousness. She could see it in my eyes.

From that point on, I hated the fucking woman.

“Castor, how’s everything going at the newspaper?” Harold had his legs crossed, sitting at the kitchen table.

“Things are great. Our readership is up a little bit, and I think it has something to do with the type of stories we’re covering.”

“Good to hear.” He flipped his head down and took a sip of his coffee. He never looked old to me, but I could see the wear in his face. He was tired.

Gregory and J.C. were in the living room, watching an old episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’. Gregory would take deep breaths and run his left hand through the blonde locks on his head. He looked uncomfortable.

J.C. was nodding off. His eyes were halfway closed. A seventeen-year-old would probably have better things to do on a Friday night than sit in a stuffy house with relatives he doesn’t see often, waiting for a nun upstairs to die. I suppose I had better things to do, as well.

“Nancy, will dinner be ready soon?” Harold had finished his coffee and looked bored.

My mother didn’t answer him. Dinner was eventually served, but conversation was lacking. J.C. openly asked a question about Judi, but no one answered him. Talking about Judi previous to this week was often avoided. The convent had rushed her off to us. They had avoided questions about Judi as well. She was the gray sheep of the family: people either hated her or loved her. On many occasions, she would lambaste members of the family, judging them based on their willingness to be part of the Roman Catholic faith. If you were the niece or nephew that went to church once a year, she probably hated you. I was that great nephew to her. And I heard about her disappointment in me on too many instances.

It was too fitting that we were all congregated here for her
death. Her passing was imminent, and I can bet Harold and my mother felt guilty for thinking it was a type of waiting game. I had flown home for this. It wouldn’t be right to leave my mother all alone with her dying aunt. It was bad enough that the church wanted nothing do with Judi’s final days.

“Out of respect for her, we’re going to stick together this week. All we can do is pray for her,” my mother told me after dinner. “That church wanted her out of there as quickly as possible. It’s horrible that they would do something like that after all of those years Judi was involved with God’s work.”

I wasn’t sure of what exactly the doctors had told my mother, but Judi resembled a breathing corpse two floors above. Death was just around the corner, but not a single member of the family knew that it wouldn’t be Judi slipping away.

It would be them.

#

It was early enough in the morning where I considered it still to be part of the night. Darkness everywhere, birds chirping, and the clank of something falling in Judi’s room. My mother was the first to reach the room. Harold was tying up his bathrobe when I finally made it to the room. Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I could see that my mother was holding the silver cross in her hand. Her eyes were teary, but she made no noise. She placed the cross back up on the wall above the bed.

“She’s fine,” she whispered to the room. Staring straight ahead and clutching the cross in one hand, she pulled Judi’s blanket with the other, over the nun’s chest and touching her chin. Gregory and J.C. never came out of the guest room to see what was going on. I didn’t blame them.

It continued to rain the rest of the day, an ominous gray swooping over the house. I would learn eventually that we would never be free of its death grip. My mother was the only one who
actually woke up at a normal hour. She made breakfast in the kitchen, a bandanna keeping her platinum hair out of her face. I heard her knock at my uncle’s door. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Deep breath by deep breath, I studied the small water stains above me.

“Castor, breakfast is ready.”

The droplets hit harder outside. I pulled the shade down and went downstairs. Harold poured a glass of tap water and put a neon green straw inside. “I’ll take this upstairs to Judi.” My mother nodded and adjusted the tie on her bandanna. Harold sighed and took off. I poured a cup of apple juice and eased into a chair. I wasn’t hungry, in fact, I hadn’t been since coming back to this house.

“Look at that rain out there. It just makes everything worse, doesn’t it?”

I frowned in agreement and finished my juice.

“Well, I’m going to clean up here and run a few errands. The nurse should be coming by soon.” My mother didn’t seem enthused. “She might stick around for a bit, so make sure you offer her something to eat, Castor.”

I forced a smile. “Not a problem.”

About five minutes had passed and Harold returned to the kitchen. His face was more pale than previously, and his big brown eyes looked as if they wanted to jump out of the sockets and dance on the floor.

“Uncle Harold, everything okay?”

Silence.

“Is Judi alright?” The concern in my voice was surprisingly genuine.

Harold looked at me and for a moment I thought he might burst into tears. He didn’t, but soon turned away and clenched his teeth.

“Harold…what’s wrong? Are you sure Aunt Judi is fine?”

More silence. And then he walked away, into the living room.

“It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right,” he repeated, now sitting in the purple sofa near the living room window. Pacing back and forth, he was now crying, his tears flowing. They fell onto the carpeted floor, lost forever. Something was definitely not right. And now I was wondering if Judi was still alive.

“It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right.” Harold held onto the mantra. His bathrobe opened a little, exposing his pot belly and hairy chest. His pudgy hands gripped the sides of his head, tugging on the hair as he wept. “It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right.”

“Harold! What is it?!”

I ran up the stairs, passing the closed guest room doors and up to the second flight, gliding two stairs at a time. The door to Judi’s room was cracked open. The only light in the room was the gentle glow of spring’s showers outside. Judi was sleeping. Her chest barely moved up and down. Edging closer to her, I saw the glass of water on its side by the nightstand, the neon green straw still inside. It wasn’t broken, but there was a crack running through its side. I picked it up and leaned closer to Judi. There was nothing wrong with her.

Did she say something to Harold?

Back downstairs, I placed the glass on the kitchen counter, noticing the knife block next to the microwave was on its side. Peeking into the living room, Harold was no longer sitting on the sofa, but his bathrobe was on the floor, next to the ottoman. There were three rooms in the first floor of the house: the kitchen, the living room and small bathroom. Harold wasn’t in any of them. I could hear him muttering when I hit the fourth step of the staircase. When I reached the second floor, I noticed the bathroom door was closed.

“It’ll all come around again. We’ll be judged. It’ll all come around again,” Harold shouted from the bathroom, his voice
muffled only by the closed door.

“Harold! Open this door right now!” There were goosebumps on my arm.

“We’ll be judged. It’s coming.”

“May God have mercy on us all.” Harold was still crying.

“Harold, open the fucking door!” It was happening in slow motion. Every forceful jab of my arm seemed to take forever to follow through. Harold’s voice faded away, and now I heard the wind outside gushing in. A thud came next. The sound of the wind was now the only thing I heard. Standing still for a moment, I didn’t know whether to break down the door or run downstairs to call the police.

Gregory stood behind me. I don’t know how long he had been behind me. “Dad! Dad! Open the door!”

We could hear the shower curtains flapping against the porcelain bathtub.

“Dad!”

I pushed Gregory out of the way and barreled into the door, forcing it open. My uncle was on his back, naked. The knife was halfway through his neck. Whatever rain that had been blown in was starting to wash away the blood, dripping onto the blue tiled floor.

Gregory knelt to the ground. “Dad…dad…d-d-d-dad…” Harold’s teeth were still clenched, even in death.

It’ll all come around again.

#

J.C. gripped the collar of his ruffled white t-shirt and leaned against the doorway to the living room. Gregory was sitting at the kitchen table with my mother, who held his hand, patting it. The police had just left.

“My father killed himself.” J.C. was not the most emotional of any teenagers, but I knew that soon all he would want was to be
in his father’s arms. Losing a father is something you eventually get used to.

“He killed himself.”

“I know, J.C., I know, buddy.” I held onto his hand and he buried his face into my chest. “Castor, he fucking killed himself.”

When I was J.C.’s age, my uncle would playfully punch me in the arm and ask me how many chicks I had slept with. My mother would yell at him. My uncle was now wrapped in a thick black bag, on his way to the morgue. The mortician is probably going to shake his head, wondering why a man would take his own life. He most likely asks these questions everyday. My family does not have to ask these questions, but now we were. And upstairs, Judi was still dying.

#

My mother was sleeping. J.C. and Gregory were packing their things. Harold’s body was going to be flown back to Seattle for the wake and funeral. Gregory slipped his headphones out of his ears when I walked into the room. “Hey Castor,” he sniffled. “Make sure you hook me up with a few issues of your paper. I still haven’t read any of your columns.”

Gregory was still in college, studying journalism. I was glad to see someone was following in those barely noticeable footsteps of mine. “Sure thing. When are you guys flying back?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t think J.C. is ready to go back home. He’ll fly back tomorrow night. I have a flight in the morning.”

I nodded. “Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything.” Growing up without a father isn’t something you get used to.

J.C. came into the room. “I think I’m going upstairs to see the old woman. Maybe seeing how she is, you know, might make me feel better. Aren’t nuns supposed to have that effect?” He was a great kid, but no one ever said he was the smartest one in the
family.

“She might be sleeping. And I know she hasn’t said a word since coming here,” I said.

J.C. shook his head. “I know. But maybe I’ll just sit next to her and talk. I remember doing that when I was a kid. She was mostly mean to me, but she always listened.” He went up the stairs, and I went into my room. Gregory put his headphones back in and sat down on one of the guest-room beds.

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke to screaming. Nearly falling off my bed, I ran out of the room and into the hallway.

“It’s coming! It’s coming! It’s coming!” J.C. was screaming at the top of his lungs. His t-shirt was ripped in several places, barely hanging off of him.

“J.C.! What’s wrong?” Gregory was holding his brother, who jetted back and forth, trying to break free. “Tell me!”

“Greg! What the hell is going on?”

He was now holding J.C. from behind, trying to keep him down. “I…don’t know! He came down after seeing…Judi! Calm down, bro!” J.C. was lunging back and forth. “He came down like this, just started screaming.”

His eyes bulging and muscles pumping, J.C. was in hysterics. He broke free of his brother’s grasp and ran away, practically jumping down the entire set of stairs leading to the first floor.

“It’s coming! It’s coming! It’s coming!”

Gregory started down the stairs just before me. J.C. had already pushed the front door open. When I finally got to the bottom of the staircase, the door was flapping back and forth. The rain was relentless.

“J.C.!” Gregory was shouting, his entire body soaked.

The same feeling that crept through my body when Harold started acting crazy had now returned. I leaned against the doorway, the droplets pelting my face. Gregory was now on his knees in the driveway, screaming for his brother. He was
screaming for my cousin, the quiet seventeen-year-old that did not want to spend the weekend here. The same seventeen-year-old who was now in the middle of the main road a quarter of a mile from the house, frantically waving his fists in the air, repeating the same phrase: “It’s coming.”

The numbness left my body and soon I was running behind Gregory, who was only a few paces ahead of me. For a miserable day, there were plenty of cars on the road, all of them swerving out of the way of J.C. Each SUV, each jeep, each sedan narrowly missing him.

“It’s coming!”

“J.C.! Get out of the road! Now!” Gregory was crying. His voice cracked and sparkled in the wind.

For a second, J.C. stopped moving. He looked at his brother, then at me. J.C., the reserved teenager, his ragged shirt glued to his wet skin. With a sickening thud, a Cadillac connected with my cousin, his arms flailing forward, sending his torso and waist into a V-shape. The car skidded ahead, while J.C. toppled over and onto the side of the road. Gregory ran over to his brother. Knelt down beside him, he held his cold fingers with one hand and placed the other on his chest.