Prologue
335 Words
Mom tells me about the year Uncle Tomás became a man. It was 1967, she says, when her brother confronted three interlocutors and a being without definition. The first was their father, who whipped Tomás with his son’s own leather belt in the musty kitchen of their Spanish Harlem apartment. The second was an older boy, who lodged a pickax in his chest for thirty-two cents of pocket change. The third was Veronica, the woman next door, who invited him in and displayed her parts. The last was Santiago, the insecure demon with a cosmic grudge, who pulled him through a door of no dimension.
“That was a bad year for Tomás,” Mom tells me. “I think it’s how he got so messed up. You should ask him about it. I don’t know about the Devil though. Tomás says things.”
When I ask my uncle, he grins and adjusts the pack of Marlboro Reds always tucked in his breast pocket. His eyebrows leap toward his prickly mat of gray hair.
“Oh, f**k! I remember that. Your mother is nuts, boy. Of course I met the Devil. I met him a bunch of times. You know I met the son of a bitch.” He raises his fist in my face. “See this, boy? This is dy-na-mite. I f****d him up real good.”
“But not the guy with the pickax?” I ask. We’re in our kitchen eating Mom’s sancocho. He’s been complaining she makes too much soup, although he admits it’s as good as their mother’s.
“Hey boy, I’m here, right?” He gives me the finger and points below his cigarettes toward his heart. He leans forward, smelling of chicken, yucca, and ash. “Right there. I took it like a man. I’ll tell you … I’ll tell you how it went down with all of them! How it really happened. You know something, boy?”
“I know.” I roll my eyes.
“That’s right. God loves me! I’m gonna f*****g live forever. I ain’t going nowhere. I wasn’t back then, and I’m not going nowhere now.”
Mom steps from the kitchen, ladle in hand.
“Tomás, man, you’re old. You can’t do those things anymore.”
He turns to her and slurps his soup.
“s**t, Dolores.” He waves a hand. “I’m gonna f*****g live forever!”
- Writer
