Atavus (19 page)

The door opened and Alfonzo walked in. He looked –drunk.

Maria stood at the sight of him. “You have made me wait while you got drunk, is this how you show respect to your mama?”

“Hola mama, hey babe,” he said with a slight lisp.

“Hi honey,” Selange greeted and then collected her book and went upstairs to leave the pair without an audience.

“Hola mi familia!” Alfonzo exclaimed and then sought to walk to the kitchen for coffee when his mother blocked his way by stepping directly in front of her son.

“Why did you miss the event for Domingo?” Maria asked.

“I forgot, I told you.” Alfonzo reached for his cell. “I’ll call Tia and apologize again if that’ll make you happy.”

“The truth will ease my conscience.”

“Mama, you look for truths in the air, maybe you should realize there is rain at times.”

Maria recoiled at the level of his intoxication. Alfonzo made little sense. “What is wrong with you, hijo?”

Alfonzo chuckled. His bloodshot eyes were the result of liquor tears. He couldn’t stand before his mother and confess a hateful act. He was Diablo’s offspring. That is what Domingo once said.

“Tranquilo, I didn’t mean any disrespect. Te amo mama.”

“And I love you.”

“See, mama it’s all love.” Alfonzo spread his arms theatrically.

Maria saw her son in a mother’s light, where there are no wrongs so horrid that would change the intensity. “Do you know your Tia buried her son face down…did you know that?”

Alfonzo’s arms dropped to his side. There are those who believe that when a deceased is murdered and placing the body in a prone position torments the murderer. Superstition survives in many cultures.

“Teresa’s boyfriend must be flipping in the grave then,” he quipped and then chuckled at the image.

Man, his mama was tripping hard.

Maria observed her son. “Corrado is missing, did you know that also?”

“No, you’re telling me now mama….
I been drinking
…
I been drinking
…” he sang the last part of his sentence but the comedy routine had the wrong audience.

Shit, she’s serious, oh no, not even a half smile!

Maria did not find her son’s antics amusing. This was the evasive Alfonzo, high and detached. “Alfonzo did you do anything to him?”

Her son’s nostrils flared. “I certainly haven’t, I am offended mama that you even think I care about that pendejo!”

Then Maria asked, “Did you harm Domingo?”

The eyes of his father never faltered. Her son’s chin lifted defiantly and his hand went in his pocket. “Why are you asking me this mama?”

The action caused her heart to seize. Whenever her son was hiding something, he’d do that or become defensive. Maria slapped her son’s face. “Stop this foolishness and answer me dammit!”

Her stubborn son sneered. “You’re getting violent mama and using profanity. Isn’t that sinful?”

Another slap to the opposite cheek did not budge the insolent adult.

“Did you know Domingo would taunt me and say I am the son of Diablo?”

A mother in agony wailed in forlorn helplessness that she could not change what had passed.

Alfonzo stared through her. “I asked you about my father and you would tell me good stories that I believed because I had no reason to doubt my religious mother. You had no pictures of him and never spoke about his family. Then I wondered is my father really the devil? Immaculate conception occurred with Mary, could the devil have done this to my madre?”

“Alfonzo?” Maria sucked in air sharply at his blasphemous talk. “
Arrepentíos
!”

“Repentance is for the faithful, I have lost my faith.”

She gripped her son’s lapels shaking the wearer so lost he could not sober his tongue. ““Do not lie to me anymore.” Her soft eyes were wet, although her voice was firm. She wanted him to confess. Yet, she had the answer. The denial is what spurred on the demand to hear him admit to her that he killed Domingo. Perhaps then, she’d know he took responsibility for his sin and did not blame others
.

"Respeta is what I have for you, madre." His eyes smarted. “I watched you work to give me things. Respeta madre.”

“Then tell me hijo, did you kill your cousin, your friend, my nephew, Carmen’s eldest son?” she asked feebly.

“Do you hate me mama? Do I remind you of him?”

She seized her son’s cheeks, cupping them with warm palms, crying because she had once loved his deceitful father and would always love her son. “You are my heart Alfonzo. You are my heart.”

His chin dropped to his chest in sadness. “Then why tell lies and then strike when told them in return?”

“I did not want your father to be a bad influence. I did wrong hijo, lo siento.” She pushed up his chin to look upon the boy who in her eyes was more handsome than his father but doing evil deeds. “Where is my son?”

“You should have aborted me mama. I am no bueno. I am Diablo’s son, the acts I do is because he lives within me.”

The matronly hand that struck a man seared flesh. Repetitive and unrelenting slaps to his face caused a son whose eyes burned with love to see red. His chin elevated higher, absorbing the blows, accepting the punishment for his wicked ways. The downcast eyes of a troubled soul bled. He chose not to weep, the emotional burns were deep and the intense heat had dried human water.

"You are not my son to say such a thing. My Alfonzo had a heart!" She wailed.

The cries are what brought Selange to the staircase. She held the railing, stepping down with feet laden with heartbreak when a mother cast out her son, excommunicating him as if she had the lord’s authority.

Selange reached the landing; the aching had turned fierce at the sight of Alfonzo’s crest-fallen expression. A wife who experienced her husband’s wounds could not breathe when witnessing mother and son face-to-face as adversaries.

The blood poured out, pooled around her, and the loss of a mother was as injurious as the day bodies lay forever silenced by violence. A voice in the chaos, masculine and loving is what she heard and steeled her mind from crumbling.

Always, she would stand with that hope, goodness resided in Alfonzo. Guard him she would with love’s sword in the darkest hours and be his greatest champion when his strength falters as it was now. Alfonzo remained stoic, facing his greatest love thrashing him with tainted holy water and the bleeding cuts open. Selange saw her husband’s soul dying.

“Stop it Maria! Cállate madre, por favor be quiet!” she screamed imploringly.

The fragile soul was not a deity but a son.

Maria ignored her beloved daughter-in-law; she stood on the side of her husband, even when his actions were deplorable. However, she was a mother and bound to instill virtue, but she had failed. When the corruption reaches a loving place and turns on family, Cain and Abel are Domingo and Alfonzo in modern day.

“Blood of family is on you hijo.”

Selange cried her despair. “Maria, please don’t say that, you don’t understand anything. Don’t speak in anger, he is your son, look at him and see your words are cutting…please mama…please stop or leave our house!”

The mother who kneeled in prayer, and believed in goodness ignored her daughter-in-law’s plea. “To kill your blood, the boy who was like your brother is beyond evil.” Her tears flowed to say to her beloved son, “You are not the good boy I loved.
My
son…
my
son…
my
son would never have done such a thing.”

"Then blame yourself for not killing me before I emerged into this shitty world of bad people and wounded you.” The blue warmth was gone. “Your son, that
good
son you wanted, died from your lies."

The loud smack resounded as if thunder claps. Alfonzo’s cheek flamed red with the imprint. His jaw clenched so tight, Selange remained frozen and afraid.

Alfonzo’s eyes descended, the liquor ignited, he flamed and the fire shot out of his eyes. To a mother who held beads, genuflected every day and did not wait for the Sabbath, he must be the greatest symbol of her sin. Why confess? To a mother he loved, he was bad and whatever he said would never be good enough.

Maria raised her hand –again, but in the air, an invisible wedge brought it to his hard chest to press and then pat the fine material similar to a touch a mourner places upon a corpse at a wake or funeral. Then Maria turned away from her son without a word, to leave him in his tomb.

She refused to do war with someone without remorse. She marched out of the house to have the guard take her to the plane, far away from her wicked boy. She preferred the darkness outside; there a mother felt safe to pray out of the presence of an evildoer.

Selange gasped at what transpired. Never would she have imagined good Maria would say such words because no matter the deeds of her children, they remained her children and loved even when awful. “Alfonzo, she didn’t mean it. Your mother’s upset.”

His eyes remained transfixed straight ahead. His chest constricted with the deepest of sorrows. He walked out the door to the fresh air and saw the brake lights of the car as it exited the gate before he could explain.

Madre, Domingo sold me out and put a gun to my face
.

The years of faith spent in ornate cathedrals crumbled in ruin. The stinging to his face did not sear worse than the cross upon his shoulder with Domingo’s birth and death recorded. He would carry the symbol of his greatest evil to the ground. He had consumed copious amounts of alcohol for a calm exterior to confront his mama; however, inside his spirit burned.

Face down in a coffin, there isn’t oxygen, only death.

~

Slippered feet glued to the floor began to move slowly. A bad dream, there is no other way to describe the surreal.

The shouts outdoors brought her sluggish legs to move faster. Alfonzo was cursing someone in Spanish, demanding the key.

Key to what? Certainly, he wasn’t driving anywhere in his condition.

Panic so great leaped and she ran with energy when the eerie sensation had her seeing a burial. She darted past hollow decorative furnishings that could never fill her heart. She ran out the door and saw Alfonzo shoving the guard before getting in the car.

In the night, without a driver or security, he was venturing into danger. An inebriated person in the clutches of hurt can be intentionally reckless.

She yelled, his name, and he shut her out. He refused to hear because that is the Alfonzo who suffers within. He retreats rather than express his turmoil.

Selange looked back at the house where the children slept in a protective fortress. Early in the black of morning, on the soil of Sicily she saw bars of prisons and crime-ridden neighborhoods where homeowners dwelled, believing all the bullshit about living right, yet dying in their fearful abodes.

She decided, hard as it was to go to the end of the unknown with her love once again and bring him out. “Protect our family dear father. If we die, it is your will and a fitting end for my wrongs.” That was the prayer of a sinner.

Unlike Maria, Selange did not walk away from a troubled offender but ran to him and wrapped him in unconditional love and mercy.

Maria romanticized about their lifestyle. She was with Bruno and he charmed her to make the realities palatable. However, Selange came from the crime-ridden streets of Brooklyn. Chaos, sirens and killings were the norm, inside and outside of some broken tenements. Hopeless people gripped by poverty and the faithful determined to find a way out. She walked the pissy floors pass gangbangers, drug dealers and thieves and many knew her by name from the kiddie days before they dropped out of school. It’s then she saw the world, the girls pushing carriages with boyfriends on the Island or shot during a botched drug transaction. That is the rawness of ghetto living, yet mansions hold killers and thieves who pay to have these deeds done. They’re in suits impregnating young girls or flying on their fancy jets to poor parts of the world to engage in perversities with children. Their women wear fine clothes; platinum blonde cosmetically altered Barbie’s to hold on to the money and not the man.

The goodness Maria wanted from her son she would never get unless she admitted they were all damn sinners. Good kids go bad and bad people pretend to be good. She’d seen enough in her years to stand with her husband because their hearts were ultimately –loving amid all the bullshit and hypocrites faking love and religion.

Stand on that pyre of hypocrisy Maria, but I’ll be damned if I let Alfonzo burn when your transgressions are what brought him into this sinful world
!

She raced through the yard and put herself in the emotional fray, by sprawling on the hood of Alfonzo’s auto to demand his attention. “You’re not going anywhere without me, do you understand that –dammit?”

Alfonzo was too angry to laugh, but he wanted to, what the fuck was she doing? He leaned out the window. “Selange, loca, get off the hood, I can’t see.”