I ended up cleaning up the broken plate. I didn’t mind so much, though, having gotten my way. Even better was the voicemail I saw after I had gone home – it was from Miguel. He told me he trusted me, and wanted to meet in person at a park in Chino Hills. So I made myself another cup of coffee and started driving. I had so many questions – and for some reason I wasn’t scared. I had known Miguel my whole life, and I knew that any anger he may have had against Abuelita was reserved for her and her alone.
I arrived at the meeting spot at just after midnight. The park was well-manicured: perfectly even grass, rows of wildflowers with dampened color in the darkness, gray-white cement that had recently been cleaned. There were a couple of lamps scattered across the walkway – I walked to the third one down and sat down on a bench just outside the reach of the light. I only had to wait a few minutes before I saw a figure in the distance approach me. It was Miguel, of course, but instead of his usually confident gait he was walking slowly and deliberately, and I could hear him coughing from my perch in the middle of the park.
Eventually he reached me and sat down, and in the dim lighting I could see he had lost weight. He looked at me and gave a weak smile, and then pulled out a napkin and coughed into it, spitting something out afterwards. It was hard to see in the poor lighting, but it looked green and slimy – phlegm. I looked away in disgust, unconsciously leaning away from him until I noticed my side was hitting the handle of the bench. I forced myself back into my original position and started talking.
“It’s good to see you Miguel. You look terrible!” I laughed nervously, and got an affirmative grunt in response.
“I feel terrible. I haven’t eaten anything in days, I have fever, my chest hurts. I’m afraid to go to the doctor though, don’t want to get caught. Not yet at least.” His voice was deep and raspy, and lacked a lot of the authority it once commanded. Even if Abuelita saw him as weaker than her other children, he still learned how to carry himself. We made eye contact, and I was reminded again how painfully blue his eyes were, a genetic anomaly among the family. They were beautiful, just like Miguel himself, but now there was a newfound layer of unmasked pain.
“I need to tell you why. Gabriel and the others wouldn’t understand, not really. It needs to be you. Of everyone else I knew you would understand – you and, and, well, Alejandro maybe. But he has his children, he has… better things to worry about.” Miguel paused to take a ragged breath.
“My mother hit me. Not for a very long time, but she used to. Whenever I talked about painting, she would hit me. I learned pretty fast not to do that. But then she would find my drawings. Or my painting supplies. Worst one time the teacher called me to compliment a sketch. I had no idea until I walked downstairs for dinner. Usually it was a sandal, or her hands… but this time she had a rolling pin, the one she used to make tortillas. She beat me hard that day, right in front of my brothers and sisters, as a lesson. I was always a lesson. She hit them too, but they never gave her as many reasons as I did. Instead she would hit me again and again, ‘God forbid you waste your time on art!’” He emulated sarcastically.
“I know she was just raising me the way she had been. People need money to live comfortably, it’s just the way the world works. But that’s how I grew up, and even if I should have known better, I didn’t. Years later, two months ago, I go to her and tell her I finally made it big. Found a rich man that liked my work, gonna set up a venue, finally, finally. But she got so mad – instead of happy, mad, said I never could take her advice, that I was lying, that she would make sure I was done with painting forever. And she takes the rolling pin, same one all those years ago, and she grabs me and puts my hands on the table… I didn’t think she would – could. But she could… she could and like I always did, I took it and did nothing. But I go to my guy after, seven fingers useless, and he says there’s no point to a painter that can’t paint.
“I was so angry, and in so much pain. Then my fingers are better, but it’s not the same, some kind of nerve damage I thought, shaking too much I can barely hold a brush. But I go in and the doctor says there’s nothing wrong, that it’s all in my head. And I realize that I’m just afraid, so afraid, but that I know what I can do to not be afraid. So I get the gun, this ugly plastic thing, and I shoot it a couple of times in the mountains, and my hand isn’t shaking so the doctor was right it was in my head and I know I can do it I can do it I can do it and I’m at her house and I tell her she was wrong and I can do it and then I raise the gun and I can do it and then I can’t. I’m the scared little child I always was and I can’t. She was right, my mama was right all along and I can’t.”
Miguel devolved into a fit of coughing, tears streaming down his face while he clutched the napkin to his face. He sobbed in between fits, and I knew I should have held him and comforted him and told him it was all going to be okay but instead I just sat there and stared.
The Scenic Climax 