Henry Lozano

Aguacatero tell me if being angry is a sin

He prays so that god doesn’t forget who he is. In unbearable places, you are born with no name. My grandfather would tell me about the dogs here. They aren’t of a specific breed. The street dogs are all mixed, and ugly. Meant for protection. He was the first one to let me know when mine died. My cousins had left their bikes in the open. The house had a fence, two boys climbed over, and stopped the dog from barking by feeding it rat poison. My grandfather would say that as boys, our earliest traumas had to do with dogs. Dogs taught my grandfather about men. Men who stole, men who killed. He didn’t agree with the idea of pets, the love for a dog was not something he could find. Instead, he saw the audacity other people had, to take, and then take some more. He continued, some boys will maybe fear dogs for a very long while. Others will hate them, treat them as disease, it is a death you’ll see more than once. A hole you’ll dig up many times. Reaching the point where you think a dog’s life holds little. Then these are the same boys who return to their own vomit, the way dogs do, and barter memories. Let go, for other traumas. Sometimes it’ll be for the terror of their own father. To live with the first man you’ll hate, and an uneasiness hard to hide from. Some boys will envy, acquire habits, want women. My grandfather wanted to know if he was capable of breaking another person.

A dog’s death taught my grandfather how to grieve. Its difficult to feel no sentiment, despite how you feel about dogs, when one dies. A young pity, remorse. Men are put in the same thought as boys, and it's the offense taken by it that fuels the same cycle. Boys want to be handsome, cowardly brave. Men want to walk like boys, again. Not recognizing the cancerous time spent learning how to be a man. It is easier to be selfless, than to ask for help to those who have just as little. Men can cry, if they promise not to fall.

I sit with my grandfather. His presence still a monument. You look at this arms, there is heat in his veins. His balding head, and the strength that was once there. His eyes, and damaged woman. His lips, and the words he no longer considered blasphemous. If he could still speak, I’d want him to tell me about anger. I want to ask if it is rage was made him thin. I know it began with Manuel. The only thing that holds him from heaven is forgiveness. There is illness this family doesn’t speak on. I want him to tell me why he named Manuel after himself. My grandfather used to build. He made, with his hands, everything he can stand on today. God blows winds. Stubbornness and concrete is what holds his roof up. He would rather run it to the ground, than have it taken.

He’d like to do everything the ways he used to. Before the stroke, and before Manuel. Everyday he wakes up before everyone, still. He cannot drive, just drag his feet in sandals he can’t put on correctly. He sneaks out to the market and brings back milk and bread. My grandmother is the amazed one. I know she feels like her husband is becoming her child, and that it shouldn’t be that way. She knows he can’t handle that either. Every morning she asks him the same thing before she makes breakfast.

“Y como te entendieron ahora? Travieso.”

Manuel was the youngest, and the first one of my grandparent’s children to make it to the United States. Made his way from Texas to Mt Pleasant in DC. Since 1987, he started sending letters back every month. A phone call here and there. Half of his check every weekend. Two years later Manuel moved in with his best friend.

All I know is that when a loved one is killed, a lot of waiting happens afterwards. There is the waiting done when uncertain. The waiting done to understand. The waiting done to grieve. The waiting for the other man to die. The waiting done before you forget the sound of that person’s voice. Today my grandfather sits, prays, walks, in silence. It is stripping to see someone try and forget parts of themselves. Where the thought of it, is what decides, whether you remain sane for now, or not. Dogs don’t wait to be found here. They wander. They eat trash, shit, and cry. They never go too far. They make friends with the intoxicated. They take from where they can take. Once a man becomes grown, he can sit and be quiet in his own consequences.

11/3/17