Rough Draft of Creative Nonfiction

Note: It's hard to keep the tenses straight when skipping around in time so much, sorry.

My mom tells me that my phone rang when I was gone. She points to the coffee table. I say ok but keep walking to my room. I swivel in my chair, check my email, look around at the motionless room. Only when I hear the shower turn on do I stand up and check my phone. Hey bud, it says. Today is Tito’s birthday. A picture of him was right under it. He is a short man, with wrinkled and baggy skin on his face to go with a smile wide like his sombrero. I started to ask when we would call him, looking at the fly across the room. My mom always that it’s my fault we have them, because I’m sloppy with food. I decide against killing it, it’ll die in a day. I click send but cancel immediately. He died last year.

I finally got to see him earlier that year, the first time since my sister was born. Earlier it was decided we didn’t want to have Luna fly there so young. Actually my step-mom decided, but my dad went along with it, and I didn’t say anything. My dad said Tito would be in the hospital a lot, but everyone else – Tita, my Tíos Roel and Rica, and my cousins – would be there. I go to my seat. 22A, a window seat on a 6-hour flight. The plane is crowded, and I step forward methodically, not bumping into anyone. I can see an empty overhead compartment right over where my seat is, the cool air from the overhead nozzle blowing onto my arm. I step to put my bag over my seat, and the tall woman in front of me reaches back to put her suitcase there. When I get to my seat, I look out to see a wing.

The days were long, but we were forced to spend most of them inside to avoid the humid heat of the valley summer. So we waited for the precious time between the sun beginning to set and darkness where all of us young and healthy enough to do so went to play baseball. I thought of when I was younger and played with a broomstick in a covered area next to Tito’s house. When I hit the ball Tito would say something to me. I don’t remember what it was. I would tell him don’t say that. Don’t say that he would repeat back to me. It’s getting dark my dad says after a strikeout. Let’s go in.

When Tito is not in the hospital he is in his green chair. It’s a lounge chair but it also rocks and also has an extendable footrest. There he drinks, dozes off, or watches old westerns. Today he watches one starring an old man and his entourage of brave young kids defend themselves and their herd from bandits. On the way to stopping them once and for all one of the kids falls into a stampeding herd of cattle retrieving another’s glasses. But they must keep moving or risk an attack by the nearby Indian tribe, and he is given nothing but a cross and a quick burial.

I used to think he’d die like in a storybook, with the whole family surrounding his bed. He would look around and tell us he loved us in a low raspy voice. Probably in Spanish, actually. Then he would close his eyes and breathe slowly until he stopped.

I got the call when I was walking back from school. Your Tito died he said. The flu he said. His body couldn’t fight it during the cancer treatment. The funeral is next weekend. Ok I said. Later that day I started to get calls and messages from relatives. He was a good man, they said. It’s a shame you lost him. I didn’t respond if I could get away with it.