Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

Everyone was grabbing at me all hugs and smiles — an independent observer would think I had just been released from a POW camp — confirming my age and handing me colorful boxes. Always with a card containing a handwritten message of devotional love. Alana was not there.

There were new people and they were introduced in painfully informal manner. Included was the latest boyfriend for Lorena whose name she repeated incessantly, surely motivated by fear that someone would mistakenly call this sap by a previous, now-defunct name. His name was undoubtedly Barry and he looked about as comfortable as a fourteen-year-old awaiting the result of a home pregnancy test. To my family he was a new toy with freckles that could be dragged from corner to corner and told bizarre stories in irreparably broken English and if things got too hairy and the words escaped, then in español and etiquette and viable communication be damned. When he wasn’t being spoken to directly he still served as backdrop.

So there was constant yapping. Lots directed at me but precious little coming from my mouth:

“Mommy, right some people don’t have a place to live?”

— I almost died during the delivery Dios mío . The next day they asked me if I had the name yet. I said casi because we were getting close to deciding. I kept waiting for them to ask me again but that’s the name they put down.

—¡No drink it fast like this! Forget the salt. All you need is la lima (never lemon) for right after.

Television was showing a computer simulation of aggrieved Dom’s final flight. In it he holds on to the can of spray paint all the way down and when he lands he shatters like a hollow porcelain doll. Sponsored by Dell.

—¡Nia says forget those antibiotics! Eso es un escam from the pharmacy companies. Just mix some shark cartilage with ginseng and drink it in three increasingly larger swallows.

“Where’s Alana?”

“Right that some people live on the street mommy?”

Candles in front of a grainy portrait of the Virgin Mary. The blue and white liquefying into each other. And what’s with the Davincian smile in this version?

— Pray to St. Anthony and you’ll find it right away.

— I don’t know. They said it was a census or somesing. I lied.

“Don’t you fear that we — the cousins — have been screwed up by all this confounded Catholic education with its sisters and fathers, even brothers… ghosts and hosts… virgins… trinities… chalices… wounds? I mean-they basically paid money they didn’t have so our brains could be washed in lies. Didn’t they?”

— Fulana de tal says that the police wait outside in the nightclub’s parking lot. When you get in your car they immediately arrest you and take your car. ¿Can they do that?

“Screwed up how? Wouldn’t one of us first have to evince the slightest hint that they received that schooling?”

— Americans love el hot dog. I sell them right out of the van.

—¿ Y Alana ?

“Who the hell’s Vince?”

“Right that some people live underground in the subway?”

— Have another aguardiente. It’s good for you.

Universal accord that these were the greatest empanadas ever ingested.

“Why not put some mustard on the van? I have yellow paint in my garage and I think it would help business.”

“Right that those people don’t have families?”

—¿ Otro aguardiente ?

“Listen to this. Air Security divides dangerous countries into four risk categories: crime, kidnapping, political violence, and wars or insurgencies. Colombia is the only country to appear in all four categories. Doesn’t it border on the significant that our parents come from this place?”

—¿ Americanos love the mustard?

—¿Lawyers in this country make a lot of money right?

— Si. Mostaza .

“Mommy what happens to those people when they die? What happens to their bodies? Do they have funerals?”

“I manage them. Testy Wee Willie Wheeler and the Dissonant Tritones . They’re going to be big.”

“Jeez Barry how am I supposed to know why she called you Fred?”

— No this is merengue . Just swing your hips from side to side to the music.

Fine the kid’s a bit weird but what does happen to these bodies?

“I said she called me Vince. Who’s Fred?”

— Down there the traffic cops give you change when you bribe them. ¡I’m not exaggerating, they’ll go to the store and break a large bill!

—¡Bill’s here! Pobrecito , he works so hard.

—¿ Por qué do you represent those people?

“Boxing is the only real sport because you know men engaged in it from the very beginning. Somehow I don’t see cavemen taking time off from battling with dinosaurs to swing a stick at a ball.”

— I had to lie to get him in school early because I heard they were only making the Hispanic kids wait until they were five so they would fall behind the Americans. So I lied. I got him shoes with big heels and said he was five, small but five. Those monjas didn’t care they just wanted the money.

“For every person I get to join I get $500 dollars! Everybody makes out.”

— After he was sentenced to life in prison the Colombian government allowed him to build his own prison. ¡He put a bowling alley and a movie theatre in it!

“I think if you come to this country you should have to speak American.”

— Miren este huevon . (Now this new guy’s the opposite of a hit.)

“Why so quiet cutie?… Mary?”

“I heard about that. One day there was a siege during a screening of a digitally restored Wizard of Oz and he just walked out.”

“Whattya mean arithmathematically impossible?”

“Is Alana coming?”

—¿Can I borrow the hot dog to pick up my girlfriend tomorrow? She loves tube-shaped beef.

Wilfred Benitez was born on September 12, 1958 in the Bronx, New York.

“The problem with this country is that we coddle our criminals. Everyone is all concerned with their rights and nobody’s worried about the rights of the victims.”

“That’s a beautiful necklace Mary but what are they supposed to be?… Mary?”

— He refused to do the pledge of allegiance. I think second grade. ¡I had to go and talk to the nun principal or they were going to kick him out!

A blue and brown soccer ball with a two hour half-life and a Bic pen’s chewed cap struggling to keep the air in .

—¿ Otro ?

“How come you’re allowed to lie in court?”

— They killed him because he scored un autogol in the World Cup.

“Where do I find this everyone ?”

Can a family be hyper-functional?

“Time’s Alana getting here?”

— Recently Miguel Lora and Rafael Pineda but before that there was of course Pambele . ¡Our país has produced many great fighters!

— I know, down there a red traffic light is more like a suggestion.

Baby Jaren seems either unable or unwilling to hold his head in one place. The lumpy hair-speckled mass has no defined position just a wave of probabilities. Finally his eyes lock on an artifactual thirteen-inch Sony Trinitron, complete with requisite logo of supine red, green, and blue ovals and aluminum foil for an antenna, located about five feet away.

“This Wee Willer, why’s he so testy?”

—¡ Ay he’s so esmart look at the way he stares at the TV!

— Drink this one, it’s nice and cold. You won’t even feel it.

— It’s not just sports either. Don’t forget Gabo .

“Any funny stories about representing the scum of the Earth?”