Preface
There is something captivating, even disturbing about documenting a person’s life. Questions come up, one more obvious than the other: Where do you start? What events do you portray? Do you want to spill your guts in a proverbial “tell all”? Or do you save the juiciest parts for a later sequel? Do you spend time on those tiny snippets of information, insignificant yet enticing morsels to attract and maintain the reader’s interest? Or do you hope against hope that people won’t misunderstand your intentions by plowing ahead regardless, oblivious to the consequences and to others’ feelings? Do you seek retribution for past slights or absolution for your sins?
Whatever the reasons, fiction is fiction. There are some incidents from a person’s past that can be embellished or exaggerated, situations that can forever be interpolated from the facts. The hardest part, as far as the author is concerned, is to distinguish fact from fantasy, and truth from fiction.
In fiction, you are free to go wherever your imagination leads you. With facts, you are hemmed in by reality. Sure, you can stretch the facts to some judicious degree, but you can never reinvent them. Fishing for facts or proof for a given set of circumstances is the preferred method for justifying your actions. Ah, but with fiction, you can embroider the story to your heart’s content. Within reason, of course. Or maybe not.
Whatever leads you to that ultimate realization is what counts: that one’s life can never follow a predetermined path. As the author, you strive for clarity and coherence; for meaning, for purpose, and ultimately for understanding.
My aim, in this work of fiction, is to reach that level of understanding whereby events in the past, whether real or imagined, can be revisited, reviewed, and reassessed with a new and better glow. By uncovering their meaning, by shedding light on their purpose, clarity, so to speak, can be achieved.
Help me, dear reader, to achieve that clarity.
Introduction
“Are you alright?” the surgeons cried out in unison. “Are you in pain?” They poked and prodded little Sonny’s abdomen, trying without success to locate the source of his distress.
But all little Sonny could do was cry. And cry. And cry. And cry. And kick and scream. And shout. Louder and louder. Wailing and bawling. But no amount of crying or screaming or kicking or shouting could make the hole disappear.
There it was: a gaping break in his lower abdomen, a nasty, bloody slash; a chasm wide enough for a man’s fist to poke through. Just below his beltline and to the right of his stomach. Above the groin area. A peek into Hell itself.
“Oh, Lord! Now I see it,” one of the surgeons remarked. A big, red gash, an open sore to the touch. “Nurse! Nurse! Bring bandages!”
To little Sonny’s mind, it resembled the Grand Canyon. Not that he had ever been to the Grand Canyon before, just that he recalled seeing it in snapshots and photos on T.V. The gash could have looked a lot bigger, were it not for the half-dozen or so layers of gauze the hospital’s anxious nursing staff had placed on it. “Cover it up,” the surgeon shouted. “We’ll attend to it later, see how it heals first.”
Lights. Bright, blinding beams above his head. Was he in Heaven? The other place? Where? How? Tears welled up in little Sonny’s eyes. My God, he could see his entrails! The bright redness of that gash allowed him a dreadful glimpse inside his innards. Little Sonny did not want to look; he was compelled to gaze. He had no choice. For there it was, in front of his eyes. The flesh, the puss, the redness, the blood. Now he knew how a gutted chicken felt as it was about to be baked whole and shoved into Mami’s preheated oven.
Not a good sign.
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Sonny’s eyes opened with a start. It took some time for him to recover his bearings. Was he still in bed? Was he alright? He looked around in the dark. It certainly appeared that all was well. Was he alone, by himself? No, his only brother, Juanito, was sleeping, just as he had been three hours earlier, in the single bed beside his. Whew, what a relief!
But where were the bedcovers? Were they on or were they off? They were on. Oh, good. Now, what about his breathing? Was it rapid, was it terse? Were there beads of sweat forming along his forehead? No, no. Nothing like that. All was calm. All was quiet.
These were good signs.
“Oh, man, what a fucking nightmare,” Sonny whispered to himself. The last time he awoke — by himself, in the middle of the night — he was covered in sweat. Ten towels were hardly enough for all the droplets that needed to be mopped off his brow. With a 102-degree fever, no less! This time, it was different. There wasn’t any fever at all. And there were no chills, no migraine headaches, no bedcovers out of place. He was – how did Juanito put it? – “high and dry.”
Well, maybe not so high. Yeah, but mighty dry. His mouth tasted of raw cardboard. Sonny half expected to cough up a Kellogg’s of Battle Creek, Michigan cereal box of phlegm, it was so scorched.
“What gives with that?” Sonny thought. Ah, radiator heat, that was the culprit! When those radiators begin to bang and clang, “Man, there’s no stoppin’ ’em,” Sonny said to no one in particular. The radiators sucked whatever moisture had been left in the atmosphere – and that included his bedroom.
To escape the dryness on cold, wintry nights, Mami, as dutiful as only a caring mother could be, would place Campbell’s soup cans filled with tap water on top of those noisy radiators. By morning, the cans would be bone dry. You would need a full-time water bearer, a Gunga Din, to keep those cans filled. As for the soup cans themselves, Andy Warhol couldn’t keep up with the demand.
“Damn, what a shitty place,” Sonny mumbled, half to himself and half to Juanito who was still sound asleep. “Freaking Projects,” Sonny repeated. “Goddamn, freaking Projects.”
Sonny rolled over to his side and tried to go back to sleep.
It didn’t take him long.
(To be continued…)
Copyright © 2022 by Josmar F. Lopes
Curtain Going Up! 