Read Online Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos - Free Book Online
Authors: John Phillip Santos
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me, I have nonetheless steadfastly expected some shapeless, postponed doom. I have seen a silence the size of an invisible continent overshadow aunts and uncles. Can the same old melancolía be handed down, wordlessly, through numberless generations, inscribed onto the helical codex of the DNA?
After Abuelo Juan José’s death and prompt burial, he was rarely spoken of. The story became a family secret, held so close for so many decades that it faded and elapsed in the hearts of all those he had been dearest to. Uela became stoic. She was always noble and erect, but also guarded away, somber, and hidden to us. Though she wasn’t the pious type, she nevertheless gave you the feeling of seeming to be in silent prayer. Every week, she made her legendary fist cookies, baked with pan volador, which got its name—“bread that flies”—from when the family used to toss it to each other when they worked in the tomato fields of western Bexar County, where they once had a farm. Uela made them by tightly squeezing a dollop of the dense pecan-flecked dough until it carried a perfect imprint of her clenched hand, with every line and wrinkle of her palm etched into the toasted, crescent-shaped cookie. We bit into these ambrosial galletas, and in this way, we received the communion of all her buried grieving.
The dead are always with us, but the dead can be lost, too.
When a family secret emerges, it can come forth like a great island emerging from the sea, all its cliffs and mountains cascading salt water—and you realize you are confronted by new, uncharted geographies. But a secret can also appear like whispered fragments you’ve heard many times before, but never understood.
Suddenly, the words become clear.
3
Valle de Silencio
Valley of Silence
His perfect, radiant grin scares me at first, when I remember the last time I had seen him six months before, dressed in a brown pinstriped suit with overly large lapels, looking tightlipped and uncomfortable with his arms folded across his chest inside the brushed copper coffin. As a ghost, he seems utterly content now, like a child, and the anguish and gravitas of his long illness has been lifted from his bones.
The skin on Uncle Raul’s face is supple, the color of dark Mayan honey and as smooth as a mango. He looks like the neighborhood ice cream man, in a pair of white work pants and a well-starched white work shirt. He is wearing the old black round-toe lace boots he always wore. They are beautifully shined, and they look as soft as kidskin.
When I discover him, he is standing in the bright amber afternoon light of my new study, looking out the window at the two giant bridges into Manhattan—the garish Triborough and the medieval stone bridge at Hellgate on the East River—that are visible from my window.
“It’s a good thing to live some place where you can see a bridge—but two! That’s pretty damn good!” he says, with his cackling laugh.
In life, Uncle Raul had the energy of a south Texas remolino, or whirlwind, and jokes rushed out of him as if they were being carried in fierce gusts, punctuated by an ear-piercing, rapid-fire laugh—part eagle shriek, part coyote song—that could shake the air. There was something about this energy that gave him enormous power over animals. He could exhort his dog, Stupid, to chase his tail until the terrier was in full churn, spinning like a proton, almost levitating over the patio. With the same powers, he taught his neighbor’s parrot Güero to sing “Volver” while wearing a tiny sombrero.
As we stand in my new study, it grows quiet. The room is still empty, freshly painted the color of sand. I am speechless, still amazed to see my uncle, who had never visited New York City while he was alive. Time slows to a murmur as we sit down across from each other in the unchanging light. When I ask him first what he remembers of his life, his eyes close, his lips move in a whisper, and he reaches over to touch the back of
After Abuelo Juan José’s death and prompt burial, he was rarely spoken of. The story became a family secret, held so close for so many decades that it faded and elapsed in the hearts of all those he had been dearest to. Uela became stoic. She was always noble and erect, but also guarded away, somber, and hidden to us. Though she wasn’t the pious type, she nevertheless gave you the feeling of seeming to be in silent prayer. Every week, she made her legendary fist cookies, baked with pan volador, which got its name—“bread that flies”—from when the family used to toss it to each other when they worked in the tomato fields of western Bexar County, where they once had a farm. Uela made them by tightly squeezing a dollop of the dense pecan-flecked dough until it carried a perfect imprint of her clenched hand, with every line and wrinkle of her palm etched into the toasted, crescent-shaped cookie. We bit into these ambrosial galletas, and in this way, we received the communion of all her buried grieving.
The dead are always with us, but the dead can be lost, too.
When a family secret emerges, it can come forth like a great island emerging from the sea, all its cliffs and mountains cascading salt water—and you realize you are confronted by new, uncharted geographies. But a secret can also appear like whispered fragments you’ve heard many times before, but never understood.
Suddenly, the words become clear.
3
Valle de Silencio
Valley of Silence
His perfect, radiant grin scares me at first, when I remember the last time I had seen him six months before, dressed in a brown pinstriped suit with overly large lapels, looking tightlipped and uncomfortable with his arms folded across his chest inside the brushed copper coffin. As a ghost, he seems utterly content now, like a child, and the anguish and gravitas of his long illness has been lifted from his bones.
The skin on Uncle Raul’s face is supple, the color of dark Mayan honey and as smooth as a mango. He looks like the neighborhood ice cream man, in a pair of white work pants and a well-starched white work shirt. He is wearing the old black round-toe lace boots he always wore. They are beautifully shined, and they look as soft as kidskin.
When I discover him, he is standing in the bright amber afternoon light of my new study, looking out the window at the two giant bridges into Manhattan—the garish Triborough and the medieval stone bridge at Hellgate on the East River—that are visible from my window.
“It’s a good thing to live some place where you can see a bridge—but two! That’s pretty damn good!” he says, with his cackling laugh.
In life, Uncle Raul had the energy of a south Texas remolino, or whirlwind, and jokes rushed out of him as if they were being carried in fierce gusts, punctuated by an ear-piercing, rapid-fire laugh—part eagle shriek, part coyote song—that could shake the air. There was something about this energy that gave him enormous power over animals. He could exhort his dog, Stupid, to chase his tail until the terrier was in full churn, spinning like a proton, almost levitating over the patio. With the same powers, he taught his neighbor’s parrot Güero to sing “Volver” while wearing a tiny sombrero.
As we stand in my new study, it grows quiet. The room is still empty, freshly painted the color of sand. I am speechless, still amazed to see my uncle, who had never visited New York City while he was alive. Time slows to a murmur as we sit down across from each other in the unchanging light. When I ask him first what he remembers of his life, his eyes close, his lips move in a whisper, and he reaches over to touch the back of
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