THE RAIN STARTS THE DAY MY MOTHER DIES. IT pours down in ugly gray sheets over everything. For days I watch it. There is no thunder, no lightning, no hail, no great wind, just a constant, steady downpour.
Lying in the bed in Chuckie’s spare room, I wake up to it and fall asleep to it, but mostly I just stare out the window at it and think of Ma. I think about how I’m never going to see her again. I think about how I don’t have a family anymore.
And then the darkness comes. Everything closes in and stays that way and my brain and heart both crumble to pieces. After that I can’t think at all, can’t feel anything but despair.
Somewhere in the darkness Chuckie’s mom brings me cream of chicken soup with Ritz crackers. “You have to eat, Marley,” she tells me. But seeing what a good mom she is only makes it hurt more.
“No, thank you,” I say, and put my head back down on the pillow and close my eyes.
There are talks of a funeral that someone is planning. “Your grandmother,” I hear Chuckie say, but that can’t be.
Most of the time when Chuckie and his family speak to me, the words feel more like memories from another life I’m not really living. Nothing feels real. I look out at the dark, cloud-covered sky and wonder if I’m merely caught in another nightmare like the one I had at the hospital. I wait for the moment when I’ll wake with a start to find Ma lying in her hospital bed alive, but the moment never comes.
When Chuckie’s mother presents me with a black suit and tells me I have to get ready for my mother’s funeral, I refuse to go. I tell her I can’t deal, that it’s too much. She tells me going will help me say good-bye. That I’ll always regret it if I don’t.
But I can’t do it—can’t even bear the thought of facing the outside world let alone facing my mother’s grave. Will she have an open casket? Will she be buried next to my father? Will anyone even show up?
Will a preacher stand in front of a church spurting the truth about her life or make up some BS story about how kind and giving a person Ma was and how much she accomplished? How do they do eulogies for heroin addicts who’ve stolen from or abandoned everyone who ever cared about them? Is there a special prewritten script they pull out and use whenever there’s an OD funeral?
These are all questions I don’t mind not having the answers to. I pull the covers up over my head. It’s just not worth it.
“Marley, please,” Chuckie’s mother pleads, and I feel horrible to tell her I can’t go, to make her life more difficult after all she’s done for me.
“I can’t,” I say again. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wu. But it’s not like it really matters if I go or not.”
“All right,” she says, before collecting the untouched plate of spaghetti she brought me earlier and carrying it out with the suit.
Not a minute later Chuckie’s father comes barging in and literally drags me out of bed. “You will go to the funeral,” he says. But really I’m grateful to him for making me go instead of leaving it up to me to decide. When I tell him I’m not comfortable wearing a suit, he helps me find a blue pullover sweater and gray slacks to borrow instead.
The service is short and sad, just like Ma’s life.
Surprisingly, nobody argues with my request to sit in the back row and wear Chuckie’s sunglasses. I hide there, watching the backs of twenty-five people’s heads but not really seeing even that much. I’m physically in the church, but my mind is still lying in bed at Chuckie’s house drowning in darkness and wondering how only three days could have passed in the outside world since Ma died.
Then Chuckie and his dad are helping me to my feet, and his mom is announcing that there will be a receiving line so people can offer their condolences. Chuckie and his parents and his younger brother stand just outside the church doors and position me in the middle of their line. I stand there in my darkness and reach out to shake the hand of whoever approaches me.
But the first person to approach is Scuzz, with his mom and sisters. Then Latreece is enclosing me in a massive hug. Latreece is followed by Will, and Terrell, and Juan, and Jennifer, and Denise, and K.C., and Tanika. I am grateful for the familiar faces that came to support me, to remind me there’s a life out there I still have to go on with and that they’re here to help me do that. Seeing the people I love is beautiful and powerful and the reminder I needed of how lucky a person I really am.
But no one seems to be here to say good-bye to my mother. It’s just like it was at the hospital, and the thought that nobody who actually knew and cared about Ma came to say good-bye to her is really sad. I see Hogan, and Greg, and Rick, and is that Dana sitting on the stairs smoking a cigarette? Even Dana came?
I see some of the other DJs from Cream—Dorian, and Jay, and Bob O.—and some of my Spazio’s co-workers, and a really tall white guy with blond hair. I do a double take on the guy and watch until he turns toward me. It’s Michael!
When he reaches me I can see that he’s been crying. His suit is wrinkled and he looks like he hasn’t slept. I look up and offer him my hand. “Marley,” he starts to say, and then he just breaks down, sobbing hysterically.
I lean in and place a hand on his shoulder. “Please don’t,” I whisper. “You didn’t do this to her. We tried so hard. That’s all anyone can do.”
Michael takes a deep breath and nods. “You’re right,” he manages. “But maybe I gave up too soon. Maybe I should have stuck it out, kept trying.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“No. I guess not.” He sighs again, but this one is more a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Marley. You call me anytime you need anything, okay? Anytime.”
I nod and drop my gaze back to the sidewalk, wondering how I’m going to get through the rest of this. How I’m going to face the next person and the next. My mouth aches from all the fake smiles. All the forced words. I just want to turn and run away.
“Marley?” a voice asks hesitantly. I look to the next person and can hardly believe what I’m seeing. I stare him up and down in shock, trying to take in his waiflike body, his sunken eyes, his fidgety movements.
“Don.”
Don, who snatched my last memory of my father right out from under me. Don, who helped my mother down the road to this fate. That same Don steps forward and holds out his hand. I stare at the hand he offers me for a long time. I know him holding it out is about a whole lot more than me shaking hands with him. It’s about him asking for forgiveness and wanting me to give it to him.
I stand there staring at his extended right hand and thinking about all the things it represents. I think about taking my own right hand and wrapping it around his bony neck and bringing the left one up to join it and strangling the shit out of him.
It takes all I have to even lift my arm, but I do it and I shake hands with that dope fiend who looks like he’s only a couple weeks away from ending up in a coffin himself and I forgive him. I let it go.
“Thanks,” he says, nodding to me and quickly moving away. I don’t know the three people who shake my hand next, but I know by the look of them that they’re also friends of Ma’s. Seeing them makes me feel oddly better. Maybe twenty out of twenty-five people at her funeral are here for me, but five still came because of Ma and that counts.
And then I see Jewel. She looks the same way she did at the hospital—no makeup, no colorful outfit, no wild hair. She holds out her hand and I take it.
“I wanted to tell you how sorry me and Hawk are for your loss,” she says quietly.
“Thank you, Jewel. It means a lot that you came.”
She leans in and kisses my cheek. “It didn’t work out with the other DJ,” she whispers. “He and Hawk couldn’t get along. Hawk isn’t taking him to Fever.”
I nod to her in reply as she lets go of my hand. She waves awkwardly to Chuckie and his mom and then rushes off to catch up with the rest of the Cream crew.
I don’t recognize the next two people who walk up. More people Ma must have known. The woman is older, in her fifties or sixties maybe, and the man at her side is practically holding her up. Her face is covered in heartbreak.
I offer my hand to her, and she takes it and clutches it tightly in both of hers and stares at me long and hard, like she’s studying me or something.
“Hi,” I offer, “are you a friend of my mother’s?”
The woman leans forward, touches her forehead to my hand, and begins to cry. I look down at her in confusion until the man with her steps forward.
“Marley,” he says, “my name is Raul Diego.”
I stare at him, and then at the woman, and then at him again.
“Do you know who I am?”
I look down at the woman’s bowed head. She’s still crying softly, still clutching my hand. “Are we… related?”
The man nods. “I’m your uncle. Your mother’s younger brother.” I open my mouth to respond, but no words will come. I just watch him in shock. “And this,” he says, gesturing to the woman who is now looking up again and holding my hand to her heart, “this is your grandmother.”
I don’t know exactly what happens right after that. It’s as if the world stops turning for a moment, and everything is still.
“Marley,” my grandmother cries out, my grandmother. “What a handsome young man you are,” she says. “My grandson. My beautiful grandson.” And then her tears become hysterical.
She pulls me to her and hugs me tight and I can feel her body shaking and her face wet with tears and it’s all too much. Raul steps forward and wraps his arms around me and my grandmother, and then I totally lose it. I start to sob, just sort of break down. I can’t believe they’re really here, that this is really my family.
We all stand there hugging and crying and I really keep at it, the tears falling for what seem like ages. It’s the first time I’ve cried since my mother died, the first time I’ve actually let any of it out. “It’s okay, Marley,” my grandmother whispers, and her voice is like a song, soothing and warm. “I’m here now. We’re here now. You cry for your mom. It’s safe now to cry for Roselia.”
And I do. We all cry together. Me and my uncle and my grandmother.
Meeting for the first time ever.
I have a family.