Your grandmother Martina didn’t talk about her upbringing, Antonio’s mother says, instead she would repeat the same refrain that her mother died when she was a small child so she had to live with her father, what other refrains do you remember hearing from my grandmother, Antonio says, asking his mother about his grandmother from his father’s side during Christmas #6 because Antonio was trying to insert the voices of his grandmothers into a novel set in Bogotá, recording his mother while his former wife and his two daughters tried to sleep in his mother’s guest room in Sioux Falls, rewinding his 1:46:43 recording of his mother and listening to her saying your grandmother Martina didn’t talk about her upbringing, just as neither Antonio’s sister nor Antonio ever talked about their upbringing, drawing flowcharts of his mother’s associations in his 1:46:43 recording of her as winter #8 comes to an end without news of when and how his sister will be transferred from Milwaukee to Baltimore, tracing his mother’s shifts from one anecdote to another, starting with Martina, the ice cream enterprises of her brother Lucho, the humorless enterprises of her brother Francisco, Lucho’s wife saying to Lucho you’re going to change or you’re going to change because I’m not divorcing you, her brother Francisco who calls her now that his family is also falling apart, all of it in the first 19:28 of his 1:46:43 recording of his mother sitting across from him at her dining table during Christmas #6, his daughters sneaking into the living room to pirouette for them like child actors performing the role of daughters who, like his own daughters, had already attended dance performances choreographed by Merce Cunningham, Sasha Waltz, Martha Graham — my favorite was the dancer with the metal wings going rarr rarr, Tata — the phone not ringing in his mother’s kitchen with news of his sister, who before Christmas #6 had severed all communications with his mother after she’d conjoined reality and irreality for the first time, in other words this was his mother’s first Christmas in Sioux Falls without his sister either there in person or calling her twice a day, the imaginary Christmas lights flickering on his mother’s Christmas tree while he recorded his mother talking about her own upbringing, yes, he can invent Christmas lights flickering behind them and he can invent a family trip on Christmas Eve to a Mormon temple where hundreds of teenagers listened to a handful of teenagers onstage strumming about the lord their savior, but this kind of invention equates to a noninvention because during Christmas #6 his mother had indeed decorated a Christmas tree with flickering lights, and they did take a family trip downtown where they chanced upon a teenage Mormon temple, he just didn’t think of either while listening to his recording of his mother at work until he wondered whether he would need to describe the setting of his recording session if he were to write about it, as he’s planning to do whenever he’s able to write again, or describe the days before and after he recorded his mother during Christmas #6 in Sioux Falls, where his mother still lives with her American husband, and as Antonio listens to his recording of his mother, he decides to prolong his time with his mother’s voice by (1) drawing flowcharts of her associations, (2) transcribing her recording in the original Spanish, (3) translating his transcription of her recording, (4) calling his mother after steps (1) to (3), although unfortunately these calls probably won’t last 1:46:43 but less than 1:00.
None of us wanted to play cards with my brother Lucho, Antonio’s mother says, except yes he would convince me, late at night during the school break he would tiptoe to my room, at midnight he would knock on my door, Leonorcita, he would say, Leonorcita, yes what’s the matter, let’s play cards, he would say, no because you’re going to cheat and then we’ll fight and then Mom and Dad will punish us, I promise you I won’t cheat, he would say, and so he would come into my room and we would play cards, but with money, he would say, how old were you, Antonio says, eight or nine perhaps, and so when I didn’t have money, we’re talking cents here, I would say I can’t play with money I don’t have any money and he would say don’t worry I will lend you some, and if you win, you return it to me, and if you lose, you owe me for next time, no I don’t have any money, and he would hand me five cents and say there you are so you can play, and I knew he was going to win because he always cheated so I would ask him to stand up and of course he’d hidden cards on the side of his shirt, he was an artist when it came to tricking me so he could win, and in the end of course we would quarrel, you’re a cheater you’re always cheating, don’t shout, he would say, don’t shout, until Mom and Dad would discover us and fiiiit, they would send us to bed, but before leaving my room he would attempt to charge me, remember I lent you this much and now you owe me this much, he would say, no I already told you no, and later yes, he would rent his comic books, but not so that he could then buy chocolate for the poor, as my mother told you, but because Lucho loved money, all his enterprises were so that he could amass money, everything he did was so that he could have more money, even if he accumulated it little by little, that was part of the fun for him, he’d always been that way, I know because I was the one who spent the most time with him and he always wanted me to join his enterprises like for instance he convinced me to make ice cream with him so we could sell it, but without Dad finding out because he’d forbidden us, and so Lucho would say okay but you have to contribute to the investment for the materials, for the coconut, for the, well, Mom would give us the milk and the sugar but the coconut yes, we had to buy it, and so we were supposed to invest half and half, and so we would make the ice cream, place it in the freezer, and then we would tell the kids in the neighborhood that we had ice cream but to not come when Dad was in the house, but sometimes Dad would park inside the garage so the kids didn’t know Dad was home and they would come and call out ice cream, señorita, and Dad would admonish us but later he would forget and we would restart our business, and Lucho would do the accounting for every ice cream, how many we’d made, how many we’d eaten, and if we’d eaten any he would try to charge us, although between me and him we were allowed one per day, but of course we would eat more than one per day, and so Lucho would chase me and my brothers around the house trying to charge us for the ice cream we’d eaten, yes, Lucho was something else, Antonio’s mother says, and as Antonio translates his transcription of his mother he remembers playing cards at a tournament with his uncle Lucho at the Colombian Social Club in Miami, which consisted of a converted garage in an alley, playing cards as a team when Antonio was fifteen or fourteen and his uncle Lucho flashing him severe looks whenever Antonio would bungle his hand because goddamn it he should have known those cards had shown up already, flashing him severe looks that Antonio must have enjoyed because, unlike the severe looks of his father, Antonio knew they weren’t a prelude to him being kicked or shouted at but that afterward his uncle Lucho would guffaw with him about winning, losing, not drinking again during tournaments, and so when it was time to share the ice cream earnings Lucho would say no you’re in debt with me, Antonio’s mother says, you ate too many ice creams so we don’t have any earnings left, all the earnings Lucho would take for himself, but with him it was always amusing, always he’s been funny and inventive and charming, and so I didn’t join his ventures for the money but to spend time with him, to share these moments with him and he’s still the one that calls me the most, when he heard what was happening to your sister he called me immediately and he checks on me every week, the rest of your uncles don’t like to bring it up.
God will punish you, my mother would say, the lord said that what you inflict on your mother and father will return to you fivefold, so now you know what awaits you in life, my god what’s going to happen to me, I would say, what will I have to endure later in life, everything magnified through a child’s imagination, of course, if I’d said to my mother, for instance, I am running away from this house because I can’t stand it here anymore because my parents are unjust, and my mother would reply your words will be punished by god because a son or a daughter can’t say this to her parents, and later the nightmares I would have my god what’s going to happen to me, what will I have to endure later in life, and I would try to find in the bible where it said that I was going to be punished and I couldn’t find it, but my mother always invoked divine retribution whenever we did something wrong because hers was a religion of torture, of punishment, not of spirituality, that’s what I remember the most from being a child my mother accusing me, pointing with her finger at everything that awaited me as a consequence of my actions, her voice trailing off so Antonio rewinds his recording of his mother and tries to soothe her as if she’s his own child — sana sana / culito de rana — don’t worry Mom god doesn’t exist he won’t punish you for trying to run away from your house just like I tried to run away from yours when I was your age — rewinding his recording of his mother to trace what had prompted his mother to begin talking about divine retribution, right, okay, his question to his mother had been what refrains do you remember hearing from your mother when you were growing up, which was the same question he’d asked her about his father’s mother because Antonio had been trying to insert the voices of his grandmothers into a novel set in Bogotá, and as he listens to his mother saying that god will punish you, that the lord said that what you inflict on your mother and father will return to you fivefold, he wonders how his own daughters would answer the same question about refrains, worrying that perhaps their answer would be just as bleak — Tata always said either way we’re all going to die — yes but Mama ordered him to stop saying that so he snipped his refrain to either way we’re all going to — or Tata would sometimes say don’t forget to bring a towel, which years later we found out was a refrain from a pot smoking character called Towelie in an asinine cartoon show called South Park — but no, Antonio will not worry for too long about their answers because tonight, as his tasks as a database analyst come to an end for the day, he will record his daughters and ask them what expressions do they think they will remember from growing up with their mother and father, starting with Eva, what I don’t get it, Eva says, what will you remember your Mom saying to you, that she always loves me, Eva says, no the kind of things she would say to you, that she loves me, Eva says, what else, that she will never go away, Eva says, what about funny things, once she said Tata eats like a pig, Eva says, okay what about phrases Tata says to you that you will remember, that he loves me, Eva says, what else, another thing that’s super funny is when you say Mama’s butt is base, Eva says, and that’s it, his recording of his youngest daughter Eva lasts 4:13, and as Antonio rewinds his recording of Eva he wonders if she’s simply too young to understand what it means to remember the past, to blur, avoid, recast aspects of the past — what child would believe you if you told her that forty years into the future her head will carry thousands of vague voices at the same time? — and perhaps if someone would have asked Antonio as a child what expressions do you think you will remember from growing up with your mother and father, Antonio would have never guessed that his answer, forty years into the future, would be I don’t remember any expressions from either my mother or father — I love how many times you’ve said my Mom had an expression, Stephen Colbert says to Vice President Biden — remember nobody is better than you, Vice President Biden says, but you are not better than anyone — and then Antonio records Ada, who says, in response to the question about expressions she will remember from her mother, Ada no, Ada says, what else, Ada sem, Ada says, what else, Ada můžeš sem na chvíli přijít, Ada says, what does that mean, Ada can you come here for a second, Ada says, what else, Ada můžeš sem na chvíli přijít, Ada says, what does that mean, Ada come clean your room, Ada says, what else, Ada come eat the phone is on the plate, or Ada stop it, or Ada go brush your teeth, that’s all I can think of — I never say come eat the phone is on the plate that’s what my mother used to say to me, Antonio’s former wife messages him — what does it mean, Antonio says — it doesn’t translate well it’s like saying there’s a phone call waiting for you at the table why are you asking all these questions, Antonio’s former wife says — and unfortunately Antonio tells his former wife about his question and Ada’s quotidian answers to his question and his former wife texts him a sad emoji and stops responding to his texts, refusing to tell him how to transcribe the last three Czech phrases Ada had said to him, okay now the same question but about your father, Antonio says, gooooool, Ada says, what else, go score some goals today, Ada says, what else, cut cut cut, Ada says (Antonio has hired a private soccer coach for Ada, an Italian coach who likes to say cut cut cut with a heavy Italian accent, meaning cut to the right, cut to the left to skirt defenders), you sing a lot of songs, Ada says, what else, Eva come play the game with us, Ada says, what else, Mamo where are my glasses, Ada says, Mamo where are my quarters, snoring we took a video of you snoring, snoring is not a refrain, Antonio says, I know, Ada says, perrito / perrito / perrito pierninuska, or move up, move up you say that a lot when I play soccer, what else, you have to use your body when you’re defending, Ada says, you think you will remember these when you grow up, Antonio says, definitively, Ada says, okay let’s forget about expressions and think about moments, Antonio says, you are playing with Perrito and Perrito pees, or you’re going to the bathroom and you go tpppppft, or you are drawing numbers on my back before going to sleep, or you are reading me a bookie, or you are slapping Mama’s butt, or you’re looking for your glasses, for your quarters, for your keys, when I took the money from the table, but I didn’t yell at you for that, Antonio says, because you would be mad at me and that was after the time you said that if I don’t get good grades you will ground me that was mean, Ada says, what else, what I will also remember for the rest of my life is my first goal and the car going beep beep beep after the ball went through the goalie and hit that car, Ada says, and unfortunately Ada’s erasures are already happening, Antonio thinks, because during dinner a few weeks ago Ada had accused him of not attending her soccer games and his former wife had to intervene and correct her by saying no, Ada, your father has only missed two games ever because he was out of town due to his job, and Antonio had to remind Ada of being there when she was four and she scored her first goal and the car going beep beep beep, which is probably the reason why she brought up her first goal when he asked her about moments she will remember from growing up with her father.
We barely saw Dad, Antonio’s mother says, sometimes we only saw him on Sunday afternoons because he worked a lot, though we would share moments with him here and there, he would call home at around nine, nine thirty to say he was coming and so all of us would sit around the table to share with him that moment when he was going to have dinner, and so he would order, well, it was already known that a huge slab of meat had to be prepared for him, a platter of meat with rice and lentils, and he would cut us a piece of meat and feed it to us, no we already ate, we would say, open your mouth and eat, he would say, because he had this notion that in order for us to grow we had to eat meat otherwise we weren’t going to grow, and he would say to save money your mother doesn’t give you enough meat, which was true, and so Dad would buy meat and would feed each one of us to make sure we ate meat, yes, at home we had abundant food, that was the main preoccupation, but it was true my mother would put some money aside to buy herself jewelry that she would never wear because either the maids stole it or something would happen because the jewelry would disappear, and so Dad figured it out so he decided to start buying the meat, which was the only food item he would buy himself, well, meat but also cheese from Cúcuta, his hometown in Norte de Santander, and so he would come home with his cheese and those tasty square crackers from La Universal, and so we had to sit around him at the table, each one of us had to eat a slice of meat that he would feed to us like birds, a slice of meat plus the square crackers with cheese from Cúcuta, and Mom would say but they already brushed their teeth, Víctor, they can brush their teeth again, he would say, open your mouths, eat, there you have cheese and a glass of milk, but we already ate, Dad, we’re full, bah, at this hour you must have digested your food already, because we would eat at six, six thirty, and here Antonio rewinds his recording of his mother because this is his favorite part, his gruff grandfather feeding meat to his mother, to Uncle Francisco, Lucho, Hernán, Víctor Roberto, his gruff grandfather who changed everyone’s life by becoming an American citizen and providing green cards for his children and his children’s children — your grandfather memorized the English dictionary and studied day and night so he could pass the medical exam in North Carolina, Antonio’s mother said — who paid for Antonio’s plane ticket to New Haven because Antonio couldn’t even afford a plane ticket from Chapel Hill to New Haven, and Mom would say but they already brushed their teeth, Víctor, Antonio’s mother says, well they can brush their teeth again, open your mouths, eat, and Mom had us trained and would say don’t take away food from your father he arrives tired from work, but we don’t take anything from him he gives it to us, no, open your mouth, my dad would say, and he would feed us one by one, so we would eat and finish the square crackers, okay, it’s late and you have to wake up early, so we would go to our room, yes, that was the part of the day we had to share with Dad, that was sacred to us, for Dad it was sacred, in other words we couldn’t skip it, everyone come sit down, he would say, and we would all come to the table to be with him.
Dad was addicted to stress, Antonio’s mother says, in other words he would function better under stress, and so in the morning during the week Mom would start with her recitation of Víctor, Víctor, it’s 7:25 already, your daughter has to be at school at 7:30, which was a problem because from our house to the school it was twelve or fifteen minutes by car, but Dad would leave at 7:25 and I would say my god we’re not going to make it, this is so embarrassing the nuns are going to reprimand me again, every morning the same story, bah, you don’t have to worry I will speak to the nuns, my dad would say, and so he would sit me in the car and he would say okay now hold on, there was no safety belts back then, hold on, and we would speed out of the house all the way to Maria Auxiliadora, my elementary school, hold on, he would say, and he would speed us there, because he always liked to speed, running red lights, yellow lights, and when he would see a red light he would look on one side, on the other, and he would say hold on and zoom us through, and so I would hold on and go zssssisst with the wind on my face, and the nuns would reprimand him, of course, and he would appease them by bringing them medicines, by offering them free medical consultations, yes, tomorrow I will come on time, madrecita, you know that I’m busy, but why don’t you just put her on the school bus so the girl doesn’t have any more problems, yes, madrecita, tomorrow, madrecita, until finally I would cry and say I am not going to school I am too embarrassed of always being late, and so eventually I was allowed to go in the school bus, but that was years later when I was in sixth grade, and here Antonio pauses his recording of his mother, closes his eyes and sees his mother and his grandfather speeding across Bogotá — grandpa? — yes what want do you want I don’t have any money — I understand now why you wanted to drive my mother every day that was your special time with her — good for you go water your fertile imagination elsewhere and leave me alone — do I remind you of you? — you’re studious like I was, sure — I see an umbilical cord like a fire hose connecting you and me across the universe — stop reading your mother’s quack therapy recipes and go back to your database job — and so my Mom would say Víctor, it’s 7:25 already, Víctor, it’s 7:20 already, all right woman I know leave me alone, every morning the same story, let me finish my coffee, you already had like four, Víctor, goddamn it why do you have to be counting my coffees you’re not the one having them, from when he would open his eyes he would drink his coffee, black and concentrated in espresso cups, and he would drink the last coffee on his way to the car so the domestics had the coffee ready for him at the door, here’s your coffee, Dr. Hernández, and it was all a pretext, later I understood it, because when he worked here in the United States it was the same story, he had to be at work at eight in the morning and if it would take him fifteen minutes to get there he would leave ten minutes prior, and so he would have to speed there, because he was addicted to stress, that’s when I understood it, but Mom was like a clock, every morning repeating Víctor you’re going to be late, Víctor, they were like cats and dogs, that was their dynamic, that’s how they courted each other, that’s how they fell in love, how they married, how they raised seven children, and that’s how they lived until Dad died.
You can’t live here anymore, Dad said, you can’t continue to disrespect the rules of this house, your siblings, your mother, you’ve been given many opportunities but you’ve refused to change, and so Dad expelled my brother Víctor Roberto from the house, and yet despite our fights with Víctor Roberto, because yes he was always inciting us and fighting with us, plus he was the only one who would dare talk back to Dad, we missed him, our oldest brother, when is he coming back, we would say, when is Víctor Roberto coming back, and Víctor Roberto hasn’t forgiven us because he felt that he was expelled from the family, when what he needed at the time was help from us, but in those days psychological help just wasn’t something families sought out, I think he started doing drugs and his personality started to change, although he was always hyperactive, extremely intelligent but inconstant in his pursuits, he knew he was intelligent but he wouldn’t put his intelligence into practice (and here Antonio makes a note to ask his mother more details about Víctor Roberto’s pursuits because he vaguely remembers hearing over the years that Víctor Roberto either piloted jet planes or designed jet planes or rockets but was thrown out of the military for misconduct (and here Antonio decides not to pursue a potential linkage between Víctor Roberto being expelled from everywhere and his own history of being thrown out of his elementary school, his high school, his former apartment where he used to live with Ada and Eva and his former wife, thrown out of so many places that Antonio has wondered if that’s the only way he feels most at ease, and what he also remembers about Víctor Roberto is that the domestic at the apartment where Antonio lived with his mother had instructions not to let Víctor Roberto in if his mother wasn’t there, and years later, when his grandfather, Dr. Víctor Hernández, died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina — goodbye Grandpa, thank you for everything — Víctor Roberto flew to Chapel Hill and apparently checkbooks and important papers from his last will and testament disappeared in his wake)), and so Víctor Roberto had a lot problems with Francisco, Antonio’s mother says, because Francisco was the perfect son, and Mom would always compare between Francisco and Víctor Roberto, Dad never compared between us but Mom did, because for Mom Francisco was a reflection of her Italian side of the family, oh so you’re the perfect child, Víctor Roberto would say, you’re the blue blood, and so they would fight each other all the time, and by the time they became adolescents these fights became frightening, and Mom couldn’t control them anymore because they were men now, and I know Víctor Roberto thinks we were relieved when he was gone but that wasn’t the case because we missed him, he was our oldest brother, he would occupy the corner of the dining table, next to Mom at the head of the table, as the oldest he would sit next to her and the rest of us would have to accommodate ourselves whichever way, and so to always see him in that seat, which Francisco occupied after Víctor Roberto left, no, we would say, Francisco shouldn’t be sitting there, that’s always going to be Víctor Roberto’s place, I was always the one fighting about it and I would tell Mom don’t allow Francisco to sit there that’s Víctor Roberto’s place, Víctor Roberto isn’t here anymore, Mom would say, he isn’t here now but he’s going to come back, I would say, and Mom wouldn’t say anything and Francisco continued to occupy Víctor Roberto’s place, which I felt was an injustice, and later when I studied constellation therapy I learned that when someone is excluded from the family system, the family system undergoes a distortion (and here Antonio decides to order books on constellation therapy to check if they yield any associative threads of interest, although the titles of Bert Hellinger’s constellation books (Laws of Healing, Love’s Hidden Symmetry, Looking Into the Souls of Children) grate on him, a cynical Colombian with a penchant for being thrown out of everywhere), even more if Francisco took over Víctor Roberto’s place, as if Víctor Roberto didn’t exist anymore, as if Francisco had become the most important, yes, Francisco did feel he’d become the most important in the family, and that Víctor Roberto wasn’t there anymore was a great sadness for us because as a family we were really close, all of us during lunch, dinner, vacations, and all of a sudden he was gone, and to this day Víctor Roberto hasn’t escaped this state of feeling rejected, of feeling we all rejected him, to this day he speaks as if we all rejected him, and so I think this was a great sorrow for my Mom but she couldn’t deal with him alone, she needed help from Dad but because Dad worked so much he couldn’t be at home more often, and so that was the only option Dad had, to throw Víctor Roberto out, and because Dad had come from studying in the United States where children leave the house when they turn eighteen, perhaps he felt it was okay, but in Bogotá this wasn’t part of our tradition, children left the house when they married, and so I think life marked him, to me this marked Víctor Roberto, who was the smartest one of us, to this day he continues just as irresponsible, complaining and blaming us for his misfortunes, never coming through in life.
I did fall in love with somebody else, Dad said, but my family was more important, I wasn’t going to allow my children to be unhappy, to live far away from me, and for me that was more important than the person I’d met, and I don’t regret it because I had you near me, and it hurts me that your mother somehow felt it, although I don’t think she ever found out, she must have felt that I had found someone else, and as Antonio rewinds his recording of his mother he wonders if his mother was recasting this anecdote about her father, turning it into a moral tale of familial love and sacrifice and so on to remind him of his responsibilities as a father, and yet he doesn’t call her to ask her about this anecdote because he barely talks to his mother, hasn’t called her on any of his (1) to (3) cycles as he had imagined he would do when he started listening to his recording of her, has barely talked to his mother since the time when he decided to leave his former wife and his mother sided with his former wife, who at the time was pregnant with Eva, and of course in retrospect he can see that his mother was right, he should have ignored his misgivings about being a father again and stayed with his former wife while she was pregnant, but six years ago, and this he hasn’t forgotten, the feeling of being trapped in a life he hadn’t chosen overwhelmed any consideration about a child he didn’t yet know (and here Antonio searches for the emails his mother had intended for his former wife back then but inadvertently sent to him instead — even though my son is a great father to Ada with his attitude he is losing his rights to be a father of the new baby, his mother wrote, unfortunately my son is not giving himself the opportunity and prefers to follow the path of his father — no, Antonio thinks, he can’t stand to read these emails again, they are still too painful), and so I asked Dad if he fell in love with someone else when he came to the United States to study, Antonio’s mother says, yes, Dad said, but why does that time come to mind, because when you came back you would play romantic songs, and I was very little, I must have been five, four and a half, and I remember you would play a song called el reloj — reloj / detén / tu camino — Dad had brought back a record player and music, in those days it wasn’t common yet to have a record player, and he would play that one record over and over, he would arrive home and to relax he would play that song, and later, when I was much older, I would sing that song, and he would say to me oh shut up already you’re out of tune, and I would say let me sing I sing because I like the song, no, no, you’re out of tune quiet down, I never heard him sing again, only that one song back then, when I was so little still.
I wrote Dad a letter, Antonio’s mother says, after that surgery on his pancreas when he almost died I wrote him a letter telling him that he’d been given an opportunity to change his life, that he could have been gone just like that, that all that money he’d amassed he wasn’t going to be able to take with him, and that it was about time that he share with us what he felt, who he really was, and when he was at the hospital, for a month he was at that hospital, he would ask my mother to read him my letter every day, read me my daughter’s letter, he would say, and she would read it to him and tears would pour out, and from then on he changed, in the last fifteen years he had left after that surgery to his pancreas he became more loving, more worried about his grandchildren and his children, he would call me three, four times a day when I came to live in the United States, he became more worried about us, I mean, it wasn’t all about him anymore, he was more worried about others, and that’s how he began to help everyone, and if someone in the family needed anything, he would give it to them, and your sister when she called your uncle Luis, who still manages Dad’s inheritance, your sister told him my grandfather says that if he was alive he would have helped me, because she was calling to ask Luis for a donation when she had to stop working due to her condition, and so in her desperation she would tell Luis that she was speaking to your grandfather and that your grandfather told her he would have helped her if he was alive, and this was true, Antonio, he would have helped her.
My grandmother the nurse quarreling with my grandfather the doctor on the stairs of a hospital in Bogotá before they even had their first lunch together, Antonio thinks on his way home from his database analyst job at Prudential Investments, my grandfather Víctor saying to my grandmother Remedios I already found out your name what kind of parent calls his daughter Remedios, my grandmother saying to my grandfather I am not moving to the United States how can you expect me to leave half of my children here, a nurse telling my grandmother to please not leave Dr. Víctor alone in the United States because there’s another woman who’s trying to steal him from her, my grandmother saying to the teenagers who bag groceries at her local supermarket in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, moo, leche, because she didn’t know how to say milk in English yet (Antonio’s mother laughing as she tries to imitate her mother saying moo, leche — you weren’t embarrassed that they didn’t understand you I would have been so embarrassed, Mom — bah tarados who don’t know Spanish they should at least know the meaning of leche —), my grandfather the surgeon phoning my grandmother the mother of seven children to say he was coming home and everyone rushing to clean the house because he was a militant man of sanitation, inspecting everything to make sure it was in order when he arrived home, my mother saying your grandmother never spoke ill of your grandfather despite his bad temper and his numerous flaws, we never thought of our father in negative terms that was just our life, how we coexisted with Dad (the summer before starting college Antonio lived with Grandpa the surgeon and Grandma the housewife and Grandpa would yell at Antonio for playing his music too loud and Grandma would yell at him for not washing the blender after making his protein shakes and on Saturday mornings Grandma would wake up early and drive to the garage sales in the neighborhood, proudly bringing back an ancient bowling bag for Antonio, for instance, and because he was still a teenager Antonio would put on his headphones and not talk to his grandmother for days, or until she issued him an ultimatum (Antonio likes to believe he learned English by watching Jerry Lewis marathons on his grandparents’ television)), my mother not including in her narrative that because of what her parents were like she decided against moving to the United States with them, finding an excuse to stay in Bogotá by marrying a man she barely knew, a man with whom she would have two children, Antonio and Estela, who would both grow up to prefer that this man didn’t exist, who have severed all contact with this man so as to pretend he doesn’t exist (Estela when she was eleven, Antonio when he was eighteen), and as Antonio arrives at the apartment where his daughters live he’s resigned to the possibility of encountering this man in his sleep again, as he has done for more than twenty years, although in his sleep Antonio doesn’t play basketball with him on his grandmother’s patio, as he had done with this man, nor does Antonio play chess with him at a second-rate tennis club on Sundays, as he had done with this man, nor does he watch interplanetary war movies at Cine Los Mayas, no, in his sleep the scarred lunar landscape and the catastrophe around him is always the same, or at least he prefers to remember it in this vague one-version way instead of as an accretion of variations on the same impulse, he hasn’t written down any of his encounters with this man so as to make them less concrete, more forgettable, and although he can’t recall anymore if his first encounter with this man in his sleep frightened him twenty years ago, by now his encounters with him have become yet another image he has to contend with, in other words while he’s awake, if he happens to remember his encounters with this man on a scarred lunar landscape, he isn’t frightened or traumatized or saddened, absolutely not, one can get used to anything (except to watching The Exorcist), and even if he knows there’s likely a correlation between the brutality of his encounters with this man while he’s asleep and his outbursts while he’s awake, what is he to do except hope none of these outbursts overturn his life irreversibly, and perhaps this is one of the reasons he has begun playing soccer again after not playing soccer for twenty years, because he has always associated soccer with violence, the mad sprints on the wings, the unhinged tackles, the name calling, the red cards thrown back at the referee’s face, and perhaps soccer not only depletes him of the energy that fuels his violent outbursts but brings him back to those years in Bogotá when he would propel himself down the soccer field every day while his sister was discovering that when she was little the man known as her father had committed repugnant acts against her that would roil her life and her reason despite her attempts to pretend this man didn’t exist, and as Antonio falls asleep he’s resigned at experiencing the terror that comes with his encounters with this man, yes, just because he’s used to these encounters doesn’t mean he doesn’t still experience terror, terror like in those horror films he doesn’t watch because why would he want to feed material to the landscape around his encounters with this man — feed your violence, you swine — terror like when he witnesses what he does to this man in that scarred lunar landscape, the man approaching him, an ax in Antonio’s hand.