Weekend Visit

“You’re doing the right thing,” her mother assured her. “You’ll feel better after this, I promise.”

MJ wasn’t really listening to her. She was staring out through the car window, watching the world zip past without really seeing any of it. She was trying to think of anything else besides where they were going and why and what she had to do when they got there.

It had felt right to her that morning, probably because she was so freaked out about the Saturday show getting canceled, and so worried about what was going to happen with the school. Going with Mom to visit Papi finally felt like something she wanted to do, instead of something MJ was being forced to do. Victory Academy had become a way to escape, to escape everything, but now she needed an escape from her fear of losing the school and wrestling and all the people she’d come to know there.

That feeling of rightness was fading with every mile they drove. It was being replaced by the familiar knots in her stomach, the same painful tightness that had happened there when she’d tried to make this trip with her mother before.

It always looked like a park at first, and MJ liked parks, so she could almost make herself believe everything was going to be fine. As their car moved slowly through the black iron gates, however, she started to see the headstones. There were hundreds and probably more, some little and some big, but all of them were there for the same reason; they marked where a person was buried in the cemetery.

Papi had died on a Tuesday, just a regular Tuesday like the hundreds and thousands of Tuesdays that came before. Her parents were upstairs in their old house, and MJ heard her mother yelling. At first she thought Mom was mad at Papi, and they were having a fight. It didn’t take long for MJ to realize her mother wasn’t mad, she was scared.

When MJ tried to go into their bedroom, her mother ordered her to stay out. When the ambulance came, her mother held her back so she never really saw Papi’s face as they wheeled him out of that room, two big paramedics in their uniforms trying to save his life after his heart had stopped beating for no reason MJ ever came to understand. She still remembered the flashing lights of the ambulance as they followed it to the hospital in her mother’s car. MJ couldn’t believe Papi was inside of it.

She never saw her father again, first because her mother wouldn’t let her, and then later at the hospital, because MJ didn’t want to see him. The doctor asked them, but she just couldn’t. If she didn’t see him like that, then he couldn’t be dead, or at least that was what she told herself at the time.

MJ barely remembered the hospital, but she remembered the cemetery. She remembered their whole family gathered here, both sides, Mom’s family barely talking to Papi’s and Papi’s family ignoring them right back, like they were at two different funerals. She remembered her abuelita, Papi’s mother, crying without making a single sound. She remembered the uncomfortable dress she wore that her mother picked out and MJ absolutely hated.

There was nothing about that day that wasn’t awful, and the worst of it happened in this place, where her papi was buried and would remain forever.

Their car slowed down, and her mother parked alongside the curb of the road that seemed to wind endlessly through the inside of the cemetery.

MJ was reminding herself over and over again about how she wanted to tell Papi about the wrestling school, and what was happening, and everything she was afraid of losing.

There was one problem, though. MJ wanted to tell him about all of those things so he could reassure her, so he could make it all okay like he used to.

He couldn’t do that for her anymore, and she knew it.

“Are you ready?” Mom asked.

MJ nodded, reaching up and grabbing the handle of the car door.

Her hand just stayed there, holding onto that handle and not moving.

She felt like she couldn’t breathe, but she was breathing, fast and hard.

“I can’t,” MJ said, and it was barely a whisper.

“What, baby?” her mother asked, not able to hear her.

“I can’t do it!” she said, louder and much angrier.

MJ wasn’t mad at Mom for making her repeat the words, she was mad at herself for saying them.

Her mother didn’t say anything back at first. Maybe she was waiting to see if her daughter would calm down and change her mind, MJ didn’t know, but the silence only made it worse.

“Are you sure, Maya?” she asked, doing that thing MJ hated where she asked a question and obviously wanted a specific answer.

MJ shook her head really fast, not wanting to speak anymore. It was somehow less painful if she didn’t have to admit it.

“Okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. We’ll try again another time.”

Her mother was trying not to sound like it, but she was disappointed, MJ was certain. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, just as it wasn’t the first time they’d driven back to the cemetery to visit Papi only for MJ to not be able to get out of the car.

She stayed quiet while her mother turned them around and drove them back out through the gates.

The farther away they got, the more MJ’s heart slowed down and her brain stopped fizzing and her stomach untied itself.

“I’m sorry I broke our deal,” she muttered a few minutes later, remembering the promise she’d made that if Mom allowed her to train at Victory Academy, MJ would finally make this visit.

“Don’t worry about that,” her mother insisted. “I told you, this isn’t part of that. You’ll visit Papi when you’re ready.”

MJ couldn’t tell her mother that she’d never be ready, but it felt like the truth.