THREE SONS ONE BASTARD
The waiting room was maybe the worst place to be when your mother is somewhere down the hallway fraught with a combination of pneumonia and a massive stroke. The doctors are doing their best, they always say they are and you have to take them at their word. My two older brothers sit silently while one watches the T.V. on the monitor and the other buries his face in a magazine. My father sits there stone-faced as ever with an open newspaper in front of him.
My two sisters are on their way but who knows when that is? There's always some long drawn out detailed story as to the who, what, where, why, and how they were late. Then there are my cousins who I am not in the mood for, just a bunch of shit talking wannabes and who can dish it out but can't take it. I've got to get this out of the way before everyone else gets here, or maybe I don't give a shit if anyone gets here or doesn't. Either way, I don't get my chance, at least not right away. The doctor walks in and everyone gets up to hear the news, he looks like he's been sweating because his scrubs are soaking wet. His name is Doctor Worley and he makes it a point to shake each of our hands, after which he runs his hands through his hair and says to my father, "Mr. Fernandez, we were unable to save your wife, we did everything we could but in the process she suffered a massive heart attack and expired. I apologize, we really did do our best. We're going to clean her up and when she's ready we'll come and get you and you can see her." He shook our hands again and left the waiting room, my brothers Donald and Peter stood there crying and then they both hugged each other. When the reached for my father he refused to hold them, instead, he said, "We're men, and men don't hug."
I couldn't hold it in any longer, I'd been hiding it for too long and I couldn't stand the sight of him much less listen to his lies anymore, "You can't hug your own sons but you can hug and kiss that booze hag at Fiona's bar right?"
"What did you say?" My father pretended to be shocked and he feigned ignorance but I knew the truth because I saw it with my own two eyes.
"You heard me, you've been fucking that booze hag all this while and now you have the nerve to come here and not cry after you find out that Mom just died? This bitch must suck your dick pretty good huh? Is it with dentures or without ?" Even before Donald or Peter could get to me, my father took a swing and punched me right in the jaw. It dropped me but I got right back up. "Is that all you got Mr. Welterweight golden gloves champ of Wainaku village?"
He went to swing again but I beat him to the punch with a kick to his nuts, it lifted him and dropped him. My brothers were shocked at first but then they grabbed a hold of me and slapped me around, I grabbed Peter and shoved him hard into Donald and then I left. I ran to a phone booth two blocks away and called my girlfriend to come to get me since I rode to the hospital in my father's car. On the way to her place I grabbed her hand and kissed and told her that I didn't want to talk right away because I was still absorbing everything that just happened.
............
My mother had already suffered a stroke that rendered the entire right side of her body completely numb, she could walk but her speech caused her to talk like an infant child in broken English. Her right hand was curled into a permanent claw. She only had three mu'umu'u which she wore, a purple one, a flowered one, and a brown one, her favorite was the purple. Every morning you could hear her bed creak and then you heard the sound of one footstep and then the thump of the cane would follow. She was always on the way to have her coffee before she did anything else, it was the only way that her day could begin. She had only four sets of teeth left, two on the bottom and two on the top, she looked like one of those old sailors from a Popeye cartoon. I helped in the mornings before I left for work and in the afternoon or later at night when I got back from working or hanging out with my girlfriend. She was good about helping out whenever she could, luckily my mother liked her, her name was Haunani. My brothers did their parts on the weekends and my sisters only showed up whenever they needed money, otherwise, you could never find them for help.
Usually, when Haunani and I would drink, we'd buy a couple of six packs and go in my room while we watched a movie or something. However, on one particular night Haunani wanted to go to a bar to drink so I figured why not? We stopped in at Fiona's bar and the second I walked through the door, there was my father sitting at a booth at the far end of the bar with his tongue down the throat of a seasoned booze hag. For some reason, I glanced under the table where they sat and saw his hand up her dress as they continued kissing. We left immediately and stopped at a liquor store before we went back to my place only to find my two lovely sisters trying to get my mother to give them her bank account information. Charla and Rose, two bloodsucking gold diggers and my blood sisters, I kicked them both out and took my girlfriend into my room and told her what I'd just seen. She couldn't believe it, after that I told her not to come to my house anymore because it would just be too awkward, Surprisingly she agreed, she wouldn't be able to look at my father with a straight face. On the nights that one of us was supposed to be watching my mother, I would sneak off to Fiona's and park down the road and then hide somewhere in Fiona's parking lot so that I could spy on my dad. This fucker wasn't just schtupping the booze hag but he was playing father to her kids. He gave them money and bought them dinner where they would all eat together.
Motherfucker.
.............
At my mother's services I stood clear across the graveyard where I could observe everything from afar, everybody was there. Even my mother's family from Pukalani, Maui. The place was full and it sounded like a wonderful gathering had taken place. I watched as they all gathered under the tent when the final rites were given and the casket was lowered into the ground. My siblings grieved together and what from what I understand, my sisters made certain that they removed all of my mother's jewelry from her body before the casket was closed and kept it. My father, stoic as ever made no show or gesture of emotion and so no one knew if he was actually grieving or not. Sitting in the back row beneath the tent was the booze hag and her kids. Haunani attended as my spy and told me that the booze hag's name was Beatrice Enamoto. I didn't bother to attend the dinner back at the house nor did I attend the one-year memorial. My grief was private, between my mother and myself with no one except Haunani around.
.............
6 Months Later
I happened to be walking the aisles of the Waipahu Supermarket when I suddenly froze in my tracks. I heard the familiar footstep and thump of a walking cane, then I heard the rough raggedy childlike voice in broken English. My heart froze and I pushed my cart to the end of the aisle and slowly peeked around the corner to my left so that I could look down the full length of the canned foods. I nearly screamed in terror, there was my father walking down the aisle right next to my mother! That was her with her distinct footfall and thud of the cane. That was her hair matted down and greasy because she hardly showered, and that was her right hand, permanently fixed into the shape of a claw. However, when she turned left in order to say something to my father, I saw the four sets of teeth, two on top and two on the bottom. I did a double triple take and realized that it wasn't my mother, it was Beatrice! Just then I saw the look on my fathers face, it was a look of someone who was doomed to hell to suffer for his transgressions. At that point, Beatrice and I locked eyes and she gave me that four teethed toothless smile and winked. Son of a bitch, it was my mother, after all, she took possession of Beatrice's body and by doing that, she took back her husband, whether he liked it or not.
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