Excerpt from my autobiography-in-progress in honor of daddy (II)

“Porque estan llorando?” Mami wanted to know the reason my sisters were crying. As if she didn’t know . . .

“You know very well that that is the Devil’s box. Didn’t you hear Pastor preaching last night?”

Mami herself sounded like a preacher today. Papi nodded his head slowly, assenting what she was saying. He agreed with everything Mami said, even when he knew she was way off base. I held back my tears, failing to understand why our television set was being taken away. Why had it become a sin all of a sudden? We watched as our black and white friend wobbled its way out the door and down the stairs. Then we rushed to the window and stuck our heads out. We watched the heartbreaking scenario unfolding five stories below.

They hauled the television set into the back of Papi’s mud-colored station wagon. Papi went over to the driver’s side, got in and started the engine. Black exhaust smoke burst from the rear of the vehicle rising slowly towards us, but we didn’t turn away. Papi must have felt the warmth of our tear-inundated eyes upon him because he looked up at us, slightly. But he quickly turned away, his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him, steering the car away from us, mercilessly ignoring our pain, or so he pretended.

We knew him better. If it had been up to him, I’m sure that Papi would have turned his station wagon around and carried that black-and-white up the stairs, all by himself, right back to his crying nenas.

Excerpt from my aubiography-in-progress to honor daddy

Just a few hours ago I picked Papi up from the emergency room at Jacobi Hospital. He had hoped to get a steroid shot for his pain but instead the doctor gave him a dose of Percocet. These days, narcotics such as Percocet and Darbucet are all Papi has to hold on to. It breaks my heart to see him so groggy, totally dependent on painkillers. His weakened knees are wobbling uncontrollably; every otherwise simple step has become an enormous struggle. If you had only seen him way back when he used to be nice and strong!

“Papi, dame una peseta.”

I would constantly bug Papi for loose change to buy snacks. His olive green eyes would slightly wrinkle around the edges as he proudly reached into his pockets and pour a tinkling storm of coins into my expanded eager hands.

Papi used to drive a “gypsy cab,” providing “sub-legal” taxi service that catered to those who welcomed a fast and cheap alternative to the expensive and often unreliable transportation in the Bronx. Sometimes Papi would put in an “all-nighter,” arriving home just in time to take his nenas to school the next day. I have always perceived Papi as an ambitious, hardworking man -- The true essence of a “go-getter” who knew the Bronx inside out.

“Just like the back of my hand!” Papi likes to boast.

Sadly, Papi’s beginning to realize that he can’t remember many things as he used to. On those instances when he does recall a street name or some other memory from the past, he gets emotional and starts to cry.

Today when we arrived home I offered him a ripe yellow banana because he hasn’t eaten for hours. He holds out his hand and has hardly enough strength to grasp the fruit. Mami quips,

"You should've bought him an 'Egg Foo Yong'."

I sigh, for the hundredth time today, as I feel the stress pressing relentlessly against my temples. My chest is weary. How I wish I could ease Mami and Papi’s discomfort, their seemingly endless pain. I take Papi upstairs to my kid’s bed where he’s been sleeping since he came to our home. He removes his shirt and drops like a fly onto the smiling snowmen that adorn the flannel mattress cover . . .