When I Was Puerto Rican - Esmeralda Santiago [20]
At the cemetery, El Cura said a few words, and then the coffin was lowered, as Juanita’s mother and aunts wailed about what a good man he was and how he didn’t deserve to die. They shovelled dirt on top of the box, red moist earth not unlike the dirt I used for making mud people, and I wondered what would happen to him under there, with all that weight on him. I thought about this as we walked back to Macún behind Don Berto’s daughters, who were overcome with an attack of los nervios, so that their sons ended up half carrying them, half dragging them home.
Papi was to lead the novenas for Don Berto. After dinner he washed and put on a clean white shirt, pulled a rosary and a Bible from his dresser, and started out the door.
“Do you want to come?” he asked me.
“¡Sí! I would! ¡Sí!”
“Only if you bring a long-sleeve shirt,” Mami said. “I don’t want you sick from the night air.”
We walked on the pebbled road as the sun set behind the mountains. Toads hopped out of our way, their dark brown bodies bottom heavy. The air smelled green, the scents of peppermint, rosemary, and verbena wafting up from the ground like fog.
“Papi, what’s a soul?”
“The soul is that part of us that never dies.”
“What do you mean?”
“When people die, it’s just the body that dies. The soul goes up to the sky.”
“I know. Mami told me that already.”
He laughed. “Okay, so what more do you want to know?”
“What does the soul do?”
“It goes to live with Papa Dios in Paradise.”
“When people are alive ... what does the soul do?”
He stopped and stared at the tip of his work shoes. “Let’s see, what does it do?” He massaged his forehead as if that would make the answer come out quicker. “Well, it is the soul of a person that writes poetry.”
“How?”
He pinched his lower lip with his thumb and index finger, and pulled it back and forth in small tugs. He dropped his hand and took mine in his then began walking again.
“The soul lives inside a person when he’s alive. It’s the part of a person that feels. A poet’s soul feels more than regular people’s souls. And that’s what makes him write poetry.”
Clouds had formed above the mountains in streaks, like clumps of dough that had been stretched too thin.
“What does the soul look like?”
He let out a breath. “Well, it looks like the person.”
“So my soul looks like me and your soul looks like you?”
“Right!” He sounded relieved.
“And it lives inside our bodies?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Does it ever come out?”
“When we die ...”
“But when we’re alive ... does it ever come out?”
“No, I don’t think so.” The doubt in his voice let me know that I knew something he didn’t, because my soul travelled all the time, and it appeared that his never did. Now I knew what happened to me when I walked beside myself. It was my soul wandering.
The sun dipped behind the mountains, leaving flecks of orange, pink, and turquoise. In the foreground, the landscape had become flat, without shadow, distanceless.
“Papi, what happens to the body when it’s buried?”
“It decomposes,” he said. “It becomes dust.”
We were joined by a group of mourners on their way to the Marin house. They wished us all a good evening, and the rest of the way we walked in dreadful silence.
Papi settled into his place in front of the house, next to an altar with a picture of Don Berto holding his machete. I wondered if his soul had already gone to live with Papa Dios, or if he was floating around watching to see if his daughters and sons were paying him the proper respect now that his body was rotting under the ground. I tried to send my soul up, to meet him halfway