KIQUE'S GHOST
By Sofía Quintero
Even through the veil of
my hat, I see all eyes are on me as I sachet down the aisle toward Kique's
casket. Good. That's the main reason why I squeezed my big ass into the red
spandex dress. The same dress I wore on our first date when I was two sizes
smaller.
Just as I reach the
casket, a teary-eyed girl barely out of her teens carries away a toddler on her
hip. Don't ask, Lili. Just let it go. I take a deep breath and look into
the casket. Damn it if Kique don't look good! The bochinche was that the
last woman he burned had shot him right between the eyes. Guess not. I glance
at his crotch. Well, if she aimed there, the damage is not obvious.
'Chacho, the undertaker really
did an amazing job. Kique's soul patch is sharply trimmed. Those perfect lips,
rose and soft, are shaped into his signature smirk. Kique looks exactly the
same way he did the day I realized I had fallen for him. That memory gives me the
courage to do what I vowed I would to all my disbelieving girlfriends when this
day came.
I look to my left then
check to my right. Everyone is too busy mourning - or glaring at the llorona
en la esquina who's making a performance of it - to watch me. I lean over
Kique's body, lift my veil and spit on him.
“Burn in hell, ¡asqueroso!”
Then I spin on the heels
of my Via Spiga stilettos and march out of the funeral. Through the veil of my
hat, I watch the others as they stare at me, their eyes so swollen and red.
Look at them crying for Kique. Wearing black. Falling over themselves to praise
him now that the son of a bitch is dead.
Di que Kique was so
funny 'Member the time he did eso y lo otro?
Or when he was
working, Kique was so generous.
And my personal
favorite. Kique loved his children. All five of them. If he knew about 'em,
he loved the hell out of those kids of his.
¡Hipocritas! All of them, if they
truly knew him. Where's the bitch who shot him? That's who I want to see. Shake
her hand. Buy her a drink. Ask if his eyes were open when she did it. Why she
did it? That I don’t need to ask.
Just as I push open the
door that leads from the parlor into the lobby, I hear glass crash against the
tiled floor. A black wave rushes by me as mourners run past me toward the
commotion. When I reach the scene, Kique's brother and best friend pull apart
two women who still claw for each other. Water, glass, and carnations are all
over the lobby floor.
“¡Saca a esa pendena,
Junior!”
yells the petite negrita with the box braids. “She didn't give a shit
about Kique, and everybody knows it!”
The voluptuous chinita
screams back, “You've always been
jealous of me, bitch, ‘cause I'm the mother of his only son.”
Someone behinds me sucks
her teeth. “That ain't true,” she mumbles “Doesn't Kique have a son
in Santo Domingo?”
Another woman say, “And a daughter in Haina.” The revelation inspires
several gasps. Don't these people know by now that scuttlebutt regarding
Kique's “reproductivity” should be believed until
proven otherwise?
I'm so over all this. As
the catfight ensues, I ease my way through the crowd to the exit. By the door
is an easel with a poster of Kique from his three-month stint as a real estate
agent. It reads Enrique “Kique” Gilberto Mendoza, April 29, 1975 - October 29,
2012.
As I walk by the easel, I snarl at Kique's picture and point to the crowd. “Damn it, Kique . . .
even in death!”
Once outside the funeral
home, I hand the parking attendant my ticket. As I wait for him to bring my car,
I break out a cigarette. Fuckin' Kique Mendoza's dead.
I had just turned twenty
when we met. Before Kique I was too busy being the dutiful daughter to date.
Going to college, working my way through school, practically becoming the
matriarch of the family as my mother cared for my father. . . What little time
I had for a social life, I didn't want to waste on the boys around me because
they were just that. Boys who just wanted one thing and yet were incapable or
unwilling to offer much in return.
Then Kique came along
and swept me off my feet, giving me all the romance I had been missing. Craving
really. Then he ruined me for all men.
That's not a compliment.
Suddenly, a chill dances
up my spine, and I shiver. What gives? It was almost seventy degrees when I
left my apartment! The temperature must have dropped drastically in the few
minutes I had been inside the funeral home. That's October in New York for you.
I wrap my arms myself
while I wait for the valet to bring my car. He takes his time, stealing long
glances at my dress. Or more like my ass busting out of it. That's why
you're cold, Lili! I flick away my cigarette and drag the valet out of the
driver seat so I can hop in. The car's pretty damn cold, too, so I blast on the
heat as I drive off.
Only when I pull onto
the Bronx River Parkway do I remember I still have on this silly hat with the
veil. I laugh at myself as I sit on the entrance ramp and check oncoming
traffic. Just before I'm about to merge, I pull off the hat and fling it onto
the passenger seat.
“Nice hat.”
I almost give myself
whiplash in the direction of the voice. Kique? He wears his burial suit, my
spit sliding down his tie. In fact, Kique, his suit, his body, all opaque like
crepe paper. But my saliva glistens in the ray of sunlight beaming through the
front car window, just as fresh as I cut it loose.
I scream so loud that
only the blaring of the horns of the cars behind me snaps me out of it. And
what does Kique do? He chuckles condescendingly the way he always did when
faced with a woman he drove to hysteria. “Pull over, Lillian,” he says, pointing to the shoulder. He folds up the tail of
his tie to blot at my spit. “We
need to talk about this lingering rage of yours.”
My mind scampers, trying
to remember how to handle a ghost. A wooden stake through the heart! No, that's
for vampires. Besides, who the hell keeps a wooden stake in the glove
compartment? Then it hits me. I do have my shiny new Club under my seat.
I hit my blinker and make my way to the shoulder of the parkway.
Kique continues to rub
at his tie, but the spit remains as if untouched. “Spitting on me. . . “he
says. “What were you thinking,
Lili?”
Oh, now you want to
know, asshole? The
second I arrive at the shoulder, I reach down to grab the Club and swing it
with all my might at Kique's head. It slices right through him, banging against
the passenger window and ripping a crack through it. “Fuck!”
Only the sound of
cracking glass makes Kique realize what I had tried to do. “First, you spit at me
and now this?” He squints at me. “What happened to the
sweet nena tranquila who would look away whenever I told her she was
beautiful?”
Anger finally erupts,
taking me far past fear. “Damn it, Kique, what are
you doing here?” Then I remember. When
you encounter a ghost, you're supposed to confront it. Ask him what he wants so
you can give him what he needs to move on. They say sometimes a person just
doesn't know or hasn't accepted that he's dead until a living person breaks it
to him and convinces him to let go of earth. God, I hope this is not Kique's
problem. The man was so full of hubris, it'll take his ghost weeks of
hopelessly chasing live women before he accepts that he doesn't have “it” anymore and take his
game to the netherworld. “You're dead and no longer
belong here,” I say. “¿Que en carajo is holding you back?”
“I need you to forgive
me, Lili.” He blinks at me like a
child, that infamous smirk gone. “Without your forgiveness, I can't rest in peace.”
Shit. If that's true,
I'm fucked. As a child, I never even had an imaginary friend but now at the age
of thirty-three, I'm stuck with the ghost of the only man I ever loved? That'd
be bearable if he also wasn't the worst ex-boyfriend I ever had. Like it wasn't
bad enough that he lied to me about how many his-and-her kids he had, chased
away my few male friends with his possessiveness, and eventually cheated on me
with the most psychotic of his baby mamas. After I left him, Kique would stalk
me every time he was in between women - from the “Oh, I was just in the neighborhood and thought
I'd stop to say hi” drives by my apartment
to the “IF YOU REALLY FUCKIN'
LOVED ME YOU NEVER WOULD'VE LEFT SO EASY, YOU HEARTLESS BITCH!!!” messages on my answering
machine. I finally had to file a restraining order against him.
”Of all the women you've
known and screwed in your forty years on this planet, why me, Kique?” I yell. “I mean, according to the
chisme, I got off easy.”
Kique cocks his head to
the side. “That's true. What I did
to you is nothing compared to what I did to Sherry. Or Flaca. Or La Bembe. . . “ I roll my eyes at him,
and he halts the roll call of his victims. Kique looks at me with those sad
eyes. Not those telenovela eyes reserved for performing deception and
manipulation. The sincere eyes that I rarely saw in the short but intense six
months we were together. The ones filled with tears at my father's funeral. The
eyes wide with fear when Kique Jr. was diagnosed with leukemia then tight with
joy when the cancer went into remission. The eyes that slacked with resignation
when it finally sunk in that when I said I was never going back to him, I meant
it and not playing along with the usual script he enacted with his other women.
Kique says, “But it doesn't matter
that I was at my worst with them. You were the one I hurt the most. That's
because you were the only one who truly loved me.”
I did love the son of a
bitch. It hadn't matter to me that he was a twenty-eight year old father of
three children already. I didn't care that he had those children with two
different women, neither of whom he married. I didn't care that he only had a
G.E.D. and changed his career every month.
“Look, Enrique, I really
do want to forgive you. I mean, it's been thirteen years.” I say. Can you lie to a
ghost? Probably not. So I level with him. “But I just can't. I've gone for months, even years not
giving you a second thought, but when a certain song comes on the radio or I
drive by a place you took me to, all the dirt you did comes rushing back right
along with all the hurt and anger, and it feels like it just happened
yesterday.” And here the feelings
come again, and this time with an additional dose of despair. I start to cry. “I want to let go of all
that shit. I've tried really hard to focus on all the good times we had. But I
just can't.” Now I start to sob. “The fact that you're
dead now isn’t enough to change it.”
Kique shakes his head,
and that smirk of his reappears. Bastard. This is what he wanted all along.
Rest in peace my ass, he came to haunt me. Like the realization that I will
never be free of these ugly feelings toward him wasn't horrible enough. I'd try
again to crash in his skull if I knew it'd do any damage. Maybe I should do it
anyway, it night make me feel better even if just for a moment. No, Lili, you
can't afford to break that window any worse.
“So you can't forgive me,” says Kique. “Do you know what that
means?”
I wipe my runny nose
against my sleeve. “What?”
“You haven't forgiven
yourself yet.”
I suck my teeth at him. “Forgive myself for what?”
Kique sucks his teeth
back at me. He knows I hate when he mimics me, pendejo. “For putting up with the
shit I did and never giving me the hell I deserved for it.”
I think about that. I
was so young. Back then I thought that if you were truly committed, you loved
unconditionally and that meant relaxing my standards beyond recognition. All
through high school and college, I told myself You're pretty, intelligent. .
. You come from a good family. You're getting an education and planning a
career. Why is it so hard for you to find a boyfriend? Then Kique came
along and heaped on the romance, and grateful for attention, the validation, I
did overtime to rationalize all the flags. So he didn't go to college. Don't
be such an elitist, Lillian. And so what Kique has three kids but has never
been married? Nena, if you prefer a Latino man and rule out single fathers, you
drain an already shallow pool! OK, so he didn't tell you about them until you
were head over heels. He was falling for you and was afraid of losing you. How
can you not forgive him for that?
For the first three
months when things were idyllic, it was easy. Kique always has a job,
sometimes two. Kique not only supports his kids, he actually makes time for
them. He didn't pressure you into sex, was gentle when you were ready, and is
always attentive to your pleasure. I used all the good things about Kique
as excuses for putting up with the mind games he played during the last three
months. Only when he stood me up one night after going to his ex's apartment to
visit his son did I draw the line. He said that had just pulled a double shift
but didn't want to disappoint Kique, Jr. and ended up falling asleep on his
ex's couch.
While he was “sleeping on the ex's
couch,” I was crying my eyes
out on mine. But the possibility that Kique had been cheating on me was the
farthest notion from my mind. In my lovestruck naiveté, I truly thought that
something terrible had happened to Kique. (He did allude to a thuggish youth.)
I had called his job, his friends, and even his mother. She actually sighed and
said, “Nena, there's nothing wrong
with that boy for you to be so worried about him. Nothing you can fix anyway,
and you shouldn't have to if you could because you're a good girl, Lili. Por
favor don't give Kique another thought.”
I couldn't understand
how his own mother could say such a thing. Eventually, Kique arrived at my door
with a half-dozen roses. I rushed into his arms, sobbing with relief that Kique
was with me in one piece.
My genuine concern floored
Kique to the point that he couldn't tell me his story with a straight face. He
expected me to be furious. To interrogate him while knowing all along what he
had been up to, curse him out, maybe even hurl something at his head. Then
Kique was supposed to seduce me, I was supposed to forgive him, and then we
were supposed to have a fuckfest, all the while knowing that we were entering
into an unspoken agreement that this scenario would repeat itself for as long
as we were together.
The problem was I had
really loved and trusted Kique with all my heart. Unlike his other women, I
didn't need to be with him. I wanted to be with him. Looking past all
our differences, I chose Kique, and that made his betrayal all the more
egregious. As young and inexperienced as I might have been, I wasn't going to
tolerate his constant betrayal of my love and trust. When Kique pulled me away
from, looked me in the eye and insisted that nothing had happened between his
ex and himself, the guilt in his eyes told me that I needed to stop lying to
myself. He was not the man for me.
Damn it, Kique, er, his
ghost or whoever, he's right. It's been thirteen years since I've been with the
man, and I still haven't forgiven him for what he had done to me. But that's
because I still blame myself for allowing him to do it.
I look at Kique who's
checking himself out in the rear view mirror. Some things never change. “Kique. . .” I say to get his
attention. He taps his finger on his tongue then wipes it across his eyebrow
before looking at me. I snicker at the paradox of his old vanity and his
newfound depth. “When did you get so damn
insightful?” I ask.
“When you run toward the
light,” he smiles, “a lot of things get
really clear.”
“You're supposed avoid
the light, Kique, not make a mad dash toward it.”
“Only if you want to
live, Lili. Not when you're ready to go.” He pauses then continues, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “'Chacha, I ran toward that light,
and I got, like, hosed with more wisdom then I could handle. That's probably
why I had to come back and unload some of it. You know, before I could rest.”
It never occurred to me
that Kique was unhappy. When I would hear through the grapevine about his
latest escapades with the woman of the hour, I would swear that he enjoyed it.
That it was all sport for him. That he reveled in the drama that he created
over and over again. How bad it must have been for Kique to be so ready to let
go and leave his kids behind. Especially if in that rush toward the light and
the accompanying torrent of wisdom, he finally got an accurate count of how
many kids he actually fathered.
I try to find something
nice to say. Despite all the bonding, it's kind of hard. Finally, I settle on, “You made a really pretty
corpse, Kique.”
Of course, he beams at
that. “Thanks, Lillian. And
thanks for coming to my wake in my favorite dress.” He hands me the veiled
hat. “You know, you were the
best thing that ever happened to me, but I always knew you deserved better.” Kique has said that to
me before, but for the first time, I actually believe he's sincere. “That's why I did
everything to mess it up. Then when I did mess it up, I tried so hard to win
you back. Which is why when you wouldn't take me back, I got ugly. But I never
stopped loving you, Lili. I mean, as best as a guy like me could. I truly gave
you my best and, I'm sorry it wasn't worth much and that I broke your heart.”
I take a deep breath and
give a long exhale. “I forgive you, Enrique.”
“No, you don't.” Ever the drama king, he
practically sings when he says it. “You're just saying that to get rid of me.”
“Uh, if you were in my
shoes, wouldn't you?”
“Yeah, but 'member what I
said. You can't forgive me until you forgive yourself. You didn't realize that
was why you were stuck until I told you three minutes ago so no way you're
gonna get over it. . .”
Kique snaps
his fingers. “Just like that.”
I think I'm going to cry
again, this time out of frustration. The ghost is more trying than the man ever
was, I swear. “OK, here's the deal,
Kique. In order for me to forgive myself so that I can forgive you, you gots to
go, man. I mean, be reasonable here. If you haunt me, you're gonna piss me off,
and that kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think?”
Kique gives it some
thought. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“And have I ever lied to
you.”
“No.”
“So please I'm asking you
to trust me on this. If you leave and go wherever it is you belong - and stay
there! - I promise you that I will work through this.” I start to cross my
heart but quit when I remember that the last time I crossed myself, I heaved a
wad a spit onto Kique's cold body as it lay in a casket. “In fact, I guarantee
you, Kique, your leaving is going to go a looong way in helping me make peace
with what happened between us. It's best for both of us if you go.”
There goes that impish
smile again. I brace myself for the worst, but Kique say, “OK.” His apparition steps
through the door and climbs out of my car. My car suddenly becomes so hot, I
snap off the heat. Kique turns around to look at me through the cracked glass
of my passenger window. “One more thing, Lili.”
Damn it. “What?”
“An incentive.”
“What, Kique, what?”
“That dude who keeps
hanging around your cubicle? Stop punishing yourself by blowing him off. He's
the One.”
“Huh?”
“Nena, don't play dumb, you
know you're no good at it. I ain't telling you nothing you haven't already
wondered. Get over yourself and go out with the man.”
Before I can say thanks
and goodbye, Kique's ghost blows me a kiss, pulls away from my car and just fades
away.
©
Sofia
Quintero 2007
