Breaking Down Small Gods

I.

My father passed his hands down to me.

In an essay, I wrote “I am a second-generation Mexican, fourth-generation Polish immigrant.” When the publication debuts, I’m texted why did you say you’re second-gen? You’re first. Just like your father. I forgot that in coming to the U.S., he sacrificed himself so that I may be counted and remembered first.

The essay remains unchanged––I like placing him before myself.

II.
I use the word little like teenagers in the early 2000’s used the word like––I put it in front of everything.

One day, my friend M texts me that I rubbed off on her. I told R to move his little hands and he got upset with me. He thought I was commenting on his height.

I tell this story while walking to Dim Sum Garden in Philly with D, who I used to date. Our arms swing rhythmically next to each other but never touch. When I tell him the story of M’s boyfriend, now fiancé, growing upset, he laughs.

Isn’t that a sign of endearment in Spanish? To add –ito to the end of a word? D asks.

We pause under a tunnel, our conference name tags blowing like leashed-kites behind us. Yeah, I say. Yeah.

He shrugs. Makes sense to me.

I never thought about it like that.

Well well well, looks like I still know you, D says.

I trace his smile as groups of people rush around us with hungry stomachs.

III.

It’s vital that you and your partner have a safe word.

Formaldehyde cloaks the air like humidity during a Midwestern summer.

I turn to my friend AM. What about “pineapple”?

That works.

We enter the cadaver lab in a clump and are reminded for the hundredth time to be respectful. At the ages of eighteen, my high school anatomy class is not trusted to be serious. There are brains and fetuses in jars on the left and two cadavers on the right. We’re shown what a brain with dementia looks like, seven years before my grandpa passes away. When diagnosed with dementia, the brain begins to unravel itself until it looks like thick spaghetti that’s been boiled too long––it can’t hold a shape even if it wanted to.

The cadavers’ faces, hands, and feet are wrapped with white towels. They remind me of the cheap, scratchy kind at membership gyms.

We enter the cadaver lab in a clump and are reminded for the hundredth time to be respectful. At the ages of eighteen, my high school anatomy class is not trusted to be serious.

Please do not touch the body. The towels have been strategically placed to avoid upsetting you all.

I’m handed a man’s lung. The texture is unlike anything I’ve felt before. It squishes in between my fingers like memory foam and breathes its way back to its untouched form. I squeeze it again and think, like a heartbeat. AM asks me how I’m doing and I say great because it’s the truth.

We move on to the female cadaver and look inside her carved chest. It reminds me of a birdcage, only the door is a soft, leather book cover. A boy knocks into the cadaver’s right hand and the towel drops to the floor. Veins crest the top layer of her pale skin.

Pineapple. I say. Pineapple pineapple pineapple.

The med student quickly grabs the towel and drapes the hand once more. Sorry, everyone. That wasn’t supposed to happen. We cover the face, hands, and feet because we find that those parts of the body humanize the cadavers the most.

Pineapple, I repeat.

Studies have shown that even if people don’t see a cadaver’s face, seeing their hands or feet can unravel people. Something about the way veins symbolize a life lived.

AM grabs my hand and pulls me out into the hallway.

IV.

My younger sister, L, was born in 1998. A few weeks after cradling her body, my father slipped on black ice at work and felt the kiss of the garbage truck blade that’s used to compress the trash. The sun hadn’t even come out yet. Alone, he turned off the engine, climbed into the belly of his garbage truck, picked up his middle finger, and drove himself to the emergency room.

The surgeons described it as a “crush injury” due to nerves and muscles being crushed in the ring and index finger; he’d no longer be able to straighten them. His middle finger would remain at half-mast––the tip could not be saved. After countless surgeries, he’s told his left hand will never hold warmth again.

Months later, on his daily route, he makes a little boy laugh by pretending to stick his finger up his nose. When he pulls his hand down, the severed and wrinkled middle finger shows itself. The little boy continues to wait outside every week for my father’s magic.

V.

I imagine the inside of my father’s old garbage truck like a dark cave, the slime of people’s waste forming new hieroglyphics of what was lost, my father huffing as he stoops to collect himself.

VI.

My sophomore year at my community college, I take a sociology class with M. Our final assignment is writing an essay based on our family trees. We’re brought to a computer lab and instructed to make a free account with Ancestry.com.

How can you know who you are if you don’t know where you come from? My professor smiles. I can’t wait to read all your essays.

I walk up to him and tell him there won’t be any documentation for my father’s arrival to this country. He, uh, ran across the border, I say, tracing the professor’s eyes for any sign of possible hostility or questioning of my citizenship.

I’m sure something will pop up. If not, just focus on your mom’s side. That’ll be good enough.

I walk back to my computer, type in my father’s name, and filter through hundreds of results. I’m reminded that Ancestry.com is useful for people whose family got here a certain type of way.

Not wanting to erase my father from the project, I attempt to interview him. He tells me the same line he told me in the third grade: I ran as fast as I could with nothing but dreams in my pockets. When I include that quote in my essay, my professor writes “cliché.”

I walk up to him and tell him there won’t be any documentation for my father’s arrival to this country. He, uh, ran across the border, I say, tracing the professor’s eyes for any sign of possible hostility or questioning of my citizenship.

The semester ends and I receive an A in the course anyway. For days, I think of all the idioms we use in the U.S. and how my father couldn’t quote one. I want to tell my professor that when my father said he had nothing but dreams in his pockets, his eyes rosed, like the flower––he felt beauty in that thought and pride in its articulation. What if that sentence, that cliché, was a part of me? I chew on the professor’s earlier declaration. If I couldn’t fit myself into the typical American family mold, would I ever know who I was? I listened as other students recounted detailed family histories and stared down at my father’s one sentence response. There was only so much I could ask of him, so much he was willing to tell me. Perhaps, like me, the professor wanted to know more.

VII.

It’s difficult to determine if my father attempted suicide or not.

If someone is medically diagnosed as delusional from sepsis and pancreatitis but rips IV ports from their neck, blood rushing like the parting seas, do we call it an accident? What if it occurs repeatedly? What if it leads to nurses tying his arms to the ICU hospital bed rails and gloving his hands?

My father doesn’t remember any of it, or so he says. Perhaps he lies to forget. But because I remember, I write it––this braided essay, a new take on Jacob Marley’s ball and chain.

The gloves could’ve been mistaken for boxing gloves. All they were missing was a company logo imprinted on the wrist-portion of the material. How odd that in a hospital, where stains seem to accrue like debt, they chose the color white.

There are so many symbolic directions to take that design choice, that I spend days making lists:

1. They look like boxing gloves to motivate patients to fight for their lives

2. They’re the color white to symbolize peace and serenity; a way to bring clarity to problems

3. They’re white to guilt patients into not staining them

4. They’re boxing gloves because the nurses know, and accept, how badly the patients want to hit them for refusing to bring them water (sepsis patients cannot eat or drink anything)

5. They’re white and stuffed with padding like clouds to remind patients where they’ll go if they do not cooperate

6. They’re shaped like boxing gloves to give the illusion that the patient is like an animal––pawed and fingerless

VIII.

Each day in the ICU, Catholic volunteers remind me that my father’s life is in God’s hands.

There are no other hands as trusting and loving as God’s.

I want to steal one of my father’s gloves and sock the old man on the spot but smile and say thank you instead.

Everything happens for a reason, he says as he hands me a rosary.

It’s an ugly translucent color. I think of the fish that live at the bottom of the ocean whose intestines and organs can be seen through their scales.

It glows in the dark so that your hands can follow your prayers.

IX.

I wore my father’s crucifix while he was in the hospital. It’s on a thick gold chain and hangs from his wedding ring. I’ve never seen my father without it.

It felt like a lie hanging from my neck and carried as much seriousness as fuzzy dice dangling from rearview mirrors.  But I wore it anyway. Desperation does, in fact, make people desperate. When I woke up with Jesus’ mangled body imprinted into my collar bone and chest, I felt holy. Surely this was the pain that promised my father’s healthy recovery. After a month, the crucifix transfigured from a means of comfort and pleading to one of ransom.

X.

At Sunday School, Sister Mary informs us that God only listens to those who do the sign of the cross before praying. She claps her hands while saying so. Although I have not yet entered the third grade, my mind wanders to catastrophes.

What happens if you’re kidnapped and your arms are tied behind your back? I ask. Would God ignore that person’s prayers even though it’s not their fault?

What happens if you’re kidnapped and your arms are tied behind your back? I ask. Would God ignore that person’s prayers even though it’s not their fault?

Sister Mary does not stutter or hesitate. If you do not do the sign of the cross, God cannot hear you. No more questions.

XI.

It’s been said that for true crucifixion to work, nails would have to be hammered through a person’s wrist, not palm. The palm is too soft, like the belly of a ripe peach.

XII.

Hands are better symbols than wrists.

XIII.

According to Britannica.com, “death [by crucifixion] ultimately occurred through a combination of constrained blood circulation, organ failure, and asphyxiation as the body strained under its own weight. It could be hastened by shattering the legs (crurifragium) with an iron club, which prevented [the person] from supporting the[ir] body’s weight…[making] inhalation more difficult [and] accelerating both asphyxiation and shock.”

XIV.

According to Mayoclinic.org, “as sepsis worsens, blood flow to vital organs, such as your brain, heart and kidneys, becomes impaired. Sepsis may cause abnormal blood clotting that results in small clots or burst blood vessels that damage or destroy tissues. When the infection-fighting processes turn on the body, they cause organs to function poorly and abnormally…Sepsis may progress to septic shock. This is a dramatic drop in blood pressure that can lead to severe organ problems and death.”

XV.

When the nurses gloved my father’s hands, I breathed a sigh of relief. No more blood, I thought. My father convulsed against the restraints like he was repeatedly being struck by God.

When he could no longer breathe on his own, oxygen was flooded through his nostrils. His pancreas, liver, kidneys, gallbladder, lungs, and then heart sundowned one-by-one, creation style.

If one looks hard enough, it’s easy to see how people are made in God’s image––seven days are truly life-changing.

XVI.

In the Catholic Church, the number three represents the holy trinity––the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

My father spends three months in three different hospitals.

XVII.

At the age of twenty-five, I run out of FMLA days. I work Monday through Friday in a different hospital across the state border and spend my weekends driving between WI and IL. My family Googles rehabilitation centers near my father’s house; even the wealthy towns struggle to receive high reviews.

When I walk into the carpeted rehabilitation hallway, there’s classical music playing against forest green walls. I almost think lovely until I see a man my grandpa’s age slowly twisting metal nuts off wooden pegs. His spine is a curled c beneath an oversized gray sweatshirt. The wheelchair is in a locked position, the arms like those of a height chair tucked into a tabletop. He turns to look at me and waves like a preschooler being picked up after a long morning, a small smile breaking against his dry face––I swear it could shatter and keep myself from cupping it to safety in my hands.

Your dad’s been working hard all day, the physical therapist states. She is beaming with pride, like a daughter.