Danni
I really hadn’t meant to cause such a scene at that poor man’s funeral. I mean, what kind of man faints in the middle of church? Who the fuck was I kidding? I abso-fucking-lutley loved it.
My mom was right to name me Jessica lo Dannos Hernandez; said I was mischievous even in the womb. By the time she figured out she was pregnant, she was shacked up with a Northern Italian man she met while hiking in the Swiss Alps. She thought the name was appropriate: lo Dannos loosely translates to mischief in Italian. Or at least that was the cock and bull story she fed me until I found her passport. It didn’t have one travel stamp and still looked brand new even though it had expired when I was five. Whether the Italian guy ever existed or was, just another one of my mom’s witty pathological lies that remains to be seen. I think she just thought the name flowed. She had called me Danni until she died a month ago.
She had known she was dying for three months before she actually told me. The following week, I buried her. That was her style, with no consideration for anyone else. In typical Magdalena Elena Hernandez de la Cruz fashion, her deathbed confession came in the form of a Lavender scented gift basket delivered to me the week after she died. Buried at the bottom, next to the lavender bath salts, was a letter postmarked twenty years ago.
Breathless, with shaking hands, I took the butterfly knife out of the hidden pocket in my jacket and swiftly sliced open the envelope, taking a chunk of a blurry photograph that was hidden inside two folded sheets of paper.
Ignoring the photo for the moment, I focused on the letter with the handwriting I recognized. It was my mom’s curlicue chicken scratched. She liked to pass it off as cursive. It was addressed to some guy I didn’t recognize. Basically, the letter stated she had a kid and that it was his. At the time she sent it, I was eleven years old.
On cheap yellow stationery with little flowers on it, the respondent had written back: SHE’S NOT MINE in bold, blocky letters. That’s it.
I would have taken the man at his word because I knew my mom’s uncanny ability to get just about everything important in my life wrong. I’m not mom blaming, but the woman actually tried to take the wrong baby out of the hospital because she was convinced the nurses had switched me at birth. Thankfully they lo-jack babies, so, crisis averted. Then there was the time she strapped me into the car seat of the wrong car. To be fair, the car was unlocked, but at the time, she drove a white civic and strapped me into a navy suburban. After that, I wasn’t surprised that even the soccer moms didn’t invite us back for the next season.
It’s not that she was an alcoholic, an addict, or even made bad choices in men unless you considered being addicted to yourself a habit. She was young, just a child herself. We practically grew up together. Plus, if it wasn’t for her brand of absentee parenting, I wouldn’t have been allowed to hone my current skill set. She wasn’t all bad. Once, when I had been suspended for running a high-stakes poker game with the janitor, basketball coach, groundskeeper, and Assistant Principal. My mom stormed into the principal’s office and accused the administration not of being degenerate gamblers but of not knowing how to lose to a girl. Then she stormed out of the principal’s office.
Picking up the torn portion of the picture, I could certainly see a resemblance to the man whose head I had accidentally cut off. The respondent, my ‘would-be’ father, wrote his response on none other than Our Lady of the Little Flower letterhead. I wasn’t going to pursue it. At least, that is what I kept telling myself. That is until I taped the picture back together. Although, I got my coloring, eye shape, and body type from my mom. My height, eye color, and flaming red hair were definitely from the man wearing the clerical collar with his arm draped around my mom’s shoulders. A fucking Clerical collar.
That is when I realized finding my father was going to be as entertaining as when my mom hired Madam Se Livrer for my seventh birthday party. When Ms. Se Livrer cracked her whip to turn off the candles on my birthday cake. Everyone took off. I don’t think I have ever seen a stampede like that unless it was for a Black Friday sale at Walmart.
When I parked my rental car in front of the church two weeks later, this place was like Stars Hollow on crack. There was an old-timey ice cream parlor with pink and white striped curtains, a barber shop with the little blue and red spinning thing, and a community board featuring next Sunday’s farmer’s market and craft fair. The quaintness of the town made my skin itch. I need cars blaring salsa and a little spice in my day-to-day. This place was as bland as cafeteria green beans. No wonder my mother ran away.
My grandparents lived on the outskirts of town in what was once called the rich part of town. I’m not sure what it would be considered now. It didn’t matter anyway. The moment they found out my mother was pregnant, they up and sold the house before the first sonogram was done. Scandal for the Hernandez de la Cruz familia, not a chance.
As for the church, Our Lady of the Little Flower was a modest-looking building, nothing like the catholic churches I had seen before. There were no gargoyles or stained glass adorning these walls. But there was something to be said about the stateliness of the church. The building itself demanded respect.
I had the idea of wandering the grounds until whatever service let out to talk to the man with whom I shared DNA. At least, that’s what I had told myself. Then I saw a man standing on the sidewalk looking as lost and uncomfortable as I felt. So, I took Count Pugula out of his carrier and went to find out what I could about the man outside the church. It all went to shit when he started staring at my tits from half a block away. This should be fun!
