Snow-ghouled, reckoning a car’s funeral

In a language without words, a lingering spell was cast over four-year-old Mayra’s waking day. Locked into watching the meticulous preparation her papa, Rogelio, begot from his craft-skilled father, she doted their secret bond. He masterfully ground the beans to make the perfect espresso. It closed off its final journey blurting a wheezing, cauliflowered-shaped puff as if proudly granted a listed status. Out in the world, it carried over into normalising Mayra’s everyday. When he brushed her shoulder, its swilling, misty twirl poured out her very own patented cloud from a 1933 monumental three-chamber design. Rogelio’s pride and joy at the kitchen counter, brewed an exclusive, kindred rite of passage for them.

Devoted, the milky-toned caffeine infusion confirmed a belief it was a daily, magic feat performed only for her from his devoted hands. At the heart of which was attached such acts of tender purity. The heavy-steeled percolator metamorphosed from a mechanical brewer into their unique, lingering umbilical cord. Bewitching, it was a diminutive version of him, airing her maturing ladder into adulthood. Stacked, its strength fortified her birthright. Like certain algebraic calculations she couldn’t fathom, she never resolved when his own sillage began or ended as they merged. In equal measures, their bouquet blended to a knot of sensorial accords.

Bruised, battered, she too felt like her loyal coffee-machine. Idolised, it stood, a receptacle, a lynchpin go-between. Traditional rituals firmly bonded to long-running spotlights. Torn from her withering, familiar past times, they seeped away from her sides. Listening out for its irresistible whoosh delivering chirping, percolated gurgles like a steam engine reaching its final destination on schedule with a parting hurrah. Its high pitch fostered freeborn freshness. A released squeal flurried amidst the vapour banding to a gracious Elaichi curtsy. In person, she closely watched a perfect blockbuster drama performance. Together two realms understudied the mirage delicately swooning. Deep duo dancers devotedly twirled round one another to a final waltz.

For a split second, horrifying memories were shrugged off. Welcoming and making room for Rogelio’s absent presence, she continued mourning life without him. Her own mindful consciousness held her to ransom. Seconds connected irreversible sound bites. In a toxic brush with her world of crime, her family was wrecked. Mayra instigated the deaths of her first love, Goyo and two sons. The youngest pulled through.

Their charred bodies pushed her over the edge. A reduced Mayra latched onto strong booze. From a lookout, a neighbourhood watch scheme emerged. Social services alerted. Before they snatched Gael from her limp hold, its consoling clutch timed out. At endless support meetings, she typically whined in self-pity. Reminded of her appalling mothering skills, she winced speechless. Delirious, she compared herself to celebrities discovered leaving Ecstasy pills around for weans to swallow like sweets. On her good days, she validated her atrocity to be justified. At least one child was saved. However, those overwhelming abysmal, black tunnel-dog-turmoil times, charged her as a murderess. By stigmatising herself, inwardly she was an abettor, an accomplice. She was an accessory to a dormant aggressor.

The judiciary sided with her, dissolving her heinous offence. Freedom of movement granted (under the Homicide Act 1957, combined with ‘loss of self-control’). The wigged judge declared the disastrous catastrophe resulted in ‘diminished responsibility’ in her defence. Their clear deliberation left Mayra agitated. She picked on her wedding ring, twiddling and toying. Once set free, her ears pinned back, slumped, numb in the dock. Guilt, her escort, nevertheless followed her.

“Rebuild, respair from where you left off, Madam,” thanking the jury, the magistrate rose.

Facing unchartered land, no easy feat! Who believed her the cause of her family/couples’ break-up? Her in-laws’ scowls dug into her back. Wedged together, crossed-arms like crows ready to mob. Although she left the courtroom absolved in the eyes of the law, her relatives grumbled. Intimidating tensions, disapprovals boiled. Gone are long-tailed tits’ king selection, preserving the family unit. A hardened curtain collapsed over Mayra’s plight.

No clapping or bravos reached her as she lowered her brow. Knees buckled at the release of endless, accumulated, suffocating angst. Her legal team levelled congratulations. During the climactic clamour, brouhaha of shuffling, retreating patter, they guided her out. The stark lighting cast angular chiaroscuros around Mayra. The shielded brim of her hat angled like a gritty, film noir mise-en-scène. In limbo, she anxiously stood on the fringe. As if in need of CPR, she clutched her comfort kit-bag. Stunted, unable to digest exchanges, they circled her head like swallows. She was jostled. The exit bended like a current sucking her towards a fierce whirlpool of locks.

“No entry, Madam,” slammed the hardcore guards denying Mayra access. The uniformed cave dwellers vetted her. Albeit a family member, her Human Rights peeled away.

As if on hold, Mayra’s departed family rested in the morgue somewhere downstairs in their liminal, veiled space, awaiting burial.

“I demand my kins’ final remains!” Rebooting her muted voice, she desperetaly hurled.

Every sector stopped her progress, for bureaucratic sign-offs. Down in this part of the building’s maze, archaic rules excluded her. Its indecipherable legislation imposed its irreversible might. Shoehorned into submission, corridors and impenetrable chambers, Mayra felt pursued. A harsh disinfectant waged war. An attempt to cleanse her.

Even in this bottomless underbelly, there was no sanctuary for her. Similar would-be villains found solace on cold, resting slabs. What prevailed here in the Kafkaesque, illogical paperwork? While aimlessly walking away, her heels clicked stone floors like radio dots and dash signals. They hoodwinked her ill-doing to murky tenants past and present.

“No! I can’t do this alone. We’re a team, the best. Or we were. Why did we have to go on that stupid snow-covered road? Too many of us in that ridiculous, lopsided AMC Pacer car. Men, you and your motor obsessive egos! I don’t know how to climb to the next day anymore without you, Goyo,” tearing the budget Jumbo loo roll. In the empty Ladies, she ripped its bracket like it had a hidden solution at the dispenser’s end. On her knees, chipping a manicured nail, she grabbed chaotic, damp sheets. They stuck to tiles like loose feathers from a torn pillow. Under panda eyes, Mayra’s piercing despair screeched at her reflection. Laddered tights, she bolted for a bunker situation. A fugitive from her demons’ clasps, she got a grip of her despicable actions. The pointed finger appeared regularly leaving scratch-marks. Later, on her return trip, she slipped into twitchy slumber. Defaced, colourless hauntings followed her.

Undone, Mayra, strayed, unsure, dreaded the homeward route. The living no longer welcomed her anymore. Until Gael made progress, and maybe not even then, she met empty silhouettes and shadows. A vacuum of pulling and receding persons connected to her past but no longer her present and future. They squeezed into her throbbing psyche. All of her doing, the severe, loose-lipped mirrors witnessed her years of marriage. Confronted, they reminded her every time she checked herself. Before she stepped over her well-trodded entrance. It was among their beloved heartbeats. Empty, neglected hooks, nooks and crannies, once hugged apparel. They couldn’t recover from their banishment. In her frequent panic spasms, she strained for plush netting. An inflatable jacket to cushion her fall as she leapt from soaring heights.

Barely released from the ward after weeks in recovery, she stood, brain-frozen, wondering on the how’s. Broken, she planed her convalescing toddler’s Paediatric A&E bed. Over months, Mayra, her in-laws and other family members, differed over the inevitable burial date. Ill-equipped for threefold life-changing losses.

“Of one thing I’m certain: Gael will attend the triple funeral. However long it takes, he’ll stand on his own legs beside ME!” Donning Goyo’s rowing-shirt, Mayra smoothed away faint wrinkles with equanimity. The phone gagged as if it were meddling.

Gruesome nights weighed on her. She grappled with red tape to fill in her late husband’s cold, green Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (MCCD) and the Certificates of Registration of Death (BD8). Her adult sons’ wives sorted theirs. Curios came to mind as a distraction, watching shapes race, larking about, mimicking birthdays, Sunday dinners, school exams falling between the cracks of life. Indicative of her fumbling working-mind, it alerted her to get back on track. Amateur motherhood aside. Her role as specialised editor was to resume.

“I had my custom-made little world of men, destroyed single-handedly like a meteor. Of course it was bound to happen. If a psychic decided on your fate, you were branded. A jinxed cachet stalked you everywhere like a birthmark over one’s face. Twistedly viewed by everyone to see, mock, jeer at and pity you for. The moment I was presented to my papa’s second wife, Amparo. I was pinned like my favourite red velvet bow grouping my locks in my Sunday best. Insightfully she predicted the omen seconding me. Up went her plucked eyebrows into her lined forehead. She foresaw my besmirched destiny. Without seeking an audience with her clairvoyant, she deep-dived, declaring my ambitious, selfish arc. Her piercing voice downtrod and taunted me. In raising me, my faults, mishaps, inadequacies surfaced. We may have had regular meals but at what cost? No space for melt-downs. The catastrophic change ultimately impacted us. Each of my siblings ended up either on the breadline, married to a drunken wife-beater, incarcerated. Me, personally, I jumped on the first steamship to America to escape Amparo’s control, balls and socialite gossip,” Mayra shepherded her panting.

In the crackling, cursing blaze, she reminisced rocky beginnings. Then her grieving taita* (*dad) fell victim to bourgeoisie’s pressure. The burden to remarry, support his large starving brood, maintain stature and revive his dwindling writing aspirations, struck him hard. Manhood in jeopardy.

Next to him, the prospect of raising only one offspring left Mayra feeling humiliated. Petrified, incompetent, she lacked his relentless resolve. For the first time, her deep-rooted resentment cast aside, Mayra empathised fully with Rogelio's position. An only-parent, he brought up solo six jagged youngsters. ‘Twas the Silver Age’s traditional Hispanic society’s cradle. He had to accept his fate. The social stresses in his day were different: it was a privileged, closed in-crowd. Showing-off class and conduct, scrutinised like a combat zone.

“How did papa manage?” Staring into the hissing fire’s flames. Her parental incompetence’s nadir rose shamefully.

The fighting blaze snapped in agreement. In turning back the clock, she huddled scenarios from her papa’s cluttered work space. Amid sagging bookshelves, bulging chests of manuscripts and music scores, plastered walls framed with admired artists’ portraits, busts of composers, Rogelio found his allies. An oversized cello case housed Mayra on numerous occasions from her siblings in hide-and-seek larks. Impeccable maids also sought her under orders from their employer, Mayra’s relentless step-mother. Inside the well-used fabric sack, Mayra curled up. Its thick, soft, deep-purple velvet lining nested her like a shimmering rook masterminding its interiors. A special mixture of rosin for the bow hair, wood and polish sweated through. Serenaded between her father playing Scheherazade Op.35 and scented lather, her mother, Remedios, clandestinely resurrected before them both. Persian melodious waves spun Arabian Nights’ webs. In a haze of Remedios’ oriental perfume, Mayra drowsily slipped into it.

***

Untypically she muddled through documentation. Creaking foundations distracted her. Their groans were like spiteful rumours. Eventually, she succumbed to anguished sleep. Each night, burrowed into Goyo's armchair, his retro-inclined lightstand minded her.

At this intense stage Mayra grappled double-binded cremation and ash scattering storms. Although Goyo and her could not fathom their permanent split, they left their Last Will and Testament for a rainy day. In hindsight, death was short-changed, sidestepped by their romantic momentum. Nighttime visions channelled her to place their deceased remains in La Hoyada, Ayacucho. Goaded, escorted, she was roused to cement her tribe’s spiritual epilogue. Respecting Quechua’s coexistence with the departed, she preserved the newcomers’ contents in a dedicated family urn. Only Gael’s and hers were lacking.

“What should I do, Goyo?” In the past his hushed whisper advised her.

Spectral foggy penumbras now took over.