Feverish Delirium
By Mauricio O. Rocha
At this point, I just burst out in a stream of laughter, comic relief. The temperature is 107 degrees outside and I am trapped in a metal box of heat. Bumper to bumper vehicles are assembled in an endless fleet of scorching metal. Laughing, wiping sweat of my brow, I feel like I am going as mad as a mercury riddled hatter. I feel like this may very well be the root of all insanity.
This moment of insanity comes only after witnessing my father’s silver Chevy, bum-rushed by local vendors: hawking bottled water, peanuts, sunglasses, and framed portraits of Pancho Villa, whose holding a riffle like a trophy. It wouldn’t be outrageous to believe I was in the middle of a packed Rockies game back home. Well, minus the portraits.
The reality: I am stuck in the long waiting line to come back home, to the U.S, with wave after wave of misfits attacking the car, moving a foot per minute, some whose fists clutch wet washcloths. These folks began to wipe furiously at the car after dashing towards it. When my dad, Baltazar, gestures for them to stop cleaning the truck, they refuse to accept it a genuine answer. My salt and pepper haired father tells me from the driver’s seat, “they’re trying to service us to make a living, because we have Colorado license plates, they assume we are loaded and want to wash our car.”
One man is hopping on a makeshift crutch; my dad slips him a few pesos through the driver window--pity pesos. Blistering heat waves and the humming of barely moving, over used motors surrounds me. Out of one insect splattered window I see seedy looking a man slinging burritos; out of the other window I see a woman offering sliced fruit in a cup soaked with lime juice.
Is this some deranged social experiment, or is this the path that one must go through to enter into The States from Mexico? I ponder this behind my caramel colored aviators.
I roll over in the back seat, sprawling across the midsection, seeking refuge in my blue iPod, my novels (The Beautiful and the Damned, Snuff, The Rum Diaries), and my notebook: the salvations that kept me going when time on the road got tough. In hindsight, it seems like one big cramped haze of sweat and sleep, with us occasionally stopping to eat and rest. Perhaps in a feverish delirium, or perhaps just elated to be returning to Denver, I burst into laughter. Both seem like the truth to me now in retrospect.
I think back to a week ago, how nervous I was to be embarking on a new adventure. I had only a vague idea of what to expect, but nothing too concrete. I think of why I went on this mission in the first place: the promise that my father made to the Virgin de San Juan. Before I underwent surgery to correct the arching curvature in my spine, to reassure my recovery, my dad pleaded with the Virgin: “Can you watch over my son, protect him, and make sure that all goes well when he is under the knife? If you would be so kind as to do this, we will both visit you in your home town of San Juan, Mexico, and be ever so grateful.”
My surgery was a success, I had a speedy recovery and my dad was determined to keep the promise he made. Making sure we went to Mexico to visit the saint was now my obligation, my burden, the weight on my shoulders to bear. For the six months in between my surgery and when we left to Mexico June 16, 2010, I felt like if I were to die my soul would belong to the Virgin de San Juan. I would burn in hell for my father’s beliefs if we did not follow through with this pilgrimage. Needless to say, this was something that had to be done.
Now waiting in this purgatory to enter back home, I think of the moments that I shared with my father in Mexico: visiting the Technicolor cemetery with all of its fluorescent pinks and pastel blue flowers. My father and my godfather, Vicente, both immediately begin to scrub the tiled monument that holds their parents inside. I feel a mixed emotion: proud sadness because the set of two loyal brothers, now orphans, are paying respect to their parents. This is when it occurred to me that Mexico is a place of strong family loyalty, and the deepest of sorrows.
I realized my father’s hometown of Loreto, Zacatecas, which I had been absent from for ten years was no longer the carefree one I recalled. The one where I would run around with primos, slurp fresh, pulpy, orange juice out of a bag, and chase farm animals on the rancho until I was all tuckered out. The one where I would converse with my abuelos in their native tongue, and they would embarrass my dad with stories from his childhood. No, this Mexico was drier, more serious, and more sullen. The silence echoed in my grandparents’ vibrant green home. I wished for banter and laughter, but there was none.
Fast forward to rolling mountains and pale skies. My dad and I are entering Colorado, driving through a scenic backdrop with the dotted yellow leading the way. White, and yellow dotted lines gradually fade into the infinite black tar.
My father and I talk about the trip, now behind us, and what we will do when we get back to Denver. Maybe it’s because I am older now, I can think about things in the past and analyze them like an adult. My maturing mind is a gift and a curse; with new each year I gain, I can understand new complex sorrows. I now understand the thoughtful expression permanently plastered on my fathers’ face. His salt and pepper hair: a symbol of his vast knowledge. I understand that he doesn’t dye it for a reason. It’s not because he is striving for that Mexican George Clooney look, it’s because he isn’t afraid to wear his wisdom on his head.
I understand that I am fortunate to live my life here in Denver, with all of my freedoms and opportunities that I am given on a daily basis. I feel bad that my cousins and tias and tios in Loreto will never know the luxuries that I have: living alone in a studio apartment in the heart of downtown Denver, working at a movie theatre, attending an honorable college. I think about all of my DVD’s, my novels, my things, and they seem just that--things. I feel like a typical glutinous American, even though I wish I wasn’t.
Simultaneously, this motivates me and encourages me to live my life turned up to eleven, for all of them that cannot. It motivates me to push myself in new directions and to always be honest to my character. My purpose hits me then: to both pay my dues, and to carve my own niche. Now free of religious burdens and a semi-clear conscious, I intend to do just that.
Republished with kind permission.
About the author (2011): Maurico O. Rocha, Denver, is a student at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
