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The Losers’ Club:
Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez
copyright © 2005— all rights reserved
Novel excerpt—page 36
“Madrecita”
The author, Richard Perez
16.
The Soft Descent
“Emptiness,”she said.
“All emptiness
is open to me …”
The Sky Is Barren.Dreams Are Useless.
Dissolution Rules.
Long ago, I dreamtI fell through
the clouds …
I fell easily and
kept falling.
My arms extended,my eyes open,
I descended
through the clouds
without a whisper,
without a sound
(as in a flickering
silent picture
show).
How well—how well
and easily
I kept falling.
How oftensince then
have I had this image
in my mind …
that
of my body
falling
fall-ing
without a whisper,without a sound.
Some nights later, Martin was alone again, trying to work out an old poem, when his thoughts strayed to days long past and memories of his departed mother … madrecita.—What recollections did he have of her?
A petite, fine-featured woman with dark curling hair— again Martin envisioned her in a familiar pose, lingering by the half-open shade of her bedroom window, staring out into the street.
Always this strange and tomb-like solitude: permanently shut away from the sun and the rest of the world.— Why? …
Once, while she stood by that window, Martin consi-dered, in fantasy, sneaking up behind her and shoving her out. (“¡Hala, vaca!”) Were it not for that rusted window guard, she might’ve fallen too. Dropped down and down, in slow motion, five full stories, arms flailing, legs kicking wildly—her head smacking the sidewalk and splitting open like a ripe watermelon—brains and bitter sadness splattering for yards! Martin looking down at horrified bystanders, timidly waving a hand.
Other memories?
Not due to any sickness he could see, his mother’s darkened form unable to get up from bed for days on end, her chest gently falling and rising, rising and falling. His mother sleeping more than anyone in the whole world.
Martin fixing his own breakfast, Martin walking himself to school, Martin pleading with her to take him to the big park, the one with the Indian caves, the quiet winding paths, the giant ball fields.
Rendered nearly powerless in the oppressive dark, his mother sometimes not bothering to answer the door when it rang or even pick up the phone. Stomping his feet, Martin flouncing into the next room to snap on the TV, turning up the volume. At last, she would cry out in a wrecked voice, “¡Bájalo!” But he would turn it up, losing himself in silly-happy dialogue and cartoon violence. “¡Bá-JA-LO!” With that, the volume went even higher. Way up! In the end, staggering, she would burst into the room, eyes puffy, face incredulous: “¿Pero qué eres, IDIOTA!?..”
He recalled another time, years before, the two tranquilly reclined on her wide bed, taking an afternoon nap, facing each other, when Martin, suddenly bored, mischievously reached over and yanked down hard on her pajama bottom, his jaw dropping at the sight of her thick, hairy PUSSY!
“¡Cochino!”—and WHACK!—his mother slapping his face so hard his ears rang for a full fifteen minutes.
Other times? He remembered his mother without pro-vocation, abruptly swinging—pelting him. Now, crumpled in a corner, open hands held up in surrender. Thwack! Martin seeing stars: a hot, tingling sensation on his skin where mami hit him. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!.. ” he bawled, shivering. Then striking him again and again, suddenly ranting, “¡Si no fuera por ti! ¡Si no fuera por ti!” And with her bare foot, kicking him. Stubbing her big toe, somehow. “—¡ Ayyy, Dios! … ” And as she did a hopping dance, her face screwed up in pain, Martin breaking into a laugh—a loud laugh—his cheeks still wet with tears.
Then, of course, there were the happy times. Her sadness ebbing, her mood lightened; his mother affectionate with him, suddenly warm and tender.
Together on the sagging bed, her softness against him, her skin milky: pleasant. Martin closed his eyes, floating back through time, feeling her light teasing fingers on the nape of his neck, softly along the back of his head, now stroking his hair gently, gently comforting him.
Her face then pressed against his, her lips kissing him. Smack! Affectionately kissing him. Smack! Smack! Martin cringing. Her voice laughing; light laughter passing be-tween them, cascading, ringing like bells.
The two embracing, squeezing each other a long time, in a firm hold on life, Martin slipping into a dream. Tight against her bosom, tight; hanging on, her heartbeat in his ear. Hearing her heartbeat then, he could not comprehend, could not imagine how it wouldn’t last forever .…
Then, recalling how his grandparents would show up to take him away.
As always, Martin at a loss.
In the end, the very end, amid the flashes of light and wide gaps in memory, the fierce bouts of anguish and pain, his grandfather arriving again, muttering—let in with his own key—this time to pack Martin’s things: whatever remained. Martin frightened, confused: “¿Qué haces?¿Pero dónde está Mami? ¿Dónde está Mami?”
In return, nothing. A widening silence, a crushing loneliness.
Sirens wailing in the distance, in the night … his mother, madrecita, being taken away forever, away from that window, away from that bed, her shattered face receding, fading, amid a swirl of shadows, into memory, now as always. “Amid a swirl of shadows” Martin wrote, “into the lonely night .… ”
Complete Restored Edition!
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Book Group Questions!
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“It is a book to be savored!”
—Tim Sandlin,
Sorrow Floats, Social Blunders
The Losers' Club:
Complete Restored Edition!
by Richard Perez
ISBN: 0-9713415-5-9
“Original and highly entertaining”—Midwest Book Review
“A story of youth, very well told, and it dwells in the mind
long after a reader finishes it.”
— Joanne Greenberg,
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
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