Carry Me Like Water Read Online Free PDF

reading:
    “Death is easy. It was life that was so damn hard …” He wasn’t sure about that part either, not because it wasn’t true but because it was so true that everybody already knew it. Why was it necessary to state the obvious? People might not like it and never read the rest of the letter. He scratched it out with pencil. Maybe he could find a better way of saying the same thing. He made a note to himself to go to the library and check out a book of quotes or something like that. Maybe he could find an appropriate quote as a kind of epigraph to his letter. It would be a nice touch. He continued reading: “I always hated that I was born deaf. I think my mother always hated it, too. She never learned sign language. I don’t think she wanted to learn, or she didn’t have time—I don’t know. I thinksometimes that she never wanted to hear what I had to say. She knew when I was hungry or thirsty or tired; she knew when I was happy or upset; she knew the easy things, but that’s all she knew. Maybe she didn’t think I had real thoughts. Maybe she thought things were different for the deaf. I don’t know. Maybe she figured because I talked with my hands she could guess everything about me from the outside. She was like everyone else I ever met: always smiling at me and hoping I would somehow go away. Where the hell was I supposed to go?
    “I guess it doesn’t matter much. I know she loved me as much as she could. And she loved me better than anyone who has ever known me …” Maybe I should add something here, he thought. He took a drink from his cup of coffee, shook his head, and took down a few notes on the margins of the paper. “… Now, I just go to work in a place where there will never be any signs of the sun and I come back home. I watch people talk; I read their lips and they say things like, ‘I need to get out of his hellhole of a town, I hate this city—it’s fucking dead.’ I saw this lady once, dressed real nice with lots of jewelry, like the Empress Carlota’s, and she was telling her friend that life was a piece of shit; ‘My husband, he buys me rings and necklaces and clothes, and he takes me out once a year like a moveable, decorated Christmas tree.’ I think she wanted to cry—but she didn’t. The look on her face wasn’t angry. She was mostly sad, I think. Sad. And the people I see at work, they look like they’re in a war or something. They don’t even have enough energy to raise the flag of surrender. They all took tired. Maybe it’s me who’s tired—that’s what my friend Luz says. She says everyone looks tired to me because I’m tired. I wrote out on my pad: “Your eyes would be tired too, Luz, if you always had to stare at people’s lips to see what they were saying.” She told me to stop being angry. “You’re not the only one who has to look at those faces,” she said. Maybe she’s right, but goddamnit, I can’t help being angry. I can’t stop myself. Besides, Luz is as angry as I am.
    “Most people don’t know I can read lips. It’s a secret I like to keep. Why should I tell them? I just pretend I don’t understand, so they write things down for me. When we have to write things down, we’re all equal. The people who come into the restaurant alwaystell me I have real nice handwriting—but I read their lips and they say things. And I don’t care for what they have to say. Well, it’s their world—but they don’t have hearts. Luz says I’m too nice to people on the outside and too hard on them on the inside. But one thing I do know: The only way to find out if some people have hearts is to cut them open and take a look because I sure as hell can’t tell by the way they act …” Right here Diego stopped and shook his head. Luz is right, he thought, I am too angry. It wasn’t fair to be so hard on people. And what if someone found this letter when he was dead? Wouldn’t they hate him for it? He laughed. But he’d be dead—he wouldn’t feel a