Monstress Read Online Free PDF

through cupboards, open drawers, not sure what I’m looking for, so I settle for a mug and fill it with water and though I’m not thirsty I drink it anyway. “He couldn’t breathe. And then he died. When people ask, that’s what you say.”
    Ma picks up the spoon again, and now I understand: “Ang bunso ko,” she’s been saying. My baby boy, over and over. Like Eric died as a child and she realized it only now.
    T he morning after the show, my brother called me at work. When I picked up, he said, “Well . . . ?” like we were in mid-conversation, though we hadn’t spoken in six months.
    â€œYou grew your hair out,” I said. “It’s blond now.”
    â€œExtensions,” he said.
    â€œThey look real.”
    â€œThey’re not.” He took a deep breath. “But the rest of me is.”
    It was a little after seven. I was the only one in the office. Not even the tech guys were in yet. I turned and looked out my window, down at the street, which was empty too.
    â€œGoddamnit, Edmond,” my brother said. “Say something.”
    I didn’t, so he did. He said he was sorry if it hurt Ma and me, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I showed the world what I’m made of.” He said this slowly, like it was a line he’d been rehearsing for months. “What do you think of that?”
    â€œI saw nothing,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI saw nothing.” It was the truth. When Eric lifted his shirt, they didn’t simply cover his breasts with a black rectangle. They didn’t cut to commercial or pan the camera to a shocked face in the audience. Instead, they blurred him out, head to toe. It looked like he was disintegrating, molecule by molecule. “They blurred you out,” I said.
    I could hear him pace his apartment. I’d never visited, but I knew he was living in the Tenderloin in downtown San Francisco. The few times he called, there were always things happening on his end—cars honking, sirens, people shouting and laughing. But that morning, there was just the sound of us breathing, one, then the other, like we were taking turns. I imagined a pair of divers at the bottom of the ocean, sharing the same supply of air.
    â€œYou there?” I finally said. “Eric, are you there?”
    â€œNo,” he said, then hung up.
    And that’s how it ended, for Eric and me.
    I go to my apartment to get clothes, but stay the night at Ma’s. My old bed is still in my old room upstairs, but I take the living room couch. I don’t sleep, not for a minute. Before light comes, I call Delia in Chicago, but her fiancé picks up. I ask for my wife, which irritates him. But technically, I’m right: the divorce isn’t final, not yet. I’m still her husband, and I won’t let that go, not until I have to.
    â€œNo message,” I tell him, then hang up.
    Somehow, I’m wide awake all morning. Driving to the funeral home in North Oakland, I don’t even yawn.
    Loomis, the man who handled Dad’s funeral eleven years ago, waits for us in a small square of shade outside the main office. He’s heavier now, his hair thinner, all white. Back then he walked with a limp; today he walks with a cane.
    â€œDo you remember me?” It’s the first thing Ma says to him. “And my husband?” She pulls a picture from her wallet, an old black-and-white of Dad back in his Navy days. He’s wearing fatigues, looking cocky. His arms hang at his sides, but his fists are clenched, like he’s ready for a fight. “Dominguez. First name Teodoro.” Loomis takes the photo, holds it eye level, squints. “I do remember him,” he says, though he saw my father only as a corpse. “And I remember you too.” He looks at me, shakes my hand. “The boy who never left his mother’s side that whole time.”
    That was Eric. Ma knows it