A Bull and a Matador

On loss and Frank Ocean in 2020

I. Nurse Mary

My nana’s feet look almost brand new, uncalloused and smooth. They extend out from underneath a hospital sheet. A ventilator covers her mouth, and her acrylic teeth shine through when the machinery inhales.

My nana looks her size, and she can’t wear her sunglasses here, can’t cover her almost black eyes. She holds tight in her fingers a small laminated novelty card. “There are angels on Earth disguised as moms,” it reads, two cartoon cherubs floating, holding hearts in front of a blue sky.

Only one person at a time. Masks required. Not because she has the virus, but because it would surely be the last straw. It’s the summer months, and things have briefly settled. My sister and mother stand outside the door.

My entire life, people have raved about how they all look like each other — my sister, my mother, my grandmother. All of those years, I would squint to see the resemblance they saw and I would fail. But, here, for the first time, I see my mother in this bed. I see the stringy texture of my mother’s hair, I see my mother’s straight lined mouth and her small lips. The thick balls of my mother’s arthritic knuckles. I consider, for the first time, that I’ve had more years with my mother now than I will have. We’ve made it more than half the way.

When I see my mother again, I let go a little less, and I wonder if it was the nurses who washed my nana’s feet, or if they’ve always been that clean.

II. Self Control

It’s the second week of March, and J and I wallflower a packed and sticky bar in Chinatown. We shimmy our shoulders to Frank Ocean songs while taking sips of house whiskey.

“What do you think the odds are that someone has it here?” I ask her.

“Probably pretty good,” she responds.

We know enough to know that we probably shouldn’t be here, but we don’t yet know that this will be the last time we do this for a length of time we still don’t fully know.

Paper lamps hang above us and softly illuminate the crowd in a faded red. I think about how I’ve never seen this place lit up in fluorescents before, only in this humming glow. I wonder what the floor must look like, stained with alcoholic sugar water.

The DJs know when to kill the music and let the crowd carry the melody. Like when Frank croons —

I remember. How could I forget?

how you feel?

You know you were my first time?

A new feel.

J and I each put a hand up and cradle our drinks with the other, swaying our arms with the waves of the beat.

How much time have I spent mourning things I haven’t yet lost? I will in a few months wonder if my gut could already sense the absence of these crowded rooms. Was the quiet rumble inside of my belly actually a grieving? Like, did my molecules know? Was it lament that I felt in the soil that holds together the matter in my joints?

Late into the night, we get drunk enough to find our way closer to the speakers and collect with the other leftovers to dance in the almost emptied center of the room, unaware of how loose we all look. We sing back and forth to each other and wobble across each others’ feet. We dance around each other.

But never together.

All of us, leftovers. We hover our voices over plucked electric guitar strings.

Q kills the track and together, like a hymnal, we chant —

I, I, I know you gotta leave, leave leave.

Take down some summer time.

Give us

Just tonight, night, night, night.

Just tonight.

Almost like we already knew.

III. The Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis

Let’s say that the language you’re given at birth also influences your cognition, guides the way you process the world. Does the opposite happen when a language is taken away? You have to wonder if at some point you start to feel the language leaving. If the creases in your brain start to close up or shift.

My grandmother’s teenage hands, colored with welts in the shape of a ruler.

When she was older, she scoffed at anyone who tried to speak to her in Spanish, hunched over as if to protect herself, like how a child jumped in an alley might protect his diaphragm.

“Speak to me in ENGLISH,” she’d say. Her tone jagged and cold.

I wonder if she ever mourned her tongue, if she thought of it when she would float the tips of her fingers over her forehead, her naval, both shoulders, the same way she would do each time she would merge onto the freeway.

Sometimes you lose things so well that missing them becomes who you are.

The Father. The Son. The Holy Spirt.

Amen.

IV. A Bull and a Matador

Dogs. Loyal. Trustworthy. Excitable.

This is how you see yourself.

Flannel shirt. Warm. Comforting. Protective.

This is how others see you.

A breeze. I don’t know, man. There’s something calming about the resistance, to have this very earth push up against you like a weighted blanket, to not just feel like you’re floating out there all alone and without consequence. It’s really hard to explain but when I feel a breeze out when I’m walking, I almost feel at peace.

This is how you feel about death.

I’ve had nightmares recently and consistently of my dog dying in horrifying, unexpected ways.

After spending years with my mother because of my work hours, the pup began living with me once it became clear this pandemic wouldn’t give.

Or that we wouldn’t let it.

I dream she gets loose and runs across the street, struck by a car that bolts. I dream she gets attacked by one of the stray coyotes that come out from the hills behind my house each night. I dream she jumps down from the balcony on the second floor.

She’s 13. It’s much more likely she’ll go the way most do. A small poke into her hip. But, still, my mind danced with these thoughts, entertained them and avoided them.

Like, shouldn’t we all go out on fire? Not just as an exhale.

I used to hold onto things so hard, I’d break their bodies in my embrace. I’m learning now to hold a little more loosely.

I’ve heard Frank softly in the back of my mind each day of all of this.

There’s hell on Earth and the city’s on fire. Inhale. In hell, there’s heaven. Amen.

There’s a bull and matador dueling in the sky. Amen.

In hell, there’s heaven.

Amen.