Misguided Ghosts

My grandpa died in 2021.

I wrote a series of poems and prose, hoping he might hear my calling from the grave, that he might appear in moments of debilitating sorrow. Maybe he did, and I didn’t have the intuition to notice.

I would have preferred if grandpa had waited a little longer, but I think he might have been ready to die.

He wasn’t terribly old, but he did have a terrific condition. He was born with all of his organs on the opposite side of his body. It was fitting - a pretty unusual phenomenon for a pretty unusual guy. If we were actually related, I’d be a lot more concerned about my own chronic ailments, but most of my bodily issues are phantom symptoms of anxiety, curated by the vagus nerve. 

My grandpa died in the middle a pandemic, and I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Though my childhood memories may be unreliably filled with shadows of dinosaurs in the cul-de-sac and ghoulish arms creeping out from under the bed at night, I remember grandpa with clarity. His social skills were lacking in terms of conventional norms, but I always thought he was the most impressive person in the room. He responded to small talk with unexpected phrases like, “It’s better to have dogs in your yard than beans in your ears.” Experienced conversationalists would admit defeat and retreat from further attempts to break through his shell. I found these masterful avoidances delightful and inspiring.

My grandpa is dead, and he is also not my real grandfather.

Despite that fact, I saw my real father cry real tears while the little funeral goons lowered his casket below the earth. Although that was unsurprising, I also watched my real brother cry real tears, a monumental event that I had witnessed approximately twice in my lifetime. While my real uncle, who was my grandfather’s only real son, delivered an impersonal and overly religious eulogy, at my grandpa’s wake, I couldn’t stop thinking about bookfairs, library visits, and reading Dr. Seuss for the first time. He may not have been of my own blood, but his influence in my personal becoming was more significant than that of any DNA ties.

I remember the day that I met my real grandfather. 

I was sixteen, a junior in high school, working the cash register at the friendly neighborhood Burger King. The usual Wednesday night crowd had already made a mess of the dining area. I was sweeping away stray french fries dropped by poorly behaved children when a man that I’d never seen before sauntered through the door. I froze in disbelief at the sight of this stranger who just so happened to look exactly like my father, who looks exactly like my brother, who looks exactly like me. He greeted me by name. I glanced down to confirm I was wearing my name tag. He asked how my tía was doing as we ventured towards the counter. It was a small town, and my aunt was a teacher at the local high school. She was fine, I guessed. The stranger stared wordlessly into the depths of my soul, searching.

I looked into the eyes of a ghost, and for the first time, saw a reflection of my past.

“Do you know me?” He asked. I couldn’t respond. This question was a test, and I had failed. We stood in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time before he abruptly ordered a Whopper Junior. I waited by the counter and he by the soda machine. We side-eyed each other from a distance, awkwardly failing to read each other’s minds until the burger arrived. He turned away slowly, a cane in one hand, a paper bag containing a miniature Whopper in the other. “Fair well, mija.” He said and disappeared into the middle Georgia sunset as mysteriously as he’d arrived.

This unforeseen fast food patron was my real grandfather.

I suppose I had always known it, but there was no room for doubt after seeing his face. José Emiliano Martinez was my grandfather, not the silly, gentle, book loving grandpa who’d attended every elementary school Grandparent’s Day event. My grandfather was this unknown man with dark curly hair, a mischievous grin, and deep set eyes that resembled my own. This man, who visited me then, but had never before in sixteen years, passed down to me his blood, unspoken traumas, and centuries of anxious genetics.

I totaled my car my junior year of college.

After losing traction control, I fishtailed into a ditch. Hitting just the right angle with just enough speed, gravity sent the metal box flying more than ten feet through the air, flipping uncontrollably. A pack of cigarettes and a Bic lighter floated weightlessly next to my face. I threw my arms over my head and waited to get off the ride. “Angels” by Chance the Rapper was playing through the speakers when the machine stopped rolling and somehow landed perfectly back on all four wheels. Although the paramedics were expecting to pull a corpse from the wreckage, I managed to crawl through the passenger door before they arrived. They checked that I still had teeth and asked for the name of the president of the United States. I begrudgingly answered, Donald Trump. I was wrong. He hadn’t taken office yet, but regardless of the election results, I was mostly fine.

That was the day that I learned the truth about my real grandfather.

It was late when I returned home, and I wasn’t expecting to find my dad awake. Despite the lack of blood, bruises, or broken bones, he took one look at me and knew something terrible had happened. I explained that I would need to borrow his car to get to work in the morning, and he cried tears of joy. Too shocked to sleep, he rolled a joint for us to share. We had never smoked together before, and we had also never spoken about Joe. At age seventeen, my dad committed grand theft auto. He stole a car and drove it across state lines just for fun. After being denied by every family member and rotting in a Florida jail cell for two months, he called Joe. My dad’s real father, who he hadn’t seen since childhood, made the eight hour drive to pay his bond and bring him home. I told my dad about the time that I met Joe at Burger King, that he had since messaged me on Facebook, and that I never responded. He recommended that I keep it that way.

My grandpa narrowly escaped death before I was born.

My dad shared that Joe immigrated from Puerto Rico to the US for specialized military training. He completed three Marine tours in Vietnam before being honorably discharged due to injury. He told me that when he was a child, Joe beat him and his sister badly, that he beat my grandmother until her face was swollen and discolored. He told me that when my grandmother remarried, Joe beat my grandpa within an inch of his life. Luckily, he awoke in a hospital bed days later. I finally understood why my family had always chosen to gloss over our objective differences, our varying facial features, our Spanish surname. I understood why my aunt chose to deny her Puerto Rican heritage and why my father refers to himself as a Redneck Latino, despite their Taíno roots.

All of my life I have been haunted by ghosts, but never the ones that I expected to meet. 

I wish I could say that we beat the family curse, that violence, rage, and addiction didn’t run deep within our veins. It’s unsettling to know there’s something inside you waiting to erupt and to have no understanding of its origin. If I dared to peer deeply into the darkness of my own eyes and see Taíno staring back at me, maybe my Boricua bruja bisabuela would appear in a vision of clarity, rather than sending my vehicle catapulting through the sky to prove some menial point. Maybe then I’d understand.

My grandpa has been dead for five years, and I have never seen his reflection in a mirror.

The first time my dad visited my apartment, he pointed to the jars of plant propagations on the counter. He said Joe’s home used to be covered in them. I sometimes wonder if perhaps we have any more commonalities that I may never discover. I wonder if Joe’s mother never made him mofongo, if his father beat him as a child and called it discipline. After my grandpa passed, I learned that for the last thirty years, Joe has lived only five minutes from my hometown. He is old now and very frail. He may not last much longer, but I have no desire to fill a void. Maybe we’ll chat later.