After some editing, this is the final version...
The mass with eight heads.
After eight years of being locked, we decided to finally empty that place. The house where I grew up was my shelter for the first sixteen years of my life, a cubbyhole where I found one eighth of identity, shared with my seven siblings. It was as if we were a big mass with eight heads, but it was the nook where, despite how crowded it was, I found comfort and safety.
I was given the task of packing up our stuff, all of it. The stuff that for eight years was forgotten and forsaken, and as I started to sort it out, before my very eyes, all the memories got unpacked and started to take over. I could almost feel it, as if the dust that covered everything had sealed the memories within every object. As I blew the dust off, I also breathed new life into the memories.
As I was clearing up the table, I remembered the weekday mornings to the beat of classical music from the radio, the deep voice of the announcer, “It's six forty-five and we just heard Peter and the Wolf by
Sergei Prokofiev, narrated by José Ferrer, performed by the Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Eugène Aynsley Goossens”. Then my dad asking “could you identify the flute in that slow part? The high pitch resembles the voice of a small bird”, as he was sitting on his chair with the ever present cup of coffee, from which I had already had the mandatory sip, “blow on it first so it doesn't burn” Dad would say. As my older siblings got ready for school, coming and going in a bee hive-like frenzy that at that moment felt like an intelligible blur, that today comes back in full detail. I could see my sisters Mercedes and Isabel, fighting over who was going to use the bathroom mirror to put make-up on. Then my brother Antonio would use the distraction to take a step and take over, running in and closing the door behind him. To my sisters' protests he would say, “sorry it's an emergency” in a muffled, insincere apology. At the same time, My mom, with her best drill sergeant voice would say from the kitchen “Rafael, hurry up and finish your milk, I don't want us to be late”
It was like a three ring circus, chaotic in appearance, but it was a well adjusted operation where everybody got ready to go out to the world to be someone else, because out there, we were not someone's brother or daughter, we were individuals, we were just ourselves.
I finished clearing up the table, to start packing up books. Now we were gathered around the dinner table for the evening reading session, almost all of us wiggling impatiently in our seats, waiting for the magic of my dad's voice to bring the characters to life. What would it be tonight? Maybe one of Chekhov's stories with their bizarre ending, which I never understood, and at the end, I would always sit perplexed and ask “is this it? Is that the end of the story?” I preferred to hear about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, about his travels and the ingenuity that kept him alive. He remained stranded for at least 3 years until I was old enough to pick up the book and rescue him by reading the end of the story, which definitely would get a smile and an approving nod from my dad.
Some other evenings it was not about fun. My dad would pick up the Atlas and ask randomly the capitals of Europe, South America, or the states of Mexico. It could also be the multiplication tables or a spelling contest. Whatever was needed to go over. The fun of being the youngest in “the mass with eight heads” was that I could be part of the competition without being expected to excel and still enjoy the rush of competing. It was so much fun to beat my older siblings. It was great to finally be visible even though I had to cheat by looking up the Atlas when none was around.
I then remembered how I sat with Juan Carlos to listen to the Rolling Stones, and he knew that my favorite song was “Ruby Tuesday”, one time Jesus bought me something with the money he made selling newspapers, Mercedes used to take me with her when she visited her friends, Rafael would help me tie up my shoes so we could go out and play, Jani would let me sit with her when she was repeating her French exercises. I was amazed to realize that just as my siblings were visible individuals to my eyes, big brothers and big sisters to look up to. They acknowledged me and actually knew me, that they saw in me more than just a head.
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