And the Geo-metro Gave Birth

Carlos Fidel Espinoza

Angel Alberto squinted to see through the fog and tarnish that was his old mirror. He drew two small, black, triangles under each eye. His right hand dipped into the tub of cold, white, make-up and he smeared it on his chin and cheeks. He took the tube of red number thirty-six lipstick painted his lips and the area around his lips; grabbed the small red ball with a slit on one side, squeezed it so that the slit would open like the mouth of a small bird begging for food, and placed it on his nose. Angel Alberto thought his reflection resembled a five-hundred year old fresco painting, San Payaso. When he walked out of his small apartment, his friends were outside. The five men, waiting for Angel had on similar make-up. The six of them crammed and elbowed themselves into the yellow Geo-metro that Angel Alberto’s mother had left him when she had passed several years ago.
They drove down Ave. 16 de Septiembre; at the stop lights Angel Alberto looked out the car window to the corner where he and his friend Filberto would normally be juggling and twisting bright colored, phallic shaped balloons into small dogs. When they arrived at the church, a small child pulled on his mothers dress and said “momy mira los payasos.” The six men stretched and pulled as the Geo-metro gave birth to them two at a time. They opened the doors to church and were greeted with a chorus of quite weeps and sobs. Women and there children where huddled around the closed brown box, they carried black rosaries and wiped there faces with white handkerchiefs. Angel Alberto began to walk towards them, but one of his friends grabbed his right shoulder, shook his head no and pointed to the last row of pews where the other four men sat.
After the service the six men stood up, walked to the box and grabbed the metal bars that were on both sides of the box. When the six men lifted the box a sharp cold pain ran up their arms, to Angel Alberto it felt as if though he was lifting a piece of solid ice. As they walked out of the church, to the white cargo van that had its backdoors open; Angel Alberto thought about his friend who lay inside the box. Though his angular face had been made a soft pulp, Angel Alberto knew, underneath the chunks of bone and now rotting flesh his friend had on his white make-up and red plastic nose.