Thinking of my grandfather brought me back to times of routine hospital visits where I’d drink the fun-sized cups of orange juice nurses would pass out. Feeling blue as I waited for a patient vomiting blood to pass by. My grandpa vomited phlegm because throat cancer wouldn’t let him eat through his mouth. I choked on my tears because not being able to eat in peace must’ve made him desperate for a reason to live. To provide adequate nutrition, surgeons cut a hole in my grandfather’s stomach and linked it to a transparent plastic tube where he directly received liquid food. My family and I watched the fat previously fueled by solid food shrink from his bones throughout the two years he lived with us. Before he ever came to my house, I lay in the red guest room he’d soon overtake, at least I knew it as the “red room.” White curtains dotted both sides of a red sash. Dark red, almost burgundy paint graced the walls. I used to see this red as pure passion and peace. Occasionally, I’d look out the room’s window, watching kids around my age play in the grassy field across from my house. It was about half the size of a soccer field, so those kids would always run or throw a ball around. One of them went to my elementary school and wore a smile on his face like clothing. The other girl who was often there was his older sister, and sometimes their friend would join them. I also wanted to join them. I was an only child, so it would have been nice to know more people around my age in my neighborhood. But by fourth grade they moved away, my grandfather moved into the red room a year later, and the walls paled. A little TV was installed in the corner of the room and made up for the fading colors. After a while, I noticed the red paint still leaked out, like blood from a wound, with the frequency of fresh tears. We’d routinely go to Publix and get pound cake which was all too yellow for my grandfather’s disease. But it didn’t look like stage four advanced throat cancer, it looked like a shiny loaf of goodness I was grateful could prevent a lack of sweets at home. Entenmann's, I’ll always remember that brand because it was my favorite brand of pound cake. A few years ago, I couldn’t remember the name of the pound cake my grandfather always insisted on. I still wonder why I found it difficult to not pay attention to the pale walls of the previously red room just enough so we could watch a TV show or two. I never went out of my way to pay attention to my grandpa unless it was to ask for something. I recall the first time I asked him for something pretty well. I was in 6th grade, and it was a particularly boring afternoon. “¿Abuelo, puedo usar tu teléfono?” “¿Para que?” Is what I think he asked when I asked to use his phone. “Para jugar en tu teléfono, porque mami me quito los electrónicos.” Looking at my downcast face, my grandfather must’ve taken pity on me because he gave me his phone and didn’t even stand behind me, or follow me to my room, or do anything to make sure I was doing what I said I would be doing on it. I don’t think I deserved the pity, because my parents grounded me for good reason most of the time, and I don’t know how they dealt with me on top of stress from work. My mom owned a therapy business for years, and it was getting harder and harder for her and my dad to manage. At the time that my grandfather was sick, she had many employees to look after, and a bigger office to maintain compared to the one where her company was previously located. My dad was unemployed since before my grandpa came to live with us, so he would help my mom with the technological aspect of the company. On days my mom worked until late, I’d spend long afternoons in the company office frequently playing with the kids who were receiving therapy and making conversation with the therapists. There was a glittering board in the lobby which had the company name and logo and was illuminated by the lights perfectly positioned above it. Whenever my mom’s business came up in conversation I’d say, “Little Star Therapy Services, Incorporated,” making sure to not abbreviate to “Inc.” so I sounded smart when I said it. Most of all, I was happy I had the key to unlock the stacks of toys in the floor-to-ceiling white cabinets in four of the six therapy rooms. But my mom had to deal with heavy office work, balancing the books in addition to managing therapy sessions, and taking care of her dad, and it took a toll on her. There were days she’d come home at 7 PM, tired and frustrated from a long day, and still do things around the house. There were times I spent too many hours on my iPad or computer instead of helping her out. One day after school, after a long work day, my mom snapped. “I work like a horse! I work till I’m done and I’m sweating and you do nothing!” I took a look at my mom’s heavy undereye bags. They were creased with wrinkles. I noticed the grays of her hair seemed even more pronounced, and not just because she dyed her hair deep brown, almost black—how did I not start crying right there and then? I can only remember thinking, What do you mean, I do nothing? I hold back my tears, I’m getting good grades in school, I go to grandpa’s hospital visits without complaint. I am not doing nothing. These disputes happened occasionally because my mom and I did not know how to deal with each other and the situation at hand. My dad was often the middleman between us, and I’d talk to him when I didn’t know how to resolve conflicts with my mom. He stayed home with me more than my mom did, and so we bonded over a mutual commitment to watching Marvel’s Agents of Shield on Netflix. My grandfather would never intervene in family arguments or discussions, as he either kept himself planted in his room watching TV or would literally plant things. As in going outside and touching dirt. My reaction to this back then was what’s so attractive about dirt? I respected him for trying to move around or go anywhere but his room, though. And I respected him for going easier on me than my parents did. When I first used his phone, I thanked him and downloaded Roblox, a multiplayer game where you can customize a character and choose from an array of games within the app. As it was downloading, I scrolled through my grandfather’s LG. The bright display was smooth and compact, and the apps loaded much faster than they would on my iPod. Gah, when am I ever going to get a phone of my own? Even if it’s just one like this, an android, that’s better than nothing. Nevermind, an android is too far-fetched. I’ll take a flip phone at this point. My parents are so strict. I wondered about these things often when I used my grandfather’s phone. A part of me felt like it was my own, like it was an escape into a reality where I was an adult and could use adult things. Like it was an escape into a reality where I was grown up and didn’t have to worry about my parents yelling at me or following my mom and grandfather into routine hospital visits. I wouldn’t ever have to see my grandpa’s neck scarred from radiation or see him confined to a heart monitor in an ER that was so busy, it was hard for me not to worry about how many people got sick every day. But when did I ever wonder how long my grandfather was going to be around, or that part of growing up is dealing with a stage of life where I won’t be able to ignore old red paint, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes, I would look at myself in the mirror because I was an awkward tween who didn’t know how to deal with my appearance. I had a big mirror in my bathroom stretching to the ceiling and which covered the width of the bathroom counter, and it reassured me I wasn’t going crazy as a girl with a familiar face smiled back at me. This time, I wasn’t sure whether I was going crazy or not, because a few irritated bumps had formed on my skin. Oh gosh, are those… pimples? My hands immediately went up to my cheek and touched a now-oily patch of skin, and I scowled. Although the smooth skin on my face was in jeopardy, I put an unconvincing smile on my face and tried to overlook it, because my eczema was much worse. I had it since I was two, but for some reason, it’d intensified in the past year. The subtle red rash sprinkled around my wrist and elbows was spreading across my back and legs. I told myself in the moment that it didn’t matter, all the while itching my way through school and at home. Again one day, I wanted to use my querido Abuelo’s phone, because my parents once again grounded me. I walked into his room. “I already know what you’re going to ask. Just take it.” I am pretty sure my Abuelo Freddy said this in English, and that surprised me. He usually speaks Spanish… I didn’t even know he spoke that much English. Looking back, maybe he was trying to break more than a language barrier. “Oh… okay. Thanks.” I gingerly took the phone from his bedside. For the first time out of the few times I’d taken it, I felt a penitence so deep it dropped to the pit of my stomach, and from there, it settled in the center of the Earth. Of course I need to entertain myself, but at what cost? From then on, I no longer felt pure joy from using his phone. I just thought about how our rare, partly in-English conversation was becoming more than just one conversation. At first, I thought he was speaking more English because he’d been with us in the states for a year now, but what if he felt a disconnect from his heritage after being gone for more than just a few days, weeks, months, that he spoke in English instead? What if he wanted me to understand that he was more than some guy—who I hardly knew before he came to live with my parents and me—from Puerto Rico who came to live in my house temporarily? Sometimes, I looked up from my escape and found my grandpa gardening outside, tending to a banana tree, a mango tree, or whatever needed watering or new soil. It was his escape, but back then I didn’t know it because I didn’t understand how dirt could be so appealing. If only I’d known, I would’ve joined him, and tried to dig out that pit of penitence from the damp soil. Over the next few months, my grandfather’s tumor shrunk to the point where he was in remission. With this news, he walked around the house regularly. His skin got less sickly, less yellow. He’d eat cake and developed a preference for Sara Lee pound cake (that he’d pronounce in a thick Spanish accent, “saralii”), I now remember the name. Grocery runs with him weren’t so bad because he’d beg for this and other sweets—that I still cannot remember—and his gardening outside made me smile. When Abuelo was doing better, or at least didn’t have such frequent hospital visits, he, my mom, my dad, and I went to Busch Gardens around the middle or end of 6th grade. When we walked through the wildlife portion of the park, I learned there was such a thing as white peacocks. One walked right in front of us and started flaunting its tail, revealing an array of pure white feathers. Everyone was at least mildly surprised. Every so often, my grandpa would stop to take a photo of animals he liked. I wasn’t sure if he took a picture of the peacocks, but he did love the jovial flamingoes. His eyes lit up and his smile in these moments sticks out the most in my memories, as he watched such delicate animals live life even if their skinny stick legs looked like they could fall at any moment. And then they did fall. The delicateness of his cancer came to light as his seemingly benign tumor became malignant again. This time, it was hard for him to fight it. It was hard for him to be both fragile and strong. This time, the hospital visits grew more tedious. One evening, we bought chipotle so we could stay in the hospital and watched him at his bedside, probably wondering if he was jealous we were able to eat and he wasn’t. I’d write pages upon pages of stories based on alternate worlds, even though my grandpa was lying right next to me, asleep in a bed that wasn’t his. One story I started writing during my grandpa’s hospital visits was about a guy who needed therapy after a car accident killed some of his loved ones. This accident cursed him, causing him to turn into a monster for half of the day. I think these stories were my therapy as I grappled with what I thought was an accident; something that shouldn’t have happened to me, or my family. On another afternoon, after the Busch Gardens trip passed and the reality of his tumor set in, my grandfather, who was again staying in our house after a short-term stay in the hospital, stopped at my door. I looked up from whatever I was doing—perhaps homework or playing Roblox, something to distract myself, that's for sure—and for the first time, was really taken aback by my grandpa’s decay. The light which usually marked his eyes when he saw flamingoes in a theme park to when he simply watered his plants, was gone. His frown was exaggerated by the five wrinkles I was pretty sure he gained in the last month. “I’m not doing well,” he said, his voice so hoarse his throat sounded clogged with ash. “What do you mean?” I wanted to know what he meant because I wasn’t sure if he was talking about physically, or mentally, or both. “You know what the doctors said, right? That tumor isn’t going away,” he said. “What? But there’s still a chance, I mean—” “No, there isn’t,” he said quietly. Before that moment, I desperately held onto the hope my Abuelo would one day be okay, or at least feel okay, out of the fear he would not. Out of the fear these last few days, what I thought I was only seeing on the surface—him getting skinnier, his eyes getting more sunken—was only that, just on the surface. I genuinely hoped his spirit could remain even if his physical condition deteriorated. And I had hope he could overall get better, just like he did before. That a family trip to Busch Gardens could happen again. So it did happen that we went on another trip—but not for the right reasons. At the end of October 2017, less than halfway through my 7th-grade year, we went to Puerto Rico to see Abuelo's funeral. A few days prior, we’d received a call from one of my sobbing family members. I heard the voice of a distressed woman, likely my Tia Abuela, calling out, “Ay, Freddy, Freddy murió!" My mom and I broke down, hugging each other upon heaps of sobs. It was the first time in a while we’d both seen each other so vulnerable because my mom was usually busy working and I was usually busy distracting myself. But at that moment, I let out the red paint I’d ignored for so long, in tears running deeper than wounds ever could. I looked at the red room for what it truly was for the first time in a while—just a room with another coat of paint which held many memories. Most were sad, but only because I let them morph into sad memories, full of pity and concern for my Abuelo. Did I ever think that he felt penitence too, for having to vomit phlegm in the room right next to mine, for only seeing me when I asked him for something? What if I’d just taken a moment to overlook the hospital visits and pale hospital walls and watched some TV with Abuelo? He was away from his home, and like any other person, would’ve wanted some company. The fact that I didn’t think once I should’ve devoted some time to him, that I was a less-than-decent person who’d take his phone and disobey my parents, left me with my own room to dissect. It was a room full of mirrors all reflecting at me, and in all of them, I was on my rash-covered knees in misery. Only after he died did I learn Abuelo had already been to the states before, and not just for tourism, he lived there. Spent his teenage years living with my bisabuela and working in New York City in the 60s and 70s. Learned English so well, my mom was stunned I couldn’t tell from the way he spoke that he was proficient despite his accent. I could only imagine how hard Abuelo worked to avoid 60s New York crime and prosper. In Puerto Rico, he was a business owner. He and Abuela owned a grocery store, he sold it, and he opened Villafane liquor store. Even in the early stages of his cancer, he was trying to build a pulguero on one of the many empty plots of land he owned. During one of our visits to Puerto Rico, my mom, dad and I passed by that plot of land. There sat two plastic poles dug into tan soil bordering soon-to-be removed patches of grass. It was far from finished, but my Abuelo’s eyes still shone with a hope that made me think, for a second, red wasn’t blood or rash. If anyone thought red signified healing, and pulguero tents could stand unwavering in the island air, it was Abuelo. But the tents were never put up, and I stayed on the ground. I was letting the red paint go rampant as it threatened to not let me see my reflection. A year or two after his death, I channeled paint to paper. I wrote a poem about how his body on the casket looked like the husk of a man my family and I knew. Out of the guilt that I was confining myself to one of my outlets, I shared it with my mom. The further she read, the further her face flooded with emotion—but not the anger she thrust at me when we both didn’t know any better. Her eyes filled with tears, and so did mine, and we embraced for a few seconds. If my mom understood how I felt during that year and a half, perhaps Abuelo did, too. I got out some buckets, collected the paint, and made a mural on the pure peacock-white floor of the room. I tried my best to not pay attention to how the floor itself looked like it was about to seep dark red through its deepest crevices. It almost overflowed a few times, but I was convinced my paintbrush was, and still is, stronger. Maybe I was able to make something beautiful even if red isn’t a color of passion or peace for me anymore. Perhaps this mural could tell people in my life how much they’re worth, reminding me of how much I want to be around them. This mural may not be fully complete, but it’s a lot better than letting a sea of paint overtake me. I take a step back and admire my work. A wave of red paint is no longer threatening to turn the room upside down, it’s instead painted in artistic swirls around the room, surrounding the people I love. The room's mirrors are shimmering with a changed reflection, and I am in that reflection, standing and smiling. I decide my time in the mirrored room is done—at least for now. I open a door I just noticed and close it behind me. I don’t have to look back because I know my mural—our mural; Abuelo, and Mami, and mine—will be there when we need it.
