Mexican High

This review of Mexican High written by 14-year-old high school freshman Wallis Monday (and how cool is his name?) from San Antonio, Texas. An articulate young man!

Oops. An articulate young woman with a very cool name. Thanks to Jay Monday for pointing out my error!

I knew that when my mother left me three messages the other day while I was in Fire Island that something wasn’t right. It wasn’t that there were three of them — I can’t make international calls from my cell phone, and she is based in Caracas, Venezuela, where she’s currently Consul General at the U.S. Embassy. So when I’m not near my phone, she’ll leave messages until I pick up. It’s usually pretty funny to listen to them all, her singing “where aaaareeeee youuuuu…” into the voicemail. This time, she sounded serious. When she finally got me, I was on the LIRR, just getting back into a cell service area. “Your uncle called from Italy,” she said. “Your father has passed away.”
I hadn’t spoken with him in two years, maybe a little more.
Lately, I’d been plotting on how to get back to Genoa to find him. I’d stay in a hotel, knock on his door, figure out why he’d stopped answering my letters. He never used e-mail or the phone. I didn’t make it back in time. I suspected this was coming, eventually, I just never thought it would be this soon. They told me his liver gave out, he slipped into a coma, and then he was gone.

I wrote a piece in November 2005 that ran in the New York Times, called “Ciao, Papa.” It was about finding out the truth about some things that happened to him, and the last time I saw him, which now will always be the last time I ever saw him. It seems appropriate to re-post it. Things that were getting to me before seem like nothing now. I am trying to channel my grief into writing, and also reading a book that came recommended, The Denial of Death.

Ciao, Papa

Journalist Melynda Fuller’s Q&A with me is in this month’s edition of Bookslut. Click the link to check it out!