Day of the Dead

by Karen Crawford

I place a picture of my father on the altar. The one where he is smiling, sitting on the hood of the car by the side of the road. The one Mama took after they dropped me off at summer camp. After they steamed up the car like teenagers. The one before he made a wrong turn, and she realized they were lost, and he insisted they weren’t. Before he stewed in the car while she ran into a truck stop for directions. The truck stop he never saw her come out of. 

I light the candles and put a glass of fresh water next to his photo. Today, Mama says, we’re gonna bring your father back to life. She tells me where to place the bread, the calavera, the flowers. Bright sunflowers. The kind he always bought her after an argument. She tells me to call out his name.

When the candles flicker, I watch him shuffle through the door, eyes gaunt, sallow skin tatted. Looking like one of the skulls on the altar minus the sugar. I want to run to him, but Mama says to wait, her voice breaking up. She has something she wants me to tell him.

What’s all this, Mija? He chokes with a mouth full of dry air. It’s been a year since he’s called me that, and my throat gets tight. I follow his listless gaze, from the melting candles on the altar to a photo of me and Mama hanging on the wall. The last one he took of us in matching yellow headbands.

Mama whispers in my ear that I will always be her flower child. She wants me to tell him she’s sorry, so sorry. About the fight, the truck stop, how she never should have gone inside. But all I can muster is, I miss you, Daddy. And that’s when the candles fizzle, and that’s when Mama’s voice fades away. And that’s when Daddy reaches for me. His face alive with tears. 

Karen Crawford grew up in the vibrant neighborhood of East Harlem in New York City. She currently lives in the City of Angels, where she exorcises demons one word at a time. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Cheap Pop, Anti-Heroin Chic, Six Sentences, Rejection Letters, A Thin Slice of Anxiety among others. You can find her on twitter @KarenCrawford_.