Sine Equals Cosine

I did not need friends because I had my mother. She dropped me off at school and picked me up every day. She answered every question I asked and played with me every afternoon. She tucked me into bed with a kiss each night.

I do not know why but from somewhere I decided I wanted to give her a present on my birthday. I chose a song; I do not remember which one. I practiced it in secret until I thought it was perfect; not good enough for my mother, but at least it was perfect. She cried through my performance. She picked me up for hugs and kisses.

"Mi amor, (My love)" she whispered. "Mi amor. Mi bello, bello amor. (My love. My beautiful, beautiful love.)"

My mother insisted on singing lessons. They were after school, before my father got home so they would not interfere with his time with me. My life was the guitar, singing, and my parents' love.

'Amiga mia no se que decir, ni que hacer para verte feliz' (My friend, I don't know what to say or, what do to see you happy)

If there is a more evil word than cancer, I have not heard it since my mother spoke it two weeks after my eleventh birthday. Death is a word; a concept; a phrase, 'Mama went to heaven.' Cancer is the angel of death sitting down at the dinner table and eating your serving of platanos maduros (fried plantains). I did not know what that word meant, but there was fear in my mother's eyes. My father was not in the room; I wanted him to tell me why my mother was afraid. I had to ask a teacher what cancer was: she cried and made me afraid.

My father found a place to hide in a daily bottle of alcohol. How can you expect a child to survive when his father is broken by a single word? I do not call it survival, but I lived for my mother as she lived to see my father smile again.

My mother's pain was not just physical. I did not have to be an adult to know that. She went to the doctor a lot but alone. The second month of doctor's visits, she found me sitting in the backseat waiting for her.

"No, Michael," she said with tears in her eyes.

I ignored her and played my guitar on the way there. The other patients did not seem to mind when I sang quietly in the waiting room.

My father moved out of the master bedroom in the third month of my mother's ordeal. I spent as much time in there with her as I could. It took two months for her to learn to cry in front of me. I was singing when her tears began to flow. Her chin was up afterwards, and I thought I had found a way to ease the emotional pain in her eyes.

My singing teacher was a woman and had no problem teaching me in the bedroom. My mother was hugs and kisses after every song. The teacher did not mind the interruptions. I refused to take music lessons except with my mother there; guitar lessons were the only time that my mother and father spent in the same room anymore. I do not think I should have insisted. My mother cried, soul deep sobs, when he left the room after every lesson.

I did not see my father cry until the end.

'Amiga mia, princesa de un cuento infinito' (My friend, princess of an endless story)

There were months of hope and laughter: days when we almost forgot, our world was my mother's disease. The visits to the doctor were sometimes feared and other times wished for. My mother took me into those rooms with her. She made the doctor explain each new hope for the cancer to be beaten. My mother believed it every time, but I saw something different in the doctor's eyes. He did not. I believed enough for him and me. I believed enough for my father too.

At least, I thought I did. The doctor was right though; hope and belief do not beat cancer. Love does, but my mother needed a love that fled death.

The first song I wrote was for my mother. I wanted to tell her what we would do after she was healthy: dance, sing, be happy, and find my father again. Every song I wrote those five years were for her.

She was incredibly beautiful. All children think their mother is, but I knew it. The day her hair started falling out from the chemo, she cried for hours. The only Spanish words my father knew were 'mi bella' (my beautiful). My mother did not think she was beautiful now. I tried to tell her she was, but she did not need to hear it from me.

The second year, I had to learn how not to cry until she fell asleep.

I asked the doctor if my mother was going to die. He tried to lie; I never thanked him for that. I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling. Sleep could not find me around the tightness in my chest. My mother was dying. I walked into her room and crawled under her bed. I made sure my crying did not wake her.

I was twelve years old.

She found out that I slept under her bed every night a couple of months later. She tried to make me stop; but every morning, I was there. When I became too big for that, I slept at her feet. I needed to hear my mother breathing to let sleep take me.

Her pain drove the third year. She lost so much weight that I could see the bones of her cheeks. I sang and played for my mother. It was the only time I saw her smile. She told my singing teacher that she almost did not feel the pain when I brought the music back into her life. I played until my fingers bled, and sang until my throat ached.

She continued fighting. The doctor could not believe it. The cancer ravaged her body and he did not know how she kept going. I would have told him.

My mother loved my father.

She fought for five years; I sang and played every one of those one thousand eight hundred and twenty six days. My father never came to her. He never said the words that belonged to her. I do not know if he said a single word to her in those five years.

I was holding her hand when she died. I held on to it until she turned cold. I did not have tears left to give my mother.

My father was waiting at the dinner table. He did not look at me.

"Mi bella is dead," he said. "My wife is dead."

The tears finally fell freely from his eyes. He brought his hand from under the table. The gun was already cocked. He put it to his temple; I thought guns made a louder noise when they were fired. They told me that if the bullet were foot and half to the left my father would have killed me too.

It was fitting that at the end, he failed me as badly as my mother.

'Que toda esta historia me importa porque eres mi amiga' (That all of this story matters to me because you are my friend.)

-----

I put the guitar away with the tears blinding me. I had found them again almost three years after my mother died. I still did not cry for my father, but at my mother's gravestone I learned to let the saltwater free again. It was the day I told Dacia that I loved her.

I picked up the guitar case and walked off the stage. Everyone was quiet and turned their heads to watch me leave. There was not a woman in the room that did not have to wipe tears out of her eyes.

"I love you," Dacia said when I stood by her.

"I..." Elizabeth started to say but stopped to squeeze her eyes shut.

I left.

-----

Dacia and Elizabeth were in bed whispering to each other when the call came. Elizabeth pounced naked from the bed to her purse. She dug her cell phone out and answered it.

"You're in," Elizabeth told me.

Dacia screamed and danced around the bed. I watched her naked body. Dacia did not need music to move sensuously. Elizabeth leaned down and kissed me. I buried a pair of fingers into her pussy. Dacia grabbed my face and turned it towards her. It took a couple of seconds for my eyes to soften. She smiled as Elizabeth turned me back to her.

They sat back on the bed and whispered between them again. I shook my head. I was surprised to find both the women waiting when I got home. Dacia did not tolerate rivals, and I doubted Elizabeth was in love with sharing. They were in my room as if they were best friends and I was not a man between them.

I closed my eyes and thought about my parents. Three months passed after their deaths before I picked the guitar up again. My father's first lessons were all I could play for days. I did not sing again until I did it to win Dacia back. I strummed those first lessons while listening to the women.

I opened my eyes to see them kissing.

"So tell me about Michael's mother," Dacia said to Elizabeth who looked at me.

Elizabeth had the story right, but not the details. She did not know my mother was my friend: my closest friend, my best friend, the only friend I would ever allow. She did not know I liked bad movies because I used to cry in the back of an empty movie theatre where no one would bother me. I would never tell them about the last time my mother went outside, an Alejandro Sanz concert.

My family's story was mine. A lot of people would say if I spoke, it would be easier to bear. What did they want me to say? That sometimes love, an absolutely beautiful love that made a child happy, could not face death. The stupid ones would tell me that my father did not really love my mother or maybe he did not love her enough. The others would be worse though, because I would have to see their faith in love die.

My mother never stopped loving my father, not for one second of any day in the five years he was not there for her. I did not know how she could hold on to her love, but as the bullet passed I understood. His soul died every inch with her, and I made him do it alone. In those five years, both of my parents were dying, but I only saw the suffering of one. I abandoned my father when he needed me too.

The two women did not say anything for a long time.

"How do you do it?" Elizabeth asked finally.

"Do what?" I asked softly.

"That room," Dacia answered for her. "Everyone was with you while you sang."

I looked between both of them.

"Mi mama canta conmigo." (My mother sings with me.)

THE END