Rest In Peace, And Other Lies They Tell

Death came to the Colonia last night. It took the life of a woman who I had greeted not two days before. I may not have known her personally, or known her name, but what my discernment tells me is that like most of the other women her age here in the neighborhood, she was a mean little woman.

I notice that as soon as someone dies, everyone is quick to forget all the terrible shit that person ever did and wax nostalgic about the “good times”, even when they struggle to find any in recent history. My neighbor, the woman who has become like a burr in my side, asked me if I wanted to go to the funeral home to pay my respects. Hell to the no. I absolutely have no desire to do that, and I said as much.

In turn, she then felt the need to want to justify going. She didn’t need to justify anything to me. I couldn’t give a shit if she chose to go and show her face to this dead woman’s family. I have nothing to prove. I barely knew her. And what I did know, I didn’t particularly care for. I didn’t have decades of knowledge to cloud my judgment. Only the last 8 months and all I know is that she was not as nice as everyone made her out to be.

Even the council president felt that going was purely out of societal conventions to show support as being part of the council and she having been a member of the community. Not out of any personal desire to pay her respects, even though she had known this woman all her life. That tells me all I need to know.

The funny thing about being in the Colonia is that the more time I spend here, the more I get to know people’s names as a result of being on the council, the more I realize how intertwined all their lives became over the decades since the neighborhood was founded.

So many people share the last name. So many people it turns out are related by marriage as families intermarried with other people within the neighborhood. It’s all very insular and small town mentality while being inside of a much larger city. And this was all before the Colonia was closed off behind gates. But I digress.

The woman who passed away had a heart attack, so I heard. At first I couldn’t place the name to the face because I don’t think I was ever formally introduced. She never wanted to know my name. The few times I happened to be in the vicinity when my neighbor spoke to her, or the council president spoke to her, were purely random, and she was not introduced to me, nor did she make any effort to get to know me. But because even when I don’t know names, I know faces I’ve seen before, I would greet her when I saw her.

I thought of it as aggressive politeness. Bitch, you may not want to acknowledge my presence but you will if I greet you first. Shy away from that. So the last thing I ever said to her was “Buenas tardes” because I saw her standing out side of the little store that is within the neighborhood, a little bodega sized thing that people visit and is owned and operated by someone in the community. It’s literally front and center of the main street, and there is nowhere to hide when you’re outside being helped at the window.

So she looked at me as I approached, and tried to avert her gaze. What was her beef with me that she didn’t even want to look at me? Who knows. But fuck that. You, like everyone else, will acknowledge me. So I greeted her. And when she didn’t respond at first, trying to pretend she didn’t hear me, I said it again, this time louder, to the point that a small child nearby turned to look at me. Yeah, I know you heard that. And she couldn’t pretend to not have heard me now, and I had the satisfaction of seeing her face me and greet me back. That’s right.

That was the last interaction I had with her. She claimed, when she was alive, that she didn’t get involved in the community business because she just wanted to mind her own business. But I know that is bullshit because I have literally witnessed her gossip and chisme her way through an afternoon with her contemporaries. So if she was actually minding her own business, how did she have so much chisme to share? It was all a carefully crafted facade that people ate up. Not me though. I knew she was just as judgy (moreso since she avoided everyone) as the rest of the older people in this Colonia.

But now she’s dead, and the people are mourning her loss and trying to think of nice things to say about someone who didn’t have anything nice to say about anyone else.