The Door to Heaven by Becket

Author:Becket
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Becket

DOMINIC

Dominic’s mamá became a kindergarten teacher at his school. She had not worked while his papa had been alive but now she seemed happier than he had seen her in a long time. She never did cry after his papa’s funeral, and he never did bake her buñuelos. She had begun to spend more time with the advanced class teacher — the dark man with the thick mustache at the garage sale. His mamá stopped looking at his papa’s designs on the walls of their house. She spoke less often in Spanish and she smiled more often with her broad mouth. He felt that she was like a house that had been remade from the inside out with new floorboards and rewired electrical and fresh paint. The only argument he had with her happened the day she told him to repaint their house’s interior. She wanted him to paint over his papa’s designs.

“This house looks like a cave covered in the art of a caveman,” she said. Dominic could not do what she asked. The house was a museum of his papa’s life and work. His papa had built the whole house from the ground up. His papa had built all the furniture inside — the rocking chair and the dining table and the chest at the foot of her bed and everything else. Why paint the house? Why not mar his papa’s headstone? Dominic refused his mamá. He would not paint over his papa’s designs. He studied them often. The designs taught him how to be a millwright. They showed him how to be the man he wanted to be — his papa. “Hijo,” she said to him, “this is the man I am trying to get over. How can someone else like him help me do this?” No matter what his mamá said, he could not paint over his papa’s designs. From them he had already learned much about woodworking. He did not think that she understood him so he took her hand and led her into the hallway. They stood in front of the raft’s design. The hallway was a chapel where Dominic could speak with God and his papa in Heaven. The hallway was a painful place for his mamá. She would not listen to his explanations. She could not look at his papa’s cave art. Weeping, she covered her eyes with her hands and through her hands and her tears she said, “Please, please, please, hijo. I am begging you. Paint the hallway wall because buñuelos will not heal the hurt of my heart.” The designs on the walls had prevented them from saying goodbye to his papa. Saying goodbye was too painful for him. Not saying goodbye was too painful for her. And he could not bear to see her suffer. So reluctantly, softly, he said that he would do what she asked in three days. He needed time to say goodbye to the designs so that she could say goodbye to his papa without them.

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