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2004-02-11 - 17:32 coping My mind is a whirl of color and sound and emotion and thought. ['Chinga'o,' mutters Moco. 'Porque ahora?'] My body is a mechanical device, blundering along without emotion, devoid, it seems, of any life. Piojo has taken over the primary controls.We just got off the phone with my father. Pablo is dying, he says. This time it is confirmed by his family. Se esta muriendo Pablo. Chinga'o. As we walk to the library after hanging up, our body begins to shiver, but it is not because of the cold. Gis trembles and sighs. It's been - what? - over 20 years that Dad's known Pablo? The old man was there when 'Ama needed it, cuando la pinche familia demostro que no vale pa' pura verga para los asuntos que cuentan. He worried about Dud when she was in the damn war. As a veteran of Vietnam, he knew how traumatic it was for a young person to be deployed, taken far from her home to defend a country we're still not sure we're part of. He was there. As we waited in the library lobby for the damn elevator to arrive, our eyes got hot. Gis's lip trembled a little bit. 'If you cry I'll rip your eyeballs out,' Piojo told us, and we fought back the tears. Now he's almost completely taken over GS, and we wait inside in the darkness of it all. 'Apa does not want us to tell Mom or Dud. He says we must wait and go see Pablo tomorrow morning at the hospital... if he lasts the night. We are not to speak of it 'til then. We are not to cry. We are not to worry anyone. So Piojo pushes us aside and emerges from the Closet alone and unaided. My face is a mask as I cease to feel anything. My body is relaxed and cold. I show no emotion, for I feel none. I sit and am content to simply exist. Yo soy Piojo. No siento nada. � 
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