Magic in Costa Rica

Part I. Magic in Costa Rica

My father is a magician and my mother died when I was nine. Whenever people ask me what happened to her, I tell them that my dad sawed her in half during a magic show. Nobody ever believes me, at first. But then I tell them how the factory made a faulty box that was too tight to allow my mom to switch out her real legs for the fake legs, and how my dad always used a real electric chainsaw during his trick, so it was too late once he realized what he had done. I describe in detail how I was in the audience and saw the whole thing from beginning to end, how her eyes widened in terror when my dad started the chainsaw. How she tried to cry out to him, but the rumble of the chain was too loud for him to hear her. How the blood sprayed all over the first two rows, including me, and how everyone screamed and women fainted and children cried. I tell them about the trial, and how my dad was found innocent because of the faulty box. And how I took the stand to defend his honor and sued the faulty box company for the death of my dear mother. And when I finish telling the story, which grows more complex and more believable with each retelling, when they break the shocked silence with a stammered apology, I shrug and say "It's alright. At least we won a million dollars," and then I walk away.

The real story is much less compelling. My mother died of a brain aneurysm. I don't really like to think about it, because every time I do, I relive the day it happened. We were walking in the park, hand in hand on a sunny day. She took the day off because she had a headache, and decided that fresh air would do her good. I was jabbering on about a dream I had in which my dad got a job to do magic in Costa Rica and we all moved there to start a new life together. I have always had vivid dreams, and I loved to tell my mom about them. I realized she was not interjecting with her usual comments and questions, so I looked up and noticed that her face was as white as a ghost. I asked her if she wanted to find a place to sit down. She looked at me, opened her mouth to speak, and immediately collapsed. After that I don't remember what happened. I was told by police that I knelt by her side and screamed. I screamed when people at the park tried to help, and one man even tried to perform CPR. I screamed when the paramedics got there and took her away on a stretcher. I screamed, right up until my dad arrived and forcibly removed me from the scene. I don't remember the doctor telling us that they hadn't been able to revive her, that she had died right there in the park, perhaps before she even hit the ground. I don't remember going home and going to bed. All I remember is waking up the next day and thinking I was in Costa Rica. My dad said no, no we were never in Costa Rica, but I refused to believe him.

I told him that after mom woke up from her fainting spell, we all decided that moving to Costa Rica would be good for her headaches, and left that night, remember? We arrived in San José at 8:00am after a long flight and crashed at a motel by the airport. We found a little apartment in a historic barrio of the city filled with colorful buildings with ivy scaling the walls and countless restaurants, museums, and parks. We learned Spanish from the locals, although there were plenty of English speakers to help us find our way around. Don't you remember when we got lost trying to find that café on the corner with the green door, and that nice man crossing the street gave us directions? No, I don't remember. Well, don't you remember when you did your first magic show in the theater downtown? And mom wore a beautiful, sparkling silver dress, and everyone in the audience couldn't take their eyes off of her. Until you started performing, and instead of a rabbit you pulled a parrot out of your hat! A beautiful Scarlet macaw, with yellow and blue feathers on its wings, and it flew over to me and perched on my shoulder. And I named him "Arándano" because that's the Spanish word for cranberry and he was my best friend after that. Where is he? Why are we back in Boston? Where's mom? Did she get another headache? Yes, she got a big headache, and she's not here anymore. Mommy's gone, sweetie. I'm sorry, mommy's gone.

As soon as I saw the tears spring up in my father's eyes, I understood. I spent the next week in a fog, suspended between the reality of my mother's death and our fictional life in Costa Rica. While relatives stared at her cold body at the wake, we basked in the hot sun and frolicked in the waves at the beach. While everyone else bowed their heads in prayer at the funeral, I took Salsa lessons, and twirled in a red dress beneath the stars. While her coffin was being lowered into the ground, I wandered farther into the tropical forest, Arándano perched on my shoulder and a canteen of water slung around my waist. I knew that it was only in my imagination, but I accepted it completely as a separate reality. I could feel the sun warm my skin, I could taste the tres leches cake, I could feel the spot where Arándano's claws hooked onto my flesh. It was real to me, and I didn't care if it was real to anyone else. This was the life I should've had, the life I wanted.

After a while, the lines between my imagination and reality began to blur, and I found that the only way I could escape my fantasies was to write them down. For a whole month I spent my days scribbling tales from Costa Rica in my spiral-bound notebook, until one day I realized I had reached the end. I flipped through the 250 pages, skimmed every last line, and suddenly, like magic, my life in Costa Rica became a story, no longer a reality. I held the notebook in my hands, a lifetime of adventure between my palms, and felt pride swell in my chest. I ran to the living room and threw it on my dad's lap, urging him to read it. Without a word or a single expression, he read the entire thing in one sitting while I watched him. When he finished, he softly closed the notebook, handed it back to me, put his head in his hands, and began to cry. Between sobs he told me it was time to go back to school.

The day I went back to third grade, all my nosy classmates asked where I'd been, what had happened. That's when I made up the story about my dad sawing my mom in half. After I had thoroughly traumatized every student in the classroom, my teacher sent me to the principal's office and I was sent home in order to be psychologically evaluated. When my dad came to pick me up that afternoon, he looked at me as if I were a stranger, and I have seen that look in his eyes many times in the following years.

So, no, I do not like to talk about my mother's death. But it is important that I write it down, because I have a strong feeling that my life would have gone much differently if it did not occur. If she didn't have that brain aneurysm, I wouldn't have started writing at such a young age. If I hadn't started writing, I wouldn't have gotten into advanced English my sophomore year of high school. If I didn't take that class, I wouldn't have met Mr. Miller. And If I hadn't met Mr. Miller, well, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.