Ben Perez

The Man on the Floor

Tossing and turning in bed, half asleep, I turned over to where my sister slept about two feet away in the other twin bunk bed. We shared a room in the middle of our two-bedroom apartment with only a nightstand separating mom’s two little angels. She was sound asleep, snoring with a bit of spit sliding down her left cheek. The kitchen light was on and I heard my mother busy at the dishes like she always was once we were put to bed. I couldn’t get myself to sleep and I was becoming frustrated because I knew I’d have to wake up in a few hours to the noise of my sister getting ready for school. I finally found a comfortable spot near the edge of my bed and I opened my eyes to the floor for a second and immediately jumped up onto my bed and began screaming at the top of my lungs.

“What is it hijito? Why the hell are you screaming?” My mother ran in from the kitchen to comfort her wailing son. I told her what I had seen. It was a white man laying on the floor staring at me. His legs were crossed and his hands were held at his waist, almost as if he were lying out underneath a tree on a bright sunny day. He wore a white gown that covered his body below his neck and his hair fell right below his chin. He turned his head to look at me just as I opened my eyes and he smiled. I was so filled with fear and I didn’t know what to make of it. Was I dreaming, or did this man really appear to me and was gone as soon as my mother entered the room? It was Jesus, my mother told me, and she made me pray with her that night. I was only about five-years-old so I didn’t really have a clear understanding of what we were doing or what just happened. Why would Jesus fill me with such fear if my mother said he was there to protect me?

The Tragic Account on Arnold Street

I walked through the kitchen past the Reggaetón that was blaring through the stereo to where I was bombarded by the smell of my mother’s simply delicioso cooking. The table was filled with arroz con gandules, pork shoulder seasoned with adobo, my father’s special potato salad and his stuffed peppers. I made a stop at the bathroom first before I grabbed a plate of food to find my sister and cousin sneaking some beer they stole from the cooler in the kitchen. My sister gave me a stern look as to not tell my mother or she’d have me, seeing as how I was only nine, and she offered me beer to secure our secrecy. I longed for the taste of the liquid that made my mother loose. I put the bottle up to my lips and engulfed the pee tasting ale, swallowing it quickly as to not barf it back up.

The three of us walked back through the living room to my parent’s bedroom where my mother was entertaining the few family members that were already there with some pot and alcohol. We were half way there before I saw my mother fly back against the wall and everyone screamed as she slid to the floor. The gross tasting Heineken I held in my hand busted as it fell onto the floor and I ran to see what caused my mother to flail helplessly on the floor like a fish out of the water as she painfully grabbed at her mid-section.

Earlier that day, my mother had gotten into a fight with the strange lady that lived below us. The lady downstairs was a drug addict who played with some mysterious objects. Her apartment smelled of strange herbs and incense and my mother would tell stories about how she practiced some sort of voodoo and she cursed the people who did harm to her son. I’m not exactly sure what sparked the altercation, but I guess she asked to borrow money from my mother and once my mother refused, she went ballistic and attacked my mother. They fought for a while in our front yard as all the neighbors gathered around like spectators while my father attempted to pull them apart.

It was the son of that bitch that came into our house that night and kicked my mother so hard that he fractured a rib and damaged some of her insides. The lady downstairs was so furious that all of the neighbors saw her get her ass whooped that she called her son to come down to our apartment and take care of her unfinished business. Hartford, Connecticut was infested with gangs and crime and this man just happened to be in one of the bigger ones. Although everything was happening so fast around me, it felt like I was in slow motion as I watched my sister run past me to help my mother. I heard frantic screaming as I turned the corner to see the man that kicked my mother fly down the stairs to hide his face. If he was so bold enough to bang on the door to kick my mother, why didn’t he have the balls to show me his face? I only remember seeing his boot as I watched him run down the stairwell, the same boot that planted itself in my mother’s midsection. They were strong, tan steel-toed boots with a thick sole and probably a size ten or eleven.

As my mother lay there awaiting the ambulance and the police to come, the man and his friends surrounded our house with guns and weapons and threatened to kill us all if my mother didn’t go outside so he could finish what he started. I looked out the window to see a big white woman at about 400 pounds holding a think linked chain that only God knows what she would have used for. My aunt quickly yanked me out of the window and told me it wasn’t safe. We all waited in fear for the police to come and for my father to show up from work. I sat there that night thinking, where was the man-on-the-floor who was supposed to protect us? The cops came and they suggested we leave that apartment, but my father had bigger plans. We were to leave the city of Hartford and start our lives in a few towns over. My mother was never the same after that.

The sad story of Evelyn Perez with a family so far from God

After her attack on Arnold Street, Evelyn Perez was constantly in and out of the hospital. She carried two more children beside her son, Ben, and her daughter, Melissa, but lost them due to the hard blow to her abdomen. She had an early hysterectomy from all the surgeries she went through and suffered the pangs of hot flashes and stomach cramps at the age of thirty-nine. She always looked wet and tired with her short, balding hair sticking to her plump, white face. She had unusually light skin for a Puerto Rican and had put on a few pounds since the time she was attacked and forced out of her home. Her high cheekbones hid her soft darker-than-brown eyes that were so deep that when you looked into those sad eyes, you almost fell into the darkness that consumed her life. Her husband took her for a hypochondriac or something, but Evelyn knew it was una maldición, a curse on her and her family. Not only was Evelyn suffering physically, she suffered emotionally from all the stress put on her from all the bad luck her family received. It seems that no matter how hard they worked, she and her husband, Benjamin, could not make ends meet at home. The children’s father was always absent, working from nine in the morning to ten at night and Evelyn worked as hard as she could to keep a steady job while tending to her kids. She prayed day and night for her situation to improve but is only put off by silence. She made sure her family attended Sunday mass every week and Sunday school for her children, as well as the occasional youth group every Wednesday. Evelyn found herself at her knees almost constantly, praising her faith with all her might, but it seemed that every day it just got harder.

Dark clouds roared above her head as Evelyn found comfort in the alcohol that waited in the fridge to be consumed every night. She and her husband worshiped marijuana and cocaine to ease the pain of their troubles and perhaps get to sleep somehow. She pursued other means of getting money, and with an absent husband, she found it easy to sneak off with other men, a simple exchange of her body for money. She swore her children to secrecy as the men kept coming to her door to offer a twenty here and a twenty there. After they were done with her, her son would find her hunched over on the edge of his bed, mumbling little prayers as she softly sobbed, looking for the man that once laid on the floor for her son. She was losing her faith while finding her way through sin and wondering why her family was so far from God.

La Maldición

My mother always told me to have faith and to remember that it only gets worse before it gets better. I tried to believe her but it seemed that every day something else went wrong. I figured it just happens to everyone and we’ve all got our problems, but with the constant nightmares of devils and witches holding me down and taking my breath away, along with the constant heartaches of disappointment after disappointment and trial after trial, I began to believe in the old family curse. I didn’t know what to make of the dreams at first, just thinking they were bad dreams or night terrors, but it was the same old lady that would come to me in my dreams to send me a message. She would scare me in some way or another, popping out of closets with her disfigured face and iron gray hair screaming “DON’T FORGET ABOUT ME!” Then there were the demons that would come to me and rip off my skin or pull me into a dark hole in my sleep where I would be blinded by blackness and could only hear myself screaming. I would often wake up drenched in sweat and panting like a dog.

I told my mother of these dreams and she would cross her chest and say a prayer in Spanish as she lit one of those holy candles with the picture of Christ on the front. He reminded me of the man I once saw near my bed when I was little. I always thought this was a bad thing for my mother to do, light these candles, because she once told me about the commandment to not worship man-made things, and these candles were man made things, right? I wasn’t sure if they were actually blessed or not, but she had one in each room and kept them lit throughout the day. Before she lit them, she told us to leave the room because she had to be alone while reading the little prayer on the back of the candle and cross her chest with a couple Our Fathers before she lit the candle. I began to think she was a mad woman when she did this. She even had the picture of Christ against the wall in each room and kept crosses on the mirror of her dresser.

She told me I was haunted by una maldición and I should pray to God to get rid of it. I told my friend about the alleged curse, and she told me that it only takes hold of you if you believe it. I was way too far in as I believed it when everyday I was held back by anther drama I had to play. I fell into the habits of my mother, constantly feeling sick and alone. I began to constantly run because it was the only way I thought I would get away from la maldición. I left home my senior year of high school to get away from the constant nightmares and moved in with my best friend as I prepared to leave the state for college. With the bad luck that I still had, I figured leaving Connecticut would sever the ties I had with the evil that was bestowed upon my family.

I knew it was that woman that used to live under us on Arnold Street. All of these events took place after our quarrel with the witch. She is laughing happily at our demise and it is she who I curse myself. Although I don’t know the exact chemistry to do it properly, I pray to God every night to smite she who does harm against me.

On this land so far from God

I am beginning to lose my faith as my mother once did. If there were a God watching over me, it would be impossible for me to have to endure so much pain. Living with such a cruse can take a toll on life. Your heart begins to feel heavy and overwhelmed, almost like if it’s ready to burst out of your chest. Every morning when you wake up you just know that something is coming and that it’s best if you just waste away in your bed because what’s the point? You avoid your phone when it rings because it’s going to be more bad news or another set back and no matter how far ahead you move, there is always something there to push you back a little bit. You try to be happy, you even try anti-depressants but it’s the curse that is killing your soul, not depression. Even though you are so successful and so well known and popular, you feel below everyone because this curse weighs you to the bottom. You get so used to the disappointments that you anticipate them and prepare yourself for another let down each day. That is really difficult and it is hard to live with a curse, but you do get used to it.

One day my mother even said to me, “I’m glad that I got kicked back in Hartford.”

“What?” I asked her. “It ruined our lives and you are happy about it?”

“If it wasn’t for that kick, we would have never moved out of that hell hole and we wouldn’t be where we are today. Melissa would probably be pregnant with five other kids and you would be in jail or something. I’m so glad my baby is in college and both my children are successful and that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t get kicked.”

“Well what about the curse?”

“What about it?”

I was so surprised that she looked at this event with a positive perspective and since then, I have come to live with this curse that has pushed me so far into the ground. Because of this curse I am stronger and I wake up every morning with a heavy heart, yes, but it is strong at that. I am ready to take on any demon that decides to get in my way. I may be set back today, but tomorrow I have the chance to try harder. I may not get what I want and I may have to suffer for what I can get, but I’m not going to let some curse consume my life. Of course it’s hard at times and I just want to give up, but I have to have hope that there is light above my head.

The man on the floor never appeared to me after that one night, maybe because I scared him off with my shrieks as he petrified me. My dreams have gotten better lately, but I still face disappointments and I do find myself going through the motions at times because I am so sick and tired of carrying this curse. I do believe that there is a better place somewhere outside of where I am now. Right now I call it Heaven. I believe that this is as bad as it gets. This is the hell that all Catholics and Christians fear. This is where we must all suffer on this land so far from God.

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