2026: Chapter 18

Niña would have made a really good mother. That is what has been on my mind recently, and for no good reason. I’m sure part of it was the reminder of wishing her sister my congratulations for getting married all the way out in Vietnam at the beginning of August — in a wedding I semi-committed myself to attending before realizing how difficult the logistics would be (of obtaining a visa, paying for all the travel expenses and lodging, etc.) — and I imagine rereading The Good Earth played some role as well. I just can’t divorce myself from thinking about Niña whenever I read my favorite book.

One of the more prevalent themes I find whenever I comb over the incredibly long blog I wrote shortly after Niña’s passing is how she was so full of love. Many people choose to believe suicide is such a selfish act, perhaps the most selfish of all selfish acts, and yet I can’t think about Niña without in some way recounting my own selfishness towards her. It’s just an objective fact that, whether while we were in a relationship or afterwards, when the two of us were mere friends, she always gave to me more than I did her.

And that bothers me. You know? I mean it’s one of those things that can’t not bother me. When you envision somebody being in your life forever, it lends to a sort of psychology that takes that person for granted. My love for Niña always was quite abundant, but not so abundant as her love for me. So it has been a very regular occurrence to think about her (as I do still, every day), and punish myself by remembering the moments when I didn’t do enough, or didn’t go far enough, and compare that to the lengths with which she was willing to go for me.

She was full of love. That was and is the message. But what Niña failed at to find was another who was able to love her in the way she so desperately needed and desired. I could obviously blame my own family, or upbringing, as to why I lacked so much in the ways of love, and showing affection, as well as receiving it, for I did not grow up in one of those households. But that’s a copout more than anything. It isn’t good enough of an excuse, nor do I wish it to come across as such.

The reason Niña would have made such a good mother is because of her love, and the fact that she would have had someone to love her unconditionally in return. Her and I from the very beginning spoke of it often, the idea that she had a complicated relationship with her mom and I had a complicated relationship with my dad, and so our way of building a better future was to learn from and improve upon that which the two of us considered blindspots, or shortcomings, or just plain-old failures, from our parents. It really was a brilliant strategy as we forever looked towards tomorrow: We were able to see what was wrong, and thus we would not make the same mistakes.

She was not destined to wait long enough to fulfill all of her promise, and for that the world will never be as good of a place. I loved Niña for many reasons, but among my favorite was that she was far from a square; she possessed some book smarts, enough to know enough, but what she was really good at was going gangster on people. She knew how to get what she wanted, when she wanted it, and she would have gotten so much more had her heart not been so soft and pure. She chose to use her powers for good, in other words.

Niña’s mother, Lilet, taught her that, even though it’s one of those things one cannot teach and one cannot be taught. There are certain truths that become transmitted unwittingly from one generation to the next, almost as if it were through a kind of osmosis, or like water wrenched through a towel soaking wet. What drips onto the surface is what Niña represented to Lilet, and it is what Niña’s offspring would have represented to her.

This ability whether learned or unlearned is what bound Niña and I. I can’t honestly say where it is I found it for myself, because I came from a family of do-gooders and aversion to conflict — not that there is anything wrong with that. All I know is using words to my great advantage and hustling has always come naturally to me. I didn’t obtain it, as Niña likely did, from such an obvious source.

Still, the two of us spoke that language to one another. And occasionally I do come across others who speak it the same, albeit in silence, in a way that neither party need even admit that it’s a language at all. Niña’s children would have spoken it, too, regardless of the fact that they would have grown up in a better position than she did, in a better more affluent country than she did, and so on. You are either a gangster or you are not. You either speak the language or you do not. As Taking Back Sunday once said on the song ‘Timberwolves at New Jersey’: You either have it or you don’t.

I think back to the speech I gave at Niña’s funeral. Her sister, Raven, spoke first, and then it was sort of expected for me to go next even though there was very little preparation involved in the operation. Raven was kind of like ‘Does anybody wanna come up and saying something?’ And then a second later she said, ‘Okay, Eric,’ and then she gestured for me and there I was in the front row with my right leg crossed over my left and my sunglasses on, and I got up to say what it was I needed to say.

And I didn’t cry, which was weird because I think literally every day for two weeks between when she died and when the service was all I could do was cry. I spoke of us, of Niña and I. About how she was part of so many special memories for me. Then I segued into what was most special, to me, about her, which was really just an account of how much fun we had doing the most absolutely mundane things, such as going grocery shopping, or folding clothes, or cooking, or playing video games, or watching stupid shows together while we ate snacks in bed.

So many of my relationships ended with bridges getting burned and bombs bursting in air — and to this Niña’s relationship with me was no exception — but it was not until she died that I really like remembered: That it was all about the quiet times. The memories that were not captured on Facebook or in an Instagram story or on Snapchat, but rather Niña’s mom or her sister needing to borrow her car so I had to drop her off and pick her up at work, or driving on the empty freeways during the heart of Covid’s quarantine to go and see her, or her sneaking me into her parent’s house for sleepovers because her stepdad wouldn’t allow boys in the house.

The hurt of Niña’s death wore off quite a while ago, but what has yet to wear are the quick and tiny instances I am captured in disbelief that she is no longer here. Isn’t that strange? The intervals of becoming emotional are growing fewer and further between, as they say, but when they hit me they still come with the force of anything and everything I have ever known or could possibly conceive. Niña is dead. Never again will I see her. I haven’t been the same since she’s been gone, and I know I won’t ever be the same again.

What I failed to say at her funeral — which would have been impossible, since I didn’t arrive at it until I decided to write this particular blog — was that she would have been a good mother. I don’t know why I care so much at this point. Or why, now, it matters to me. I guess it’s just one of those things. Always I have had issues not with what is, or what has been proven, but rather the catastrophic loss in potential. We know what the world used to look like and we know, now, what it happens to be. What we don’t know is what it could’ve been.

I think what it boils down to is the fact that I got to see, firsthand, more than perhaps any other, and better than any other, what Niña was willing to do for somebody whom she loved. I got to witness her drive an hour from the desert to my mom’s house in Riverside CA just to see me for a handful of hours before I left for work the following day. I got to feel how she took care of me when I had strep throat. Even when we weren’t together and I was dating a stripper and I forgot to bring my work shoes to the stripper’s townhouse in Loma Linda CA I texted Niña and asked her to pick me up some shoes and leave them in a locker, and so she went to Wal-Mart and did that.

You take someone who was so willing, to do these things when she didn’t have to, for somebody who, in retrospect, was just another guy, and you can imagine for yourself how much further she would go for someone who shared her DNA. It could’ve been a little girl who would have learned from Niña the tricks of the trade, of how to get everything you want, whenever, or it could’ve been a little boy who she would have taught to treat women the right way, and go about the business of life as a gentleman. It’s so stupid to think about, but still I do think about it.

Amidst the great tragedy of Niña’s death are concurrently these other lesser tragedies, not of what was lost but what could have and certainly would have been gained had she stayed with us. Such as her interest in transitioning from the casino into the brand new world of cyber security, or of finding somebody — which was certainly bound to happen — who gave her the type of love she deserved, or of raising children for the betterment of all. I can’t tell you what they would have looked like or who they would have turned out to be, but I’m confident, because of her, that they would have been and done just fine.