Lament for the Deaths of Many
by
Jim Marquez


Sometimes it's a large painting of the Virgin Mary. Sometimes, it's a few candles; various saints glowing in the dark, and the blinding light of day. Other times it's a 2' high crucifix adorned with rose petals nestled within a makeshift canopy of cardboard and aluminum. This altar, and, when one sees it, that's exactly what it is, has been placed upon the sidewalk, near the lip of an alleyway, not two blocks from my house, and it has been there, everyday, in some form, for almost two years now.

I drive past it on my way to teach a class, or to make an appointment with a book shop. Ever stable, never wanting for attention, for the flowers are fresh, daily, and the candles are replaced, seemingly, every eight hours.

You see these types of memorials to the dead on the news all the time, after a drive-by, a hit & run, set up for lives slashed short, usually an innocent wrongfully taken, usually in parts of Los Angeles where these things continually occur. I can't remember when I saw a circle of candles set up along a curbside in Beverly Hills, have you?

By friends, but mostly by families who have no idea what just happened. Who have no idea that this is only the beginning. They grieve publicly, not old school at all, for we were taught to sequester ourselves and not let others see us cry. To suffer in silence. Our cultural motto'�

Today though, with the disheartening and soul-crushing advent of 'Reality TV'�, the more shots of those huddled and bawling the better. And after the cameras are gone, after the waving of the arms in histrionic fervor is mercifully over, and the stuttering of breath has finally shut the hell up, you can see the burning wax has recessed, the petals fallen off their stems, the notes and cards stepped on, tossed by the dry winds, the teddy bears stolen.

But not this one particular memorial in my corner of East L.A. It is untouched. Clean. Pure.

I wonder who was killed this time. How? And when? I live less than two football fields away and I never knew what happened. I certainly didn't see anything on the news, not that they would bother with this part of town anyway.

I tell myself if I ever see anybody tending to the shrine of their dead I would pull over and ask, I am desperately curious, but no. I couldn't. And I've never seen them. They are as formless as the spirit they attend to.

So many of these shrines have gone up of late, but this one, I feel, serves, unnervingly, as a harbinger of the many more to come. There are no answers. There are no solutions. Only regrets.

The other day I left my car at the mechanic's for the second time in a week and I took a taxi back home. And as we drove by the shrine the taxi driver pointed and said, 'Hey, my friend, what happened on that corner? I see that all the time I drive through here now.'�

'I really don't know, " I said.

'It's probably a mother who does that. Only a mother would take such good care,'� the driver said and shook his head.

'You think so?'� I could only offer.

'Yeah, it's probably the only thing that's keeping her alive.'�

'Maybe,'� I said. 'Maybe.'�

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