I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  Brian couldn’t either. He was hyperventilating after she left the room. His hands covering his face, his body all contorted, repeating, “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” I was wishing he’d say something besides “Oh God!” but when he started talking, I changed my mind.

  I’d never seen anyone act like that. He was sweating and pacing and his hands were in his hair like he was going to rip it all out. I thought he was going to take apart the walls, or me. I really thought he might kill me.

  “So at my old school,” he said. “There was this kid on the baseball team. People thought, I don’t know. They saw that he went to some website or something.” His inside face had become his outside face and it was all knotted up. “They made it impossible for him to play. Every day, they found another way to mess with him. Then one Friday after school, they locked him in the storage closet.” He winced, as if remembering and I knew. I knew then. “All night long and the whole next day. A tiny, dark, disgusting airless space. His parents thought he was at the away game and someone told the coaches he was sick, so no one even looked for him. No one knew he was trapped in there.” His chest was heaving and I was remembering how he told me he didn’t used to have claustrophobia and now he did. “He was really good too, probably the best player on the team or could have been. And he didn’t even do anything. The guy just went to these sites and someone saw. Do you get it? Do you get what it would mean for me? The assistant captain? I want to be captain next year so maybe I can graduate early. No scholarship. No nothing. These guys aren’t”—he made finger quotes—“evolved. They’re not from Northern California. They don’t do all-day sits or draw pictures.” The dagger went straight in. “It’s brutal in a locker room.”

  “No one will find out,” I said.

  “You don’t know that. You remember that idiot cousin of Fry’s I nearly decapitated last summer, the one who looks like an ape? His little brother goes to my school. I thought I was hallucinating. He looks exactly like him.” He licked his bottom lip. “Anyone could’ve seen us the other day, Noah. Anyone. Fry could’ve and then . . . I didn’t even think about it I was so . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t get forced off this team. Can’t lose my athletic scholarship. We have no money. And this high school—the physics teacher’s an astrophysicist . . . I just can’t. I need to get a baseball scholarship for college. Have to.”

  He came over to where I was standing. His face was crazy red and his eyes were too intense and he seemed about twelve feet tall and I didn’t know if he was going to kiss me or punch me. He took me by the T-shirt again except this time he balled a piece of it up in his fist and said, “It’s done with us. It has to be. Okay?”

  I nodded and something really big and bright in me crushed to nothing in an instant. I’m pretty sure it was my soul.

  “And it’s all your fault!” I spit out at my mother.

  “What is, honey?” she says, alarmed.

  “Everything! Don’t you see? You’ve crushed Dad. You banished him like a leper. He loves you! How do you think he feels all alone in that dying room breathing gray air and eating cold stale pizza and watching shows about aardvarks while you cook feasts and wear circus clothes and hum all the time and have the sun follow you around in the pouring rain? How do you think that makes him feel?” I can see I’ve hurt her and don’t care. She deserves it. “Who knows if he even has a soul left thanks to you?”

  “What do you mean by that? I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe you stomped it to nothing and now he’s hollow and empty, a shell with no turtle inside.”

  Mom pauses. “Why would you say that? Do you feel that way sometimes?”

  “I’m not talking about me. And you know what else? You’re not special. You’re just like everyone else. You don’t float or walk through walls and you never will!”

  “Noah?”

  “I always thought that you blew in from somewhere so cool, but you’re just regular. And you don’t make anyone happy anymore like you used to. You make everyone miserable.”

  “Noah, are you done?”

  “Mom.” I say it like bugs live in the word. “I am.”

  “Listen to me.” The sudden sternness of her voice jars me. “I didn’t come in here to talk about me or about me and Dad. We can have those conversations, I promise, but not now.”

  If I don’t look at her, she’ll drop it, she’ll disappear, and what she saw Brian and me doing will disappear with her. “You didn’t see anything,” I yell, completely out of control now. “Guys do that. They do. Whole baseball teams do it. Circle jerks, that’s what it’s called, you know?” I drop my head in my hands, filling them with tears.

  She gets up, walks over to me, puts her hand under my chin, and lifts my face so I’m forced into the earnest hold of her eyes. “Listen to me. It takes a lot of courage to be true to yourself, true to your heart. You always have been very brave that way and I pray you always will be. It’s your responsibility, Noah. Remember that.”

  • • •

  The next morning, I wake at dawn in a stark raving panic. Because she can’t tell Dad. She has to promise me that. After fourteen years, I have a father, I like it. No, I love it. He finally thinks I’m a fully functioning umbrella.

  I prowl through the dark house like a thief. The kitchen’s empty. I tiptoe to Mom’s bedroom door and sit down with my ear to it and wait for her to stir. It’s possible she already told Dad, though it was late when she left my room last night. Could she ruin my life anymore? First she destroyed everything with Brian. Now she’s going to do the same with Dad.

  I’m falling back asleep, Brian’s lips on mine, his hands on my chest, all over me, when the sound of Mom’s voice jolts me. I shake off the phantom embrace. She must be on the phone. I cup both hands around my ear and place it against the door—does this actually work? It actually does. I can hear better. Her voice sounds strained like it gets when she talks to Dad now. “I need to see you,” she says. “It can’t wait. I’ve been up all night thinking. Something happened with Noah yesterday.” She is going to tell him! I knew it. Dad must be talking now, because it’s silent until she says, “Okay, not the studio, at The Wooden Bird. Yes, one hour’s perfect.” I don’t think she’s ever even been to his studio. She just leaves him at that hotel to rot.

  I knock and then swing open the door after I hear her say come in. She’s in her peach robe, cradling the phone to her chest. Mascara’s smudged all around her eyes like she’s been crying all night. Because of me? My stomach rolls over. Because she doesn’t want a gay son? Because no one does, not even someone as open-minded as her. Her face looks old, like she’s aged hundreds of years overnight. Look what I’ve done to her. Her disappointed skin is hanging all over her disappointed bones. So she just said what she did last night to make me feel better?

  “Morning, sweetheart,” she says, sounding fake. She tosses the phone on the bed and walks over to the window, opening the curtains. The sky has barely woken up yet. It’s a gray, homely morning. I think about breaking my own fingers, I don’t know why. One by one. In front of her.

  “Where’re you going?” I manage out.

  “I have a doctor’s appointment.” What a liar! And she lies so easily too. Has she been lying to me my whole life? “How’d you know I was going out?”

  Think of something, Noah. “I just assumed because you weren’t up early baking.”

  This works. She smiles, walks over to her dressing table, and sits down in front of the mirror. The Kandinsky biography she’s reading is facedown beside her silver brush. She starts rubbing cream around her eyes, then takes cotton and wipes off darkness.

  (PORTRAIT: Mom Replacing Her Face with Another)

  When she’s finished doing her makeup, she starts sweeping her hair up into a clip, then changes her mind, shakes it back out, picks up the brush. “I’m going to make a red velvet cake later . . .” I zone out. I just have to
say it. I’m the expert blurter too. Why can’t I get the words out?

  “You look so upset, Noah.” She’s staring at me through the mirror.

  (PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Trapped in a Mirror with Mom)

  I’ll tell the Mom in the mirror. It’ll be easier. “I don’t want you to mention to Dad what you saw. Not that you saw anything. Because there was nothing to see. Not that it means anything anyway . . .” Mayday, mayday.

  She puts her brush down. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Absolutely okay. It’s your private business. If you want to tell your father what I didn’t see, you will. If what I didn’t see ever actually does mean something, then I encourage you to. He’s not really the way he seems sometimes. You underestimate him. You always have.”

  “I underestimate him? Are you serious? He underestimates me.”

  “No he doesn’t.” She holds my eyes in the mirror. “He’s just a little afraid of you, always has been.”

  “Afraid of me? Sure. Dad’s afraid of me.” What’s she saying?

  “He thinks you don’t like him.”

  “He doesn’t like me!” Well, he didn’t. Now he does for some reason and I want to keep it this way.

  She shakes her head. “You two will figure it out. I know you will.” Maybe we will, maybe we are, but not if she tells him. “You’re very much alike. You both feel things very deeply, too deeply sometimes.” What? “Jude and I have quite a bit of armor on us,” she continues. “It takes a lot to break through it. Not you and Dad.” This is news. I never thought I was anything like Dad. But what she’s really saying is that we’re both wusses. That’s what Brian thinks too. I’m just someone who “draws pictures.” And it burns in my chest that she thinks Jude’s like her and I’m not. How come everything I think about our family keeps changing? How come the teams keep switching? Is this how all families are? And most importantly, how do I know she’s not lying to me about not telling Dad? She just lied about the doctor’s appointment. Why is she meeting him then? And hello? She said: Something happened with Noah last night.

  She absolutely is going to tell him. That’s why they’re going to The Wooden Bird. I can’t trust her anymore.

  She walks over to her closet. “We can talk more about this later, but I really do have to get ready. My doctor’s appointment’s in less than an hour.” Pinocchio! Pants on Fire!

  As I turn to leave, she says, “Everything’s going to be okay, Noah. Don’t worry.”

  “You know what?” I say, bunching my fingers into fists. “I really wish you’d stop saying that, Mom.”

  Of course I’m going to follow her. When I hear the car back out of the driveway, I make a run for it. On the trails, I can get to The Wooden Bird almost as fast as she can by car.

  • • •

  No one knows who made The Wooden Bird. The artist carved it out of a humongous redwood stump, wooden feather by wooden feather. It must’ve taken years, ten or twenty even. It’s huge and each feather is unique. Now there’s a trail to it from the road and a bench by it that overlooks the ocean, but when the artist carved it, there was none of that. He was like Jude, doing it because he liked to, not really caring if anyone ever saw it. Or maybe he did care and liked the idea of strangers stumbling on it and wondering.

  I’m hidden in the brush, yards away from Mom, who’s sitting on the bench staring out at the sea. The sun’s broken a hole in the fog and light’s reeling around in the trees. It’s going to be hot, one of those weird warm winter days. Dad’s not here yet. I close my eyes, find Brian; he’s everywhere inside me now, always swimming up my body. How can he shut this off? Will he change his mind? I’m reaching into my pocket for the rock when I hear footsteps.

  I open my eyes expecting to see Dad; instead there’s a strange man strolling down the trail. He stops at the tree line and stares at my mother, who doesn’t seem to sense his presence at all. I pick up a stick. Is he a psycho? Then he turns his head slightly and I recognize him—that face, its geographic scale. It’s the artist from Day Street. Here! I drop my sword, relieved. He’s probably making a sculpture of her in his head, like I do with paintings. Is he out walking, I’m wondering, when all of a sudden, the sky comes crashing down in shards because my mother has flown to her feet, dashed over to him, and fallen into his open arms. I feel myself ignite.

  I shake my head. Oh, it’s not Mom, of course, that’s it. The barking maniac sculptor has a wife who looks like my mother.

  But it is her in his arms. I know my own mother.

  What. Is. Going. On?

  What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On?

  Things start coming together. Fast. Why she was in front of his studio that day, her kicking Dad out, her phone conversations (his phone conversation! Hurry, my darling), her happiness, her unhappiness, her spaciness, her cooking and baking and stopping at green lights, her salsa dancing, her bangles and circus clothes! Everything clicking madly into place. Them, there, so clearly together.

  The howling in my head is so loud I can’t believe they can’t hear it.

  She’s having an affair. She’s cheating on Dad. She’s a two-timer. A toilet-licking asshat liar. Mom! How could this not have occurred to me? But it didn’t occur to me exactly because she’s Mom. My mother would never do anything like this. She brings donuts—the best donuts I ever tasted—for the toll collectors. She doesn’t have affairs.

  Does Dad even know?

  Affair. I whisper it aloud to the trees, but they’ve all run away. I know it’s my father she’s betraying, but it feels like it’s me too. And Jude. And every single day of our lives.

  (FAMILY PORTRAIT: And Then We All Blew Away)

  They’re kissing now and I’m watching and can’t stop watching. I’ve never seen her and Dad kiss like this. Parents aren’t allowed to kiss like this! Now Mom’s taken his hand and is leading him to the edge of the cliff. She looks so happy and it cuts into me. I have no idea who this lady is spinning around in this stranger’s arms, spinning and spinning, like they’re in some lame movie until they lose their footing and fall to the ground.

  (PORTRAIT: Mother in Blinding Color)

  What did she say this morning? It takes a lot to break through her armor. This man has broken through her armor.

  I pick up the stick. I need to defend my father. I need to fight this asshat artist. I should throw a meteorite at his head. I should shove him off the cliff. Because my poor artichoke of a father doesn’t have a chance. And he knows it. I understand now that what is shrinking him, what is turning the air around him that awful gray, is defeat.

  He’s a broken umbrella. Has he always been one? We both are. Like father, like son.

  Because I know it too. I don’t have a chance either. “It’s done with us. It has to be. Okay?”

  No, it is not okay. Nothing is okay! They’re kissing again. I think my eyes are going to fly from their sockets, my hands from my arms, my feet from my legs. I don’t know what do. I don’t know what to do. I need to do something.

  So I run.

  I run and run and run and run and run and when I reach one of the last bends before the trailhead onto our street, I see Brian walking with Courtney.

  His meteorite bag is wrapped around his shoulder and their arms are crisscrossed behind them, his hand in the back pocket of her jeans and hers in the back pocket of his. Like they’re together. There’s a smudge of bright color on his lips, which confuses me for a second until I realize it’s her lipstick. Because he kissed her.

  He kissed her.

  It starts as a tremor deep inside, growing quickly into a quaking, and then it’s all erupting together, what happened at The Wooden Bird, what happened in my bedroom last night, what’s happening right now, all the rage and confusion, the hurt and helplessness, the betrayal, it’s a blowing volcano inside me and out of my mouth flies, “He’s gay, Courtney! Brian Conne
lly is gay!”

  The words ricochet around in the air. I instantly want them back.

  Brian’s face slides off and there’s loathing underneath it. Courtney’s mouth drops open. She believes me, I can see it. She steps away from him. “Are you, Brian? I thought—” She doesn’t finish her sentence because she sees his expression.

  This is what his face must’ve looked like when he was inside that storage closet all alone hour after hour. This is what a face looks like when all the dreams get sucked out of it.

  And I did it to him this time. Me.

  • • •

  I can’t stop seeing Brian’s face hating me as I bolt across the street. I’d do anything to take my words back, to put them again in the safe silent vault inside me where they belong. Anything. My stomach’s like I’ve eaten nails. How could I have done that after what he told me?

  I’d do anything to not have seen what I saw at The Wooden Bird too.

  Once in the house, I go straight to my room, open a sketchpad, and start drawing. First things first. I need to get Mom to stop this and I only know one way to do that. It takes a long time to get the picture right, but eventually I do.

  When I finish, I leave the drawing on her bed, and then go look for Jude. I need Jude.

  Fry tells me she went off with Zephyr, but I can’t find them anywhere.

  I can’t find Brian either.

  There’s only Prophet, who as usual won’t shut up about Ralph.

  At the top of my lungs, I yell, “There is no Ralph, you stupid bird. Ralph does not exist!”

  • • •

  When I get back home, Mom’s waiting for me in my room, the picture I made on her lap. It’s of her and the sculptor kissing by The Wooden Bird in the foreground and Dad, Jude, and me as one blur making up the background.

  Her mascara’s making black tears. “You followed me,” she says. “I really wish you hadn’t, Noah. I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have seen that.”