Teófila’s Guide to Saving the Sun

by Cynthia A. Rodriguez

  When my father turns my way, I shut the door. All the while, I take in every detail I can. And I wonder if Elijah will be able to go home.

  Because if they put him in a cell, I’ll sit outside the jail. I’ll use my savings to help get him out.

  I’ll do whatever I can to make sure he’s okay.

  A few minutes later, they uncuff Elijah.

  He stands and hugs my dad, his shoulders shaking, and his head tucked so I can’t see the tears and fears that match my own.

  I am trembling hands, sobs, and relief.

  Elijah and my father are love and mourning.

  We are all confusion and understanding.

  When they part, my dad grips Elijah’s shoulders and speaks to him with earnest eyes and a tone I can almost make out, all while Elijah nods, wiping his tears away.

  I’m not sure how I feel when my dad gestures for me to come with him when I want so badly to leave with my best friend.

  Because Elijah doesn’t even look my way as I get out of his car. Not as I walk past him, and not when I open my father’s passenger door.

  He doesn’t answer my texts or calls when I get home.

  I have trouble sleeping that night, the image of him with a cop’s knee in his back rotting my dreams, turning them into nightmares.

  24

  WHERE DID YOU GO?

  I think my heart is going to pop right out of my chest.

  All at the sight of the door right in front of me. At the thought of pressing the doorbell. At wondering what the woman on the other side of it will tell me.

  I opt to knock, reasoning that if I don’t ring the doorbell, my body won’t react as intensely.

  I’m wrong.

  I nearly vomit, the bile rising because I haven’t heard from Elijah in three days. I have no idea how he’s doing, what he’s been up to.

  If he still wants me…

  I tell my mind to shut the hell up, even as the urge to purge grows.

  But I’m saved by the door opening, having to pull myself together at the sight of a woman I’ve known for a very long time without having spent any real time around.

  Elijah’s mom is a nurse at a retirement home. She works long hours, sleeping while he’s at school and out of the house by the time he gets home.

  I worry that I’m interrupting her sleep, but she’s fully dressed, her purse in her hand.

  It drops to the floor when she sees me, her hands gripping my shoulders and pulling me to her. I’m confusion and concern in her arms.

  She smells like baby powder and something tropical, like pineapples.

  I always wondered what her heart was like.

  It’s strange to feel it thump against mine.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for being there for him.”

  I mumble something that even I can’t make out—a mix of you’re welcome and I’m sorry. Because I am.

  I’m sorry and terrified and frustrated.

  When I asked my dad what to do about the lack of communication with Elijah, he said to just give him some time.

  Three days are up, and I’m here to collect on the promises made to me.

  She and I come apart, our feelings on our faces. Both of us are wearing tears.

  “Where has he been?” I ask as she steps aside, ushering me into the home I’ve been in too many times to count.

  More recently, I hadn’t been here in months.

  “His dad took him to see some producers he had a lead on.” She sniffs and bends down to pick up her purse, setting it on the table beside the door. “Perfect timing because that boy was a mess when he got home the other night.”

  “When did he leave?”

  I’m standing in front of the door, not sure what comes next. She looked like she was on her way out when I saw her, but she let me come in…

  “The very next day. I try to tell him not to get his hopes up when it comes to his father, but you know I can’t tell him anything when it comes to that man,” she tells me before running her fingers over the thick twists in her hair.

  Her skin tone is a few shades darker than Elijah’s, but the buttery brownness of her makes her look like she belongs on a throne.

  I have to wonder what it’s like to hear so much warning against dreaming and hoping from one person all your life.

  Are we ever really afforded the opportunity to dream?

  The house is quiet and clean, and it has always felt so empty without her. Without noise and warmth and the scent of food in the air.

  So unlike my own home.

  Now it feels even lesser without Elijah here.

  I stare at the woman in front of me, wearing Elijah’s eyes that watch and wait for whatever I have left to say.

  “I…I can’t help but feel like it’s my fault. And now he won’t talk to me.”

  She shakes her head with a smile, her hand reaching for mine. “Don’t you think that. Not when you were there for him.”

  It all sounds so practiced and borderline dismissive.

  Where is her anger? Has she put it away because I’m here?

  “Are you...okay?” I ask as her fingers slip from mine.

  Her sigh reminds me how tired she must be.

  “Well, I went down to the police station. Filed a complaint. Reached out to news outlets. Sent a couple of emails.” She’s got her hands on her purse now. “No one gives a damn. So now we just try to make sure it doesn’t happen to him again.”

  People would care.

  They’d care if he’d gotten hurt or killed.

  He was lucky, but what if the next person isn’t?

  I’m in front of this woman who’s always intimidated me, even though I’ve never spent more than twenty minutes in her direct presence.

  And I wonder if I’m part of the problem, too.

  “Thanks again. You’ve always been able to reach him when I couldn’t,” she says.

  I don’t know what to say, so I nod.

  If I’m not as powerful as I thought I was.

  If saving Elijah meant I opened the door for an extremely spiritual growth spurt.

  “I have to get to work,” she starts.

  My awkward words jumble together as I reach for the doorknob.

  “Thanks again,” she tells me just as the sun hits my face.

  I’m smiling, but I don’t know if it’s because her previous words are true or because they sound so lovely.

  Was anyone ever really able to reach him?

  And if I’d had the ability then, would I still now?

  I DON’T HAVE to wait days for Elijah to find his way back to me. He creeps into my bedroom that night as if I’d dreamed him here.

  When I hear my window slide open, I want to find my rage.

  But I ask myself if the rage is worth not experiencing the way he feels, sliding into my bed.

  My sigh says no. So he’ll never know.

  His body fits against mine in a way that makes me believe in us.

  “Where did you go?” I whisper in the dark, too afraid of him leaving again to give him the full force of my worry.

  “I’m back now,” he tells me, squeezing me and pressing his face into my neck. “Not leaving you ever again.”

  But his promise holds less weight after his absence. It chipped away at the foundation and created cracks in what I thought would withstand almost anything.

  Three days is nothing.

  Three days of worry is more.

  And three days of fear is too much.

  Fear without cause only requires a deep breath to get past.

  Fear with cause is a curse, requiring sacrifice to lift.

  I’m not bold enough to ask for anything, so I am alone on the island of fear, unable to reach the life raft Elijah offers.

  “Are you okay?”

  He stills at my question and when I shift, I’m hit with the pungent scent of marijuana.

  “Can we not…talk about it?” he asks.

  Hurt is a tropical storm on my island.r />
  But I nod and let myself relax in his hold, pretending I’m not blowing in the wind.

  25

  RAINBOW SPRINKLES

  Happy Birthday to me.

  I’m sitting with Elijah at the park, watching kids play as we eat ice cream. But there are no words between us; nothing to fill the growing space, despite him sitting adjacent from me.

  We’re both watching the kids playing like it means anything to us. The silence is stilted, but the façade of watching them keeps both of us from speaking first.

  Until Elijah clears his throat.

  “How’s pistachio treating you?” he asks.

  I watch him set down his cup of nearly finished vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.

  “It’s good.”

  A kid starts crying near us and Elijah turns to see what’s going on. I don’t bother, still watching the way the sprinkles melt into now muddy colors.

  “I’m heading to Atlanta next week,” Elijah murmurs, and from the corner of my eye, I can see him looking at me. “I think this is it, T.”

  I feel my smile start to form and by the time it’s out, it’s too late to try to hide it. “I hope so,” I say, because I mean it. I want him so far away from this place where he only has hope and horror to keep him company.

  When he isn’t calling me.

  “What about you?” he asks.

  What about me?

  My parents are starting to wonder why I haven’t signed up for classes at the local community college. That was always their plan, for me to start there and end up somewhere better once I’ve proven myself to more expensive schools.

  Community college is what they can afford right now.

  “Start classes here in the fall.” My answer is lame, but that’s what happens when you don’t have plans, I guess. You start filling your future with the plans other people make for you.

  “You don’t want to leave?”

  Words laced with hesitation and confusion hit me square in the heart.

  Leave to where? I want to ask him. But I don’t. I don’t want to hear his suggestions.

  So many years of not knowing things led to people wanting to fill in the blanks for me.

  “I don’t know what I want yet,” I say.

  In truth, I’d spent so much time wondering about what other people wanted that I silenced my own thoughts to hear theirs clearer.

  “I don’t want my life to change and for yours to stay the same,” he confesses, his words sounding closer to pity than anything.

  This causes me to look at him.

  To take my eyes away from the melted mess in front of me and address the melted mess we’re dangerously close to becoming.

  Elijah’s earnest eyes are pleading for me to find a future where the compass leads me to him.

  “I have the power to change my own life,” I tell him. “Just because I don’t want to be rich and famous doesn’t mean I don’t have the capacity for a remarkable existence.”

  All those words I spent time writing in that secret journal of mine, they’re coming out of my mouth instead.

  No one could sneak inside my head now, invade my privacy; not when I’m so willing to give them my thoughts outright.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he asks.

  “I think you forget it sometimes,” I remind him, my response as quick as his.

  “I love you, T. But if you don’t want to do this anymore…”

  “Why does it have to come to that? I feel like I don’t even know you these days. You stay out all night, I hear from you when you decide you want to be heard from.” I stand up from the picnic table and glare at him, willing him to deny any of my claims. “And when I try to talk to you about it, you just shut me out.”

  “What am I supposed to tell you?” he shouts. “What the hell do you want to hear from me? That I’m scared that if I don’t leave this place, it’ll be another cop, another situation where I’m on the ground? Only this time, I won’t get up and I won’t go home? Another black boy, fucked by the system.”

  He’s standing and we’re facing off like we don’t have common enemies. Like we’re the ones at war with each other.

  I want to cry out and tell him I’m prepared to lay my arms down; I will wave my white flag. But he’s so immersed in his defensive tactics that he doesn’t see my wish for peace.

  And so, we go back and forth, louder and louder.

  We’re so busy yelling at each other that we don’t notice the people staring at us. We don’t notice the way everything around us stops.

  But when I look past Elijah, my eyes must betray my thoughts. Because he turns around to see what’s there.

  We’re both watching the cop leaning against his patrol car, his aviators hiding what I’m sure is a hard stare fixated on us.

  His head tilts a fraction, but it’s a warning. And I wonder why I became this person who had to heed warnings and knew what force could mean for us.

  I’m not Elijah. I don’t know what it’s like to be black in America. Or what the ground feels like under my face.

  But I know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he were placed in the same position once again because we were arguing.

  My hands are on Elijah, pulling him away and toward his car. He follows, like I’m dragging him back to shore from tumultuous waters.

  He gets in the passenger side and all while I get ready to get us the hell away from here, my hands shake.

  When he finally stares at me, his eyes are emptier than I’ve ever seen them.

  Elijah isn’t all Elijah anymore.

  Part of him is still the young man with a knee in his back and his face pressed against the asphalt.

  And I am stuck with him in that moment, screaming for him to follow me to safety.

  He doesn’t say anything as I drive us to my house, the only place I feel safe enough to escape to.

  But when I pull into the driveway, he doesn’t move.

  “Elijah…”

  “We can’t do that again, T.” Finally, he unbuckles his seatbelt and faces me. “We can’t do that shit again.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay, all right.”

  I don’t know if he means arguing in public or…

  Either way, I tell him what he needs to hear, terrified that he can’t even be afforded anger. Wondering what it means for us.

  “I need to get the fuck out of here,” he whispers, and it sounds like a sob as he presses his forehead against the glove compartment. “I can’t stay here.”

  His words are wheezy, and they have me reaching for him.

  But he shrugs me away. “Go inside. I’ll call you later.”

  And I know whatever he’s fighting is more about him than it is about me. So, I take my wounded feelings inside and hope he actually does call, even though he usually doesn’t anymore.

  MY PHONE VIBRATES just beside my face, forcing me awake.

  When I see Elijah’s name, I press the green button to answer.

  “Hey,” I answer, my voice gritty and groggy.

  “I miss you,” he tells me, his words sounding muffled and tired.

  It’s strange to hear, considering he saw me earlier. But it still makes me turn over with a smile, pressing the little phone against my cheek. “I miss you, too.”

  I fell asleep waiting for his call, wondering if it’d come at all. When I glance at my alarm clock, it reads three eighteen in the morning.

  “Do you still love me?” he asks.

  “What are you thinking?” I know what it’s like to base your own worth off the worthiness others deem you, and I don’t want that power.

  “That I’m fucking this all up with you,” he says.

  I bet if I could see him, he’d have his hands on his head, his elbows on his knees, and his eyes closed, hunched forward with stress lining his features.

  “You could be,” I whisper. “But it isn’t too late to figure this out.”

  This is it. This is the opening to fixing; the
entrance to healing.

  I’ve often heard that the first step is admitting you have a problem.

  It wasn’t until I acknowledged my sadness and my cutting that I was able to respect and address it.

  I’d thrown the box away, and while I wasn’t cutting anymore, the urge crept in from time to time, willing me to walk that path again.

  Every time I felt close to it, Elijah popped in my head, handcuffed and hidden from me. So I never could.

  But it was acknowledged and shelved for the powerful entity that it is.

  After all, the dark parts of you require as much attention, if not more, than the parts you love. Every piece of you creates the image of the entire person you are.

  And Elijah, it seems, has a darker side that I never knew existed, triggered by a situation that never should’ve been.

  “Okay,” he answers.

  This is it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he tells me, and my heart sinks.

  This is not it.

  And he does not call me the next day.

  26

  PRETTY PAIN

  “I heard what happened to Elijah.”

  The sun is beating down on me as I wipe at the sweat beading on my forehead with my wrist.

  My parents take such pride in their home. That pride came from a place of back-breaking work. When you build something, tend to something, put your life into something, it becomes a trophy of yours.

  And so, on this hot Wednesday afternoon, with Miley standing somewhere behind me like some sort of reckoning, I’m pulling weeds.

  I’ve been ignoring her attempts to get in touch since our argument, so I can’t say I’m surprised she showed up here almost as soon as she touched down.

  Her Facebook had been full of updates from her family’s trip to Thailand. All while I was home, ripping weeds and dealing with a hurt no one knew what to do with.

  And a boyfriend who wanted to get high and pretend everything was okay.

  “Yeah?” I ask, continuing with my task, a little more rigorously than necessary.

  She squats down and pats at the earth for a moment. I’d be willing to bet she has a fresh manicure and I want to resent the care she takes with herself. That she can afford to love herself in a way I can’t.