Speak of Me As I Am

by Sonia Belasco

  Next to the photos I wrote out a card that says: Photos taken by Carlos Antonio Remedios Ruiz-Gutierrez, 1999–2016.

  You have the longest name in the world, I used to tease him.

  He’d shove me and say, You know what they say, the bigger the name, the bigger the— and I’d put my hand over his mouth before he could finish.

  My eyes skim up. I see that above the card with his name is the picture I gave Melanie, the one I took of him all those months ago. Carlos and that devil grin.

  It hits me, so hard and fast, I have to remind myself to keep breathing.

  Carlos was that boy drugged out and cursing me in the park, pushing me away and pulling me back in again. He was desperate and secretive and he will always, always be a mystery to me, an unknown, the x I can never solve for.

  But he was also this.

  Sometimes he was happy.

  “Is it okay?” I hear Melanie say, and realize she is standing beside me.

  “It’s great,” I say, and I mean it.

  My eyes drift. Next to the photographs are a series of drawings. They’re many versions of the same woman as she gets thinner and thinner, her rounded features growing sharper and sharper. She is beautiful but also gets more frightening as the drawings progress, as her profile becomes more stark, as she fades.

  “These are incredible, Melanie,” I say, because they are.

  She’s dying, I realize.

  “This is my mom,” Melanie says.

  This is the first time I’ve ever seen pictures of Melanie’s mom. Melanie has her eyes. Not just the shape and color, but something about the look in them. The wisdom. The understanding.

  “God, Melanie,” I whisper, and wrap my arm around her waist and hold her close. She is stiff, at first, but slowly she relaxes, her body melting against mine.

  “She’s beautiful,” I say, and I can feel Melanie take in a deep breath, then let it go.

  “Melanie?” I hear behind me, and there’s Max, looking more serious than I’ve ever seen her look. “Sorry, I overheard. This is your mom?”

  “Yeah,” Melanie says, and I release her from my embrace. She stays close.

  Max glances at the card next to the pictures, which reads: Dana Marie Ellis, 1968–2016.

  “She just died this year,” Max says, her eyes wide. “She was young.”

  “Yeah,” Melanie says, and I can see her swallow.

  Max reaches out and wraps her hand around Melanie’s wrist.

  “My dad,” she says, “died a couple years ago. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.”

  Melanie looks so sad. “I’m so—”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry,” Max says. “Please?”

  Max moves forward and catches Melanie up in a hug. When they separate she says, “Do you think maybe I can like—bring something in and add to this? My dad loved music, and—”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “Anyone is welcome.”

  “I made a blanket for my grandmother after she died,” Tristan says. He’s standing a few feet away, his eyes not moving from Melanie’s drawings. “It’s kind of ugly, but—”

  “I didn’t know that,” Melanie says.

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know everything about me,” Tristan says, tossing her a smile. Melanie wraps her hand around his wrist and holds on, keeping him in a loose grip.

  “It doesn’t have to be pretty,” Melanie says, and I know she means his blanket, but maybe she means all of this.

  All of what’s left behind when someone is gone.

  Maybe it could have been different with Carlos—not just if I’d known, but if he had. If he’d known he wasn’t alone in all this. If he’d known that if he’d reached out, other people would have reached back, would have held his hand.

  Let’s do this, I can see Carlos shouting, standing with his feet wedged between the bars of the bridge, arms spread wide, leaning forward so much that my breath caught. Let’s show the world who we are.

  • • •

  When Melanie sneaks backstage to find me before the show, I’m half dressed in tailored dark purple-striped pants and an undershirt, caught somewhere between the Moorish prince and myself.

  “Hey, look who it is,” I say, and grab her around her waist and yank her forward, pulling her into a kiss.

  “Oh, gross, gross,” Tristan says, pushing past us carrying a couple of swords. “Backstage PDA is so tacky.”

  “Shut up, Tristan,” I say, and he pokes me in the side with one of the prop swords.

  “Hey, look, I get that Melanie is like your real-life Desdemona,” Tristan says, “but in case you’ve forgotten? That did not turn out so well. I’m just sayin’.”

  I look down at Melanie.

  “Melanie’s not my Desdemona,” I murmur. “She’s my Melanie.”

  Tristan pretends to retch, and narrowly escapes being kicked in the kneecaps by scampering into the wings.

  “You’re an idiot,” Melanie tells me, and I smirk.

  “Yeah, but you like me,” I tease. “You like me a lot.”

  This time Melanie kisses me, pressing her lips to the corner of my mouth.

  “I do kinda like you,” she says. “Sometimes.”

  I snort, fingers curving around her waist and lingering.

  “Break a leg,” she says.

  “I might,” I say, grinning. “I heard the set construction’s a little shoddy.”

  Melanie rolls her eyes and makes as if to leave, but I grab her arm.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, and Melanie’s eyes soften.

  “You don’t need to thank me for anything,” she says.

  I hold her gaze. In my mind I’m circling Melanie, looking through the viewfinder and seeing her there—no smoke and mirrors, no set pieces, no memorized lines, no false fronts. I think of her breath against my face and my hands in her hair and my lips cold and dry against her cheek.

  I think of the way she holds my hand, fingers threaded through and thumb stroking along my skin, skimming, light.

  You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone.

  “I’ll be there when it’s over,” Melanie says, and then she’s gone.

  • • •

  Under Othello’s skin is still a frightening place to be.

  Who can control his fate? ’Tis not so now.

  Be not afraid, though you do see me weaponed.

  Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,

  And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

  Onstage, I never falter. I understand my lines and my blocking. I understand Othello. I understand Othello’s pride and his anger, his straightforward thinking and his naive and eternal trust in others. I understand his way of speaking, unusually direct for Shakespeare, particularly striking in a play where so few say what they mean. I understand his love for Desdemona, his soldier’s resolve, his jealousy and his irrational fears.

  I understand this play about jealousy, this play about grief, this play about loving someone the world doesn’t want you to love.

  When act 5, scene 2 rolls around, I am so exhausted, I am beyond exhaustion, situated in that strange middle space where everything is distorted from weariness. I turn to deliver my final speech, and have a sudden flash of Carlos and me together in a crew boat, sweaty and laughing. I remember:

  You dickwad, when he says stroke you pull.

  That’s what I was doing, asshole. It’s not my fault if you suck at this.

  If I suck? If I—

  I shoved Carlos then, and Carlos shoved me back, Carlos saying, Are you afraid of me? You are, aren’t you? You scared of all this?

  I shoved him back, laughing: Yeah, Carlos, you are just too much man for me to handle—

  When we got out of the boat, Carlos slung his arm around my shoulders, pulling me
close and whispering in my ear, Teamwork, Lewis. We work together, we’re unstoppable.

  Goddamn right, I said, and my mouth felt like it couldn’t stretch wide enough to contain my smile.

  It hurts, having that camera and not having Carlos.

  We never took enough pictures together.

  I am so sorry for that, man.

  But I don’t need those photos behind me, I realize. I’ve got him with me all the time.

  “I pray you, in your letters,” I begin, and my voice, as Othello’s, shakes, “when you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice. Then you must speak of one that loved not wisely, but too well; of one not easily jealous, but being wrought, perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, like the base Indian, threw a pearl away—”

  I stop. My throat aches.

  Speak of me as I am.

  Carlos never asked me for this, but Carlos never asked me for a lot of things.

  I’m crying. I can feel the tears slide down my cheeks, marking me, making visible my grief.

  I miss you. I miss you.

  “Set you down this,” I say, as Othello. “And say besides that in Aleppo once, where a malignant and a turbaned Turk beat a Venetian and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, and smote him, thus.”

  The rubber dagger hurts when it presses against my ribs, but I don’t care. As I fall, all I can think is, It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.

  • • •

  Backstage there is the hubbub of cast members milling around and tossing out congratulations, a hundred pats on the back, Max’s high-five, Lacey’s kiss on the cheek.

  Then I turn and there’s Prague, standing hunched over in a corner and looking awkward, hands tucked into the pockets of his baggy jeans. I walk over and Prague tilts his chin up in a gesture of greeting.

  “Had a hole in your busy social calendar?” I ask with a crook of my eyebrow.

  Prague shrugs. “Heard you were playing the lead or some shit. Figured I better check it out.”

  “Well, what’s the verdict?” I ask.

  “Othello is pretty badass,” Prague says. “Fucked up, but badass.”

  Truer words have rarely been spoken. I give Prague a crooked smile. He’s all right.

  “I saw the photos you put up outside,” Prague says. “They’re for real, man. Carlos was legit.”

  I don’t want you to be alone with that, Prague had said.

  I wasn’t ready to listen then, but I’m listening now.

  “Yeah,” I say. “He was.”

  I slap Prague on the shoulder, and to my surprise, Prague pulls me into a tight hug.

  I see Tristan standing in a corner, alone. Did his parents not even come? That’s cold. I look up, and Tristan’s eyes catch mine. His face brightens, and he bounds over to me.

  “Amazing,” Tristan tells me. “You were amazing.”

  “You were too,” I say.

  “Dude, of course I was!” Tristan says. “Did you expect anything less?”

  Melanie wraps her arms around Tristan from behind and squeezes him until he squeaks. “My favorite whore-loving douchebag,” she says.

  “Now, that is not something you hear every day,” Tristan says, and they embrace tightly.

  When Melanie unwinds herself from Tristan’s embrace, she wraps her arms around me and says, “You did it.”

  She means the play, but she also means something else.

  We stand there in the middle of the chaos, holding each other close. I can feel her hand on the back of my neck, her hair tickling my cheek. She breathes, and I breathe, and we breathe together.

  I did it.

  I feel you, man, I feel you, I do.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Three weeks before I began my creative writing master’s program at California College of the Arts, my ex-boyfriend killed himself. I was the last person he spoke to. Though we had been broken up for about a year, we had dated for five and a half years and known each other for ten, and my sense of loss was enormous. Big enough for me to write a book about it. Big enough to define the next steps I took in my career. Big enough for it to still be hard to talk about, even now, years later.

  Grief is complicated, and losing someone to suicide has got to be one of the most complicated forms of grief there is. It is a kind of loss that is overlaid with shame and guilt, and a kind of loss many choose to keep secret. The problem with secrets is that they’re lonely. The more that people feel they can’t talk about what or whom they’ve lost, the more alone they feel. It is always hard to grieve, but there is a reason we organize community rituals like funerals around death. It is hardest to grieve alone.

  Grief is also complicated when you lose someone to an illness like cancer. It is no easier to feel someone slowly slip away than it is to lose them suddenly and seemingly without warning. Grief will have its way with you, a therapist told me once, and it is so true. We can’t control the way we feel when we lose those close to us, or when we feel grief or how it manifests in our lives. We can’t steer the roller coaster—we can only try to hold on.

  But grief has things to teach you, too. My grief taught me a great many things, one of the most important being how essential it can be to reach out for help, even when it’s hard. I hoped in writing this book that I might help people—including you, reading this now—to know that you are not alone. That your pain is valid and real and that there is a way through it. That it is okay to reach out, because when you do, you will find many people who are struggling or have struggled in the way you are.

  Here are a few resources to help you with reaching out.

  American Association of Suicidology: Suicide Loss Survivors: Books & Resources for Survivorswww.suicidology.org/suicide-survivors/suicide-loss-survivors

  Alliance of Hopewww.allianceofhope.org

  Suicide Prevention Resource Center: A Handbook for Survivors of Suicidewww.sprc.org/sites/sprc.org/files/library/SOS_handbook.pdf

  The Trevor Projectwww.thetrevorproject.org

  ReachOut.comus.reachout.com

  SAVE—Suicide Awareness Voices of Educationwww.save.org

  American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: International Survivors of Suicide Loss Dayafsp.org/find-support/ive-lost-someone/survivor-day/

  American Cancer Society: Coping with the Loss of a Loved Onewww.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/002826-pdf.pdf

  Lifehacker: The Things Nobody Tells You About Grieflifehacker.com/the-things-about-grief-nobody-tells-you-1383119181

  It Gets Better Projectwww.itgetsbetter.org

  Susan G. Komen Foundation: Sources of Support for Family and Loved Onesww5.komen.org/BreastCancer/SourcesofSupportforFamilyandLovedOnes.html

  Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: Caregiver Supportwww.mskcc.org/experience/caregivers-support

  Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Family Connectionswww.dana-farber.org/Adult-Care/Treatment-and-Support/Patient-and-Family-Support/Family-Connections.aspx

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was touched by many hands during its journey into existence, and I am endlessly grateful for all those people who helped me make it a reality. An enormous thank-you:

  To all the young people I’ve worked with over the years who have inspired me and taught me so much about what it means to be resilient in the face of trauma, to survive and thrive in spite of loss. You and your stories are valuable and beautiful and amazing.

  To my mentors and professors who helped coax this book out of me: Donna de la Perriere, Holly Payne, John Laskey, Aimee Phan, Rebekah Bloyd.

  To my steadfast friends and supporters, members of Book Club both nearby and long distance, who put up with so much talk about this book and read drafts and believed in its potential even when I was ready to throw in the towel: Emily Ro
sendahl, Katherine Wooten, Anna Alves, Sarah Carter, Shana Naomi Krochmal, Jessica Maxwell, Erica Dessenberger, Siobhan McKiernan, Laurence Zavriew, Ash Rocketship.

  To my fellow writers at California College of the Arts for their feedback and inspiration, with a special shout-out to Matthew Jent and Beth Mattson.

  To my wonderful agent, Erica Rand Silverman, for sticking with this book through many ups and downs and ins and outs, and to George Nicholson for seeing potential in me from the beginning.

  To my fabulous editor, Talia Benamy, as well as Jill Santopolo and everyone at Philomel Books for supporting and shaping this book.

  To the Circle of Ancients, my grandparents: Big Mum and Just Ed and Grandma Shirley, for believing in my impractical passions, always.

  To my parents, Amy and Warren Belasco, for their support and patience and love, and to my brother, Nate Belasco, for never letting me take myself too seriously just because I was writing a very serious book.

  To Shannon Brown, my hetero-lifemate and my person, expert editor and reader and cheerleader. This book would not have happened without you.

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