by Victor Yates
Copyright ©2015 by Victor Yates
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0692553312
ISBN-10: 0692553312
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955101
Hillmont Press
512 Evergreen Street Unit 305
Inglewood, CA 90302
I sing so they’ll know I am not afraid.
Billy Holiday
I write so they’ll know I am not afraid.
Victor Yates
Dedicated to Alkebulan and Desmond.
Wherever you are. I love you. Thank you.
And to E. Lynn Harris.
Wherever you are. I love you. Thank you.
And to my future sons.
Wherever you are. I love you. Thank you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
My first language was Somali, then English, then Spanish. Although I am not fluent in Spanish. Red was the first word that formed in my mouth. Mother would cross her hands at the wrists, making her thumbs kiss, and wiggled her fingers to mimic a pigeon. She cooed to catch my attention, but the color distracted me. Her ruby polish was candy to suck. Because I could taste it and feel bubbles the size of poppy seeds, I could assign it meaning. Now when I refer to the color red, I use the Spanish word instead. In English, the word on my tongue sounds similar to my father’s name. The color is a constant in my life: red darkroom lights, grease pencils, rosary beads, blotches, tissues, and Father’s eyes. For a moment we stare at each other, then Brett looks down in his lap at the coffin. Standing in the maroon room, I relish in removing my camera from its resting place. I hold the body the way Father taught me allowing aluminum to sink into my skin. My right hand curls into the handgrip. The texture is smooth, unlike the rest of its pruned body. My left hand cradles the Nikon, gripping the lens, and I tuck my elbows into my sides. Hand placement is as significant as breath. His thumb squeaks against the plastic as he turns the page. My eye moves to the viewfinder, and the camera fades. Shlick shlick. A seductive sound to a faraway shot. I am preparing myself to ask him as he flips through my portfolio if I can photograph him in profile. His profile is six sharpened lines: nose, cheek, jaw, brow, and neck. His face, cream shirt, and tanned arms are a study in contrast. His picture would capture the essence of a perfectly formed man.
With aluminum in my hands, hard facts soften into mush. The red in the room unravels, Father’s eyes follow, then the world outside of the frame. They float to the floor creating a mound of threads. Concentration sucks all the colors away. Only light, breath, sound, and Brett are left. Glass breaks him down into a seed. Here, in the red, he and I have one name, twins. We share the warmth of the womb with all of the gruesome knowledge of the world. Instead of unraveling with the room, the image in the lens slicks down my worn ends. The camera slips as I hear a crackling sound, and the neck strap saves it from breaking. My father could catch us questioning desire in the season of cicadas. His eyes see everything, except himself. Distant yelling proves he glued his feet to the back of the truck. Outside, a kid chuckles and I step back, but the baritone of Brett’s voice bends me toward his face. The camera clicks again. My lens is a permission slip granting access into the intimate world between men. I kick a box on accident causing crushed newspapers to shake. The boxes closest to me read Reed’s room, darkroom chemicals, kitchen, and photo albums. Under photo albums, in parentheses, is Carsten’s Room. I snuck out my portfolio from the last box. Photography is the one language I speak that helps me communicate with men who move at night.
“You’re probably the only teenager that has one of these,” he says, with his head down.
“You are probably right.”
A smacking noise comes from his mouth, then he says, “I like this one. Who is she?”
“A girl I knew in Chicago.”
The sounds our bodies make will dissolve into the house’s bones and will remain here forever. Then, the smacking, swallowing of saliva, and cracking of bones will combine, creating new noises. A cut-up Polaroid of my ex-girlfriend has him stuck, staring into the past. Maybe he has a question about her laugh; however, I hope he is asking questions about the print on my pants. Blood, not floral, tribal, or tropical, is responsible for the shape. The scent of frankincense thickens in the air. Making myself as tiny as possible, I position him into portrait. But before I tap the shutter button, I look up, down, and beside him, checking if the corner exits can be improved. I search the viewfinder and move the camera so that the blue flag, draped over a box, is not in the frame. The panel behind him (and above the fireplace) splits the maroon with myrrh in shiny stripes and church lace in dull stripes. A design detail I would discover in a darling hotel. The house, far from that, is the oldest on Evergreen Street in Beverly Hills. The pipes of the suburb could be ripped up and planted in the other Beverly Hills, in California, with its air of plastic bourgeois exclusiveness. Soon the living room will be filled with unextravagant things like the donated couch, love seats, coffee table, lamps, milk jars, and headrests buried behind boxes on the truck.
The shadow of my arm cuts across the shadow of Brett’s body making a cross. Through the camera lens, I study his shape. The line of his body breaks the lines in the background, projecting him forward. His athletic frame, his bullish face, the veneer of toughness, and the paint splatter on his uniform, slash what Father screams at me. Funny men are pretty vaginas with mustaches. Pretty and Brett are as far apart as never and always. Mannified is a more accurate description. He is the type, which, when I see, I assume reeks of beer, cigarettes, and cheap aftershave. Though mannified men are always significantly older. Brett shines, not from the sun, from a readiness to show off his youth. When his father told my father he was eighteen, I asked him to stand on the other side of a bulky box. In response, he said cool. Cool is not in my vocabulary. Father prohibits me from using the language of my generation.
The ends of his curly hair are blond and hide the clues of his glances. Looking and liking have striking differences. He crosses his arms, one hand on his arm, and one hand tucked under his arm. “We’re alike in different ways.”
“How so?”
“We both work with our hands. I work with my dad in construction. You work with yours in photography. If you want to go to the Detroit art museum, I’ll go with you.”
“The DIA? I would live in a broom closet there. All those gorgeous silver prints.
”
“Let’s do it,” he says, lower and slower, sexual-sounding. “I can’t believe you’re a family of photographers.”
“Two of us are photographers. My older brother isn’t interested in photography. My younger brother wants to be a kid. I did not have a choice.”
“I can tell your older brother and dad don’t get along. You seem to somewhat.”
“I do not have a choice with that either.”
“Yes, you do.”
“My father is Somali. You’ll learn quickly. The photograph is the only thing I can control. I control what is going on inside it.”
“The photo of the wedding dress and tux suspended in the air. And the two grooms holding a cross is beautiful. How’d you do that?”
“With lighting clamps. I clamped the dress and tuxedo onto a metal rod. And I asked two men in the wedding party we were shooting to pose together.”
“Were they a couple?”
“No, but they had similar faces. I wanted to play with those images.”
“Your dad must be proud of your work.”
“He hasn’t seen that picture.”
“Why not?”
“He’d rip it in half. Anything he disapproves of, he destroys.”
“How does it feel, to be reminded, of what you can’t do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have your dad photograph your wedding.”
“Can I photograph you?” I ask him, to avoid answering his question.
“Yes.” The word, a short intake of breath, pushed out in exaggeration to sound suggestive.
I break eye contact with him, pulling myself back. His explain something explicit is growing inside of him – something un-African, a sexual thought, material for an erection. I have studied that knowing-slant in the pages of a magazine that is a penis away from being pornographic. Muscle Workout might cause untrained eyes to miss it rummaging through my underwear drawer. This month’s first workout, featuring a gymnast in fishnet swimwear, caused a woman to huff passing behind me in the grocery store. Turned, standing in profile, with the shutter speed narrow, Brett will appear bright and well-exposed. The background will come out dark, almost black, yanking out a wild ferocity in him, which will contrast with his feminine mannerisms. How his skin will look on film, I am not as certain. Being that Brett is biracial, his color drifts from tan to brown, depending on how much light hits his face.
In the lower corner of the frame, I catch the Somali flag with the five-pointed Star of Unity. Under it, there is a green flag with a crescent moon and star. I grew up in a strange world with Saint statuettes from my mother’s mother alongside a Quran, wrapped in green silk that my father’s father read from as a boy. In the upper frame, a moth appears and disappears fluttering over the oatmeal carpet. Every straight line is broken from this angle.
As the camera clicks, Brett uncrosses his arms and crosses them highlighting his neck, chest, and shoulders. If Father were hovering beside me, he would yell, stop, girls do that. His words are too pointed to forget, like the front-page of a newspaper during wartime. The light dazzles Brett’s eyes and five brilliant flecks shine. Wait, I hold up a finger, pausing him, to shoot another picture and drag out this moment that we have alone. The first shot that a photographer takes is always a throwaway, like the peel of an unripe pomegranate, beautiful but unusable. I learned my greatest secrets from my Father and also ways to keep them. A musty scent enters the room with cut grass and an old dwelling smell. Close by, I hear tape ripping from a box. The splitting sound sends Father’s fist flying toward my face, even though he is not physically in front of me. I listen for the tap tap of his shoes by the front door. Smooth as a cat on a carpet, he could tiptoe in on us to check where our hands are. If jolted he might bite them off. Death in his mouth is like cinnamon tea. The ride here held us under mirrors and heat and rattled him beyond his cattish ways. Indoor cats that escape outside will hunt and kill rats.
Rubbing his hands together, he grins as if he is about to say something off-color. “Do I need to marry you to see these pictures?”
Brett and I both laugh at this understanding between us, but this is a secret we have to toss into the fire.
Drizzled drops of paint highlight the veins in his right hand. By his middle knuckle, dried blood has crusted around a bruise. If the color red had a smell, it would smell metallic. A close-up shot of his hand, clearly focused, that is the photograph I need. His hand is the object that reveals we are native sons. And, we work out of the disorder of life to achieve beauty. I want to explore more.
Although, like the Nile crocodile, heavily armored and quiet until it attacks, Father creeps up on us.
“You, your father wants you,” he says to Brett.
The coldness in his first word is enough for me to see my error. A photographer never stops looking. His eyes, usually expressionless, move toward perplexity. As the front door crunches, I realize the closest exit is a cracked window. However, I know as long as I squeeze my camera in my hand, he will not bare teeth. I grip the body tighter. The flash smashes into my ribs, and I jerk it away.
“Did that boy say he wanted to marry you, and you laughed?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“You have a girlfriend. What is wrong with you?”
“It’s not what you think?”
“So you know what I think?”
“Yes, I do. No, no I don’t.”
Father’s knuckles knock me in the jaw, ripping the room half-open as if it were a plum. The swelling teaches me how to breathe under a beast’s power. Whatever direction his weight pulls my body in, I must follow, even if it is underwater.
Chapter 2
Inside congested markets selling curry-flavored worms, images of disembodied hands are everywhere – in logos, pottery, graffiti, tattoos, jewelry, clothing, and charms. The image symbolizes protection. In Lama Doonka, where my grandfather is from, the symbol is eight-fingered. Finding villagers with six or seven fingers is as common as finding a traveling troupe of baboons. Eight-fingered villagers are treated like gods but are born once every one hundred years. My Father’s unshakeable nickname growing up on the far North Side of Chicago was “Hand.” His crueler friends would make tongue-clicking sounds around his name as if dressing it in quotes, but he smiled hearing it. Some of his closest childhood friends have only recently discovered why the nickname stuck. And, he smiles telling them. He moved like a professional illusionist, distracting them with overexaggerated gestures, pulling attention to his left side. The performance prevented them from gasping for breath at his right hand.
The human eye is easy to mislead, but cameras tell the truth or a distorted version of the truth. Of the thousands of photographs that I have of him, in only two are his right hand entirely visible. The first is a wedding picture buried in a bottom bedroom drawer. His hand is blurry and unremarkable from the wide angle of the living room. In the second picture, he is looming in Union Station inside the marble terminal. Tight concentration is in his face, and a Nikon camera is in his hand. He is photographing an older man in secret that is photographing his adult son. The son, partly in shadow, is cradling an infant in the crook of his arm at a slight incline. A dark-colored blanket insinuates the child’s sex. Shot from his right side, the focal point of the image is my father. A crack in the tile runs from the top of his hand and connects him to the other men like a vein; it is closer to the skin. From son to father and father to son, our relationships are equal in blood; however, our trinities are unrelated and unknowable. Five or six once-overs might be required to realize that his hand looks rather peculiar, and then the viewer notices it: skin, soft tissue, a bone with a joint, two thumbs. Fortunately, the crash of noise and Father’s concentration muted the clicks of my camera.
Water plopped in fours somewhere inside my high school’s darkroom. The room felt restrictive from its arrangemen
t of tables. It smelled older too than the rest of the school as if it had been torn out of another building and dropped into ours. Or maybe the room had been born a restroom, and the adjacent storage room walls were hammered into dust. Dust, dirt, moisture, and hands age restrooms faster than other rooms. In the other prints from Union Station, I rubbed my fingers across Father’s eyes, feeling for familiarity. But I only found the disconnected stare of a man to self-involved to care about anyone else but his lover, his work. Though someone else who saw the pictures might think, that he had found a new way of talking in silence. My fingers wrinkled like an elderly man’s by the time the pictures had dried. I tried to mimic the intensity on his face without a mirror to face. The way lines creased in the space between his eyebrows and the beginning of his nose; I could not copy, even when mashing the points together. A microwave beeped three times on the other side of the wall where I stood. Something like a saucer or coffee mug scraped the glass, and a minute later, I handed my life to my instructor.
“Hands are more expressive than faces. You’ve captured that here,” he said.
Weeks later, he added the photograph was one of my strongest during a portfolio review. Then, he pulled it closer and rubbed his lips with his finger. While watching his lips mouth soundless words, I missed him reaching into his desk and realized this after a magnifying glass smashed my father’s head. What the magnifying glass could not show, being in black and white, was the blood under his thumb, nor the spotted tissue beside my foot. The photograph embodies every lesson that I have learned from Father as a photographer – from image structure and contrast and balance to darkroom editing and hand placement. A real education is unconscious seduction. Want and risk in wanting wait under the laurel wreath. However, Father has never seen the print and never will, hopefully. He would rip it up into a million little pieces and demand I hand over the negative.
Whenever we find ourselves staring through lenses, he loves to say, a photographer’s greatest weapons are his hands not his eyes. I know that to be true firsthand.