by Victor Yates
Chapter 3
Through the fisheye peephole, the crimson and clay-colored world kindles under the late afternoon sun. Careful not to cause a sound, I crack the door and peek out, listening for the tap tap of church shoes. A watch ticks. My knee bangs against the doorframe. Purple leaves on a head-high shrub shake. I jerk back, seeing a hand move, and relax. Brett nods, standing at the bottom of the steps.
“I’ll help you,” he says.
Tiptoeing down into danger, I glance in both directions first. Then, I leap looking towards Brett’s house; however, he loops his arm around my arm. Now, I cannot disappear. The puffed-up paint splatter itches rubbing against my skin. Glancing at the truck and then his face, I stop convinced I am with an aged version of him. Somehow time has sped up and spun a net around him, plucking out his youth as if it were nose hairs. His face was mannified, although now it is gaunt. The skin under his eyes looks hollow. In his eyes, fear appears to be a foreign feeling. His boots march on the path toward an enemy, whose hands are sharper than thorns. A flattened box spins in the air from the back of the truck to the driveway. Red-bricked and with cobweb cracks, the driveway is a reminder of Father’s violence. The bloated inside of the truck is a visual catalog of his madness. On the seven-hour drive, every pothole that rattled the wheels was a fist in my gut. I convinced myself that the sardined furniture was crushing up my cameras. Being pig-headed, he selected the mid-sized rental over the longer truck that we needed to save eight dollars and forty-five cents. Two bloody tissues slide on top of a box labeled hot lights from boxes moving. Scuff marks cover the outside. Lenses and, under the word, for the studio, is written in parenthesis on the box to my right. Father’s forehead wrinkles pushing a bundle of light stands to the truck’s edge. A burlap rice sack is wrapped around the stands, and the bundle is tied together with an electrical cord. Each stand weighs thirty pounds to support heavier photography equipment. The sack, cord, and stands can turn into instruments of torture at any moment. Brett and I grab opposite ends of the sack together in a synchronized movement.
“Stop. He doesn’t need your help,” Father says.
“Mr. Tynes, yes he does.”
“No, he doesn’t. He needs to stop being weak.”
Glassy-eyed and focusing his fury on me, he tucks his left fist under his right triceps and his right fist under his left triceps. His way is the only way a man should cross his arms, according to him. The gesture is a period at the end of a sentence that does not need words. An entire non-verbal vocabulary exists for his violence.
“No, I can manage,” I say to Brett.
Hesitating at first, he sets his side of the sack down at a long-drawn-out pace. Father’s eyes throw daggers at the damned world beneath his worn sandals. The thick layer of shea butter that I smoothed over my face is sweating off in the Midwest heat. Milky beads drip to the sack. My thin shirt sticks to my chest and back while I fight with myself how to hold the stands. I struggle to carry them, cradled in my arms, for five feet and stop.
From across the yard, Brett’s blond father says, “help him,” with a buttery tenderness that is unfamiliar to my ears.
He waddles to the truck with two paint buckets in one hand and a toolbox in the other. Brett smirks as Father nods down at us and spits. I close my eyes before the pink goo splats on the ground. Father’s face is stone but pockmarked with resentment. The irony is that now he will bless Brett helping me out of respect for his father. Somali men refuse to shame other men to their face. The resentment in his face settles into blankness. Even without a mirror to verify it, I know my face is as blank as his. Brett’s face reverses back into his youth.
Our bodies, ready for the job at hand, float up from the cobwebs. The purple leaves shake as they scrape my arm. Glancing over my shoulder, I step inside the warm living room and look in front of me and fixate on Brett’s body. Muscle fibers in his arms fill up with blood, showing off his veins. His veins twist like politics on his skin. Blood rushes between my legs as we lower the stands to the floor. The lines of his jeans are swollen with puberty and milk. I ask in secret with my hands to show me what is underneath. Turning my back to Brett, I adjust myself through my khakis and move it up into a less noticeable position. His face is a face that I know and do not know. Athletic, hirsute, strong-featured, and with large feet, he is every combination of the men featured in my non-porn porn collection. The videotapes, which are exercise workouts, are in the last place my father would rummage through, a satchel with an angel’s face printed on the front and back.
With my back to Brett, I say, “It will probably take us all day to unload everything.”
“Can I ask you something? How do you deal with your dad’s cruelness?”
I start to respond, but the truth might frighten him. My second answer feels dishonest and borrowed. That is the difficulty with language, finding the purest way to describe emotions, without having the appearance of stealing rented words. But then again, he should be as terrified as I am. My father is capable of anything, even killing a child. Brett only knows his father, paint, hammers, wood, and the splinters in his hands.
In my silence, Brett says, “You need to stand up to him.”
I shake my head in agreement; however, I know the moment I fight my Father, will be the moment he pulverizes my body into a soupy pulp. Yes, I have wanted to say – curse word – you to him two hundred times today, but my brothers and I are not allowed to swear. Respectable Catholics cannot pollute God’s breath with disrespectful language, especially Black Cuban Catholics.
“You need to speak up for yourself.”
“It is not that simple. Your father is not Somali. If he were, you would understand.”
“You shouldn’t put up with his bullshit.”
A soft rattling like ice shaking in a plastic cup startles me. The pain in my face forces my feet to take a small step to the right away from Brett. I take another step. Junior, my older brother and Father’s favorite son, tugs the dolly into the living room. Brett whispers something, but the words sound like gibberish. White bungee cords secure four boxes down to the dolly by its handle. My younger brother speed walks around Junior huffing, carrying two black-framed posters.
“Here,” Ricky says, leaning the blown-up photographs forward for me to grab, and then he races up the stairs, pumping his arms up in the air.
“Who is this?” Brett asks, pointing to the woman posed in the first poster.
“Marian Anderson. Richard Avedon, my idol, shot this.”
The black and white image has a gypsy-like quality. Strings of multi-shaded beads are around Marian’s neck. Her long, jet-black hair streams across her high cheekbones. Her hair is wild and windswept and elegant. The first time I stumbled upon this picture at Whitney Museum, I had to reread the description five times. In every other picture of the opera singer I had seen, she had perfectly coiffed hair, was put together, sequined, furred, ready to sing a standing ovation worthy performance. This picture, shot from the neck up, is unflattering, makeup-less, focused on her voice. She is singing to Richard against a stark white background. Later that day, I bought every album of hers that I could find at a music store down the street from the museum.
Junior heaves, straining himself, setting one of the boxes on the ground. A noise follows that only a man designed like him can release in public – he breaks wind. Being pudgy and drab, he could tumble into a pool of pink glitter and sashay out wearing a tiara and tutu, and no one would question his manhood. That may be the reason Father wants to mold me into a younger version of Junior; being that Junior is a younger version of Father.
“If you’re free tomorrow,” I say to Brett. “We will be setting up our studio in downtown on Main.”
I regret saying it as it leaves my lips.
Brett rubs the back of his curly head in a slow, forward sweep to his forehead, down to his face and spreads his fingers open. The gesture is seductive
and playful. He pinches his nose, cocks his head up saying, “downtown,” and shakes his head no.
And, I am grateful for that answer.
As we walk back outside, the scent of rosemary weighs down the warm air. Brett drapes his arm around my shoulder in a graceful movement. A quiet celebration is happening, but I want to continue away from the eyes of everyone else. This physical closeness, might appear vulgar to my father, and lead to punches. Natural excitement turns to terror as his arm remains in place. If I move out of his embrace, that might confuse him. Step, step, and I can almost catch a glimpse of the back of the truck, where my father is praying. I slow my pace, but my legs tremble. Father’s soaked back is facing us. The pressure of his hand lightens sliding down my body. I snatch my hand away as he squeezes it. Father spins around holding a box that he insisted I tape up earlier. A resealable bag, matchsticks, frankincense, two chunks of charcoal, an incense burner with one handle, and a bundle of dried sage (to bless the house) are inside it. Inside the resealable bag, there are spearmint leaves, black tea leaves, khat leaves, cardamom powder, and a smaller bag with pills.
“Young man, your father, said you needed to be somewhere right now,” Father says.
“I completely forgot,” Brett says and checks his sports watch. Pink flashes itself, a pig pink, like where babies come from, and a finger increases its size. The rubber band on his wrist is a rainbow: pink leads to purple, purple leads to soft blue and soft blue leads to pink.
“He already left. You should go,” Father says. “And thank your father for the cart. I’ll grab it. Junior,” Father yells as loud as he can toward the house. “Bring that cart back.”
“Keep it. You still have more to move,” Brett says. “Nice meeting you Mr. Tynes and Carsten.”
At the touch of his calloused hand, I transform into a boy disconnected from his prepubescent body. Blood engorges between my legs, and I become firmer and enlarged and it is impossible to disguise it with Brett shaking my hand. As his hand lowers, his eyes also lower. I dig my sweaty hands in my pocket to readjust myself. My body, having a built-in alarm clock between my legs, buzzes and vibrates when it finds a man attractive. I am not certain; however if I will be able to reveal to my Father that I am attracted to men.
With his right hand, Father taps his forehead, then his chest, his left shoulder, then his right shoulder and the boxes behind him become an altar.
“Carsten,” he says in a tone reserved for lessons on manhood. “Carsten,” he screams and kicks me in the shoulder. “Don’t hang out with that boy. He’s khaniis.”
Hearing that abrasive word forces me to remember every lie that I have torn from my tongue, and given to my Father in the past year.
Chapter 4
The ribs of a photography umbrella are comparable to a human rib cage, in that one break disturbs the way a photograph breathes. The sensation of breaking ribs, little snaps, like cowpea beans being torn open, is as familiar to me as the smoothness of my camera’s shutter button. Two summers ago in 1996, I shot four rolls of film at the beach, where Lake Shore ends, at a curve and turns into Sheridan Road. I caught a city bus and stopped at Ardmore. From Ardmore, I caught a glimpse of blonde sand, blue water, and handsome men in Speedos. Six miles away, Father was shooting the wedding of two Somali families from our neighborhood. He asked me not to shoot with him and said that he would return to the studio later that night.
When I heard the three bells ding on the front door, I started snatching the photographs out of the drying rack. Father barged into the darkroom and glanced at the last picture as I was reaching for it. In the picture, two blond bodybuilders in Speedos were in a classic beefcake pose. Both bodybuilders had one arm flexed, and the other extended up and out to the side. Father had my body pinned down on the studio’s hardwood floor before I could run out to Michigan Avenue, and disappear in the breath of the city. My chest cracked, easy as eggs, from the punches. The feeling afterwards: a gravedigger’s shovel splatting against dirt. I tasted metal in my mouth. Father broke me down as if I would be born again and made perfect. The colors in the room were sucked out and turned bone. I heard tapping, followed by distant voices. I woke up stiff on a cushionless examine table, with Father whispering, “don’t tell her,” in my ear. I obeyed his order and did not reveal to the nurse that he broke my ribs.
The next day, he handed me an expensive camera, now my favorite hush hush camera and told me, “I love you. I’m sorry,” in Somali. The sentences sounded more like you are a prisoner, in being that I felt like a prisoner. To break away from under the bounds of his power, I snapped every rib on his most-beloved photography umbrella. Sharp pains shot from my chest to my shoulder as I broke his ribs; however, I could not stop. It was the first time I felt confidence radiating in my body without a camera in my hand. What was strange was that when he discovered what I did, he cleaned up the shredded nylon without saying a word.
Chapter 5
Metal toys hit the ground in an explosion of rage, underlining Father’s last word – a sexual slur in Somali. My older brother’s face begs me to bark back at him. My younger brother smoothes out the bottom of the split open box. The tape crinkles. His fingernails click against vintage dump trucks, race cars, and trains as he snatches them up. On each beat, Father’s eyes blink, and then they squint at me becoming thin slits. The slits widen and become ravens. He wipes his nose with his wrist and wraps his other hand over the redness. Lean-jawed, his face slick with shea butter, a plant leaf stuck between his teeth, he only knows hunger and disappointment.
Looking at his watch, he screams, “what is taking so long?” a second time.
“Say something,” Junior whispers to me, showing off his missing tooth.
“Do you have something to say?” he asks, with his heat singeing Junior then me.
In the silence, Junior mumbles Father’s least favorite curse word. On cue, Ricky reverses out of the adult world, leaving the sound of metal jangling from inside the box. Green juice dribbles down the edge of Father’s mouth. He coughs, spits a stream of green, and jumps in Junior’s face as the jangling dies. The familiar mint and citrus scent of khat leaves makes my tongue itch.
“I could kill you right now.” Father screams.
“Moving everything off that fast is impossible,” I blurt out.
“Only a woman would say that. Move it in five minutes. Or you will be sleeping in the truck tonight.”
The word you, in Father’s mouth, stings worse than a wasp. I limp in pain toward the door, propped open by a bronze rooster. The pearl bone glints around his neck. The pearl is a talisman that can steal a sick child back from death if the child rubs it, according to superstition. For the past half hour, Junior and I have broken our backs moving the couch, clock, cabinets, stereo system, and larger boxes without stopping. Brokenness is not enough for him. Pushing past the veil of frailty is his idea of performance.
“Don’t suck your teeth like a girl,” Father yells.
“Why do you talk to him like that?” Junior yells back.
“Because he’s my son. Carsten. Stop,” he yells.
I ignore him limping outside bloated with the burden of Blackness. My absence will leave him empty handed with nothing physical to crush. All I know from Father is screaming, pain, finger stains, and religion. Knowing these things, I ignore the knots in my legs and run.
With the passion of a street preacher, fanatic for the word, he yells, “you woman.”
“You’re the woman. You haven’t moved one thing,” Junior yells.
Whomp, I hear, like a fist tearing into flesh, then the floor groans under Father’s weight as he chases after me. In the hurry not to fight, I kick over a box on the steps, yanking myself up with an invisible string. Months old issues of Chicago Woman spill out onto the bricks and split apart at the spine. A magazine Father has freelanced for, on and off, since 1985. When his camera is not cradled in his hands, he
likes to spit out woman, little girl, feminine, at me, the way village elders shoot out canuuni fruit seeds from their mouths. Both are equally ugly to witness. I stare at my reflection in the window of the car that we hitched here. The same car where I learned to pop my dislocated shoulder back into place. Seeing my father, grieving over women with shoe prints on their smiles, I want to smash the glass. I glance over my shoulder and Junior brushes past him, revealing red spots near the top of his white shirt. I realize that the spots are blood. For my brother, blood means punch back and harder. My reaction is the complete opposite – to run. A box clatters crashing closer to the house, and I push through the pain. Our old life will live in our new house through the arrangement of furniture, and that thought ungrounds me.
Inside the garage next door, Brett drops a battered bag into the bed of a pickup truck. A dust cloud trembles as it climbs up into the summer air. He grunts grabbing another bag. From the sidewalk, I darken the lines in the background and blur the shapes around them. Habit moves me to pat my chest, although my camera is not strapped around my neck. Watching him from this distance reduces the redness of the color red. Six silver-framed certificates show Contractor of the Year, Fuller Construction Company, beginning in 1989 and ending last year in 1997. A built-in cabinet with eighteen doors extends the entire length of the back wall. An enlarged picture of Brett, his father, and another blond floats in the center of the doorless middle section. The other blond resembles Brett’s father. Brett’s graphic t-shirt has the headless torso of a male bodybuilder with a swollen chest. His smile is the smile of my childhood. The men are comfortable, holding him in one arm hugs. Their smiles are smiles to remember. However long that he has this image, he has proof that his father loved him as he was.
“Tired of moving boxes?” he asks me.
“No, I am tired of my father calling me a girl.”