by Victor Yates
“Stand up to him.”
“And then what?”
“You’ll find out what happens.”
“I know what will happen.”
“How?”
“I am his son.”
“Okay,” he says, interrupting me. “Can you help me?” He points to about twenty bags of cement mix on the black marked floor.
With the tan bags, neatly arranged on the truck, they resemble the flour sacks that are abundant in African villages. The blue USAID stamp stands out against the burlap and the brown-dominated landscape. Villagers feed their family’s flatbread and fried sweet bread with the flour. Now, I can taste the cardamom, honey, spiced butter, powdered sugar, papaya jam, and khat tea in my mouth. In October, during our last visit, a group of men set two males discovered having sex on fire with two hundred flour sacks. A blistered message that same-sex desire is a Western disease, imported and caught as if a cold, and cured through a blaze. Their faces were inhuman: fathers, grandfathers, and dirty-faced boys as young as seven. They all knew these two men and had loved them, and no one in the crowd cried. Hate is thick in our blood. Around my seventh birthday, Father found out that his younger brother kissed another boy and beat him to the point that he became blind in one eye. Junior regurgitated the grisly details of the fight and punctuated the conversation with, “if he could attack his brother, then he could kill a son.” His words imprisoned me in an idea-walled cell. Often, long-term prisoners commit suicide when their requests for parole return denied. Recently, I started asking myself, what if I remain in confinement forever from Father forcing me to marry my ex-girlfriend. In those moments, death seems to be the quickest way to unglue the cinderblocks.
Paint fumes blend with the ammonia smell from the cement mix and release a noxious odor. The scent is similar to the smells of the darkroom. Dust from holes in the bags stick to my arms and onto Brett’s shirt. His shirt has a starch-like stiffness, probably from being worn multiple times without being washed. I love his roughness. Staring at the dark silky hairs around his lips, I realize what attracts me to him. It is his movement between masculine and feminine. At first his sexuality was a question mark blinking in front of me, because of his manly appearance and effeminate behaviors. There is a disquieting beauty to the contrast, even more so with the construction hat on his head and the dangling curls in his face.
“This is a beautiful truck.”
“I’ll take you for a ride whenever you want.”
“Does your father let you borrow it?”
“It’s mine. I bought it with cash I saved working for him.”
“I put all my money into cameras.”
“That’s what makes us different. I rebel out in the open. You are sweating. Let me get you some water.”
He caresses my forehead. I flinch, not from the roughness of his hand, but from being unprepared. My skin prickles from the softness of his gift. Like the sun on my face, like sweet Sycamore figs and guava paste, I love how I feel under his influence. I want to hear his breath in my ear as I stare at the dotted globs of paint on the ceiling. Clasped, but without metal joining them, our hands would connect us, the way sexual organs cannot. He disappears into the house through the side door. Working photographers know the power of place. The way a photographer stands in front of his subject affects the photograph. And the way a photographer holds a camera also has an effect. If cameras dream, they dream to be touched by someone like him.
The sensual shape of a wrench casts a shadow over Brett’s face in the photograph. With my eyes closed, I try to focus in on the aspects that excite me – the pink bandanna around his head. The way his nipples poke out of the bodybuilder’s chest and the ampleness of his hips accentuated by his crossed legs. The eyes, filled with black sex and white powder, have been dazzled by the sun. He is taller than my father, approximately my height, and also could be considered older. Like a cactus that blooms late at night, he stands erect, ready, showing off a pink opening at the end of a tube. The act is beautiful while it lasts; however, the witness is unlikely to experience it again. A pocketknife, with the blade out, is under the picture on the shelf. A spreading coldness on my back shocks me. I snap around. He nods, head up, holding out a water bottle. As our hands touch in the giving, a splotch at the bottom of my palm distracts me, and I drop the bottle. Nowhere else do I see maroon.
“There’s a photo exhibit at the museum,” he says and picks up the bottle. “I drove by a billboard for it yesterday. We can go on Saturday.”
“I will let you know.”
“Okay. Can you bring your camera?”
The word can so close to camera conjures khaniis up from the dead, and its thorns disrupt the conversation. I watch the word hovering above Brett. I want to choke it and leave it unfruitful. However, then, I hear the word flaming in my ear and the second word materializes on top of the first. More words appear. Maricon. Broke-wristed. Sweet booty. Soft. Sugar in the tank. Fruity. Funny people. Skeef. I imagine a fat-lipped vagina smacking open in between my legs, every time Father screams skeef. The coarseness of that word transforms how I see myself. I have to prove that I am separate from it, not because I am not attracted to men, but because Somali boys are divined to become fathers. And, fathers’ bodies are like God’s body. The body of an ungodly man is a coffin. Every time a woman we know womb expands for a baby, her family prays for a boy. Boys are kings that can increase their family’s wealth. One boy is worth five girls. One skeef is worse than having five unmarriable daughters. To say the word, emphasis is placed on the first four letters – skee (it should sound like a hiss) and followed by if. Then, add the ferocity of hungered people, and even ears that have never touched the Horn of Africa with their bare feet can hear women pounding sorghum with wooden mortars and pestles. They can hear it because the clamorous children have been startled into silence.
Seeing these slurs glued together as if they are a bridge to eternal damnation, I tell Brett, “I should leave” and the soft air of sadness dissolves the letters into a handful of dust.
Chapter 6
Stolen gooey creams, gritty scrubs, and slimy masks were my G.I. Joes years ago. I was a child soldier stealing for beauty. When no one was looking, I would dab cream under my eyes, at the bone, as if war paint and smear umber and verdigris clay on my body as if camouflage. I needed their language, their textures, and possibilities. Maroon blotches covered my face, arms, and legs yet my Mother, Father, and brother had even skin. The blotches had the appearance of inflamed freckles but were larger than freckles and smaller than a child’s front tooth. Our family doctor told Father stress was causing the blotches. Father laughed in his face while Junior invented a new nickname for me, Chester Cheetah. He would sneak and hide behind corners in our apartment, jump out, and scream, “It ain’t easy being cheesy.” I was seven then. Now I cannot walk down the snack aisle in grocery stores. Orange bags of cheese puffs cause my skin to itch, and I hear Father’s laugh and see the way he looked at the doctor, like a deranged man.
Four weeks after my eighth birthday, father dropped Junior and I off at an Ethiopian-owned barbershop. I was sitting in the barber’s chair, caped, staring at the hair-covered floor. The barber angled my head down to line up the thick hair on my neck. A confident man paraded into the crowded barbershop wearing faded jean shorts. I marveled at his body from the knees down. His legs were enviable, smooth and bright brown, like a brand new penny with golden undertones. Nothing else could hold my attention. The barber swung the vinyl chair around, and I faced the mirror at his black lacquered station. I stared at the man’s magazine-ready legs. His legs glowed even more in the mirror.
Later that night, when Father was talking on the phone in the living room, I snuck into my parent’s bathroom. I found a fading cream that I had not seen in the back of the cabinet under the sink. The front of the bottle had an elegant seahorse insignia and the word unblemished prominently printed. The word
shimmered with flecks of silver. I smuggled the bottle into the guest bathroom and savored slathering the buttery cream on my legs. Then, I smothered my face with cream. The cream had the consistency of mashed avocado, and it smelled clean. My cheetah rosettes looked less maroon and more medium brown, about twenty minutes later. I applied more to my face. The blotches turned a shade lighter. I applied even more. Rubbing the cream into my skin, I felt a wave of heat, followed by tranquilness, and finally a sensation of an unending euphoria. Even though all the treatments were different, their labels had a shared language: unblemished, clear, healthy, glowing, gorgeous, and beautiful. The word beautiful was always in the description. I knew how valuable the word beauty was. Beauty equaled immunity from Father’s rage. His cameras were beautiful to him, and he loved them more than anything else in his life.
As I turned on the sink faucet, Father barged into the guest bathroom.
“If I catch you playing in these again, I’ll cut off your hands,” Father yelled and smacked my head. I fell to the white tiled floor. Blood dripped from a cut on my face. Father dragged my body to the toilet and shoved my hands into the bowl. He yanked out my hands, and as I struggled, he forced me to wipe the white cream off my face with water from the toilet.
“You should be in the darkroom,” Father yelled and left.
As I inhaled stale urine from the toilet, I realized that to receive Father’s love photography would have to become my passion. I knew I would have to become comfortable watching the world develop in trays, even when waves rocked the surface.
Chapter 7
Dried clay flakes, fragile as a spider’s web, fall to the blue bed sheet. The flakes resemble cooled ashes. With each flake, the treatment removes a flaw. Gray guck is caked in-between my fingers and in the lines on my right hand. Gently, with my middle finger, I circle the spot by my Adam’s apple where a blotch appeared earlier. From the way I am lying, at the foot of the bed, I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror. A slender plastic tube, a straight-sided glass jar, and a round jar christen the bathroom counter and will vanish before Father returns. Creams combined with aloe vera jelly, sticky vitamin E, and slimy banana peels can minimize cuts, scrapes, and black eyes.
The detailed directions on the round jar suggest I should have washed my sunburned face twenty minutes ago. Ten minutes longer and I will wash the mask off. Ten minutes of shooting can produce more provocative work than five hours of shooting. I learned that from Father, and he learned it from Grandfather, who beat it into him. Grandfather first handed Father a camera when he was five. At five, I received my first camera, a Land Polaroid. When Father turned eighteen, he married Mother at a neighbor’s house. Grandfather used the same Land Polaroid to shoot my parent’s wedding along with fancier equipment. My older family members, on Father’s side, have traditionally married at eighteen. Grandfather married Grandmother at eighteen. Grandfather’s seven siblings were married at eighteen also. There are only two exceptions – Junior and our uncle. I am a year away from marriage age, and every wrinkled face in my life is bullying me into a rented tuxedo to marry my ex-girlfriend. However, the feel of coarse facial hair rubbing against my jaw arouses me; not breasts, blunt bangs, lace, or lipstick. I shape my mouth into an O like Marian Anderson. I laid Marian propped against the unpainted wall with twenty other framed photographs. In the stack, only one photograph is not my own. My hand bumps against a solid object at the foot of the bed – my favorite camera. The black enamel paint has rubbed off in certain areas due to extensive use. The way the camera grips in my hand builds an intimate shooting experience. I trust this Nikon more than I trust my father. Yesterday, I shot Brett with this same camera. Tomorrow night I will convert my bathroom into a makeshift darkroom and develop the suggestive roll of film. I cannot let Father find these pictures. No lie would hide the intimacy in them. Once the film is developed, I will sneak over to Brett’s with my camera when Father has fallen asleep. Like wallet, bus fare, keys, an essential, a camera’s in my hand or around my neck when I leave home.
A paint roller, box cutter, five paint cans, white bed sheets, and a cardboard box labeled Carsten’s room are in the corner opposite from the door. Earlier today, I sliced open the box and hid all the beauty products inside the box under the bathroom sink behind a wall of cleaning supplies. Then, I snuck out of the house. Brett persuaded me to run with him to downtown Beverly Hills. It turned into a tour of his favorite hardware store, his favorite music store, his favorite ice cream shop, and his favorite deli, Havington, which is across the street from the photography studio. As we passed the studio, I pinched Brett’s puffy nipple poking out through his work shirt. He chased me into a verdant park that had a canine sculpture made of mirrored tiles. In the mirrors, I noticed the maroon blotch on my neck. I told Brett I needed to hurry back home, and I ran and did not stop until I reached my bathroom. By then, most of my neck was red. When I laid down in bed, I discovered Father’s scribbled note. He and my brothers drove to Ferndale, a suburb north of Detroit, to buy Ethiopian food at a shabby, sit-down restaurant owned by my ex-girlfriend’s uncle.
Outside I hear the distinctive sound of a donkey begging for dried sugar beets. I bounce out of the bed, bang my foot against a moving box, and twist my neck to look down at the driveway. My hands sweat as I scan the road for Father’s car. His car is not downstairs. Another vehicle somehow made that strange sound. I sit down on the bed facing the open window and hold the camera viewfinder up to my eye, trying to see the image in front of me differently. The window like all the windows in my bedroom is painted white and double hung with eight glass cut-ups. White bleeds where the glass connects to wood. On the windowsill, a sun-faded postage stamp is stuck. The eighteen in the upper left corner is barely recognizable. Fathers are like windows. They control how clearly a child sees the world outside. Every time I stare out of my window I see a wedding between a man and woman. It is strange to be reminded of marriage every day, when I want to forget the word. Two years ago, Father told me he had lung disease, and he was afraid what would happen to me when he died.
“When you marry your girlfriend, I’ll give you the business,” he would often say after that conversation.
I would ask myself if I told him the truth, how long would he wait to do the unthinkable? Somali parents, who find out that their children will not marry due to un-African desires, are expected to set them on fire and spit on the charred ashes and bones.
My bedroom door swings open and my hands jerk. The camera knocks me in the chin. Gray bits stick to the camera’s body. I thought I locked the door. In the window’s reflection, I watch my little brother’s face light up full of wonder. Above his face, Father’s face shows the opposite – the taste of bitter expectation.
“Carsten, you missed it,” Ricky says.
Father yells over Ricky, “I called the house sixty times. Where were you?”
“I went for a walk,” I say to the window.
“Where?”
“To the park, down Southfield Street, and back home.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Three hours.”
“Three hours,” Father says like he does not believe me. “Did you call your girlfriend? Turn around and talk to me.”
My lower body feels weighted with industrial concrete. I know I should not obey my father, but if I do not turn around Father will force me to turn around and my punishment will be harsher. I count to four.
Footsteps run. A door slams downstairs. A different door opens somewhere else in the house. And like a tomcat to a kitten, Father snatches me up by the neck, out of bed, into the bathroom to be licked clean. I close my eyes to not remember my face in the mirror, when sleep comes. The jars rattle on the counter as my knees beat the paint-chipped cabinet doors. The slender bottle with the seahorse insignia rolls off the counter, and into a wicker wastebasket. Junior screams stop, however the torture continues. Father’s unclipped fingernails f
eel like blades as I try to free myself.
“Stop,” Junior screams.
I stop, and the pain lessens. Father releases my neck. I hear a slapping sound, and then the bathroom door slams closed.
On the other side, Junior bangs and yells, “you bitch.”
Nails dig into my neck. The four-petaled faucet molds to Father’s all-powerful hand and twists into an accessory. His power, digging into my skin, dunks my head into the deep sink. The water turns pink, swirling and satisfied. Father’s hands that are trained to accentuate beauty always uncover ways to change us into strangers. At least underwater I cannot hear him scream.
Chapter 8
The oval-faced business owners at Ford City Mall in West Lawn hated when Father traveled far for photography jobs. Junior and his grubby-fingered friends would terrorize their shops, begging for handouts, or hollering as loud as they could because they could. We were their dizzying sons from the Horn of Africa, privileged, yet poor. My older brother instructed me to walk with at least five people between us at the mall. From afar, I studied my brother like a subject sitting in front of my camera and emulated the hostility he wore under plastic coolness.
The day his friends agreed I acted like him, Junior forced me into a chokehold outside of the discount shoe store. I elbowed him in the gut and received thunderous applause from his howling friends. When Father returned from his two-week gig in Detroit, Junior told him I could take care of myself. Father agreed but slapped Junior for referring to me walaal instead of walaalo. The two long-voiced words are interchangeable as Kodak’s Tri-X film with another brand of black and white film – though only one of the words means blood brother. The other word could refer to a female sibling. From that day forward, each time Junior said brother in Somali and then my name, Father punched him. What confused our motherless lives even more was that I often used the word my brother and not my blood brother. Eventually, my older brother stopped speaking Somali, and the space between us thickened, becoming a language of its own. I started haunting my friend’s house near the South Loop.