Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “So you’re not into white ladies?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Adam just looked at me. “No, I don’t. Explain it to me.”

  “Okay, she’s real—but not real in the way I like real to be.”

  Adam nodded. But it was that kind of I-don’t-get-you nod. “Can I say something?”

  I knew he had a theory. There was nothing I could do to stop his theories. “Sure,” I said.

  “Is it that you don’t trust Susan?”

  “I think this breathing stuff is, you know, it’s crap.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just don’t like it.”

  “And you don’t like it because—?”

  “Because it’s crap.”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t like the way he said okay. “And do you even know what it is, Zach?”

  “I don’t need to know.”

  “What do you know about trauma?”

  “Nothing.”

  Adam gave me this snarky look. Not that I blamed him. I was giving him a snarky look too.

  “There’s a theory that the body keeps trauma. And Breathwork helps get at the trauma. I’m simplifying, but—”

  “Fucking fascinating.”

  Adam didn’t say a word. He just looked at me. I hated that look on his face.

  “Look, Adam, if that breathing stuff helps Sharkey and Rafael, that’s very cool. But I’m different.”

  “Terminally unique.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, something like that.” I wasn’t liking this conversation.

  “Have you talked to Rafael about Breathwork?” He knew Rafael was the only one besides him that I really talked to. He knew that. So why was he asking me stuff that he already knew?

  “Yeah, I’ve talked to Rafael.”

  “You think Rafael’s an idiot?”

  “You know what I think of Rafael.” I was getting mad.

  “What do you think of Rafael?”

  “I like him.”

  “When you say you like him, what does that mean?”

  “It means I like him.”

  “Like a friend? Like a brother? Like a father?”

  I really didn’t like that he brought this father thing up. I really was getting pissed off. I’m talking seriously, tear me up, stun me out pissed off. “Rafael’s my friend.”

  “Rafael’s fifty-three. You’re eighteen.”

  “So?”

  “So you see yourself hanging out with him?”

  “Well, I do hang out with him.”

  “Would you hang out with him if you lived in the same city?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked at him. I didn’t like his eyes just then. I didn’t. “Look, Adam,” I said, “what are you getting at?”

  “I’m making up that maybe you see Rafael as a father.” Making up. Adam loved that phrase. It meant he had a theory. Like I wanted to hear about all his theories.

  “Is that right?” I gave him a look. That really pissed me off. “What’s wrong with you?” I said.

  “What do you mean what’s wrong with me?”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t play dumb, Adam. That really pisses me off.”

  “Why are you angry, Zach?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why? You look like you might want to hit me.”

  “I don’t hit people.”

  “I don’t think you do. But you’re really angry with me.”

  “Okay, I’m angry with you.” God, I did want to hit the guy.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I think, Zach?”

  I did not want him to tell me what he thought. But I said, “Yeah, sure.” But it was a kind of fuck you yeah sure.

  He shot me back the same snarky smile I shot him. “Okay,” he said, “this is what I’m making up. I’m making up that you love Rafael. I’m making up that you’d like him to be your father.”

  I didn’t say anything. And then I said, “I have a father.”

  Adam was quiet for a long time. He was thinking and thinking. I could see that. Even though I was mad at him, I could see he was having a hard time. I didn’t know what that was about. “Have you talked to your father since you’ve been here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?” He whispered it. He seemed like he was being very careful and I was really confused.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  And then we just looked at each other for a long time. “Is your father alive?” he asked. He had this look on his face. It was such a soft and kind look. I just kept looking at his eyes—and then I just turned away from them.

  “I don’t know,” I said. And then I started crying. I didn’t know why.

  Adam didn’t say anything. He just let me cry.

  And then I said, “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go. I’ll go see Susan. I’ll do it. Can we just move on?”

  He smiled. God, his smile tore me up. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “I said I’ll go.”

  “You sound really angry.”

  “I’m not angry. I’m not. I just need a cigarette.”

  Adam smiled. He looked at the clock. “We still have twenty minutes. Any dreams?”

  “Yeah.” Look, I was glad to not be talking about Breathwork. I was glad not to be talking about Rafael. I was glad not to be talking about my father. “Yeah, I always have dreams.”

  “You want to talk about any of them?’

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  We both laughed. God, that Adam, he was fucking relentless.

  “I dreamed Rafael’s monster.”

  “Rafael’s monster?”

  “Yeah, he was in my dream.”

  “What was the monster doing?”

  “He was hanging out.”

  Adam gave me that you’re-being-a-wiseass look.

  “I was scared.”

  He nodded. “I get bad dreams too,” he said.

  “Any monsters?”

  He smiled. “I guess you could say that.”

  I liked Adam’s smile. It was real. And then I asked him. “I’m serious, Adam. Have you ever had a monster?”

  He looked at me and his face was serious. Very, very serious. “Yeah, Zach, I’ve had monsters.”

  And right then I got that part about getting honest. I mean, Adam was my therapist and he was really honest. He was right about Rafael. I hated that he was right. I did love Rafael and I wondered why it had made me so mad when he asked me if I loved him. Why did that make me mad? I did want him to be my father. But see, this is how screwed-up I am, on some days I wanted Rafael to be my father and on other days I wanted Adam to be my father. Okay, yeah, I know that these thoughts constitute unhealthy behaviors.

  -3-

  A few nights later, Rafael was working on a painting in our room. He had all these art supplies he’d bought at the art store on one of our weekly outings. The guy knew what he was doing. He was patient and he could sit there for hours just working on his painting. I’d never seen anyone who could concentrate like that. So I asked him, “When you paint, what goes on in your head?”

  “I’m not sure, Zach. Painting, for me, it’s not about thinking. When you start working on a painting—” He stopped himself and smirked, “When I start working on a painting.” We both laughed. We couldn’t stop laughing. I mean we were really laughing. And I got to thinking that the whole thing really wasn’t that funny, but we were laughing because there was all these feelings inside us and we didn’t always know what to do with all the feelings that were like knots that needed to be untied, so sometimes we just, well, we laughed. That’s how we untied the knots.

  And then Rafael said, “See, painting, sometimes it’s like laughing. It’s not just about the technical thing. It’s not just about the plumbing. I mean, you can learn how to draw and not be an artist. You can memorize the color chart and know how to mix colors and not be an artist.” He nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s true. For me. Look
, I’m not an artist, Zach. I just have this chaos inside me and I just can’t live in all that chaos. I tried drinking. I’ve tried a lot of things and most of those things were killing me.”

  I walked over and looked at his painting. There was a monster lurking in the background and there were all these things in the painting, things like books and a field of growing crops and the face of a man who looked like he was as large as God and flames in the sky and broken letters that seemed like they wanted to become words. It was like music, like Mr. Garcia’s trumpet.

  “Rafael, does it hurt?”

  “Hurts like hell.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Tell me anything.” What I meant was tell me everything. And I wanted to yell out that I sometimes read his journal. It felt really bad that I couldn’t tell him. I mean, what if he decided that he hated me. I would hate me if I were him. I really would. I mean, I was me and I hated me. Why wouldn’t he hate me too?

  “I’ve been hurting most of my life. I tried to pretend I wasn’t. I even believed my own lie. I’ve lived my entire life trying to avoid pain, Zach. That’s a terrible way to live. I don’t care any more if it hurts.”

  “Will it ever stop hurting?”

  “I don’t think so, Zach. If I’m working on a painting, and it doesn’t hurt, then the painting won’t matter. And if it doesn’t matter, then it isn’t real—then I’m not real.”

  “But why does it have to hurt?”

  “I don’t know.” And then he got this look and I knew he was thinking and so I waited for him to stop thinking because I knew he wanted to tell me something. “I have a new theory,” he said, “and the theory is this: if I develop a great capacity for feeling pain, then I am also developing a great capacity for feeling happiness.”

  When he said happiness, he smiled. And it was one of his real smiles, not one of his clearing-his-throat smiles.

  I was confused. The words pain and happiness stepped into my head. They were words on the pieces of paper lying on the floor of my brain. I didn’t know what to think of those pieces of paper. “Rafael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do we all have monsters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why does God give us so many monsters?”

  “You want to know my theory?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “You mean, like your uncle.”

  “Yeah, like my uncle. And you, Zach? Who gave you your monsters?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do know.”

  “I don’t like to think about it.”

  Rafael was quiet for a while. He kept working on his painting.

  All that raw emotion on his face really blew me away. I went back to my side of the room and thought that maybe it was time for me to start working on my own paintings. But painting was like talking. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.

  And then Rafael said, “You know, Zach, I think sometimes we fall in love with our monsters.”

  How did he know—that I had thought the same thing? “Yeah, I guess so.” And then I just blurted out: “I’m going to see Susan tomorrow.”

  Rafael stopped painting and looked up at me. “Good for you, Zach.”

  “I don’t really want to go.”

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I won’t be,” I said.

  I don’t think Rafael believed me. I kept thinking that sometimes God did give you a monster. And when God gave you a monster, well, then you were supposed to keep it forever. How could it be right to get rid of a monster that God gave you? How could you hate what God gave you? But the thing is I had to figure out what the monster wanted.

  Maybe that was the key to the whole mystery—figuring out what the hell my monster wanted before he ripped me to pieces.

  -4-

  Two nights later, another storm. The wind was tearing up the night.

  I woke up and listened. Rafael was awake. I don’t know how I knew that but I could sense him. He liked listening to storms—same as me. I finally got up and looked out the window. It was snowing. Again. I went back to bed and kept listening. I imagined what it would be like to be the wind. I thought of the chart Adam had put on the board. If I were the wind, I could be in charge.

  I was awake as a morning bird. I was. I finally decided to get up and go have a cigarette.

  “Put on your coat,” Rafael whispered.

  “I will,” I said. Some days, I just couldn’t take it that he cared.

  As I walked into the cold, I smiled. I liked the cold wind on my face. I liked the way it made me feel. When I got to the smoking pit, I lit up a cigarette. I took the smoke into my lungs and closed my eyes and thought of Susan. I heard her voice: Okay, Zach, you can close your eyes or you can leave them open. Just breathe deep, just follow my lead. I heard my own breathing, the loudness of it and the softness of it too. Yeah, it had all been so strange, that Breathwork thing, and I’d cried. I’d just cried. The need to cry had just been too much, too strong to hold back and I’d just howled and my lips had quivered and then afterwards, when I’d finally stopped crying, Susan had whispered: Okay, just relax the rest of the day. Be good to yourself. And I want you to write in your journal. It had all felt so weird, even when I was writing in my journal as if the words were water and they were just pouring out onto the page and I just kept writing over and over Mom, Dad, Santiago, Mom, Dad, Santiago, Mom, Dad, Santiago. Three pages and I just couldn’t stop.

  I lit another cigarette and laughed. Here I was at the smoking pit in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, smoking cigarettes and remembering. I couldn’t decide anymore if remembering was a good thing or a bad thing. What if remembering did nothing? What if I stayed like this forever?

  I liked the cold just then.

  I liked that I was so sober.

  I liked that I didn’t have any bourbon flowing through me. And for a moment, just a very small and tiny moment, I felt alive and almost free. It was weird to feel that rush of happiness. It was so strange and beautiful. So much better than cocaine.

  I lit another cigarette and noticed someone walking toward the smoking pit. Even before I could make out his face, I knew it was Sharkey.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey, your fucking self,” he said.

  I laughed and we both hugged ourselves in the cold.

  “We’re nuts,” he said.

  “Yeah, we’re nuts.”

  “But I’m really nuts,” he said. “Rafael had to wake me up again. I was sleepwalking. I was about to walk out the door in my frickin’ undies. That Rafael. He’s like a dog on alert.”

  “I like dogs,” I said.

  “Me too.” He lit a cigarette. “Rafael’s going to be okay,” he said. “I think he’s really going to be okay.”

  “I think so too.”

  “Sharkey, when you’re old, are you going to get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “Whatever the hell it is that we’re supposed to get.”

  “Hell, I’m never going to be as old as Rafael.”

  “Fifty-three, well, that’s not so old, not really.”

  “Well, I’m never going to live to be fifty-three.”

  That made me sad, to think that Sharkey believed he wouldn’t live to be very old. That made me really sad and numbed out. And then I heard Sharkey’s voice again. “What about us, Zach?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want me to tell you the truth?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay. I don’t think I have it in me.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “It is true, Zach.”

  “But you’re doing all this work.”

  “I don’t think I am, Zach.”

  “So talk to Adam,” I said. “Adam will
help you.”

  “What will Adam do?”

  “He’ll talk to you. He’ll help you.”

  “No. I’m just a job for Adam. I’m not anything more than that.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true, Zach.”

  “He cares about us.”

  “He gets paid to care about us.”

  “Oh, like he’s getting rich caring about us.”

  “Oh, so now you’re his big friend? What has Adam ever done for you, Zach?”

  “He’s trying to help me.”

  “Oh, so he get’s all this fucking extra credit because he’s doing his job?”

  That really made me mad. Sharkey was in a bad space and he was taking it all out on Adam. And that really made me mad. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What Adam feels for me or for you and whether he likes or doesn’t like us, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, dude.”

  “Yes, I do.” I was thinking of Rafael. I was thinking of Mr. Garcia’s trumpet. “This is my new theory, dude. It’s what I think that matters. It’s what I feel.”

  “Okay, Zachy, what do you think? What do you feel?”

  I wanted to tell him that I loved Adam and that I loved Rafael and that I loved him too. And that was what really mattered. But that’s not what I said. Love was just another secret I was keeping. Another secret I would never tell the group or anybody. But at least I was telling myself. Telling myself mattered. “You know what I feel?” I said. “I feel like having another cigarette.”

  He laughed. We both laughed.

  We smoked another cigarette and stood out in the cold.

  I hated winter.

  Sharkey was thinking his own thoughts and I was thinking mine. I was thinking I was too much in love with the night. It was no good to be in love with the night.

  -5-

  Sharkey and I walked back to Cabin 9 in the snow. When we entered the cabin, Rafael was awake, writing in his journal. He looked up at us and waved. He looked small and I couldn’t decide if he looked like a little old man or a boy. That was a really strange thing to think but that’s what entered into my head. I wondered what he was writing. I bet it was something really beautiful. And the thought entered into my head that I would like to be the words on the page that Rafael was writing. I was back to that pieces-of-paper thing and I wondered about my own strange thoughts.