Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  As I lay in bed, I waited for Rafael to stop writing and turn off the light. Sharkey was already asleep and he was tossing and turning and mumbling things. Sharkey never got any rest. Maybe God didn’t write rest on his heart. I got to thinking about stuff. I was supposed to be asleep. But I wasn’t. I was either dreaming something or I was wide awake. Either way, there was a lot of action going on in my head.

  This is what I was writing on the chalkboard in my brain:

  I don’t want to dream blood anymore.

  I don’t want to live in the night.

  I don’t want it to be winter anymore.

  I want to be the brown in Rafael’s eyes.

  I want to be the blue in Adam’s eyes.

  I want to be Sharkey’s laugh.

  I want Rafael to live.

  I want Sharkey to live.

  I want me to live. Me.

  I want to be Mr. Garcia’s music. Alive. Me.

  -6-

  I wake up from my dream.

  In the dream, I am lying on the side of a road.

  I am lying there like a dog who has been hit by a car.

  I can see myself lying there.

  I keep wanting to wake me up, the me that is lying on the side of the road. I keep thinking that the me on the side of the road is lying there dead.

  I keep telling him to get up, get up. And then I hear Rafael’s voice.

  “Are you okay, Zach?”

  I am not okay.

  I do not know what it means to be okay. I have never known and maybe I will never know.

  Okay is just a word I use so I won’t have to talk about what’s inside.

  Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.

  There is something inside me that is killing me.

  There is something inside me that wants to let whatever is killing me do its job. I think I could walk into the night and howl like a coyote, howl so the monster could find me and do to me whatever it wanted to do to me. I think I could let the storm swallow me up.

  The monster and the night and the storm—they are the same. They want me dead.

  “Are you okay, Zach?”

  The monster. The night. The winter.

  The monster, the night, the winter—they want me dead.

  “Zach?”

  “It was just another dream.” That is what I hear myself whisper.

  I wish I was a boy. I wish Rafael really was my father and he could hold me in his arms and sing to me and chase the monster away.

  REMEMBERING

  Adam looks at me with his blue eyes that see me but don’t see me.

  Today his eyes look like they have pieces of green in them. Like the leaves of summer. I think this is a strange thing to think because it’s so cold outside and the skies are dark. I think of Mr. Garcia’s black eyes that were darker than any night but somehow I could see the sky there, in his black eyes and I think that if only the night looked like Mr. Garcia’s eyes then I would never be afraid of the night ever again. And I think of Rafael’s eyes that are brown and always seem to smile when he looks at me and his soft voice. I am trying to think what color my eyes are and I don’t remember. I know the color of Adam’s eyes. I know the color of Rafael’s eyes. I know the color of Mr. Garcia’s eyes. I don’t know the color of mine. I wonder what it would be like to be Adam or Mr. Garcia and or Rafael. But I’m me. And even when I grow older I’ll still be me. I think of what Sharkey said, that he would never live to be as old as Rafael and I wonder if I will live. Will I live? Will I live? Will I live?

  Adam keeps looking at me. “Zach, are you okay?”

  Finally I make myself talk. “Yes.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I was in my head.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  I don’t want to tell him but I promised him that I wouldn’t keep any secrets even though I haven’t told him about reading Rafael’s journal. “I was thinking about the color of eyes,” I say.

  “What about them?”

  I shrug.

  “Anybody’s eyes in particular?”

  “Yours and Mr. Garcia’s and Rafael’s.”

  Adam looks at me with a question on his face. “And what about our eyes?” he asks. “Mine and Mr. Garcia’s and Rafael’s?”

  I shrug. “I like them,” I say.

  Adam smiles. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just like them.”

  “Is it because we all see you?”

  I don’t want to cry so I don’t. “I guess so,” I say.

  “Do you love us, Zach?”

  I don’t know why he asked that question. I am not going to answer it. I am not. So I ask him a question of my own. “What color are my eyes?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t remember what color they are.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t like looking at myself.”

  “Why not?”

  I think he already has made up an answer.

  “I guess I just don’t like what I see.”

  He has a strange look on his face and then he’s thinking. He gets up from his chair. “Follow me,” he says. I follow him and we walk into the bathroom. There’s a mirror there. He stands behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders and points me toward the mirror. “What color are your eyes, Zach?”

  “They’re a strange color,” I say.

  “They’re hazel,” he says. “Sometimes they look dark and brown and sometimes they look green and very bright.” He smiles. “Today they look green.”

  I look at myself. “Green,” I say. I think of the leaves of summer. But I know it’s winter.

  “What do you see?” Adam asks.

  I turn my head away. “I don’t want to see me,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says. “But can you tell me why?”

  “It hurts,” I say.

  Adam looks sad—like maybe he wants to cry. “It hurts to look at yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  We walk back to his office. I’m glad there aren’t any mirrors there.

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

  “Yes,” I say. But I am afraid of his answer.

  “I see a young man who is trying to remember who he is. I see a young man who is in a great deal of pain.” He is wearing a very kind look on his face. “Has anybody ever told you that you’re a beautiful young man?”

  I shake my head. “Why would anybody want to tell me that?”

  “That’s not what I asked, Zach.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I don’t remember.”

  “I’m making something up in my head right now, Zach. Do you want to know what I’m making up?”

  I shake my head yes.

  “I’m making up that the reason you were thinking of my eyes and Mr. Garcia’s eyes and Rafael’s eyes is that you understand what our eyes are telling you.”

  “What are your eyes telling me?”

  “Our eyes are telling you that you’re a beautiful young man.”

  “Don’t say that,” I say. “Don’t ever say that.” And then I’m crying. I’m crying and I’m crying and I can’t stop crying. And finally I make myself stop and I sit there with my head down.

  And then I hear Adam saying, “Zach, look at me.”

  And I do. I look at him.

  “I see you, Zach. Do you understand that? I see you.”

  I nod. But I’m not sure.

  And then I hear Adam ask me, “When was the last time someone told you that they loved you?”

  “I don’t remember,” I say. “I just don’t remember.”

  THE REASON I HATE WINTER

  -1-

  Sharkey told his story this morning.

  I’ve been thinking about everything that happened in group all day. It was really something wild. I mean wild is the only word that’s visiting my head right now. It feels like I’m a passenger in a car and it’s going faster and faster and then I look o
ver and there’s no one in the driver’s seat. And I know I’m going to crash.

  And here it is, the middle of the night, and I can’t sleep and it’s so cold outside that I can’t stand the thought of walking straight into the frozen air and making my way to the smoking pit to have a cigarette. So I’m lying here with Sharkey’s voice inside me. Sometimes having someone’s voice inside you is like having a bullet lodged in your brain or in your heart. Take your pick. Either way, it feels like you just might bleed to death.

  Sharkey, he was having some attitude. But I think I’m beginning to understand that attitude comes from someplace. I mean, it doesn’t just appear. And if I were Sharkey, I’d have his attitude too.

  But this is the thing—I’m really confused and I don’t know what’s going to happen.

  When Adam said with that sort of sweet smile of his, “Storytime,” he winked at me, letting me know that he was giving me a pass. He turned his look away from me and then directly into Sharkey’s eyes. I could see their eyes meeting for a second. Sharkey was sitting there like he was ready to spit it all out. “I was born…” Adam said.

  Sharkey took the ball and ran with it. “I was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a set of parents who would have scared the hell out of fucking Dracula.” That Sharkey, he let her rip. He hates his parents. He hates his brother and he hates his sister. If there were more people in his family, he’d hate them too. See, he wanted to play baseball but his mom and dad had other plans. He got piano lessons instead. He also got violin lessons. “Yeah,” he said, “see, I didn’t get a family. What I got was a father who was a failed musician and drowned his sorrows by getting involved in British banking and spent half his time in London, attending concerts. What I got was a mother who spent half her life drinking very dry martinis at very expensive restaurants with all her friends and part-time lovers—some of whom were not much older than me and most of whom were not musicians. What I got was a brother and sister who were more in love with money than my parents. What I got was a babysitter everyone called an au pair. I take it she was supposed to love me and teach me Italian. I mean, my parents shipped someone in from Italy to care for me. And when I asked for a dog, my mom said, absolutely not. My mom’s two favorite words were absolutely not. What I didn’t get was what most kids have—parents who fucking cared. When I was eight, I got sent to boarding school because I broke my very exquisitely made German violin on my father’s equally exquisitely made grand piano.” I get this picture in my head, Sharkey as an eight-year-old taking a violin and beating the hell out of the piano with it. I get the feeling that his piano cost more than the house I lived in. I mean, the only thing I ever got to beat the hell out of when I was eight years old was a piñata. Of course, I graduated to windshields. Sharkey and I, we could have hit people but we didn’t, so maybe we weren’t all bad.

  Sharkey’s whole life became this series of running away from, well, from his name. I mean the guy was born Matthew Tobias Vandersen IV. I mean, you couldn’t make that shit up. I bet it really pissed his parents off when he decided to go by Sharkey. I don’t blame the guy. He was way into drugs by the time he was fourteen, and spent all kinds of time on the streets. So one day he decides to turn himself into a pool shark. I mean, this fourteen-year-old kid turns himself into whatever the hell is the opposite of his family. Myself, I think that’s very cool. And so that’s the way he earned his money. I got to hand it to that dude, he decided to make a life for himself instead of becoming what his parents wanted him to become. That stuns me out in a very cool way.

  “Screw my parents.” That’s what he said. Only when he said that, he fell apart. He cried like a baby. He didn’t say it, but I knew what he was crying about. See, this is my theory: Sharkey was crying about what he didn’t get. And you know, this is the saddest part, I think Sharkey didn’t hate his parents at all. I think he loved them with all his heart. I know. It was the same way with me. I know all about that. That’s why we’re all screwed-up. Maybe we wouldn’t be so screwed-up if we didn’t care. But the thing is this: Why do we care? I mean, that really is all screwed-up. Why should we care when nobody else cares?

  You know, I think a lot of things happened to Sharkey out on the streets. Bad things. You know, sexual things and violent things. He has a scar over his right eye. I think it really screwed him up. And the drugs, shit, I mean that guy has done some heavy-duty drugs. When he rolls up his sleeves, you can see the tracks from where he shot up. It’s really a miracle the guy has lived to be twenty-seven. Sharkey should be dead.

  He told this story about waking up on some street in Amsterdam and how he just didn’t fucking care and how he just wanted to die right then and there. I mean, how did the dude get to Amsterdam? The only reason he didn’t die on the streets is that the authorities picked him up. He lived to take more drugs another day. I think a part of him wishes he’d died that day. I mean the guy is rich and even if he hates his parents—the parents that he really loves—he’s a good-looking man and hell, he could do something with his life—not that I have any suggestions for him.

  Okay, so he wants to be dead. I get that. I can see that his heart is really numb. The heart can get really cold if all you’ve known is winter. That’s how I think about it. It’s funny and ironic and sad as hell that he wound up in a group called Summer. No wonder the guy wants to be dead. Summer. Shit.

  I get this. I really get all this. I mean, it’s the feeling thing, the emotion thing that begins to kill you and when that feeling thing is there in your stomach and in your lungs and in your throat and in your heart, shit, it’s better to be dead. I get Sharkey. It’s like, when Sharkey was telling his story, all I could see on his face was this look of pain. I mean real pain. And I don’t think Sharkey could stand it. Who the hell is strong enough to live in the place of all that pain? Rafael, he can live there—but Rafael, well, he doesn’t count. I mean, I guess when you’re in your fifties, you learn to be tougher or more disciplined. Or something. Maybe if you live with pain long enough, you don’t even notice it’s there. Maybe that’s it. What the hell do I know?

  But see, Sharkey’s a smart guy. He managed to steal a shitload of money from his parents. “The computer is a wonderful thing,” he said. He laughed about that one. “And now, well, my father wants to nail my ass.” Man, listening to Sharkey’s story made me want to cry forever.

  So after Sharkey tells his story, Maggie asks him, “Are you sorry you stole all that money from your dad?”

  “Hell no,” Sharkey said. “It’s not as if I broke the guy.”

  “Maybe that’s not the point.”

  Man, Sharkey really lost it. “I know where you’re going with that, Maggie. I really do. But it’s really pissing me off.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you angry, Sharkey, it’s just that—”

  Sharkey didn’t let her finish. “Yeah, this is what I think you’re saying, Maggie. You’re going to that personal-responsibility-for-all the-crap-we’ve-pulled place—isn’t that where you’re going?”

  “Isn’t that what we’re here for?” Kelley asked.

  Kelley, she was in graduate school and she was always talking about “being responsible for your own discourse.” Discourse? What the hell was that?

  Sharkey was really mad. “I don’t know why the fuck we’re here if you want to know the truth.” He gave the whole group a look.

  “We’re here to be healed.” Sheila, she was all about healing. “And we can’t be healed if we don’t own up to our own stuff.”

  Adam, he was just watching us. He never stepped in unless he felt he had to. You know, it was like he knew when to step in and when to let us be in charge of our own sessions. I was getting that. Yeah, well, I’d been here long enough to get a lot of things.

  Sharkey was sort of quiet for a little while. “Look, I’d rather do a hundred years in jail than to tell my old man I’m sorry. Besides, it’s not true. I’m not sorry. And if we’re here to get honest, well, I’ve fucking arrived. Nobody can make m
e sorry for stealing money from the guy who’s been masquerading as my father for the last twenty-seven years. And that’s just what he wants—he wants me to say, ‘Dad, I’m sorry for being such a screw-up. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for being such a bad son.’ How come I have to be a good son and he gets to stay a bad father?”

  And then Lizzie, who came from roughly the same kind of privileged background as Sharkey, said, “I don’t think you should be sorry, Sharkey.”

  That made Sharkey smile.

  “But the thing is, we hate—”

  Adam stopped her. “I hate.”

  “Yeah, I hated my parents’ world. Hated it. And yet I took advantage of all the things their world could buy me. I don’t know, I think I wanted it both ways.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need my parents’ money. And they can stick their lifestyle.”

  “Then why’d you steal their money?” Adam wasn’t letting go of this.

  “It wasn’t because I needed it.”

  “Why then?” Adam didn’t take his eyes off Sharkey.

  “To stick it to the SOB.”

  Adam had this firm look on his face. “Yeah, well, what if you wind up in prison? Who’d you stick it to, Sharkey?”

  “To be Sharkey is to live in a fucking prison. What the hell difference does it make where I’m living? You think I care if I go to prison? You think I care if I live on the streets? Anywhere is better than living with my father. That’s what he wants. He wants me to live in his house, play by his rules, dress like him, talk like him, yeah, yeah, he wants me to be Matthew Tobias Vandersen IV. I say fuck no. But if I say, yes, yes, yes, then I get to have his money. There’s nothing like turning your sons into mercenaries. You think I need his money?”

  “So why take something if you don’t need it or want it?”

  “I took something from him that he loved. And what does he love most? The green stuff.” Sharkey laughed—but it looked like he was going to cry.

  Rafael kept looking at him. “Sharkey?” His eyes and voice were soft.