A Love Like Blood Page 5

  Tonight, Father ate himself to sleep on the couch, devouring a feast of meat, biscuits, cake and pop, allowing me to sneak out the front door. Before I left, I tossed his bloody facial tissues in the kitchen trashcan.

  Suddenly, Brett and I are silent and listening. Sounds I could not hear are now blaring: the mechanical rattling of dragonflies, the rapid whistle bursts of crickets, the piercing dziting of katydids, and a two-beat tapping I cannot identify. A shadow passes over my eyes. Maybe a leaf fell or a bird flew over the roof. The night air smells musty; however, the smell might be Brett’s underarms. Mustiness is his kiwi and melon. I have the desire to stick my nose in his armpits. My flashlight illuminates his nipples, forearms, and hands. His hands look cut up the way the hands of a man who could kill another man would be. Two long veins run from his right wrist to his forearm and disappear. I hear a faint snorting sound from an animal outside and shine my light in the direction of the noise.

  Brett squeezes my free hand, an unfeigned tenderness, superb in its generosity. He slides something small in my hand. The flashlight reveals it is a pocket knife that looks familiar.

  “You need to learn how to use this,” he says.

  Chapter 12

  Grunts and quick swipes on wood were constant at Grandfather’s house. The basin and crucifix in his front room would vanish throughout the day; however not at the same time. At nine at night, they were returned after guests had left. He bowed to Allah five times a day before coming to America and then identified as Muslim and Catholic. Guest conversations reflected both faiths. Almsgiving and as Allah has willed were heard after or before Glory Be, The Rosary, and Our Father. Father learned the Quran and the Bible in Somali, English, and Spanish. As an adult, he buried certain Islamic beliefs he believed interfered with being a photographer. Disgust for dogs was not one of them. Being that dogs leave impurities behind like little treats: urine, fecal matter, sweaty hair, dander, milk, or even worse, saliva. In order to hear God’s word, prayer space needs to be pure as a gold banner made of silk. The body needs to be pure as well. He would say, do not let a mutt come near you. If it touches you, you have to wash that part of the body seven times with river water.

  On the morning that I turned eleven, hearing a knock on our door lit up my face. Father would shake me violently for answering the door. However, I thought it was Grandfather with the camera I wanted. A beer-bellied man was beating on our neighbor’s door. An explosive cry from the other side of him jolted me. His Saint Bernard galloped toward us with globs of drool dripping down his mouth. Father screamed. Heavy footsteps hurried toward us, but it was too late. The demon dog leaped up, stood on his hind legs, and licked Father’s face. Stinging beads formed under my skin and burst through the skin at my elbows down to my wrists. I saw the globs and itched. The dog stepped with my father, compensating for his unexpected movements, and licked his face clean. Licking his face, he seemed happier than any other dog I had ever seen. The curse words from Father’s lips scared me more than the amount of thick drool. When I heard the words, kill, you, and Carsten, I bolted to my bedroom. The first lick of his belt’s tongue hit my neck. Gashes and welts covered my chest, legs, back, and arms. A permanent V mark is on my arm from the metal tip.

  The next day, a box wrapped in red foil was at the foot of my bed. An oversize card, with I’m sorry written inside, was taped to it. Tissue paper revealed a gorgeous Canon camera with a price tag. Numbers and plus signs whirled in my head, spinning away from me. I knew how much money Father made, our rent, and the amount he gave Grandfather every month. The math did not add up, but we stayed in our place. Now, I own twenty-nine cameras, and five of them are not I’m-sorry-gifts. But who would I be without these cameras?

  Still in pain a week later, I quit working with Father. Junior also refused to assist him. He beat us every day until Grandfather called and said the police arrested a friend of Father’s. He cleared his calendar. Before the drive, he yelled to dump out our garbage. I found a makeup case in the trash chute room. Black, rectangular, and shiny, it looked and smelled brand new. The light brown face powder glowed inside. Sneaking back inside the apartment, I locked myself in the bathroom and dabbed the puffy sponge on four whiteheads. The hard masses softened, becoming newborn skin. Excited, I dabbed the sponge on the scar on my forehead. My face looked even and smooth.

  At the jail, we moved with nervous caution through the series of lonely hallways. The clanks of locking gates did not alarm me. The security check sign leading to a closed room did. A female guard waved us inside with a gloved hand, then searched Junior and Father’s front and back pockets.

  “Pockets,” she said to me three times.

  I stared at her stone-faced unable to move or speak.

  Father patted my shoulder, whispering, “It’s okay.”

  She smiled pointing to my front pockets and twirled her fingers around for my back pockets. I dropped carrot oatmeal cookies, Russian chocolate, peppermints, my wallet, and change, into the clear bin. After she said thank you and pointed to the door, I heard a camera click outside. The sound confirmed I should be more concerned with being behind a camera than being a beautiful boy. She would have found the case in my back pocket, had she patted me down.

  Once inside the visiting room, I ran to the restroom and traced the sign of the cross across my chest. Grunts and moans stopped me at nineteen. On the reflective tile, I made out a man with his face pressed against the wall. I leaned closer, peaked over inside the next stall through the gap at the end of the divider, and saw another man behind him, pumping his body. The man panted. The wall steamed. The man said, kiss me. I squeezed into the corner of the stall, smashing my face against the tile. Some of the bulbs needed replacing, rendering the man into a blur of movement and smudged lips. His skin, even and pale, revealed his young age. He slid his fingers through the opening. The screws that connected the divider to the wall screeched. He pulled it back further. Tattooed on his neck was the word rebel. The men in the stall were both rebels, and I was a co-conspirator. As his breath steamed the tile, I blew on the wall. We shared the same breath until a hand banged on their stall.

  “Let us finish,” he yelled and they continued.

  Feeling dizzy, I rolled my head away from him and covered my mouth to smother the laughter. The sound that came through was like stone being dragged across wood.

  Chapter 13

  Slipping my finger behind the paper, the book in my lap opens to my babysitter. She has cared for me since I was two. Fifteen years later she is still shield-like, quiet as a snake, and droopy-eyed. The bags under her eyes hang to her teeth. Maybe she is fifty or sixty-five, I do not know. Her mouth has never opened in front of me, but the way she says her name, Dorothy Parker, is as fixed in my head as a tree full of cicadas in the summertime. Her voice is as tattered as her grandmother’s wedding dress. Countless nights, I imagined it and made it as sharp as the knife in my hand. I replace the wrinkled newspaper with Brett’s pocket knife. The noticeable bulge in between the pages might catch my Father’s eye. The last time he found a weapon in his house he broke the person’s jaw that hid it. That hammer, hidden among beads, bras, hosiery, and silk scarves serves as a reminder what could happen – a separation.

  In spite of that, I am broken with happiness. The knife is a connection; a shape to tessellate Brett and me together, like triangles, so our heads touch. I tilt the book, and the pocket knife slides out, dropping beside my thigh to the bed. When extended, the blade is seven inches in length and three inches in width. The contoured handle, with wood accent, has his initials, B.F., carved into the clear pine. A bar on the knife moves backward and forward into a slot. The motion locks the blade into place. I push the bar gently toward the handle to close the knife and open it again.

  The tip halfway covers the word blood on the paper. I stare at the word, in black on newsprint, and an image of meat sellers develops in the darkroom tray of my memory. The print, prodded
with tongs, slowly reveals itself. They are sleepy-eyed cutting up lamb and goat and throw the guts on the ground for crying kittens. The street is unpaved and covered with wind-scattered trash. This sandy world is as familiar to me as hearing names like Mohammed, Aasha, Hassan, and Leyla screamed under low sale prices.

  I swipe my thumb across the Somali newspaper. The letters E, F, and I become uncovered. I move my thumb more, and the letters N and K appear. Stabbed, robbed, and left bleeding, a woman told the reporter. Her statement and others like hers shocked people we know. The knife in my hand will never cut another person – a mango maybe and in secret. I rub my finger over the thin groove of Brett’s initials. The etching is perfect, about the same size as my thumbnail. BF sounds like the word boyfriend, but it could also mean best friend.

  A glare from the television set reflects on page fifty-two in Avedon’s Portraits, where Dorothy lives. A men’s swimming competition is on; however, I have the volume muted. The cameraman pans to a Somali swimmer stepping onto a slanted starting block. I know his parents are from my grandfather’s country by his nose, classic Somali, long and narrow. I have the same nose, inherited from Father. Both my brothers are the same shade of brown as him and have his gaunt face, sharp cheekbones, high forehead, dark brown eyes, and kinky-curly hair. Father calls it the growling stomach look. The swimmer could be someone that we know. Close to Marian on the wall, I hung up a photo-collage of my father and brothers. Looking at my brothers is like looking through family photo albums. I see Father as a boy and a young adult, which is why it is difficult for me to separate him from them. His nose is the only family feature that I inherited. I take after Mother, who is Cuban. I have her tan skin, hazel eyes, and coarse hair. My cheekbones are not as prominent as hers. However, when I smile, close-lipped, my cheeks dimple like Mother.

  In the book, the page opposite to Dorothy is stark white and contains a quote by Avedon: “to get a satisfactory print is often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself.” A child’s finger smeared fruit jam under the lustrous words. I retrace my fingers over the red mark. Four of Avedon’s later books, my photography guides, are where they usually are, on my bed. Avedon’s latest book is on my dresser underneath a Polaroid. A few cameras that Father has given me over the years line the top. They include a Polaroid Land Camera, Graflex Crown Graphic, Pentax K1000, Brownie Bull’s-Eye, Leica M6, Ricoh Super Ricohflex, Agfa PD16 Clipper, Nikon F3, and Canon Canonet 28. As well as accessories: Canon battery grip, Nikon flash, manual focus lens, Argus C3 camera, Argus LC-3 meter, Honeywell Tilt-A-Mite flash, and a handle bracket. He gave me Portraits after the coldest day of winter in February. I was ten years old, and like a magic trick, the book opened up to Dorothy’s face. And, I remembered the first time that I saw her. Her basset-hound eyes reminded me of a comedic cartoon character. A noise between a dog’s bark and the whoo of an owl came out of my mouth. As I look out of my window at everything green, it is impossible to believe that Chicago and Beverly Hills are freezing in February up until May.

  The doorbell chimes twice downstairs. At the front door, the face staring at me scares me because Father will pull up at any minute.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you. Without your face behind your chuh chuh,” Brett says. He transforms his hands into a rectangle and presses down on an imaginary shutter button.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Your dad mentioned to my dad. There’s a leak in your basement. I came to check it out.”

  “Did my father tell you to stop by?”

  “No, he didn’t ask me to.”

  Before I can think of a lie for him to leave, Brett drags his work boots on the knobby doormat. The leather tool belt around his sinewy waist has an attachment with multiple pockets. A messenger bag, covered in light-colored nicks, hangs over his shoulder. He swings the bag back behind him. His work uniform, a dingy white t-shirt, and paint-stained jeans, fit tight against his body. I stare at fresh, fingernail-size cuts on his forehead. On his neck and the top of his shirt, there are dried dots of what looks like cement. His mustache is thicker than it was yesterday, and his beard has grown in light but covers his lower jaw area and neck. His face looks tanned, slender, and slightly more masculine. The heaviest door closes me in and my body tenses, listening out for Father.

  As he scratches his back, walking into the kitchen, Brett asks, “Where is everyone?”

  “I’m the only one here.”

  His blue jeans sag revealing the top of his fleshy bottom. His skin down there is smooth and buttery. I could slip my hand in his pocket and yank his jeans to his knees, but I can’t; Father could be outside. My hands sweat. His skin color lightens under the harsh kitchen lights.

  Brett steps one foot at a time down the concrete stairs into the dank smelling basement. Our basement resembles a bomb shelter from the slabs of concrete. No signs of life exist here, except spider webs. I find myself fixated, staring at the curve of his backside. Then, I notice his work boots. The boots are the same color as two rampant leopards with hungry tongues on the Somali coat of arms. The spotted animals support the light blue shield that has a white star in the center. The shield is the same color as the Somali flag. Below the shield, a golden ribbon drapes itself around two crossed spears and two crossed palm fronds. Everything for me floats back to my grandfather’s country. And, back to practicing formal worship as a child, while wearing a Patron Saint Christopher pendant. Father nearly decapitated me tucking the necklace under my shirt the second he saw it. My upbringing has wedged me between rosary beads and Islamic prayer beads; and azuki beans mixed with butter and sugar on Monday and black beans and rice on Friday. And, I am stuck between his expectation of who I should be and my fear of who I am. However, every time I convince myself he is to blame for me feeling stuck, I cannot explain why not telling him I like men is easier than telling him and dealing with whatever happens.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Brett asks, “Besides photography, do you have any other talents I should know about.”

  “None I can share with a neighbor.”

  “Tell me now or I’ll push you to the ground and bounce on you until you do.”

  “Just kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  We laugh at the joke and then, neither of us knows what to do; at least I assume he does not know because I am unsure. I shove my hands in my pocket, and he copies me. After a while, he steps closer, so close that the space between us prepares to collapse. I walk around him to hold onto the moment longer. A change occurs in the room, and we do not acknowledge either’s excitement. But it is there between our legs. Hiding it is unnecessary at this point.

  Yanking my shirt out of my pants, Brett laughs, and says, “please keep it out.”

  Polo shirts, creased khakis, sometimes rolled up at the bottom, and brown loafers, are my everyday uniform, schoolboy realness, real enough to blend in. “You need to loosen up a little. Did I offend you?” He opens his arms out to cling to this moment longer. Both of his arms wrap around me, pressing my chest into his chest. It is an embrace between two men comfortable with their closeness and trying to become even closer. Our lips almost touch as his face slides across mine as we separate.

  “Look up there,” he says, standing under the stairs. “There’s a crack,”

  The crack that he points to is a pencil-thin line, the length of the moving truck Father rented.

  “It’s causing some buildup. I can tell your dad I can start tomorrow.”

  “Don’t. Let me,” I say while constructing a lie to get out of shooting the wedding booked in Detroit tomorrow night.

  Chapter 14

  Daredevil cliff divers lured tourists away from Europe to Acapulco in the 70’s. Young men in Speedos stretched out their arms to swan dive off a dizzying cliff plunging into shallow water. They transformed into acrobatic fish-eating birds. Wide-eyed onlookers held their breaths. A divers’ miscalculati
on meant life or death. For the divers, it was freeing, seeing the world from above; the way seabirds view the world. It was dream-like. They awoke underwater; that is how one local described it.

  Two years ago, in 1996, Father snatched up an assignment shooting a festival in the city of dreams for the Chicago Tribune. He arranged that I would receive one hundred dollars to photograph five up-and-coming singers from Mexico City. On the second day, I asked Father if I could shoot the cliff-side performance while he shot a jazz band from Cape Verde. He told me to wait, without screaming, and after he finished, we could hike to the cliff together. Hours earlier, I met a loudmouthed boy my age with perfect eyebrows at the café next to our hotel. He was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes with a group of young men in Speedos, of all ages and all with white teeth. I sat down at the table beside theirs, and he sat in the chair in front of me. He pronounced my name “Car-Seat.” In English, he asked if I could photograph him diving. Through my limited Spanish, I said of course and asked him to pose standing in front of the coffee shop. I shot a provocative picture of him, from the shoulder up, looking into the camera with a lit cigarette in his mouth. His face was sexual and beyond sexual in front of the red-painted sign. He smoked cigarettes, not like chain smokers on the street do during winter in Chicago. He smoked slow and deliberate like he was savoring a decadent dessert. Or, maybe he was attempting to memorize the taste of the ceremony. Then, I shot him in profile highlighting the trail of peach fuzz leading into his red Speedo.

  For me, it was dream-like watching him fly off the August-colored cliff. The cliff looked sculpted with rust, tangerine, and beige clay. His muscular body turned into a tumbling rock and then turned weightless in the salty air. The seconds after he dissolved in the foaming Pacific and emerged unscratched seemed like hours.

  After he had strutted back up, we carried on a colorful conversation without words. We stood about twenty feet away from each other and used our heads, hands, and lower bodies. I hid behind Father preventing him from seeing us speak. While gesturing I could not leave, I kicked over Father’s drink at my feet. He knocked me across the face. My camera dropped to the ground. The cracking sound ripped up my insides. I stared at the broken telephoto lens and without thinking I punched Father in the face. He fell, and his head crunched on impact. He did not move. Neither did anyone else around us.