My body is paper, p.2
My Body is Paper, page 2
I started to notice the meditative quality of working this soil, how there was something like a warm charge I received from the earth, that I became more spirit than being. And like the wind flittering through the eucalyptus tree, it felt like she was speaking to me telepathically.
“My son used to do this every Thursday, before I took over.” I stopped what I was doing. “He loved real plants, fussed over this small garden. The Father mentioned often how devoted Tulio was, how his love was an example to all of us. I was so proud of him.” On Yoli’s face, I saw a pride I wished my own parents could give me. “The women of the church would surround me and praise me for raising such a fine young man. But nobody saw how lonely he was. How he would drink in my kitchen till he passed out crying, ‘Mama, Mama.’”
I turned back to my work, flustered because I knew how he needed to create beauty in his life. “When the earthquake came,” she said, “and the hands of Mary broke, he wanted the church to have it fixed, but Father said, ‘No, it is more symbolic this way.’ Tulio could not understand; it was like the Mother of God was a real person to him and needed to be healed.”
I huffed, thinking of my own life. She turned her face away from me. “Everyone was surprised that day. I wasn’t. They came to my house, the Father, women of the church. I could tell they had been crying. They said, ‘Yoli, don’t cry but you have to see your son, you have to come with us.’ Tulio had said he was going to trim down the tree over Mary, that the boughs were too low, so off he went with the ladder and some rope.”
The shade of the tree covered us both as she spoke. “Mary stands so far away from the street no one noticed Tulio stringing up the rope, pushing himself off the ladder. When I saw him, it seemed the air gently rocked him back and forth, his feet nearly touched the head of Mary. It was many days before I cried; somehow, I knew it was all my fault.”
I wanted to ask her why, but I knew. Tulio saw no life ahead, and simply creating these altars was not enough. He was a man who wanted to heal and to be healed.
Marcus came at that moment, asked me to see a ficus tree he wanted to bring home. All I could say to Yoli was, “I’m sorry, so sorry.” Marcus was proud of the ficus he had picked for me; it looked sturdy, the roots unbound. Near the trees were shelves with pots and ceramic figures of cherubs and gargoyles. I noticed that a few of the cherubs’ arms were broken, parts of the wings missing. I could see myself grinding the arms down just to the hands and I started contemplating whether I should use glue or plaster, maybe cement.
I couldn’t tell if it was an act of creation or violence against the church. Maybe both. In my mind I saw what Tulio must have looked like. His smile must have been dazzling.
I picked up the broken arm and asked Marcus if I could possibly have this and another hand. Marcus shrugged his shoulders, questioned me, Do I want the tree or what? I kissed him lightly on the mouth, surrounded by the lushness of the nursery. He looked embarrassed in his paradise.
FATHER FIGURE
I’d always been attracted to the type of men
my mother loathed,
the hairy back,
thick-chested,
foul-mouthed bastards
whose cocks endlessly protruded
from the hole in their cotton briefs.
They would poke it between her legs
while she slept against them like a spoon.
I was a light sleeper
and would wake at any bump
or dream.
Once there was a man
standing at my bedroom door.
He was dark next to my chalkboard
with the alphabet trim.
I thought he was my dad
and asked him what he wanted.
He stood like a silhouette
slightly thinner than my father,
a bit taller than five-four.
I brought the blanket closer to my chin,
whispered, “Dad?”
My parents thought it was a nightmare
but they checked the doors and windows
and only the side gate was closed.
My father walked around in his yellowed jockeys
hanging loose at the crotch and ass.
My mother kept yelling at him,
“Put some pants on!”
She clutched tightly to the open lace
at her throat.
Her arms were crossed to protect her breast.
I told her, “I could have touched him.”
My father had dreams
of opening his own construction company.
At the age of twelve,
I knew plumbing, carpentry, electrical wiring,
and landscaping. I could add cabinets,
take out walls, mix paint, drop ceilings,
insulate, fit pipe, and lay tile.
I was his first boy.
My father would turn my hands
palms to the sky
checking for calluses.
He’d show me his
and say, “These are the hands of a man.”
ARDENT LETTERS
1.
We make fires in the hills circled in stones
aluminum cans, carry matches in our backpacks,
hidden between schoolbooks and sheaves of paper,
our bags slung low down our spines.
Joel is growing silent as I always have been,
broods in the last row in class, stays to himself.
He’s written letters about how he’ll miss me,
two grades his senior and I entering high school.
Joel scrambles over the fence in the road,
where broken asphalt crumbles into wash.
We pass the remains of other sacrifices,
blackened earth, marks against the land.
A sign states: Keep out, unsafe.
Past the gated boundary, wind steers
through branches, whittles the underbrush.
His red-banded socks attract the tiny barbs
of dry weeds that prick ankles.
My palms become stained with tree sap,
the limbs we use as ropes to ascend the hill.
Joel applies his spit to rub my hands clean.
Into the fires we throw the poems
written to each other, couplets that rhyme.
Lines then words curl into ash;
and we say always this will be the last.
We sit where we can see the whole city,
doleful skyscrapers thrust above smog.
Joel stokes the blaze with a twisted branch,
lays his head on my shoulder, hair falls in a sweep
to cover his mouth. I turn my attention
along the horizon, can see several crosses
jutting off spires, steeples in gold.
I feel Joel’s breath swirl down my shirt,
smell the eucalyptus leaves nesting in the fire.
The scent is that of a church, a sermon that burns
the pulpit, tightens my lungs. Our hand-written letters
transmute into smoke, linger in the clothes we’ve worn all day.
2.
My father is a monster
in the darkness of my bedroom.
The stretch of his white T-shirt, chest heaving,
looks as if something is about to tear.
He holds a sheet of paper, shakes it like a rattle,
a voodoo doctor, expelling demons from his son.
I recognize the letter, had found it hidden between books
left on my desk, the whole class in conspiracy.
I had folded it several times, trying to make it disappear
till it was nothing but a mark inside my palm.
My father’s machinist hand shoves it open in my face,
all I see are diamond creases, words that make me flush and burn.
Pete sat in the last row in 9th grade, typing
near me and the other bad typist,
all in order, the best to worst, fastest to slowest.
He continually pressed his knee into my leg,
tried to get my attention while
Coach Melvin lectured on the J and F keys.
I pushed his thigh aside with my hand,
his face always with a sly smile.
During practice, he typed out letters to me
addressed from Hadagee, the Armenian student,
fat and hairy who wore sweaters too small,
high-water pants, smelled of cabbage, couldn’t speak English.
Pete wrote how Hadagee wanted to see me sprawled
on his bed, how good it would feel
to have me suck his dick, lick his balls.
Once, he wrote how I’ll feel like a real woman,
humped by him on all fours, moaning for
what makes him a real man. He signed with his own name,
a mistake, he claimed, when I shoved it back in his face.
My father wants Pete taken out of school,
transferred to a program for troubled students.
Pete sits across from me in the principal’s office, red-faced,
a wooden paddle above his head, whispers he’s gonna get me.
Inside myself, something burns down my thigh, warm as piss.
3.
I see Joel in the halls, he returns my stares with hate,
the kind of disgust my father holds in his eyes. In the garage
I write on the back pages of an astronomy book, cryptic
letters and plans, how to make my father’s car explode.
When I was seven, I wrote with his cologne,
spilled Roman Brio on the oil-stained garage floor,
letters, patterns, symbols taken from the zodiac.
With a match stolen off the stove, I’d light the tail end,
watch the shimmer of blue flames race through its design
only to perish meekly, a tongue lapping at the final bit of air,
as if tasting the hand of its maker. What remained—
my father’s scent enclosed in his pitch-black workspace.
Here’s the only letter I’m not afraid he’ll find and read:
Dear Dad,
I know you don’t love me.
The time I drowned in that cold algae lake you made me swim,
my feet bound in fishing line, and you wouldn’t get your clothes wet,
wouldn’t jump in like a cannonball to save me, or touch
your mouth against mine. Some other man breathed into me.
I remember how I always kissed you goodnight, forehead and chin,
the sides of your cheeks, in the sign of the cross, as if this son’s
devotion was holy as church. I used to think love was baseball bats,
pieces of sawed-off wood, belts, and fists in the warm gaseous
toolshed where you struck the back of my legs like flint.
When I come to the letter’s end,
I don’t know how to finish, so I pile
newspapers into a corner, make a small closet
I can sit comfortably inside, knees to chest.
It reminds me of confession, purgatory
moments before Father would slide open the window,
his mouth obscured, describing the penance
I must perform. I spray the newspaper
with lighter fluid, the sheets becoming dark
as if pissed on, the odor shrouds, incense
or cologne. It takes less than a second,
flames shoot up the walls, around my feet, calves singed.
I bite my lips not to cry,
hear my father’s taunts to keep
my eyes on his pitched baseball.
I step out of the inferno,
fight fire with splashes of water,
the walls blackened to the ceiling.
Dad, I am the sissy-boy
you never wanted, afraid you’ll find
what wasn’t burnt, the blisters
along my legs, smell the ignited fuel.
Pieces of ash flit in the air, land
in my hair, mark me gray and pungent.
ERIC
I’VE KNOWN ERIC for some time now; we really grew up together, ran the streets, did school, smoked dope behind his fat-assed mother’s house. Eric didn’t even live with his mother; he stayed over at his sister’s because he couldn’t handle the way his mother hounded him, always sticking her nose in his business.
I had been over the one time that Eric lashed back at her because she’d been checking his sheets, seeing if they’d been tucked in right or if he was hiding something. It’d been building up for some time; I could tell by the way she said hello to me when I came to walk with Eric to school. If it was a good morning, she’d be drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette in front of Good Morning America. If it was a bad morning, she’d be dusting, complaining no one ever helped her out and stuff.
This morning when Eric let me in the door, the living room was filled with piles of clothes, freshly washed; even Eric smelled of detergent. When we were about to leave, his mother started yelling to get back here; she’d been in his room, had ripped the covers off the bed and wanted him to do his bed all over again. She kept on yelling, “Why can’t you do this right, you’re just in my way, can’t wait till I can kick you out of my house.”
Eric had been saying what a wack his mom was being, tearing the place apart. The day before, she’d grabbed him by the collar and pushed him out of the house because he’d left a towel on the bathroom floor. His mother was hard-faced, right up next to Eric’s, nearly spitting words at him. I guess Eric snapped because he just shoved her hard against the wall. She wanted to strike him, but he held her fist in his hand and then tossed it back to her. She started screaming some more, “I’m going to kill you, god dammit!” I grabbed Eric by the arm, his white T-shirt twisted in my fingers as I tore him out of the house, nearly ripping the screen door off its hinges.
Eric hid in my garage while his mother’s boyfriend went looking for him. My parents didn’t give a shit. “No motherfucker is going to be messing in our backyard!” My father’s voice shook as he asked, “Do you want me to get my gun, or would you like to get your ugly face away from my garage?” What a joke, but you got to love my dad; he didn’t own a gun because my mother would have harped on him forever.
They had always left me alone with Eric. Actually, my parents liked him. Eric did have a cleanliness about him, hair cropped short, a twenty on him at all times, in his wallet’s secret slot, folded, moist and accordioned.
We hung behind the steam plant, next to the hill and his apartment. He waited for me to come by, squatting on the brick wall that held the ivy lawn back, next to the pay phone where he had called me over. As a greeting I brushed my hand discreetly along his inner thigh, disturbing the perfect curls of hair on his body, fed my fingers down, inside the crotch of his loose cotton shorts, till they swam in his humidity. For the rest of the day, I’d be conscious of him, his odor distinct and comforting under my nails.
Eric and I would watch the columns of steam being pumped out of the electrical plant. There was a mattress flung out in the nearby dried grass. We would rest on it, the material warm from the sun, and listen to the water rushing down slatted wood, a part of the process to give the city energy. We’d talk long stuff, like did we believe in God or whatever. I told him I couldn’t; it was kind of pointless. I couldn’t possibly know any of his intentions, so why worry if he knows you believe in him or not. Eric sort of hated these discussions I’d bring up; he was more interested in getting out of this hellhole he was living in, and if I would go away with him. We’d finish a lunch, large bottles of Cokes. Sometimes Eric would pull out his dick and take a piss on an old, withered oak. Sometimes I could see it splash till the last few drops fell. He’d turn to me and stuff it back in.
The street over, I had a job at Bobby’s Liquor on Fair Oaks. I lied about my age; they never checked. I took the late shift, worked minimum; it paid minimum. Eric and I spent the money going to clubs and shit. I swept floors, pinned up posters of Dos Equis women, a beer bottle in one hand, a two-fingered tequila in the other.
I’m half Mexican. My mother grew up here; she looked pretty. Her sisters would call her güera, making sure she never felt good about being so pale. They made jokes about me before I was born, wondering what I’d look like because my mother’s boyfriend was white. When my mother turned thirty, I was already fourteen. I was watching a video while she argued on the phone with her older sister, saying, “You’ve got to respect me, you can’t treat me like a dog. I don’t want to hear from you again.”
I never got on my mother’s bad side either because she could drop you like that. She always acted like I was delivering bad news to her if I mentioned anything, would grab her lungs, relieved that the problem was minuscule, unimportant. She was a good lady, though, died of cancer a few years back.
My father got into AA, best thing for him. He doesn’t like me working at Bobby’s, but fuck it, I’m not, as he says, codependent. Sometimes he waits for me parked in front of the store so I don’t have to take the bus at night. When I open the passenger door, he says, “Hi.” His breath smells of coffee; I know he’s wired.
I tell him, “Let’s go out for dinner.” We drive up the street to the Salt Shaker, let the little old ladies serve us. He orders his steak and eggs. I don’t really want to eat, but he gets lonely after his meetings, tells me I really should go with him.
The year my mother died, Eric hung out at our place. His sister didn’t want him much either; he was seventeen, could join the army or get a good job. One time, my father wanted to go after Eric’s throat. Dad worked nights, molded plastics. One morning, Eric and I were at the kitchen table, breakfast almost finished; we were half-dressed for school. Eric sat there on the dinette chair, turned away from the table, shirtless, jeans on, the fly still unbuttoned. He slipped on one white cotton sock, then the other. I sat watching him, his legs opening then closing, slowly eating my maple syrup pancakes, my eyes focused on his every move, sinews twisted, then the sudden glint of his smile my way. I was near naked, just my white jockeys when my dad stepped in. He took one look at me, one at Eric. I could feel his thoughts right where they say the soul is, a feeling that yelled, ‘Why are you taking the one thing I have left in my life?’
