by Jandy Nelson
I’m going with the latter.
He’s the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down. Agreed, Mom, which puts me back at square one. How am I going to ask him to mentor me? This him is far more frightening than Igor.
He flicks his cigarette on the floor, takes a long sip of water from a glass on the table, then spits it from his mouth onto the clay—ah, gross!—then he works the moistened section furiously with his fingers, his eyes now glued to what he’s doing. He’s lost in it, drinking and spitting and molding, drinking and spitting and molding, sculpting like he’s trying to pull something he needs out of the clay, needs badly. As time passes and passes, I begin to see a man and a woman take shape—two bodies tangled up like branches.
This is wishing with your hands.
I don’t know how much time goes by as I and a handful of enormous stone couples watch him work, watch him rake his hands, dripping with wet clay, through his hair, over and over again, until it’s not clear if he’s making the sculpture or if the sculpture is making him.
• • •
It’s dawn and I’m sneaking back up Guillermo Garcia’s fire escape.
Once on the landing, I again crawl along under the sill until I’m at the same vantage point as last night, then rise just enough to see into the studio . . . He’s still there. I somehow knew he would be. He’s sitting on the platform, his back to me, head hung down, his whole body limp. He hasn’t changed his clothes. Has he slept at all? The clay sculpture beside him appears to be finished now—he must’ve worked all night—but it’s nothing like it was when I left. No longer are the lovers entwined in each other’s arms. The male figure’s on his back now and it looks like the female figure’s wrenching herself out of him, climbing right out of his chest.
It’s awful.
I notice then that Guillermo Garcia’s shoulders are rising and falling. Because he’s crying? As if by osmosis, a dark swell of emotion rises in me. I swallow hard, accordion my shoulders tight. Not that I ever cry.
Tears of mourning should be collected and then
ingested to heal the soul
(I’ve never cried about Mom. I had to fake it at the funeral. I kept sneaking into the bathroom to pinch my cheeks and rub my eyes so I’d look right. I knew if I cried, even one tear: Judemageddon. Not Noah. For months, it was like living with a monsoon.)
I can hear the sculptor through the window—a deep dark moaning that’s sucking the air out of the air. I have to get out of here. Tucking down to leave, I remember the lucky sand-dollar birds still in my pocket from last night. He needs them. I’m lining them up on the windowsill, when out of the corner of my eye, I catch a quick flash of motion. His arm’s whipped back and is starting to reel forward—
“No!” I shout, not thinking and slamming my own hand into the window to stop his from making contact and sending the anguished lovers tumbling to their death.
Before I fly down the fire escape, I see him staring up at me, the expression on his face turning from shock to rage.
• • •
I’m halfway over the fence when I hear the door horror-movie-squeak open like it did the other day and see in my periphery his immense frame emerge from it. I have two choices. I retreat back into the alley and get ambushed or I jump onto the sidewalk and make a run for it. Not much of a choice really, I think, as I land feet first—whew—but then stumble forward into what would’ve been an extremely unlucky face-flop had a very large hand not reached out and iron-gripped my arm, restoring my balance.
“Thank you,” I hear myself say. Thank you? “That would’ve been a bad fall,” I explain to his feet, quickly adding, “You can’t imagine how many brain injuries happen from falling and if it’s frontal lobe, well, forget it, you can just kiss your personality good-bye, which really makes you wonder what a person is if they can just become someone else if they bonk their heads, you know?” Whew—on a roll, off to the races, put on this earth solely to soliloquize to his ginormous clay-covered shoes. “If it were up to me,” I go on, kicked into some heretofore unknown gear, “which of course nothing is, and if it didn’t present such a total fashion conundrum, I’d have us all in titanium helmets from womb to grave. I mean, anything can fall on your head at any time. Have you ever thought about that? An air conditioner for instance, one could just drop out of a second-story window and crush you while you’re minding your own business shopping for bagels on Main Street.” I take a breath. “Or a brick. Of course there’s the flying brick to worry about.”
“The flying brick?” The timbre of his voice has a lot in common with thunder.
“Yes, the flying brick.”
“A flying brick?”
What, is he dense? “Sure. Or a coconut, I suppose, if you live in the tropics.”
“You are off the rocker.”
“Your rocker,” I say quietly. I still haven’t raised my head, think that’s best.
A lot of Spanish is coming out of his mouth now. I recognize the word loca quite a few times. On the exasperation scale, I’d say he’s at a ten. His smell’s very strong, no offense, but we’re talking total sweaty ape. Not a whiff of alcohol on him, though. Igor’s not here, this maniac’s all Rock Star.
I remain committed to my eyes-on-the-shoes strategy, so I’m not sure but believe he’s released his grip on my arm so he can accompany the ranting in Spanish with flailing hand gestures. That or birds are swooping around above my head. When the movement stills and the irate Spanish peters out, I gather my nerve and raise my head to take a gander at what I’m up against here. Not good. He’s a skyscraper, impossibly imposing with his arms crossed now against his chest in a battle stance, studying me like I’m a new life form. Which really is pot meet kettle, because, wow, up close he looks like he just emerged from a pit of quicksand—a total swamp thing. He’s completely covered in clay except for the streaks on his cheeks from crying and the hellfire green eyes that are drilling into me.
“Well?” he says with impatience, like he’s already asked me a question I didn’t answer.
I swallow. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to . . .” Um, what comes next? I didn’t mean to jump a fence, climb a fire escape, and watch you have a nervous breakdown.
I try again. “I came last night—”
“You’ve been up there watching me all night?” he roars. “I tell you go away the other day and you come back and watch me all night?”
Not only puppies, this man eats adorable bouncing babies.
“No. Not all night . . .” I say, and then before I know it, I’m at it again. “I wanted to ask you to mentor me, you know, I’d work as an intern, do whatever, clean up, anything, because I have to make this sculpture.” I meet his eyes. “Just have to make it and it has to be in stone for many reasons, ones you wouldn’t even believe, and my teacher Sandy said you’re the only one who carves anymore, like practically in the world”—did he just smile ever so faintly?—“but when I came you seemed so . . . I don’t know what, and of course, you told me to go away, which I did, but then I came back last night thinking I’d try to ask again, but chickened out, because, okay, you’re a little scary, I mean frankly, whoa—you are like totally scary . . .” His eyebrows rise at that, cracking the clay on his forehead. “But last night, the way you sculpted that piece blind, it was . . .” I try to think of what it was, but can’t come up with anything to do it justice. “I just couldn’t believe it, could not believe it, and then I’ve been thinking that you might be, I don’t know, maybe a little magical or something because in my sculpture textbook it talked all about those angels you used to carve as a kid, and it said you were believed to be enchanted, or possessed even, no offense, and this sculpture, the one I have to make, well, I need help, that kind of help, because I have this idea that I can make things right, like if I make it, maybe someone will understand something finally and that is very important to me, very,
very important, because she never understood me, not really, and she’s very mad about something I did . . .” I take a breath, add, “And I’m sad too.” I sigh. “I’m not okay either. Not at all. I wanted to tell you that the last time I came. Sandy even made me go to the school counselor, but she just told me to imagine a meadow . . .” I realize I’m done, so I close my mouth and stand there waiting for the paramedics, or whoever comes with the straightjacket.
It’s more than I’ve talked in the last two years combined.
He brings his hand to his mouth and begins examining me less like I’m a space alien and more like he did that sculpture last night. When he finally speaks, to my great surprise and relief, he doesn’t say, “I’m calling the authorities,” but, “We will have a cup of coffee. Yes? I could use a break.”
• • •
I follow Guillermo Garcia down a dark dusty hallway with many closed doors leading to rooms where all the other sixteen-year-old art students are kept chained up. It occurs to me that no one knows I’m here. Suddenly the whole gravestone-cutter thing doesn’t seem like such a plus.
For courage, say your name three times into your closed hand
(How about a can of pepper spray instead, Grandma?)
I say my name three times into my closed hand. Six times. Nine times and counting . . .
He turns around, smiles, points with his finger into the air. “No one makes coffee as good as Guillermo Garcia.”
I smile back. So that didn’t seem particularly homicidal, but maybe he’s trying to relax me, ease me into his lair, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
Health Alert: A respirator is in order. Whole civilizations of motes are caught in the thick stripes of light beaming down from two high windows. I look at the floor, jeez, it’s so dusty I’m making footprints. I wish I could hover like Grandma S. so as not to stir it all up. And this dankness—there’s got to be toxic black mold spores creeping all over these cement walls.
We enter a bigger area.
“The mailroom,” Guillermo says.
He’s not kidding. There are tables, chairs, couches, land-sliding with months, maybe years of mail, all unopened, falling to the floor in piles. There’s a kitchen area to my right teeming with botulism, another closed door, surely where some bound and gagged hostages are, a staircase leading to a loft area—I can see an unmade bed—and on my left, oh Clark Gable yes, to my great happiness, there is: a life-size stone angel that looks like it lived outside long before it moved in here.
It’s one of them. It has to be. Jackpot! In his biography, it said that to this day, in Colombia, people come from far and wide to whisper their wishes into the cold stone ears of a Guillermo Garcia angel. This one is spectacular, as tall as me, with hair that falls down her back in long loose locks that appear to be made of silk, not stone. Her wide oval face is cast downward like she’s gazing lovingly over a child, and her wings rise from her back like freedom. She looks like David did in Sandy’s office, one breath away from life. I want to hug her or start squealing but instead ask calmly, “Does she sing to you at night?”
“I am afraid, the angels, they do not sing to me,” he says.
“Yeah, me neither,” I say, which for some reason makes him turn around and smile at me.
When his back is to me again, I make a hard left and tiptoe across the room. I can’t help it. I have to get my wish in that angel’s ear immediately.
He waves an arm in the air. “Yes, yes, everyone does that. If only it work.”
I ignore his skepticism and wish my heart out into the perfect shell-like ear of the angel—Best to bet on all the horses, dear—noticing, when I’ve finished, that the wall behind the angel is covered in sketches, mostly of bodies, lovers, blank-faced men and women embracing or rather exploding in each other’s arms. Studies, I suppose, for the giants in the other room? I survey the mailroom again, see that most of the walls are similarly covered. The only break in the cave art is where a large painting hangs without a frame. It’s of a woman and a man kissing on a cliff by the sea while the whole world around them spins into a tornado of color—the palette is bold and bright like Kandinsky’s or my Mom’s favorite Franz Marc’s.
I didn’t know he painted too.
I walk over to the canvas, or maybe it’s the other way around. Some paintings stay on a wall; not this one. It’s color-flooding out of two dimensions, so I’m smack in the middle of it, smack in the middle of a kiss that could make a girl, one not on a boycott, wonder where a certain English guy might be . . .
“It saves paper,” Guillermo Garcia says. I didn’t realize I’d started tracing my hand over one of the wall-sketches by the painting. He’s leaning against a large industrial sink watching me. “I like the trees very much.”
“Trees are cool,” I say absently, a bit overwhelmed by all the naked bodies, all the love, the lust everywhere around me. “But they’re my brother’s, not mine,” I add without thinking. I glance at his hand for a wedding ring. None. And no feeling that a woman’s been here for ages. But what about the giant couples? And the woman wrenching out of the male form in the sculpture he made last night? And this painting of a kiss? And all these lusty cave drawings? And Drunken Igor? And the sobbing I witnessed? Sandy said something happened to him—what was it? What is it? There’s definitely the feeling here that something’s gone terribly wrong.
The clay on Guillermo’s forehead has crinkled up with his confusion. I realize what I just said about the trees. “Oh, my brother and I divvied up the world when we were younger,” I tell him. “I had to give him the trees and the sun and some other stuff for an incredible cubist portrait he made that I wanted.”
The remains of the portrait are still in a plastic bag under my bed. When I got home from Brian’s going away party that night, I saw that Noah had ripped it up and scattered it all over my bedroom. I thought: That’s right, I don’t deserve a love story. Not anymore. Love stories aren’t written for girls who could do what I just did to my brother, for girls with black hearts.
Still, I gathered up every last piece of the guy. I’ve tried to put him back together so many times, but it’s impossible. I can’t even remember what he looked like now, but I’ll never forget the reaction I had when I first saw him in Noah’s drawing pad. I had to have him. I would’ve given up the real sun, so giving him an imaginary one was nothing.
“I see,” Guillermo Garcia says. “So how long did these negotiations last? To divide the world?”
“They were ongoing.”
He crosses his arms, again in that battle stance. It seems to be his preferred pose. “You are very powerful, you and your brother. Like gods,” he says. “But honestly, I do not think you make a good trade.” He shakes his head. “You say you are so sad, maybe this is why. No sun. No trees.”
“I lost the stars and the oceans too,” I tell him.
“This is terrible,” he says, his eyes widening inside the clay mask of his face. “You are a terrible negotiator. You need a lawyer next time.” There’s amusement in his voice.
I smile at him. “I got to keep the flowers.”
“Thank God,” he says.
Something strange is going on, something so strange I can’t quite believe it. I feel at ease. Of all places, here, with him.
Alas, that’s what I’m thinking when I notice the cat, the black cat. Guillermo leans down, takes the black bundle of bad luck into his arms. He nuzzles his head into its neck, cooing to it in Spanish. Most serial killers are animal lovers, I read that once.
“This is Frida Kahlo.” He turns around. “You know Kahlo?”
“Of course.” Mom’s book on her and Diego Rivera is called Count the Ways. I’ve read it cover to cover.
“Wonderful artist . . . so tormented.” He holds up the cat so she’s facing him. “Like you,” he says to the cat, then lowers her to the floor. She slinks right back to him, rubbi
ng herself against his legs, oblivious to the years of rotten luck she’s filling our lives with.
“Did you know that toxoplasmosis and campylobacteriosis are transmitted to humans from the fecal matter of cats?” I ask Guillermo.
He knits his brow, making the clay on his forehead break into fissures. “No, I did not know. And I do not want to know that.” He’s spinning a pot in the air with his hands. “I’ve erased it from my mind already. Gone. Poof. You should too. Flying bricks and now this. I never even hear of those things.”
“You could go blind or worse. It happens. People have no idea how dangerous having pets is.”
“This is what you think? That it is dangerous to have a little kitty cat?”
“Most definitely. Especially a black one, but that’s a whole other bunch of bananas.”
“Okay,” he says. “That is what you think. You know what I think? I think you are crazy.” He throws his head back and laughs. It warms up the entire world. “Totally loca.” He turns around and starts talking in Spanish, saying Clark Gable knows what as he takes off his smock, hangs it on a hook. Underneath he’s wearing jeans and a black T-shirt like a normal guy. He pulls a notepad out of the front pocket of the smock and slips it into the back pocket of his jeans. I wonder if it’s an idea pad. At CSA, we’re encouraged to keep an idea pad on our person at all times. Mine’s empty. He turns both faucets on full blast, puts one arm underneath, then the other, scrubbing both with industrial soap. Brown water runs off him in muddy streams. Next he puts his whole head under the faucet. This is going to take a while.
I bend down to make friends with bad-luck Frida, who’s still circling Guillermo’s feet. Keep your enemies close, as they say. What’s so odd is that even with Frida and the toxoplasmosis and this man who should terrify me for so many reasons, I feel more at home than I have anywhere for so long. I scratch my fingers on the floor, trying to get the cat’s attention. “Frida,” I say softly.
