I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

  The title of Mom’s book Count the Ways on Kahlo and Rivera is a line taken from her favorite poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “Do you know it by heart?” I’d asked her one day when we were walking in the woods together, just us, a rarity.

  “Of course I do.” She did a joyful little skip and pulled me close to her so that every inch of me felt happy and leaping. “‘How do I love thee?’” she said, her big dark eyes shining on me, our hair whipping around our heads, blending and twisting together in the wind. I knew it was a romantic poem, but that day, it felt about us, our private mother-daughter thing. “‘Let me count the ways,’” she sang out . . . wait, she is singing out! “‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach—’”

  It’s her, here, now—her deep gravelly voice is reciting the poem to me!

  “‘I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.’”

  “Mom?” I whisper. “I hear you.”

  Every single night before I go to bed, I read this poem aloud to her, wishing for this.

  “Okay down there?” I peer up into the unmasked face of Guillermo Garcia, who now looks like he just got out of the ocean, his black hair slicked back and dripping, a towel thrown over his shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” I say to him, but I’m far from it. My mother’s ghost spoke to me. She recited the poem back to me. She told me she loves me. Still.

  I get to my feet. What must’ve I looked like? Squatting there on the floor, no cat in sight, totally lost, whispering to my dead mother.

  Guillermo’s face now resembles the photos I saw online. Any one of his features would be dramatic, but all of them together, it’s a turf war, a rumble for territory, nose against mouth against flashing eyes. I can’t tell if he’s grotesque or gorgeous.

  He’s examining me too.

  “Your bones”—he touches his own cheek—“are very delicate. You have the bird bones.” His eyes drop, sweeping past my breasts, landing with confusion somewhere in the middle of me. I look down, expecting the onion to be in plain view or something else I forgot I was carrying for luck today, but it’s not that. My T-shirt has risen up under my unzipped sweatshirt and he’s staring at my exposed midriff, my tattoo. He takes a step toward me, and without asking, lifts my shirt so he can see the whole image. Oh boy. Ohboyohboy. His hand’s holding up the fabric. I can feel the heat of his fingertips on my belly. My heart speeds up. This is inappropriate, right? I mean, he’s old. A dad’s age. Except he sure doesn’t seem like a dad.

  Then I see in his face that my stomach’s about as interesting to him as stretched canvas. He’s mesmerized by my tattoo, not me. Not sure if I’m relieved or insulted.

  He meets my eyes, nods approval. “Raphael on the belly,” he says. “Very nice.” I can’t help but smile. He does too. A week before Mom died, I spent every penny I’d ever saved on it. Zephyr knew this guy who’d tattoo underage kids. I chose Raphael’s cherubs because they reminded me of NoahandJude—more one than two. Plus they can fly. Mostly now I think I did it to piss off Mom, but I never even got to show it to her . . . How can people die when you’re in a fight with them? When you’re smack in the middle of hating them? When absolutely nothing between you has been worked out?

  To reconcile with a family member, hold a bowl out in the rain until full, then drink the rainwater the first moment the sun shines again

  (Months before she died, Mom and I went on a mother-daughter day to the city to see if it could improve our relationship. Over lunch, she told me she felt like she was always, in her mind, looking for the mother

  who abandoned her. I wanted to tell her: Yeah, me too.)

  Guillermo motions for me to follow him, then stops at the entrance to the grand studio space, which unlike the rest of the place is sunny and fairly tidy. He holds his hand up to the room of giants. “My rocks, though I suppose you’ve already met.”

  I suppose I have met them, but not like this, towering above us like titans.

  “I feel so puny,” I say.

  “Me too,” he says. “Like an ant.”

  “But you’re their creator.”

  “Perhaps,” he says. “I don’t know. Who knows . . .” He’s muttering something I can’t hear and conducting a symphony with his hands as he walks away from me toward a counter that has a hot plate with a kettle on it.

  “Hey maybe you have Alice in Wonderland Syndrome!” I call after him, the idea taking hold of me. He turns. “That’s this totally cool neurological condition where the scale of things gets distorted in the mind. Usually people who have it see everything teeny-tiny—miniature people driving around in Matchbox cars, that sort of thing—but it can happen like this too.” I hold my hands out to the room as proof of my diagnosis.

  He does not seem to think he has Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. I can tell because the loca tirade in Spanish has begun again as he bangs around the cabinets. While he makes coffee and rants, good-naturedly, I believe, this time—it’s possible I’m amusing him—I circle the pair of lovers closest to me, brushing my fingers over their gritty granular flesh, then step between them and reach my hands up, wanting to climb up their giant lovelorn bodies.

  Maybe he’s suffering from a different kind of syndrome after all. Lovesickness, it would seem, if the repeating motif around this place is any indication.

  I keep my new diagnosis to myself as I join him at the counter. He’s pouring water from the kettle through two filters poised over mugs and has begun singing to himself in Spanish. It occurs to me what the unfamiliar feeling is that’s overtaking me: well-being. At ease has graduated to a full-on sense of well-being. And maybe he’s experiencing it too, what with the singing and all.

  Perhaps I could move in? I’d bring my sewing machine and that’s it. I’d just have to dodge the English guy . . . who maybe is Guillermo’s son . . . a love child he didn’t know about until recently, who grew up in England. Yes!

  And . . . looking around for a lemon.

  “As promised, nectar of the gods,” he says, placing the two steaming mugs on a table. I sit down on the red sofa beside it. “Now, we talk, yes?” He joins me on the couch, as does his ape-man smell. But I don’t even care. I don’t even care that the sun’s going to burn out in a matter of years, ending all life on Earth, well, five billion years, but still, guess what? I don’t care. Well-being is a wonderful thing.

  He picks up a box of sugar on the table and proceeds to pour a ton into his mug, spilling as much.

  “That’s lucky,” I say.

  “What is?”

  “Spilling sugar. Spilling salt is bad luck, but sugar . . .”

  “I’ve heard that one before.” He smiles, then whacks the box with the back of his hand so that it falls over and its contents spill onto the floor. “There.”

  I feel a surge of delight. “I don’t know if it counts if you do it on purpose.”

  “Of course it counts,” he says, tapping a cigarette out of a crumpled pack left on the table, next to another one of those notepads. He leans back, lights up, inhales deeply. The smoke curls in the air between us. He’s examining me again. “I want you to know I hear what you say outside. About this.” He places his hand on his chest. “You were honest with me, so I be honest with you.” He’s looking into my eyes. It’s dizzying. “When you came the other day, I was not in good shape. I am not in good shape sometimes . . . I know I told you go away. I don’t know what else I say to you. I don’t remember much . . . that whole week.” He waves the cigarette in the air. “But I tell you, I am not teaching anymore for a reason. I don’t have it, the thing you need. I just don’t have.” He takes a drag, exhales a long gray stream of smoke, then gestures at the giants. “I am like them. Every day I think to myself, it happen, finally I become the rock I carve.”

  “Me too,” I blurt out. “I’m made of sto
ne too. I thought that exact thing the other day. I think my whole family is. There’s this disease called FOP—”

  “No, no, no, you are not made of the stone,” he interrupts. “You do not have this disease called FOP. Or any disease called anything.” He touches my cheek tenderly with his calloused fingers, leaves them there. “Trust me,” he says. “If anyone knows this, it is me.”

  His eyes have become gentle. I’m swimming in them.

  It’s suddenly so quiet inside me.

  I nod and he smiles and takes his hand away. I place mine where his was, not understanding what’s going on. Why all I want is his hand back on my face. All I want is for him to touch my cheek like that and tell me I’m fine again and again until I am.

  He stamps out the cigarette. “I, however, am a different story. I have not taught in years. I will not. Probably not ever again. So . . .”

  Oh. I wrap my arms around myself. I’ve been terribly mistaken. I thought when he invited me in for coffee he was saying yes. I thought he was going to help me. My lungs feel like they’re closing up.

  “I only want to work now.” A shadow has darkened his face. “It is all I have. It is all I can do to . . .” He doesn’t finish, just stares off at the giants. “They are the only ones I want to think about or care about, understand? That’s it.” His voice has grown solemn, leaden.

  I stare down at my hands, disappointment pooling inside me, black and thick and hopeless.

  “So,” he continues. “I think about this, assume you are at CSA because you mention Sandy, yes?” I nod. “There is someone there, no? Ivan something, he is in that department, he can surely help you with this piece?”

  “He’s in Italy,” I say, my voice cracking. Oh no. How can this be? Now? Oh not now, please. But it is now. For the first time in two years, tears are streaming down my cheeks. I wipe them away quickly, again and again. “I understand,” I say, getting up. “Really. It’s fine. It was a dumb idea. Thank you for the coffee.” I have to get out of here. I have to stop crying. There’s a sob building inside me so immense and powerful it’s going to break all my bird bones. It’s Judemageddon. I keep my arms tightly fastened around my ribs as I make my trembling legs move across the bright sunny studio, through the mailroom, and down the dark musty hallway, completely blinded from the contrast, when his baritone voice stops me.

  “This sculpture needs to be made so much you cry like this?”

  I turn around. He’s leaning against the wall by the painting of the kiss, his arms crossed.

  “Yes,” I gasp out, then say more calmly, “Yes.” Is he changing his mind? The sob begins to retreat.

  He’s stroking his chin. His expression softens. “You need to make this sculpture so badly, you will risk your young life by sharing space with a disease-carrying cat?”

  “Yes. Totally, yes. Please.”

  “You are sure you want to forsake the warm, moist breath of clay for the cold, unforgiving eternity of stone.”

  “I am sure.” Whatever that means.

  “Come back tomorrow afternoon. Bring your portfolio and a sketchpad. And tell your brother to give you back the sun, trees, stars, all of it already. I think you need.”

  “You’re saying yes?”

  “I am. I do not know why but I am.”

  I’m about to leap across the room and hug him.

  “Oh no.” He wags a finger at me. “Do not look so happy. I tell you ahead of time. All my students despise me.”

  • • •

  I click Guillermo’s front door shut, lean against it, not sure what happened to me in there. I feel disoriented like I’ve been watching a movie or like I’ve just woken up from a dream. I thank and rethank the beautiful stone angel inside who granted my wish. There is the problem of my portfolio being full of broken bowls and blobs. There is also the problem that he said to bring a sketchpad and I can’t sketch. I got a C in life drawing last year. Drawing is Noah’s thing.

  Doesn’t matter. He said yes.

  I look around, taking in Day Street, wide and tree-lined, with a combination of dilapidated Victorians where college students live, warehouses, the occasional business, and the church. I’m letting the first sun we’ve seen this winter soak into my bones, when I hear the screech of a motorcycle. I watch the adrenaline-happy driver, who thinks he’s at the Indy 500, boomerang a turn at such an extreme angle the side of the bike scrapes the street. Jeez, no offense, but what a stupid reckless idiot.

  Evel Knievel screeches once again, but to a halt this time, not fifteen feet from me, and takes off his helmet.

  Oh.

  Of course.

  And in sunglasses. Someone call medevac.

  “Well, hello there,” he says. “The fallen angel has returned.”

  He doesn’t talk, he lilts, his words taking to the air like birds. And why do English people sound smarter than the rest of us? Like they should be awarded the Nobel Prize for a simple greeting?

  I zip up my sweatshirt to my neck.

  But can’t seem to get the boy blinders on.

  Still a reckless idiot, yes, but damn, he looks fine, sitting on that bike on this sunny winter day. Guys like him really shouldn’t be allowed on motorcycles. They should have to bounce around on pogo sticks, or better: Hippity Hops. And no hot guy should be allowed to have an English accent and drive a motorcycle.

  Not to mention wear the leather jacket or sport the cool shades. Hot guys should be forced into footie pajamas.

  Yes, yes, the boycott, the boycott.

  Still, I’d like to say something this time so he doesn’t think I’m a mute.

  “Well, hello there,” I offer, mimicking him exactly, English accent and all! Oh no. I feel my face flushing. Losing the accent, I quickly add, “Nice turn back there.”

  “Ah yes,” he says, dismounting. “I have a problem with impulse control. Or so I’m quite frequently told.”

  Great. Six feet of bad luck and impulse-control issues. I cross my arms like Guillermo. “You probably have an underdeveloped frontal lobe. That’s where self-control comes from.”

  This cracks him up. It makes his face go everywhere at once. “Well, thank you for the medical opinion. Much appreciated.”

  I like that I made him laugh. A nice laugh, easy and friendly, lovely really, not that I notice. Frankly, I also believe I have impulse-control issues, well, used to. Now I’m very much in control of things. “So what kind of impulses can’t you control?”

  “Not a one, I’m afraid,” he says. “That’s the problem.”

  That is the problem. He’s tailor-made to torture. I’m betting he’s at least eighteen, betting he stands alone at parties leaning against walls, knocking back shots while long-legged girls in fire-engine red mini-dresses slink up to him. Granted, I haven’t been to a lot of parties lately, but I have seen a lot of movies and he’s that guy: the lawless, solitary, hurricane-hearted one who wreaks havoc, blowing through towns, through girls, through his own tragic misunderstood life. A real bad boy, not like the fake ones at my art school, with their ink and piercings and trust funds and cigarettes from France.

  I bet he just got out of jail.

  I decide to pursue his “condition” as it falls under medical research, not because I’m fascinated by him or flirting with him or anything like that. I say, “Meaning if you were in the room with The Button, you know, the end of the world nuclear bomb button, just you and it, man and button, you’d press it? Just like that.”

  He laughs that wonderful easy laugh again. “Kapow,” he says, illustrating the explosion with his hands.

  Kapow is right.

  I watch as he locks his helmet on the back of his bike, then detaches a camera bag from the handlebars. The camera. I have an instant Pavlovian response to it, remembering how I’d felt sitting in church with him looking at me through it. I drop my gaze to the ground, wis
hing my pale skin didn’t blush so easily.

  “So what’s your business with The Rock Star?” he asks. “Let me guess. You want him to mentor you like every other female art student from The Institute.”

  Okay, that was snide. And does he think I go to The Institute in the city? That I’m in college?

  “He’s agreed to mentor me,” I reply triumphantly, not appreciating the innuendo. No other art student, female or not, needs his help like I do, to make things right with their dead mother. This is a very unique situation.

  “Is that right?” He’s out of his head pleased. “Well done.” I’m back in the spotlight of his gaze and having the same sense of vertigo I did in church. “I just can’t believe it. Well done, you. It’s been a very, very long time since he’s taken on a student.” This makes me nervous. As does he. Kapow, kaboom, kaput. Time to go. Which involves moving the legs. Move the legs, Jude.

  “Got lucky,” I say, trying not to trip over my own feet as I pass him, my hands deep in my sweatshirt pockets, one wrapped around the onion, the other around a bag of herbs that promise protection. I say, “You should really trade in that thing for a Hippity Hop. Much safer.” For the female gender, I don’t add.

  “What’s a Hippity Hop?” he says to my retreating back. I don’t notice how incredibly cute the words Hippity Hop sound coming out of his mouth with that accent.

  Without turning around, I reply, “A large, round rubber animal you bounce around on. You hold on to the ears.”

  “Oh, of course, a Space Hopper, then.” He laughs. “We call them Space Hoppers in England. I had a green one,” he yells after me. “A dinosaur I named Godzilla. I was a very original thinker.” Mine was a purple horse I named Pony. I was also an original thinker. “Well, nice seeing you again, whoever you are. The photos of you are brilliant. I stopped by the church a few times looking for you. Thought you might want to see them.”