by Victor Yates
Standing, hunched over the window, I watch Junior’s car vanish in the opposite direction Father drove. Across the street, multiple flyers that create a single dollar sign flap in the wind. Five minutes later, Father’s car cries like a donkey begging for sugar beets and parks in front at eight o’clock. Then, under my feet, I hear splat, something hefty thrown in the studio, followed by fuck, and I smile.
Chapter 30
The seeing eye Labrador, stuffed under my seat, licks the back of my ankle. Jolted, I swing my foot forward. Blonde hairs are stuck to the vinyl floor. Dried pop has shaped a spider web of sugar. The dog’s owner, an elderly blonde, mumbles something that sounds like Russian. Her gold chain necklace has a babushka doll pendant with stripes and swirls of color. The Styrofoam container, in a plastic bag on the seat beside her, reeks of horseradish. Or maybe it’s on her breath. All the Russian students in Chicago smelled like horseradish. My sambusa lunches tasted richer with their borscht, lamb shashlik, cabbage pirozhki, or rolled pancakes with fruit jam. My stomach growls. Would she know if I took her bag?
The bus stops at a boarded up building with a mural of an underwater world. The sun, painted lime green and in flames, is the focal point. Multicolored mermaids, bearded mermen, imaginary creatures, and decomposing flowers contrast the sun. The color mixing, shading, and layering creates a photographic image. It looks staged, shot underwater, blown up, and wheat-pasted. I yank the hanging cord gawking at one of the mermen. The stop requested sign glows.
Like Brett, he has soft features but is otherwise unfeminine. The light brown hair and eyebrows and dark eyes look exactly right. In his lips, there is the beginning of a smile. The delicate mouth highlights the prominent nose. Standing behind cameras, pushes photographers to notice eyes, noses, and mouths more than other people. Jewel-toned scales plunge down his fin and spreading tail. The algae-covered rock he sits on accentuates their brilliance. I adjust my camera to prevent overexposure to the picture from the morning sun. Given distance, I realize telling the truth is like taking a picture. Through the lens, the photographer has to find meaning, something necessary to share. Being behind a camera, helped me avoid telling my father I wanted to be with a man. It became easier dealing with what was in my camera lens, than what was in front of me in life. I was afraid. Fear was just as much a part of me as a scar. The shame I covered the scar with was a cocoon, and I became my fear. In my bedroom, I’d stare up at the ceiling, wishing I could remake myself into what a man should be, but what makes a man? Not being female. Having a penis. Testosterone. Thick body hair. Being a copy of the Marlboro Man. Aggression. Presence in a crowded room. An absence of fear. I don’t know how to define being a man. However, I do know I want to be a man who isn’t afraid to share who he is. There are all kinds of fear. Having to cross out an entire part of your life with a grease pencil, may be the worst kind.
Someone graffitied a French fry carton on a trash bin in front of the building. The carton has a protruding stomach. A miniature fry, drenched in ketchup, is falling from its lips. The fries are knife-shaped. For me, yellow and taste are married. The potatoes in sambusa are saffron. Ripe plantains are brownish-yellow, dappled with black, and ready to fry. Sweet tulumba is the color of burnt sugar. Blended mango juice, with milk, yogurt, and sugar, is more chartreuse than orange. My favorite foods are yellow. Hunger pangs force my feet to follow meat cooking in the opposite direction from the DIA. The scent intensifies. On the sidewalk, yellows become bolder than other colors: the cheese in a window display, the words in junk food wrappers, and the hair on a spray painted bombshell. At the cross street, 6th, a hot dog seller set up an elaborate stand with a dog-shaped counter. The position of the grill places his back to the customers. Four rickety tables with foldable chairs are beside the stand. Two blond businessmen wearing black suits sit at one table eating hot dogs. A blonde sitting facing the street looks as if she is waiting for hers. The seller rolls a bacon-wrapped dog through onions, green peppers, and a chili. A clock-sized sign, with neon dots circling around blackness, reads one hundred percent beef. The seller places a paper food tray with the dog and fries on the counter. He pushes a service bell, pushes the bell again, and then removes an uncooked dog from a lower compartment. When the woman remains seated, I realize the food belongs to the man on the payphone nearby.
A liquor bottle shakes on top of the payphone as he leans against it. He yells in Spanish into the phone. His outfit clashes with the Detroit heat: black skullcap, camouflage army jacket, and camouflage pants. The materials look thick. The slower I walk, the less Spanish I recognize. The man is not speaking Latin American Spanish or Caribbean Spanish. When we learn to speak, we are translating. I try translating what he’s saying, but hunger drags me further away.
While watching the redness in his neck, I snatch his food then smash my body into a pillar, six buildings down from the stand. I peel off the soggy bacon before devouring the dog. Juice drips from the bacon to the sidewalk. I drop it and peek from behind my hiding place. The way the concrete juts out, I can only see from the counter to the sidewalk. The terrifying man isn’t lurking there or on the opposite side of the street, but I’m not worried about him. I’m more worried about the woman. I watch her as I shove fries in my mouth. Faintly, I hear the bell ring and the hot dog seller sets another tray on the counter.
Klunk, I hear close by and drop the fries. I see the man searching for the thief down the street. He hits a trashcan with a pipe and disappears, but I hear the destruction of metal on metal.
As I run in the opposite direction, the banging stops. Black letters C, A, M, and E on a marquee slow my steps. R and A follow, and then store, and my feet stop altogether. His face does not appear when I look for him. Through the thick graffiti on the window, the world inside looks antique, like a snow globe turned over, and fifty years of stillness has fallen. The front door, covered with wood planks, is nailed tight. I run into the side alley to check for another entrance. At first unrecognizable, I realize the back door has been painted the same dark red as the entire side of the building and then graffitied over. Feeling the door, I figure out it has a wood frame, and it swings toward the inside of the store. I kick the door three times, focusing on the tiny space below the doorknob. Whack, the frame splinters. I kick it again, and the store welcomes me inside.
Peeling paint and plaster and pieces of the cottage cheese ceiling cover the floor. On other sections, it appears as if loaves of moldy bread were ground to crumbs then tossed down for dead pigeons. The crumbs are the color as maggots. At my feet, I see pigeon droppings, white bird feathers, beetle carcasses, and decades of decay. A pillbug crawls out of a square-shaped object. The storefront has built-in shelves on each wall and four display cases. Two cases, closer to the window, are like a broken V with a ten-foot gap in-between them. In the center, sits a waist-high circular case. A longer case is in the back, where the cash register would’ve been. On the top, propped up, there is a face that haunts me. It is Richard Avedon’s photograph of Marian Anderson. Even caked in dust I hear her singing. Dried oak leaves, a wooden box, a golf ball-shaped mineral, a brass candleholder, and a glass bowl are beside her. The arrangement of the items suggests it is an altar. A puckered sign, written in black marker, and taped to the back wall reads, “Do Not Enter Area.” The sign reminds me of religious spaces, where only religious leaders are allowed to enter. The sign is a warning. Through time and abandonment, the entire store has become sacred. Air, water, dust, and cobwebs have magnified its preciousness. I trace the shape of a cross on my body. In my left pocket, I fish around finding: keys, tape, lens cap, shower cap, change, knife, and film canister. I grab the canister, kiss it, and add it to the altar. It has a thin strip of correction fluid. The cracked white material has the same innocent appearance as the datura flower. My ancestors in Cuba used it for centuries to induce visionary dreams to reveal the roots of misfortune. The first museum in the town, where my mother’s family is from, was a church. Churches c
an be museums, and museums can be churches. The sign, “Do Not Enter Area” could read, “Do Not Touch The Exhibit.” This space could be both a museum of death and a cathedral of life everlasting. I feel safe here.
I try to imagine how the shelves would have looked alive with Nikons, Canons, Minoltas, Leicas, Yashicas, and Fujis. What the skin of the camera bodies would feel like to my fingers? I would wait in wonder for the morning light to open and know one would sell. The saddest image for a photographer to see has to be an abandoned camera store.
My foot brushes against something spongy. Pictures printed on postcards overflow out of the box beside the case. I tap the bottom. A clump of slimy mush and a second Marian slip into dust. As I flip through the familiar McCurrys, Langes, Evans, Erwitts, Adams, and Halsmans, my camera bag tilts. My business cards spill. I caught the bus to pass them out at the DIA – in hopes of making money.
Behind me, the door creaks open. The wind, I assume. More light tiptoes inside. A black flash on the side of my face turns into camouflage pants. Tall and lanky, scraggly dark hairs from the terrifying man’s mustache curl down to his upper lip. His crooked nose has a pronounced bump in the middle. A shadow across his eyes forces his face into a permanent scowl.
“You stole from me,” he yells in a thick accent. Then he smashes his pipe against the display case. “Now I’m going to steal from you. Give me your camera.”
I yell, “no,” matching his rage and run behind the case.
“Give it to me. Or I’ll kill you,” he yells. The man slams the pipe against the glass and glass shatters.
Shoving the camera into my bag, I zip it closed and step backward. I feel the wall. He runs toward me, but the face I see is of my father.
Chapter 31
Through the dust cloud, Father rushes toward me with a machete to hack up my body. Fire will burn the guts, gristle, and fat. My bones and ashes can add to the altar. He kicks a dry rotted chair into the cracked case I’m using as a shield. The sound of glass crunching transforms Father back into the terrifying man. I run to the left. The man screams. I hear a faint shriek, possibly from a rat crushed under his weight. He slips backward. The whole room shakes. White cottage cheese flakes, from the ceiling, fall and float in the air. Pieces catch sunlight and shimmer. I run for the door. As I reach the end of the case, something solid whacks the back of my head. I fall face down in a puddle of pigeon droppings and a clammy green substance. Whatever the green is, it tastes salty on my lips. A rustling noise forces me up to my feet. An O-shaped object hits brick. It smashes and becomes dry oatmeal. His shadow enlarges on the wall. Over my shoulder, an object swings close to my head. The swoosh stings my ear. I squat low, missing the pipe and run behind the case into the corner. A chunk of glass shatters to the ground.
A murky glass bottle rolls against my shoe. The man spotted with dust holds the pipe beside his face as he runs closer to me. I hurl the bottle at him and hit his hand. The glass explodes on contact and the pipe drops. Dust flies up in the damp air. Four rats scatter and disappear. I run for the door. The strap of my camera bag catches on something sticking out of the wall. The rough-textured strap snaps. My shoulder burns from a cut. It felt like a sharp nail. Something close-by crackles. A glob of goo, packed like a snowball, explodes in my face, and I trip. Coughing violently, I wipe my face with the inside of my shirt. The goo smells like spoiled fish left by the owners when they abandoned the store.
He snatches me up to my feet, the way Father snatched me out of bed and dragged me into the bathroom. His hands clench around my throat. Up close, his face is even more terrifying. He bares his teeth. His jaw, square and sharp-angled, seems capable of opening and devouring a man whole. He bites down on my neck. I raise my knee to knee him in between his legs. He bites deeper. Blood dribbles down my neck. I dig into my pant pocket. The knife handle feels like freedom. I stab him in the stomach. He winces, and watching him contort charges my body with pure energy.
“You bitch,” he says, but it’s Father’s face I see on his shoulders.
His eyes follow the blade, up in the air, down to his shoulder. I stab him, and I want to experience the sensation again; how his shoulder opens, and blood oozes out. I stab him again. Blood rushes between my legs. The rush feels like I’m speeding downhill on a sled. His skin peeks out as patches of dust vanish, eaten by perspiration. Under the dust, his face turns pale as death. He presses his wounded shoulder. Blood bleeds between fingers, over grayness and camouflage. My breathing stops from the shock. I run out to the alley, out to the street, into the sun.
The image of the jacket splattered with blood swirls in my head. Green and black and brown and red. The camouflage crumbles when flashing lights drown the street. A police officer must’ve seen how I looked, running, holding a knife. I slip the knife in my pocket, but it’s too late. I see myself as the officer sees me with blood sprayed over my shirt. We make eye contact, but the siren wails are for someone else. In the silence, I rub my hands together to wipe off the blood. Only soap and water will burn off the memory of the knife in his shoulder. Is this what Reed wanted me to discover? How of the languages we speak, violence is the most comfortable. I am Reed’s son. Reed is Grandfather’s son. In vacation pictures, keloids cover Grandfather’s neck, chest, and arms. When I was younger, he loved to tell me how my great grandfather beat him so much that welts formed everywhere on his body, even between his legs. And, that made him fearless.
Another police car, distant but fast approaching, whines and its lights bounce off the buildings. I take off running down the cross street cradling my camera in one arm. My foot kicks a pop can. A man covered in tattoos throws up a gang sign from the side of a building. The three-finger pyramid covers Chicago’s Southside. A five-pointed star crown gleams above his bald head. To his left, a crescent moon is made of the word terror. Two thick fonts squeeze thinner fonts in the middle. The word, aardvark, drawn out in a dripping font, cuts off his shoulders. The spray paint is red. The highlighting is in maroon and gold. The word has a snout and with its snout, it sucks up tiny words. A knife stabs him in the shoulder. Cooing pigeons fly past the pyramid. The knife drops to the sidewalk, softens, and turns into bird droppings.
Out of breath, I collapse at a storefront. My hands squeak on the glass as they slip. Five mannequins stick out their tongues in the display. I blink and lean closer to the window. Not to see the blood, the filth, the bite mark, to see the second thumb. It has grown on my right hand, the same hand as Reed. I lift up my hand. No, it’s an illusion. Confused, I lower it, and the thumb returns. The display is creating the illusion. Although, from this angle, it’s clear I am becoming a shadowy reflection of Reed. I am capable of anything too – even death. As I marry the images in my head, the terrifying man appears. I reach for his face; however, I touch the glass. Did I kill him?
Chapter 32
The bones in Reed’s knees crack and pop, the opening ceremony of his ritual. Readjusting himself on the couch, he places a box of fried chicken, two sides, and a greasy paper bag on the tray table. Spicy and salty smells waft through the window crack. He gorges down the meat, potato salad, and biscuits in seven minutes. As he opens the second container, the top flips over and slides down his leg. Slop, I hear, and he shoves red beans into his mouth. Sauce spills on his robe. The idea of eating forms a knot in my gut. Standing in the bushes, I read Reed’s receipt to avoid being disgusted more. Next, he’ll eat the marshmallows, candy bar, donuts, pie, ice cream, and cookies. The paper dropped to the mat when he pulled out his keys. I shiver from the night breeze that rustles the leaves. An odor in the air has me grasping for words. The purple-leaved bush smells livery and rusty.
The living room light and the night sky hide me. As I watch Reed, he watches television. An unseen hand slices open a mutilated stomach on the screen. The abstract image comes into sharper focus. It is of lips painted pale pink and flaunted against a swirling pink background. He blows into a tissue. Redness spr
eads over white. A sour taste forms in my mouth. My mouth waters. I turn to the television; fixate on the swirling pink blob and everything in my stomach comes up.
Having devoured the rest of the food, half an hour later, Reed is snoring with a football game muted. I sneak out of the bushes, to the side, and push up the dining room window. Inch by inch, I open it and stop every few seconds listening for movement. I ease my right leg inside. Then, I lower my left leg in the window. Squeak, the sound surprises me, and I almost slip on a toy. The couch creaks. Waiting six minutes, I then creep over to Reed. His black robe combined with the white, from his shirt, gives him a priest-like appearance. Two bloody tissues are beside his feet. The sauce splattered across his stomach resembles blood. His loud snoring walks up behind me on the stairs.
A concert of two-beat tapping from an insect passes through Junior’s bedroom. He’s asleep on his side. Even in the dark, a scar on his arm from a fight with Reed is visible.
“Wake up.”
“Carsten. What’s wrong?”
“I stabbed a man. I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Where did you stab him?”
“His stomach.”
“God damn! Did you kill him?”
“I don’t know. I just ran.”
“Did he run after you?”
“I don’t remember.”
“If I stabbed a man, I’d remember him chasing after my ass. We need a plan. How about we take my car, drive to Wisconsin and disappear.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“You might have killed a man.”
“Can you drive me to the studio? I need to sleep then I can decide what to do.”
“Stay here tonight and I promise Reed won’t know you’re here.”
Tears come. Junior hugs me. I struggle under the weight of his softness. Words collapse around us, and a stairway materializes. Like a smudge of charcoal on newsprint, with additional strokes a life drawing forms. We have created a connection, closeness, which is more important to brothers than blood or history. Junior knuckle-punches me in the arm, and I punch him back. Then, we growl like bears with our heads raised, a flash from our childhood. A guttural bark, from the back of his throat, makes me laugh. He reverses into bed, yanking the sheets over his head, and says, “good night little brother bear.” I creep into the comfort of the room where I used to sleep. My body sinks into the lumpy mattress. Junior had owned this bed before it became mine. The stale sweat odor on my pillow smells welcoming. Even the rough lint balls against my legs feel pleasant. Sleeping on cheap sheets is a luxury compared to lying awake in pain in a sleeping bag. While staring out the window, a cloud shaped like a stomach forces me to flip over, but the ice crystals become real like the bloody tissues downstairs and the image dangles in my head. Sleep comes, eventually.
