Last Night I Sang to the Monster

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  2.

  The boy’s name is Rafael. He is seven. He could be five or six or eight. But right now, he is seven. When he grows up, he will become a writer, though no one suspects this—not even the boy.

  There will be many monsters in the stories he will write.

  3.

  The boy reads the story of his life to the monster but he leaves certain things out of the story. He is afraid of making the monster angry. If the monster gets angry, something very bad will happen. The boy decides that the monster prefers happy stories about happy boys so the boy makes up a happy story about himself. He becomes an expert at telling happy stories. He is certain the monster likes the stories. He is certain.

  4.

  As the boy grows older, the monster comes to him—mostly at night. The monster is insatiable for stories. The boy, who is now almost a man—but who remains a boy—keeps telling stories to make the monster happy. Somewhere inside of him, the man who is still a boy knows that the monster will never be happy.

  But he continues reading the stories he writes for the monster.

  5.

  Sometimes, Rafael doesn’t feel like reading his stories to the monster. He is tired. There are nights when the monster stays away, and he thinks or hopes or wants to believe that the monster has gone away forever. Sometimes the monster stays away for weeks and months and Rafael starts to believe that he is free. He prays that the monster is dead.

  But the monster always comes back.

  6.

  The boy has now become a man (but is really still a boy). Reading to the monster is driving him insane. He begins to drink. He has always liked drinking but now the drinking has become his consolation. He drinks and drinks as he reads his stories to the monster. He knows now that he has always hated the monster. He wonders what would happen if the monster discovered the truth. He feels as if his heart is on fire. The hurt is becoming impossible to bear.

  But the drink is good and helps him get through the story when the monster comes.

  7.

  Rafael, the man who is still a boy, is starting to get old. His hair is turning white and he wears the look of a man who has learned how to whisper the word suffering as if it were a prayer. He has forgotten words like happiness and joy. He laughs but the laughter is hollow. Only the tears are real.

  He wonders why he has a monster. He wonders why he has surrendered to him.

  8.

  He thinks to himself: What would happen if I stopped reading to the monster? What would happen if I read him a real story—a story about a boy who was damaged and hurt and kept wounds in his body like treasure? What would the monster think about that story? What would the monster say if I told him, I don’t want to tell you any more stories about boys. I want to tell you a story about Rafael who wants to cross the border and enter a country called manhood. It is a hard and difficult and beautiful country. Do you understand that, monster?

  Tonight, when the monster comes, he will tell him the story he has wanted to tell all his life.

  9.

  It is dark outside. The night has come again, but he is not afraid. It is a strange thing for him not to feel the fear. He feels naked. But he thinks it is not such a bad thing to feel his body, to feel his arms and his legs and his chest and his hands and his heart. He is sitting on his bed. He does not need a drink.

  He will not drink. He is waiting for the monster to come so he can tell him his story.

  I knew Rafael’s story had to do with the drawing he brought into the group. The drawing that really wigged me out, the drawing that made me cry, the drawing I thought was about me. I know that. But the thing is that I’m in love with Rafael’s story. I think I understand when Adam says that all our stories are different but in some ways our stories are all the same. I never really got that. But when I start to read Rafael’s journal, it’s as if I can see myself. It’s better than a mirror. Even though I’m eighteen and he’s fifty-three, I can see myself in the words that Rafael has written. I can. This doesn’t make any sense, but this is the thing: to me it makes perfect sense.

  Adam is not right about everything. No, he’s not.

  Still, I don’t think Adam would get into the fact that I was reading Rafael’s journal. But see, it’s helping me do the work. Why should anyone have a problem with a guy trying to do the work? Okay, I can just hear myself tell Adam these things. I’m seeing the look that enters into his face. The look that, you know, reminds me that I’m lying to myself. The look that says, Zach you are not getting honest.

  I’m an addict. There. I’ve done some work on that and I’m realizing that yes, I am an alcoholic addict. So, now I’m addicted to reading Rafael’s journal. They say that’s what happens—you trade in one addiction for another. But it is better to read Rafael’s journal than it is to drink bourbon and do cocaine. That’s my thinking. Perspective, that’s the thing. Okay, yeah, I’m stunning myself out all to hell.

  And I’ve started keeping a journal too. This is what I wrote down this morning when I woke up:

  I think my monster has something to do with my brother. My monster has something to do with my mother and my father. I know that the blood in my dreams and the monster have something to do with each other.

  I’m caught between wanting to remember and wanting to not remember. Is it me who wants to keep from remembering or is it the monster? Or maybe the monster wants me to remember. If I remembered, then maybe something really bad would happen to me.

  There is something I am keeping inside me that feeds the monster. And I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. What if I stop feeding the monster? Maybe I’ll die if I do that.

  Does my monster behave like Rafael’s monster? I wonder if Adam ever had a monster. Sharkey, for sure, he has a monster.

  Another thought: Normies and earth people probably do not have monsters. But everyone here definitely has a monster. Some people here have more than one.

  There are monsters all over the place.

  As I’m staring at what I wrote, I’m thinking that maybe God gives us monsters for a reason. I don’t have a clue as to why God would do that, but see, I don’t know anything about how God works. We are not good friends. God and I don’t trust each other. Is that my fault? Okay, maybe so.

  This is the good thing: I don’t really want to die anymore. At least not today. Every day is different. I have good days. I have bad days. That’s the way it goes. I don’t think I know how to be alive. I’m getting very frustrated and when I get frustrated I get anxiety attacks. I don’t like the anxiety. I keep biting my nails and there isn’t anything left to bite. I even started chewing on my knuckles but Adam put me on a contract. No chewing on my knuckles. “That borders on a self-harming behavior.” I get that. Every day I do something that tears me up. Why am I always screwing up? I guess I’m just a screw-up. Screw-ups screw things up. That’s what we do.

  I have to stop reading Rafael’s journal. It’s wrong.

  But I don’t want to stop.

  This is not healthy.

  I’ll make a list and put it in my journal. On one side of the page I’ll list all my healthy behaviors. On the other side of the page, I’ll list all my unhealthy behaviors. But what happens if most of my behaviors fall on the unhealthy side. What happens then?

  -2-

  “Storytime.” Adam smiles, his eyes searching the room. We all know what that phrase means. Someone’s going to tell a story. Not just any story. Not just a made-up story. Their story. Part of the deal of being here is that we eventually have to tell our stories. It’s a part of the healing thing. Healing. I hate that word.

  Adam looks at me, and I look down at the carpet. I know that I have to tell my story sometime. And I’ve been here for more than thirty days and most people tell their stories a week or two into their stay. Yeah, well, we’re all different. Look, I’m cool with telling the stories. I’m okay with that. Okay, I’m mostly okay with the storytelling thing. Okay, so maybe I’m not so okay with the
concept as it applies to me.

  Adam wants to know what’s on the carpet that’s so interesting. Only he’s kinda gentle with me these days. Since the day I sort of lost it when Rafael brought in the picture of his monster. Since that day, I think Adam looks at me different. I don’t like it. It’s not as if I’m nuts. I’m just a little wigged out. You know, nervous. Jumpy. I always feel like I’ve done something wrong and someone is going to catch me. You know, find me out. What’s that about?

  Adam keeps looking at me like he’s expecting me to answer, like he’s not going to go away until he makes sure there’s someone home. He asks me again. “What’s so interesting about the carpet?” His voice is calm and really nice. See, the thing about Adam is that he has an unthreatening voice. That makes me mental sometimes.

  “There’s a stain,” I say, “on the carpet. You see it?”

  “Yeah, I see it.” He shoots me this smile that’s more like a smirk. “Life, it’s a little messy. Carpets get stains.”

  “Yes, they do,” I say.

  “Carpets get stains and people get scars,” he says.

  I shoot him back the same snarky smile. “I’d rather be the carpet,” I say.

  “I get that,” Adam says.

  “I don’t think you do,” I say. Some days I get a little feisty. I don’t mean the baseball-bat kind of feisty where I smash in windshields. Not that kind of feisty. But, you know, regular feisty.

  Adam shrugs. Very calm that guy, doesn’t get all bothered about stuff. I worry about him. No one can be that calm around all these non-normies. In fact, sometimes I think we’re anti-normies. How can you remain calm in the face of all us anti-normies who are definitely aliens? Look, Adam’s not going to get into it with me, but he does say, “People step on carpets. You do get that, don’t you, Zach?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Okay,” I say, “so I don’t really want to be a carpet.”

  Adam nods, and gets a not-quite smile on his face. He looks at Sharkey and Sharkey, who’s always all set to talk about himself says, “Not today, dude, they’re adjusting my meds. I’m feeling all zonked out.”

  It was true. He looked like crap and he’d been sleepwalking, which was something he did on a regular basis and that sort of had me a little worried. Rafael would guide him back to bed but I would get all wigged out. Not that I said anything. Sharkey was having bad times. Not a good day for him to tell his story.

  Adam, he gets these things. “I’ll have a talk with your doctor.” Adam, now he’s got this thinking look on his face. Then he gets a more-focused look on his face, then points that look toward Rafael who looks back at him, like, okay. Rafael smiles that smile of his that doesn’t really mean a smile. I mean to say that Rafael’s smile can mean a hundred things, not all of them good things. But sometimes it means he’s clearing his throat.

  “I was born,” Adam says. He gets us going that way. It’s like “Once upon a time.”

  “I was born,” Rafael says, “on a farm …” His voice is quiet and soft but he’s not hard to listen to. Rafael’s voice is like Mr. Garcia’s trumpet. It tears me up to shreds. We all sit and listen to his story. The guy’s done a lot of things. I mean fifty-three is pretty old. Okay, not like seventy—but still he’s not exactly a kid anymore. But, see, there’s something about him that is like a boy. He wears jeans and Chuck Taylor’s and he just doesn’t have the look of an old guy. So Rafael has this very serious look on his face as he begins telling his story and his dark brown eyes don’t get darker, they get this light in them as he talks.

  “My mom named me Rafael because that was the name of a famous painter. She also told me it was the name of one of the angels—San Rafael. I never understood how some of the angels could also be saints. That always confused me. My mom was very religious and she really loved me. I hardly remember my dad.

  “They died when I was about five. I had brothers and sisters and we were all farmed out to our relatives. My twin sisters who were eight years old went with my aunt who didn’t have any kids. She’d always wanted girls, I think. I don’t know if I’m just making that up. I’m not sure. One of my uncles took my two little brothers. They were really little and it was easy to see why anyone would want them. They were two and three. Who wouldn’t want them? My uncle and aunt in California took my two older brothers—they were ten and twelve. My uncle owned a garage and I got the feeling that my two brothers were going to be working for him. I was right too. They both became mechanics.

  “And me? My uncle Vicente took me. My uncle Vicente was pretty young and I’d never liked him. There was something about him that really bothered me. He wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t. But he was the only one who wanted me. So, I went to live with him.

  “I don’t remember how my mom and dad died. I know what I was told but that’s different than remembering. It was a car accident. But I never knew the details and no one seemed to want to talk about it. My dad was a serious alcoholic so I always believed that my dad got himself killed while drinking and driving—and got my mom killed too. But that’s just an idea that I have. I don’t really know whether that’s true or not. I think a part of me wants to believe that my father was a drunk who killed himself and my mother. But the whole story of the car accident might not even be true. I don’t know what’s true. I guess I just made stories up in head. I sometimes hate myself for the not-so-beautiful stories I make up…”

  I hated when Rafael said he hated himself. Sometimes he would say something like that. I just didn’t like hearing that. Why would he want to hate himself? Okay, people don’t really want to hate themselves. I get that. It comes from somewhere deep inside and getting to that place is hard as hell. I get that too. This is my theory: the people who shouldn’t hate themselves, do hate themselves. And the people who should hate themselves, don’t hate themselves. The world is all backwards. See, this is one of the many reasons why God and I are not good friends.

  I stared at Rafael’s face and noticed the lines. They made him look old. And yet, sometimes, it didn’t seem like they were there at all and he looked kind of young. I watched him and the words coming out of him were like leaves floating in the air.

  “… not long after I went to live with my uncle Vicente, he started sleeping with me. He used to go to my bed. It all started, I don’t know, it seemed innocent. Almost nice and normal. He would go to my bed and he would just sleep with me. And he would hold me. And I thought that was nice. I liked that. I was five and I was sad. I missed my brothers and sisters and I missed my mom and dad and I was really lonely. And I liked that he would hold me. But then that changed and he started having sex with me—even though I didn’t exactly know what was happening.

  “It really hurt and I was really scared. Today, I’d use the word rape, but back then, I didn’t know that word and I just didn’t know how to name what was happening. I never said a word, nothing, not ever. I felt as if someone had sewn my lips shut. All I knew was that there was something wrong going on and I felt really, really dirty. Sometimes I would spend a lot of time in the shower trying to wash myself off because I wanted to be clean. I remember that. And I thought I’d never ever be clean again. And I hated everything about myself and wondered what it was that I did to make my uncle do the things he did. I knew I’d done something but I just didn’t know what.

  “I really wanted my uncle to go away, and, after a while, it was as if I wasn’t even there. He’d come into my room and take his clothes off and I would just go away somewhere. I would pretend I was a bird that was flying up in the sky and from up there I could see all the trees of the world and all the rivers. I would disappear into a world that didn’t exist. But it did exist. It existed for me. And I know that the life of the mind helped me to survive.

  “I was happy on the nights he didn’t come. He didn’t come in every night. You know, maybe two or three nights a week. This went on for a few years. Until I was about eight. I was thinking of running away, but I never did. I didn’t know where to go. And mo
stly, my uncle Vicente was nice to me. We didn’t talk much. I don’t really remember. I just remember that I was really sad and afraid and that I really wished that I could live at school.

  “I knew my uncle had a girlfriend and one day he came home and said he was going to get married and that maybe it was time for me to find a new place to live. And then he said, ‘You better not ever tell anybody what you made me do. If you tell anybody, they’ll know all about you and they won’t want you.’

  “I didn’t say anything. I just nodded. Who would want a boy who let his uncle do all those nasty things to him?

  “My aunt took me in, the one who’d taken my sisters. And I was happy. Sort of. She was really nice to me and I tried not to get in the way. The truth was happiness just went away.”

  Rafael looked around the room and drank from his bottle of water. I could see the tears running down his face, but he wasn’t making a sound.

  “I have dreams sometimes, I dream him. I dream that he comes to me. All my life, he’s come to me. Everything was okay for a few years. I was okay because I was living with my sisters and I loved them and I know they loved me. But there was something wrong with me—I knew that. I tried to pretend that I was normal. I wasn’t. But my aunt and uncle were pretty normal and they really loved my sisters and they did everything for them and I could see that my sisters were happy and smart and that their lives were normal. And me, I had become this very emotionally aloof boy who was distant and didn’t trust adults. I didn’t want to be that way but I was that way. I didn’t like talking to my aunt and uncle, and, really, they weren’t that interested in talking. Not to me anyway. I understood that they took me in because they felt sorry for me. I hated when people felt sorry for me. I felt like a dog who was pawing at a door.