Tell
us, Celio, what the white boy told you that day. Celio at twenty-two, with an
unfortunate name, always the pause when you say it. Tell us what he told you,
though we already know what he told you because he tells the same story to everyone,
all of usweve all met him. Tell us about the town in Maine where he
grew up, the small town where it snows until April sometimes, flakes as late as
May one year when he was six. You pictured leaves falling, didnt youlike
usleaves bright red, the way they gleam gold on calendars when you flip
to October? Tell us about the family plot where he hopes to be buried someday,
no matter who he winds up with, and how he looked at you when he said that. Did
you feel the little pull of loss already beginning when he mentioned it? Tell
us when exactly he mentioned the family gravewas it after the first drink
or the second, or did he wait until you were out of the bar? Tell us if he asked
anything about you, where you grew up in Texasnear Corpus Christi or up
by Abilene?and if mattered to him, Texas geography and where your people
are buried. We have our guesses. Celio,
weve been there, all of us, the befores, the way-back-whens. On the second
visit to his apartment, the morning after, while he made you coffee, he handed
all of us (most of us) to you in that photo album. Didnt he? Ask yourself
what he was asking you to see, the judgment that was shining in your eyes as you
went over each of our faces, this one smiling, this one holding his arm, this
one resistant to his clutching. Did you make up a story for some of us, a beginning
and a middle and an end? Did you wonder if some of us still hadnt seen the
end, still in his life somehow? Did you ask how anyone can say Its over
to a man like the one in the last picture, the one with the brilliant white shirt
and skin as dark as yours, his face beaming back what he can do better than you?
Celio, you know,
all of these stories, all of these peoplethey begin the same way. The introductions,
the essential information, where you live and what you do and how old you are.
But what happens afterwardwhat anyone says nextis up in the air. All
of us tell our stories in the same way, sitting on the barstool, drink in hand,
leaning in to say it louder in the listening ear. Even when we are asked to repeat
something, we say it in the exact same way. So we dont blame him, Celio,
for his being so predictable. But here you are so soon after having met him and
already were traveling with you as the sharp, remembered glimpses of men
smiling at a camera. Already you see us in the mirror as you get dressed for dinner
with him (dinner! a romantic dinner!) on his invitation, the shirt not quite right,
the hair not quite set. We are with you as doubt and distrust, the way we all
walk around listening to our own voices (I, me, Celio) or to a snatch of music
(heard in the grocery store) that we cant get rid of. We are there smiling
back at you, some of us not yet ended, and we can help if you tell us some more.
Tell us some more about what he has told you. At
the dinner at that restaurant where he treated you to wine, did he tell you the
story about how he almost went to that park? He had wanted to talk about his first
time, didnt he, but did not ask about yours. And yet you did not mind because
the way he talked at length about himself fascinated you, the way he never moved
his eyes from yours to search for the right words. Did he tell you about the urge
he had at twenty (so late for some people, just the right age for others) to go
to that park and how he hadnt because of what he had read in the newspaper
one morning? How did he describe the story of the man beaten to death with a hammer
in that park? He said he felt for him; he said he thought that could
have been me. And though you closed your eyes in sympathy for that man, you
pictured the park, didnt you? And the hammerthe awl-honed leather
handle, the claw hook and the flat shiny head, the latch where it hung in a garage,
the lifting of it and the tucking in a jacketpictured so clearly you could
see it being used against him, this white boy treating you to wine in a nice restaurant.
You had another jolt of coming loss, Celiowe know, we did toostaring
at him across the table and how lucky we were to be with him. You grimaced at
which end of the hammer would be worsethe claw hook or the flat shiny headand
you moved your hand to his knee under the table. You started thinking about how
passionate you would be later in gratitude to how close he had come and in all
of that, you neither told your story of a first time nor heard when his first
time really was. Really!look how crafty he is! Celio,
theres a point to saving you, just as there is a reason (its true!)
why you cant rid yourself of that random song in your head, those days you
happen to have one. It is so soon, and already you are thinking of how right things
seemthe good job he has, though he is only twenty-four; the fact that other
men notice how handsome he is; the tautness of his back when you hold your hands
there; his friends each prettier than the next; the button he pushes to roll down
the window of his car as youre driving and your hair flies like in the movies;
the calls to say good night if youre not staying over; the note he leaves
on his bedroom nightstand when he goes quietly to work in the morning and trusts
you sleepy in his apartment; the pleasure you feel when he introduces you and
his pretty friends look back. Its all there, your heart a spark of lightning.
Were here to tell you something. He is going to tell you (we know) about
how your heart is a spark of lightning. Tell him that first. See what he does.
See what he does when you tell him that walking down the street with him is like
walking with light itself. Say it earnestly. Say it with feeling, like the words
came to you because you stared at him so long. Tap your index finger to your temple
(the right one) and say Youre getting in here. We
want you to surprise himsooner than laterto save you, Celio. Because
he has told you all that he wants to tell you right now about Maine, about the
family you will never meet, about the town you will never see. And he is afraid
to ask about where you are from. We have told him thingsabout houses falling
apart in Arizona, in California; about the rotted kitchen counters in a Brownsville
apartment and how the snails appeared through the plumbing, the Morton salt canister
by the sink; about how two nails and a piece of heavy string made for a lock in
houses like ours; about the dog out back dragging a heavy chain around a lemon
tree and made mean with a stick; about pink and aqua paint being the cheapest,
but still the walls everywhere remained chipped; about the chalky film sticking
in our throats from powdered milk; about men living twenty to a house on all corners
of our neighborhoods, and that was normal; about our brothers rooms out
back, the window screens rusting and peeling and letting in the humid night air;
about the aunt who made money by selling dolls, crocheted dresses with hidden
Coke cans serving as the torsos; about the $90 encyclopedia our mothers bought
for nothing, the roaches trapped between the pages; about tea when we were hungry;
about lice outbreaks at school two times a year, guaranteed; about how the boys
in town still grew impossibly muscular through all of this and we couldnt
have them; about the guilt of having cousins who still live like this in Colorado,
in New Mexico; about how we would never go back. Tell
him, Celio, like we told him. Maybe youre the one. Maybe he will not stop
telling you the things he is telling you. Maybe he will not mention one of us
to you, how you remind him of one of us, how it is too painful for things to go
any further. He will tell you this anyway, sooner or later, because he is not
at that point in my life right now. So get in his head, Celio. At least for
us. Give us something about Corpus Christi or Abilene or wherever you are from.
Give us something about where you think you are headed. Were all in ittell
him so that he has the whole story, so many piecesand he will come back
to one of us. Because it happens, how we all revisit what weve done and
been. He is going to look back and reconsider someday and he will have some of
the story straight if you do your part. Were sure of it! Do it, Celio. Give
it all up to him, like we did. Tell him your whole story and see which one of
us he comes back to. |