A Love Like Blood (2 page)

I
nside congested markets selling curry-flavored worms, images of disembodied hands are everywhere – in logos, pottery, graffiti, tattoos, jewelry, clothing, and charms. The image symbolizes protection. In Lama Doonka, where my grandfather is from, the symbol is eight-fingered. Finding villagers with six or seven fingers is as common as finding a traveling troupe of baboons. Eight-fingered villagers are treated like gods but are born once every one hundred years. My Father's unshakeable nickname growing up on the far North Side of Chicago was “Hand.” His crueler friends would make tongue-clicking sounds around his name as if dressing it in quotes, but he smiled hearing it. Some of his closest childhood friends have only recently discovered why the nickname stuck. And, he smiles telling them. He moved like a professional illusionist, distracting them with overexaggerated gestures, pulling attention to his left side. The performance prevented them from gasping for breath at his right hand.

The human eye is easy to mislead, but cameras tell the truth or a distorted version of the truth. Of the thousands of photographs that I have of him, in only two are his right hand entirely visible. The first is a wedding picture buried in a bottom bedroom drawer. His hand is blurry and unremarkable from the wide angle of the living room. In the second picture, he is looming in Union Station inside the marble terminal. Tight concentration is in his face, and a Nikon camera is in his hand. He is photographing an older man in secret that is photographing his adult son. The son, partly in shadow, is cradling an infant in the crook of his arm at a slight incline. A dark-colored blanket insinuates the child's sex. Shot from his right side, the focal point of the image is my father. A crack in the tile runs from the top of his hand and connects him to the other men like a vein; it is closer to the skin. From son to father and father to son, our relationships are equal in blood; however, our trinities are unrelated and unknowable. Five or six once-overs might be required to realize that his hand looks rather peculiar, and then the viewer notices it: skin, soft tissue, a bone with a joint, two thumbs. Fortunately, the crash of noise and Father's concentration muted the clicks of my camera.

Water plopped in fours somewhere inside my high school's darkroom. The room felt restrictive from its arrangement of tables. It smelled older too than the rest of the school as if it had been torn out of another building and dropped into ours. Or maybe the room had been born a restroom, and the adjacent storage room walls were hammered into dust. Dust, dirt, moisture, and hands age restrooms faster than other rooms. In the other prints from Union Station, I rubbed my fingers across Father's eyes, feeling for familiarity. But I only found the disconnected stare of a man to self-involved to care about anyone else but his lover, his work. Though someone else who saw the pictures might think, that he had found a new way of talking in silence. My fingers wrinkled like an elderly man's by the time the pictures had dried. I tried to mimic the intensity on his face without a mirror to face. The way lines creased in the space between his eyebrows and the beginning of his nose; I could not copy, even when mashing the points together. A microwave beeped three times on the other side of the wall where I stood. Something like a saucer or coffee mug scraped the glass, and a minute later, I handed my life to my instructor.

“Hands are more expressive than faces. You've captured that here,” he said.

Weeks later, he added the photograph was one of my strongest during a portfolio review. Then, he pulled it closer and rubbed his lips with his finger. While watching his lips mouth soundless words, I missed him reaching into his desk and realized this after a magnifying glass smashed my father's head. What the magnifying glass could not show, being in black and white, was the blood under his thumb, nor the spotted tissue beside my foot. The photograph embodies every lesson that I have learned from Father as a photographer – from image structure and contrast and balance to darkroom editing and hand placement. A real education is unconscious seduction. Want and risk in wanting wait under the laurel wreath. However, Father has never seen the print and never will, hopefully. He would rip it up into a million little pieces and demand I hand over the negative.

Whenever we find ourselves staring through lenses, he loves to say, a photographer's greatest weapons are his hands not his eyes. I know that to be true firsthand.

T
hrough the fisheye peephole, the crimson and clay-colored world kindles under the late afternoon sun. Careful not to cause a sound, I crack the door and peek out, listening for the tap tap of church shoes. A watch ticks. My knee bangs against the doorframe. Purple leaves on a head-high shrub shake. I jerk back, seeing a hand move, and relax. Brett nods, standing at the bottom of the steps.

“I'll help you,” he says.

Tiptoeing down into danger, I glance in both directions first. Then, I leap looking towards Brett's house; however, he loops his arm around my arm. Now, I cannot disappear. The puffed-up paint splatter itches rubbing against my skin. Glancing at the truck and then his face, I stop convinced I am with an aged version of him. Somehow time has sped up and spun a net around him, plucking out his youth as if it were nose hairs. His face was mannified, although now it is gaunt. The skin under his eyes looks hollow. In his eyes, fear appears to be a foreign feeling. His boots march on the path toward an enemy, whose hands are sharper than thorns. A flattened box spins in the air from the back of the truck to the driveway. Red-bricked and with cobweb cracks, the driveway is a reminder of Father's violence. The bloated inside of the truck is a visual catalog of his madness. On the seven-hour drive, every pothole that rattled the wheels was a fist in my gut. I convinced myself that the sardined furniture was crushing up my cameras. Being pig-headed, he selected the mid-sized rental over the longer truck that we needed to save eight dollars and forty-five cents. Two bloody tissues slide on top of a box labeled hot lights from boxes moving. Scuff marks cover the outside. Lenses and, under the word, for the studio, is written in parenthesis on the box to my right. Father's forehead wrinkles pushing a bundle of light stands to the truck's edge. A burlap rice sack is wrapped around the stands, and the bundle is tied together with an electrical cord. Each stand weighs thirty pounds to support heavier photography equipment. The sack, cord, and stands can turn into instruments of torture at any moment. Brett and I grab opposite ends of the sack together in a synchronized movement.

“Stop. He doesn't need your help,” Father says.

“Mr. Tynes, yes he does.”

“No, he doesn't. He needs to stop being weak.”

Glassy-eyed and focusing his fury on me, he tucks his left fist under his right triceps and his right fist under his left triceps. His way is the only way a man should cross his arms, according to him. The gesture is a period at the end of a sentence that does not need words. An entire non-verbal vocabulary exists for his violence.

“No, I can manage,” I say to Brett.

Hesitating at first, he sets his side of the sack down at a long-drawn-out pace. Father's eyes throw daggers at the damned world beneath his worn sandals. The thick layer of shea butter that I smoothed over my face is sweating off in the Midwest heat. Milky beads drip to the sack. My thin shirt sticks to my chest and back while I fight with myself how to hold the stands. I struggle to carry them, cradled in my arms, for five feet and stop.

From across the yard, Brett's blond father says, “help him,” with a buttery tenderness that is unfamiliar to my ears.

He waddles to the truck with two paint buckets in one hand and a toolbox in the other. Brett smirks as Father nods down at us and spits. I close my eyes before the pink goo splats on the ground. Father's face is stone but pockmarked with resentment. The irony is that now he will bless Brett helping me out of respect for his father. Somali men refuse to shame other men to their face. The resentment in his face settles into blankness. Even without a mirror to verify it, I know my face is as blank as his. Brett's face reverses back into his youth.

Our bodies, ready for the job at hand, float up from the cobwebs. The purple leaves shake as they scrape my arm. Glancing over my shoulder, I step inside the warm living room and look in front of me and fixate on Brett's body. Muscle fibers in his arms fill up with blood, showing off his veins. His veins twist like politics
on his skin. Blood rushes between my legs as we lower the stands to the floor. The lines of his jeans are swollen with puberty and milk. I ask in secret with my hands to show me what is underneath. Turning my back to Brett, I adjust myself through my khakis and move it up into a less noticeable position. His face is a face that I know and do not know. Athletic, hirsute, strong-featured, and with large feet, he is every combination of the men featured in my non-porn porn collection. The videotapes, which are exercise workouts, are in the last place my father would rummage through, a satchel with an angel's face printed on the front and back.

With my back to Brett, I say, “It will probably take us all day to unload everything.”

“Can I ask you something? How do you deal with your dad's cruelness?”

I start to respond, but the truth might frighten him. My second answer feels dishonest and borrowed. That is the difficulty with language, finding the purest way to describe emotions, without having the appearance of stealing rented words. But then again, he should be as terrified as I am. My father is capable of anything, even killing a child. Brett only knows his father, paint, hammers, wood, and the splinters in his hands.

In my silence, Brett says, “You need to stand up to him.”

I shake my head in agreement; however, I know the moment I fight my Father, will be the moment he pulverizes my body into a soupy pulp. Yes, I have wanted to say – curse word – you to him two hundred times today, but my brothers and I are not allowed to swear. Respectable Catholics cannot pollute God's breath with disrespectful language, especially Black Cuban Catholics.

“You need to speak up for yourself.”

“It is not that simple. Your father is not Somali. If he were, you would understand.”

“You shouldn't put up with his bullshit.”

A soft rattling like ice shaking in a plastic cup startles me. The pain in my face forces my feet to take a small step to the right away from Brett. I take another step. Junior, my older brother and Father's favorite son, tugs the dolly into the living room. Brett whispers something, but the words sound like gibberish. White bungee cords secure four boxes down to the dolly by its handle. My younger brother speed walks around Junior huffing, carrying two black-framed posters.

“Here,” Ricky says, leaning the blown-up photographs forward for me to grab, and then he races up the stairs, pumping his arms up in the air.

“Who is this?” Brett asks, pointing to the woman posed in the first poster.

“Marian Anderson. Richard Avedon, my idol, shot this.”

The black and white image has a gypsy-like quality. Strings of multi-shaded beads are around Marian's neck. Her long, jet-black hair streams across her high cheekbones. Her hair is wild and windswept and elegant. The first time I stumbled upon this picture at Whitney Museum, I had to reread the description five times. In every other picture of the opera singer I had seen, she had perfectly coiffed hair, was put together, sequined, furred, ready to sing a standing ovation worthy performance. This picture, shot from the neck up, is unflattering, makeup-less, focused on her voice. She is singing to Richard against a stark white background. Later that day, I bought every album of hers that I could find at a music store down the street from the museum.

Junior heaves, straining himself, setting one of the boxes on the ground. A noise follows that only a man designed like him can release in public – he breaks wind. Being pudgy and drab, he could tumble into a pool of pink glitter and sashay out wearing a tiara and tutu, and no one would question his manhood. That may be the reason Father wants to mold me into a younger version of Junior; being that Junior is a younger version of Father.

“If you're free tomorrow,” I say to Brett. “We will be setting up our studio in downtown on Main.”

I regret saying it as it leaves my lips.

Brett rubs the back of his curly head in a slow, forward sweep to his forehead, down to his face and spreads his fingers open. The gesture is seductive and playful. He pinches his nose, cocks his head up saying, “downtown,” and shakes his head no.

And, I am grateful for that answer.

As we walk back outside, the scent of rosemary weighs down the warm air. Brett drapes his arm around my shoulder in a graceful movement. A quiet celebration is happening, but I want to continue away from the eyes of everyone else. This physical closeness, might appear vulgar to my father, and lead to punches. Natural excitement turns to terror as his arm remains in place. If I move out of his embrace, that might confuse him. Step, step, and I can almost catch a glimpse of the back of the truck, where my father is praying. I slow my pace, but my legs tremble. Father's soaked back is facing us. The pressure of his hand lightens sliding down my body. I snatch my hand away as he squeezes it. Father spins around holding a box that he insisted I tape up earlier. A resealable bag, matchsticks, frankincense, two chunks of charcoal, an incense burner with one handle, and a bundle of dried sage (to bless the house) are inside it. Inside the resealable bag, there are spearmint leaves, black tea leaves, khat leaves, cardamom powder, and a smaller bag with pills.

“Young man, your father, said you needed to be somewhere right now,” Father says.

“I completely forgot,” Brett says and checks his sports watch. Pink flashes itself, a pig pink, like where babies come from, and a finger increases its size. The rubber band on his wrist is a rainbow: pink leads to purple, purple leads to soft blue and soft blue leads to pink.

“He already left. You should go,” Father says. “And thank your father for the cart. I'll grab it. Junior,” Father yells as loud as he can toward the house. “Bring that cart back.”

“Keep it. You still have more to move,” Brett says. “Nice meeting you Mr. Tynes and Carsten.”

At the touch of his calloused hand, I transform into a boy disconnected from his prepubescent body. Blood engorges between my legs, and I become firmer and enlarged and it is impossible to disguise it with Brett shaking my hand. As his hand lowers, his eyes also lower. I dig my sweaty hands in my pocket to readjust myself. My body, having a built-in alarm clock between my legs, buzzes and vibrates when it finds a man attractive. I am not certain; however if I will be able to reveal to my Father that I am attracted to men.

With his right hand, Father taps his forehead, then his chest, his left shoulder, then his right shoulder and the boxes behind him become an altar.

“Carsten,” he says in a tone reserved for lessons on manhood. “Carsten,” he screams and kicks me in the shoulder. “Don't hang out with that boy. He's khaniis.”

Hearing that abrasive word forces me to remember every lie that I have torn from my tongue, and given to my Father in the past year.