Last Night I Sang to the Monster (15 page)

“Rafael, does it hurt?”

“Hurts like hell.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Tell me anything.” What I meant was tell me everything. And I wanted to yell out that I sometimes read his journal. It felt really bad that I couldn’t tell him. I mean, what if he decided that he hated me. I would hate me if I were him. I really would. I mean, I was me and I hated me. Why wouldn’t he hate me too?

“I’ve been hurting most of my life. I tried to pretend I wasn’t. I even believed my own lie. I’ve lived my entire life trying to avoid pain, Zach. That’s a terrible way to live. I don’t care any more if it hurts.”

“Will it ever stop hurting?”

“I don’t think so, Zach. If I’m working on a painting, and it doesn’t hurt, then the painting won’t matter. And if it doesn’t matter, then it isn’t real—then
I’m not
real.”

“But why does it have to hurt?”

“I don’t know.” And then he got this look and I knew he was thinking and so I waited for him to stop thinking because I knew he wanted to tell me something. “I have a new theory,” he said, “and the theory is this: if I develop a great capacity for feeling pain, then I am also developing a great capacity for feeling happiness.”

When he said
happiness,
he smiled. And it was one of his real smiles, not one of his clearing-his-throat smiles.

I was confused. The words
pain
and
happiness
stepped into my head. They were words on the pieces of paper lying on the floor of my brain. I didn’t know what to think of those pieces of paper. “Rafael?”

“Yeah?”

“Do we all have monsters?”

“Yes.”

“Why does God give us so many monsters?”

“You want to know my theory?”

“Sure.”

“I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“You mean, like your uncle.”

“Yeah, like my uncle. And you, Zach? Who gave you your monsters?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you
do
know.”

“I don’t like to think about it.”

Rafael was quiet for a while. He kept working on his painting.

All that raw emotion on his face really blew me away. I went back to my side of the room and thought that maybe it was time for me to start working on my own paintings. But painting was like talking. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.

And then Rafael said, “You know, Zach, I think sometimes we fall in
love with our monsters.”

How did he know—that I had thought the same thing? “Yeah, I guess so.” And then I just blurted out: “I’m going to see Susan tomorrow.”

Rafael stopped painting and looked up at me. “Good for you, Zach.”

“I don’t really want to go.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I won’t be,” I said.

I don’t think Rafael believed me. I kept thinking that sometimes God
did
give you a monster. And when God gave you a monster, well, then you were supposed to keep it forever. How could it be right to get rid of a monster that God gave you? How could you hate what God gave you? But the thing is I had to figure out what the monster wanted.

Maybe that was the key to the whole mystery—figuring out what the hell my monster wanted before he ripped me to pieces.

Two nights later, another storm. The wind was tearing up the night.

I woke up and listened. Rafael was awake. I don’t know how I knew that but I could sense him. He liked listening to storms—same as me. I finally got up and looked out the window. It was snowing. Again. I went back to bed and kept listening. I imagined what it would be like to be the wind. I thought of the chart Adam had put on the board. If I were the wind, I could be in charge.

I was awake as a morning bird. I was. I finally decided to get up and go have a cigarette.

“Put on your coat,” Rafael whispered.

“I will,” I said. Some days, I just couldn’t take it that he cared.

As I walked into the cold, I smiled. I liked the cold wind on my face. I liked the way it made me feel. When I got to the smoking pit, I lit up a cigarette. I took the smoke into my lungs and closed my eyes and thought of Susan. I heard her voice:
Okay, Zach, you can close your eyes or you can leave them open. Just breathe deep, just follow my lead.
I heard my own breathing, the
loudness of it and the softness of it too. Yeah, it had all been so strange, that Breathwork thing, and I’d cried. I’d just cried. The need to cry had just been too much, too strong to hold back and I’d just howled and my lips had quivered and then afterwards, when I’d finally stopped crying, Susan had whispered:
Okay, just relax the rest of the day. Be good to yourself. And I want you to write in your journal.
It had all felt so weird, even when I was writing in my journal as if the words were water and they were just pouring out onto the page and I just kept writing over and over
Mom, Dad, Santiago, Mom, Dad, Santiago, Mom, Dad, Santiago.
Three pages and I just couldn’t stop.

I lit another cigarette and laughed. Here I was at the smoking pit in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, smoking cigarettes and remembering. I couldn’t decide anymore if remembering was a good thing or a bad thing. What if remembering did nothing? What if I stayed like this forever?

I liked the cold just then.

I liked that I was so sober.

I liked that I didn’t have any bourbon flowing through me. And for a moment, just a very small and tiny moment, I felt alive and almost free. It was weird to feel that rush of happiness. It was so strange and beautiful. So much better than cocaine.

I lit another cigarette and noticed someone walking toward the smoking pit. Even before I could make out his face, I knew it was Sharkey.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, your fucking self,” he said.

I laughed and we both hugged ourselves in the cold.

“We’re nuts,” he said.

“Yeah, we’re nuts.”

“But I’m really nuts,” he said. “Rafael had to wake me up again. I was sleepwalking. I was about to walk out the door in my frickin’ undies. That Rafael. He’s like a dog on alert.”

“I like dogs,” I said.

“Me too.” He lit a cigarette. “Rafael’s going to be okay,” he said. “I think he’s really going to be okay.”

“I think so too.”

“Sharkey, when you’re old, are you going to get it?”

“Get what?”

“Whatever the hell it is that we’re supposed to get.”

“Hell, I’m never going to be as old as Rafael.”

“Fifty-three, well, that’s not so old, not really.”

“Well, I’m never going to live to be fifty-three.”

That made me sad, to think that Sharkey believed he wouldn’t live to be very old. That made me really sad and numbed out. And then I heard Sharkey’s voice again. “What about
us,
Zach?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want me to tell you the truth?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be okay. I don’t think I have it in me.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“
It is true, Zach.
”

“But you’re doing all this work.”

“I don’t think I am, Zach.”

“So talk to Adam,” I said. “Adam will help you.”

“What will Adam do?”

“He’ll talk to you. He’ll help you.”

“No. I’m just a job for Adam. I’m not anything more than that.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true, Zach.”

“He cares about us.”

“He gets paid to care about us.”

“Oh, like he’s getting rich caring about us.”

“Oh, so now you’re his big friend? What has Adam ever done for you, Zach?”

“He’s trying to help me.”

“Oh, so he get’s all this fucking extra credit because he’s doing his job?”

That really made me mad. Sharkey was in a bad space and he was taking it all out on Adam.
And that really made me mad.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What Adam feels for me or for you and whether he likes or doesn’t
like us, it doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, dude.”

“Yes, I do.” I was thinking of Rafael. I was thinking of Mr. Garcia’s trumpet. “This is my new theory, dude. It’s what
I
think that matters. It’s what
I
feel.”

“Okay, Zachy, what do you think? What do you feel?”

I wanted to tell him that I loved Adam and that I loved Rafael and that I loved him too. And that was what really mattered. But that’s not what I said. Love was just another secret I was keeping. Another secret I would never tell the group or anybody. But at least I was telling myself. Telling myself mattered. “You know what I feel?” I said. “I feel like having another cigarette.”

He laughed. We both laughed.

We smoked another cigarette and stood out in the cold.

I hated winter.

Sharkey was thinking his own thoughts and I was thinking mine. I was thinking I was too much in love with the night. It was no good to be in love with the night.

Sharkey and I walked back to Cabin 9 in the snow. When we entered the cabin, Rafael was awake, writing in his journal. He looked up at us and waved. He looked small and I couldn’t decide if he looked like a little old man or a boy. That was a really strange thing to think but that’s what entered into my head. I wondered what he was writing. I bet it was something really beautiful. And the thought entered into my head that I would like to be the words on the page that Rafael was writing. I was back to that pieces-of-paper thing and I wondered about my own strange thoughts.

As I lay in bed, I waited for Rafael to stop writing and turn off the light. Sharkey was already asleep and he was tossing and turning and mumbling things. Sharkey never got any rest. Maybe God didn’t write
rest
on his heart. I got to thinking about stuff. I was supposed to be asleep. But
I wasn’t. I was either dreaming something or I was wide awake. Either way, there was a lot of action going on in my head.

This is what I was writing on the chalkboard in my brain:

I wake up from my dream.

In the dream, I am lying on the side of a road.

I am lying there like a dog who has been hit by a car.

I can see myself lying there.

I keep wanting to wake me up, the me that is lying on the side of the road. I keep thinking that the me on the side of the road is lying there dead.

I keep telling him to get up, get up. And then I hear Rafael’s voice.

“Are you okay, Zach?”

I am
not
okay.

I do not know what it means to be okay. I have never known and maybe I will never know.

Okay is just a word I use so I won’t have to talk about what’s inside.

Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.

There is something inside me that is killing me.

There is something inside me that wants to let whatever is killing me do its job. I think I could walk into the night and howl like a coyote, howl so the monster could find me and do to me whatever it wanted to do to
me. I think I could let the storm swallow me up.

The monster and the night and the storm—they are the same. They want me dead.

“Are you okay, Zach?”

The monster. The night. The winter.

The monster, the night, the winter—they want me dead.

“Zach?”

“It was just another dream.” That is what I hear myself whisper.

I wish I was a boy. I wish Rafael really was my father and he could hold me in his arms and sing to me and chase the monster away.

Adam looks at me with his blue eyes that see me but don’t see me.

Today his eyes look like they have pieces of green in them. Like the leaves of summer. I think this is a strange thing to think because it’s so cold outside and the skies are dark. I think of Mr. Garcia’s black eyes that were darker than any night but somehow I could see the sky there, in his black eyes and I think that if only the night looked like Mr. Garcia’s eyes then I would never be afraid of the night ever again. And I think of Rafael’s eyes that are brown and always seem to smile when he looks at me and his soft voice. I am trying to think what color my eyes are and I don’t remember. I know the color of Adam’s eyes. I know the color of Rafael’s eyes. I know the color of Mr. Garcia’s eyes. I don’t know the color of mine. I wonder what it would be like to be Adam or Mr. Garcia and or Rafael. But I’m me. And even when I grow older I’ll still be me. I think of what Sharkey said, that he would never live to be as old as Rafael and I wonder if I will live. Will I live? Will I live? Will I live?