Part 77 (1/2)

She sighed and wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n, wondering what to say and how to say it.

”Your dad had a hard childhood,” she began, wondering where to tread and what to reveal.

My innocent eyes compelled her to continue speaking.

”I don't really know how to explain it, because I'm not sure if I understand it myself. He just got tired of poverty and despair.”

”But if there's a good bakery there, and other good businesses are there, can it be all that bad?”

”I don't know, honey. But he hates everything that reminds him of there, and he loves anything that's different,” she said.

Then I heard her sniffle before her head went down. She wept silently while fingering her wedding band.

That afternoon, my mother's family poured into our home to celebrate my birthday. My mom dished up the cake while my dad served drinks. He kept his gla.s.s filled, and every time he got the chance, he refilled the gla.s.s of my mom's younger sister. She smiled appreciatively and soon she began giggling whenever he approached. Soon, the two of them disappeared. Together.

THING THREE OF THREE.

My mother was gone. She left us at the end of the summer. Just walked away, leaving a note for my father in her stead.

James, I should have known. I should have known that you could never love me when you hate yourself. I thought I could help heal you. Lift you up. Lead you to love, but you never even lit the path.

Know that I don't hate you. I don't hate my sister. I don't hate any of the others. I don't hate my child. Please make sure she knows that. I just need to preserve myself since no one else will.

I love you. Tell Shana that I love her with all of my heart, but I have to go. Please love her, James. Let her know that the skin she's in is not a curse. Make her know that she has a place between black and white.

Elizabeth He folded up her letter and put it in a drawer. He never mentioned her again.

THE LENS.

I fell in love with the lens when I was fifteen. In that stage of swirling emotions, I dug the way I could manipulate the lens and create flatness. Flatness of emotion and energy. Yet if I wished, I could also capture frenzy and excitement. The camera and the lens became my means of control. Despite the circ.u.mstances surrounding me, despite the drama, I could create peace. Thinking of it still gives me a rush, and in my egomaniacal moments, I imagine, just for a split second, what it's like to be G.o.d.

Around my high school, I came to be known as something of a beatnik, what with my weed-smoking and endless supply of black clothes. I was the Herb Ritz of Girls' High. I was the Photography Club and the Art Club. I didn't like taking pictures for the newspaper or the yearbook because the shots were always so staged.

”Here's Becky, the president of Rotary Interact. Smile, Becky.”

Click.

”Here's Yolanda, captain of the basketball team. Yolanda, hold up that basketball for us and say cheese.”

Click.

Even the ones that were supposed to be candid were fake.

”See the Key Club as they box up the donations from this year's Christmas Drive. Aren't they magnanimous?”

Click.

All people have an image they want to convey, a way they want to be seen. Then, there's the truth. That's what I try to capture on film. The truth. But truth is fleeting. Yet still I try.

HIM.

I've always tried to freeze people in the moment their raw purity is exposed. Those moments just come to me. I can't create them. So I must wait. That's what I was doing the first time I saw him.

He raced into my peripheral vision as I sat on a bench on Thirteenth Street in the heart of Temple University's campus. Leaning my back against the table, my camera resting on my stomach, I felt his heat before I saw him. I fumbled for my camera, my breath catching in my chest as I watched the northbound specimen in admiration. His white tank top revealed his glowing golden skin. His tight shoulders led to arms etched with muscles. His torso was lean; his stomach, flat. His behind was tight and high, and his legs, ripped with muscles, carried him quickly as he sprinted away.

Something stayed with me long after he was gone. Though his face looked relaxed, his hands were drawn into tight fists, telling me that his heart was torn. I wanted to get inside of that torn heart, to mend it from the inside out.

ONE O'CLOCK.

I determined that with his runner's discipline, he was a creature of habit. That habit would lead him back to Thirteenth Street where he would run north like his ancestors had probably done generations before. He would pa.s.s briefly through my life again at one o'clock. I sat ready, like a cheetah waiting to pounce, camera poised to capture his naked edge.

Again I felt his heat before I saw him. I wondered what it was about him that made me sense his presence. It was like I was a heat-seeking missile, and he was my target, only that a.n.a.logy made me feel too predatory. Whatever it was, whatever I called it, it drew me toward him, and I hoped that the camera's eye could catch and preserve it until I could catch him.

I lifted the camera to my eye and pointed it in his direction, moving slowly to match his pace as he approached.

Click.

Calm.

Click.

Ease.

Click.

Despair.

Click.

Peace.

Click.

Pleasure.

Click.

Pain.

Click.

Happiness.

Click.

A nod and a smile at me.