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When Quincy told me that stuff about love, I think he was specifically talking about something he had been going through. Let me ask you this, Trinna: At the time, why would I take anybody except Quincy’s advice on the subject of the heart?
We were kids with silly ideas. I figured Quincy’s ideas on love and relationships made more sense than, let’s say, Charles’s. Unlike Charles, I thought a guy could have a perfectly fine, passionate relationship without igniting someone’s vagina. Then there was Bixby, who advised me to stay the hell away from Sandra. That couldn’t have been the right thing to do, no matter his reasoning. What did my own gut say? Really, nothing. I froze at the thought of her.
I went with Quincy’s advice of becoming a rock star in her eyes. If I showed her how amazing I was, I’d stand out.
No matter how unique, if you do normal things long enough, you become normal. If you do what most people do on the regular, then it’s normal. Go to school, get good grades, make friends with people who probably don’t care for you, get a job millions of others have, pretend bad jokes are funny. If you do what I can do, there is probably no place in any of this for you.
My mom left because she found out I wasn’t normal. She left because of my rock star ability.
The truth is, you aren’t always what you do or don’t do. Most of the time, you’re what people see you as. I’m normal, as long as nobody knows me.
Despite being afraid to scare her off, I called her up.
She answered as if it was a business call. “Hello. Dunbar residence.”
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
“Just saying what’s up. Maybe you want to meet up tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” Shocked like she didn’t know I wanted to hang out. “Why night?”
In the afternoon there would be too many people. “I’ve got something to show and tell you.”
“Don’t know. I might be busy.”
“Make it so you’re not busy.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she said.
“What are you doing to make you busy?”
“Family stuff. I can get out of it. Where do you want to meet?”
“My place.”
“Your dad doesn’t like me.”
“Your place,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea either. The family stuff.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“If nothing’s wrong, then what’s wrong?”
“You sound funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You sound different.”
“I had coffee at dinner.” I was nervous to ask her out.
“I don’t like the suspense. Why don’t we meet tonight?”
“Oh shit. Tonight? Can you do that?”
“What time? When?”
“How ‘bout at the park after it’s dark.”
“That sounds...smart?” she said.
“We’ll be fine. Won’t be there for too long.”
“What time? I’d rather have a time.”
“Let’s meet down the street from your house in two hours.”
“It’s a date,” she said.
I had the date.
***
We met on the corner close to her house. We lived a few miles from the park. It’d be a good walk.
How she dressed, it could have been an actual date. I had shown up in shorts and tennis shoes. She had her hair brushed all to one side, and wore a formfitting but loose, sky-blue dress. I can see it like it all happened moments ago.
Quincy had advised me to be honest. So I was. She was pretty as hell. I told her exactly that.
She walked with her hands behind her back, hid them from me.
“What’d you want to tell me?” she said, averting her eyes.
“It’s more show you.”
She looked me up and down and around my back, as if I kept a secret behind me. “What’d you want to show me?”
“You’ll see.”
“It’s not your penis, is it?”
“Huh.”
“Just checking. They say guys won’t stick around unless you give them that one thing.”
“What thing?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t make me say it.”
I knew what she meant. “That’s not what I want to show you.”
“Uh huh. You didn’t want to give me...the friction?” She used air quotes when she said it.
It took me a second, but I caught on she had been kidding with me. “I’m cool frictionless.”
“You can be the frictionless boy I know.”
We were less than a block from the park.
I took my hands out of my pockets, got close to her, and gently grabbed her hand. I had never romantically held a girl’s hand. In my mind, we would soon kiss, deeply gaze at each other, kiss some more, and then somehow end up in Bixby’s bed having sex.
At the park, I ran ahead to the swings where she had sat years ago when I made the sand deer.
She said, “As much as I love the swings...”
Streetlamps dimly lit the park from the walkway that divided it. Parts of the park was mostly in shadow. Although our neighborhood hadn’t been known for its crime, it had its share of homeless, its share of gang members. It couldn’t have been the safest place at that time of night.
“You said it wouldn’t take long.” Sandra looked paranoid as hell, searching in the darkness for muggers.
To calm her, I grabbed her hands, told her nobody would do anything to us if I stood with her.
“Let’s not be too long, anyway,” she said.
Clouds hovered over us like soft, invading spaceships. A breeze kicked in, blowing her hair, exposing her neck.
“Do you remember the day we first met?” I said.
She closed her eyes. “Do I remember? Hmmm. Maybe. Your mom was panicked about something. I think I saw what you did. I think. Did you... I don’t know how to say it.”
She had known all along.
I thought back to all the times I was too scared to talk to her, all the wasted time. I thought it a relief that, come to find out, she had always accepted me. She was my home, as I always felt she had been. A certain gravity instantly removed itself from my body.
“I thought you’d be afraid,” I said.
“I am afraid. Not in a bad way.”
“Are you for sure?”
“I get scared before talking to important people. It’s the best part about meeting them. I was scared to come out here with you. That’s the best part.”
“You’re important to me too.”
Then we held hands.
“A lot happened that day, you know.” I told her, “My dad heard about your dad being with us at the park. Made him all kinds of jealous. It’s basically why they broke up.”
“Why who broke up.”
“My mom and dad. Dana and Bixby.”
She gazed at me. “My dad is not why your parents broke up.”
“After we left the park that day, my mom told Dad about what had happened with my sand deer—”
“—That’s what it was? A deer?”
“Was supposed to be. What she told him about me at the park was so crazy that he focused on the only thing that made sense about her story—the fact that another man was at the park with us. Your dad. Something that small, in the long run, broke them up. Not anything to do with your dad, really. He seems really cool.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What freaked my mom out was I took sand,” I leaned over and lifted some sand into my hand, “and molded it into something.” A bunch of the sand blew away in the breeze. “What I molded shocked her so much that she jumped to her feet in a panic.”
I tossed the rest of the sand into the air. We watched it slowly descend on the ground in flakes of sparkling dust. Gradually, the sand remaining in the air morphed into silhouettes of me and her as small kids. The sand versions of us became dense, dirt individuals. In the details, even in the little light we had, a person could tell, it was us sitting next to one another, in sand form. Those were my sand cheeks, and that was her sand dress. From about ten feet away, we listened to the sand versions of ourselves whisper something we couldn’t clearly hear.
Looking at them couldn’t have been more amazing. I had no clue what Sandra’s expression meant: her mouth open, eyebrows raised, fingers outstretched. She stood with her hands to her sides, her lips pursed, while she squinted at the sand versions of us.
“Is it magic?” she said.
It was the first time someone referred to my ability as a good thing.
It was magic.
“You look freaked out.”
“I’m freaked the fuck out. Not a bad thing.” She mumbled something to herself, took a step away from me. She reached out and grabbed my hand, again, all because of my rock star.
“I can feel something here,” she said, in a joyous tone. “Can you feel it? Can they see us?” She whispered, “Can they hear us?”
“Arthur!” I yelled to my sand version.
“Huh,” my sand version replied.
I didn’t know what to say after that.
“Sandra!” the real Sandra called out.
“Yes?” her sand version replied.
“Is it really me?” Sandra asked.
I answered the best I could. “I. Don’t. Know.”
I let the sand versions of us dissipate into the rest of the park sand.
“Where’d they go, where’d they go?” Sandra’s eyes searched around, her mouth agape.
“They’re around.”
One thing I learned is that the more I matured, the more I could control my ability. If I wanted my old bear back, I could have it back. I don’t want it back. I still might need him, but I don’t want him. If I recalled the sand versions of us, would I be recalling the actual me and her from the past?
She said, “Me and my dad talked about what you did at the park, off and on, for years. Whenever I brought it up, he assured me it happened. He said people can do things sometimes, especially when they’re kids. You must have a good, nice, pure, child heart, in there.” She swung our hands.
“Yeah, I’m just a big kid.”
“He reminded me in kindergarten and in first grade, and in second grade. Magic happens with a big heart.”
“If you mention it to anybody,” I told her, “nobody will believe you.”
She stopped swinging our hands. “I won’t tell anybody.”
“I’ll walk you home.”
“Are you okay? Does doing it do something to you? Are you okay? You feel alright? Are you mad?”
“I don’t know what I am.”
***
It’s odd to call you Trinna instead of Ms. Kimbrel. It’s kind of like we’re old friends who haven’t talked for years. It’s kind of how me and Sandra turned out towards the end. We didn’t talk after a while. We worked together with basically no conflict. Most people would look back on how well we got along and appreciated it. Our circumstances are different. Getting along and not arguing didn’t stop me from being depressed, didn’t stop her from killing herself.
On any level, opening up to her gave me half a mind to open up to Bixby as well. Bixby knowing could have helped him understand what Mom had truly been through. Sandra and her dad knew, come to find out. They knew, and it didn’t matter. For me and Bixby to get along, he’d have to know all of me; he’d have to see my rock star.
It’s my opinion that Bixby couldn’t show Dana his true self. He and Dana had issues long before the day I made the sand deer in the park. Some relationships are kind of like the government. You can sustain it, but how well does it actually work?
Realizing my mom and dad were going to break up anyway, and not because of me, I didn’t see the need to help Bixby out. Half my mind said to work with Bixby. The other half wanted to tell him to suck a dick. On one hand, Bixby had been one of the nicest people I knew, someone who had always supported me. On the other hand, I didn’t feel a bond with him at all. History but no bond.
The same night I showed Sandra my rock star, the phone rang in the other room. My digital alarm clock read 11:15 p.m., way too late to get a phone call, but I was hoping Sandra would call.
I hurried over and flicked off the ceiling light. After kicking off my shoes, I jumped into bed, now prepared for Bixby to enter.
He knocked, and then entered my room without permission. When he flicked on the light, he saw me under the blankets waking up from barely getting to sleep.
“You want to talk to her?” he said with his palm over the phone’s microphone.
“Who is it?”
“Arthur, do you want to talk to her or not?”
I sat up and reached for the phone.
He took a few steps in my direction, handed me the cordless. “Not all night.”
He lurked around for a moment.
After he left, I said, hello, into the receiver.
“Arthur,” Sandra replied.
“Uh huh.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
“I meant to tell you earlier,” she said, “my mom and dad aren’t together either. They still love each other.”
“That’s good.”
“It could be the same for your mom and dad.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how necessary it is.”
“You know, your mom used to come over talking about you.”
“Not in a good way.”
The dead space on her end said I was right.
She said, “She tried to convince us of what we already suspected. Dad said he didn’t think it was good to get into it with her.”
“Too weird?”
“Really too weird. I don’t know how to say this without hurting your feelings. She kind of thought you were evil.”
“She used the word evil?” I wanted to know.
“She loved you but didn’t trust you.”
“She wanted to love me but couldn’t.”
I think the same about myself most of the time. I certainly don’t blame Dana.
Sandra said, “Originally, she thought you would bring them closer.”
“I’m this thing.”
“You’re not a thing.”
“I should find my real parents. My real dad, not this stand-in. My actual dad would know something about me.”
“I have my real dad. He doesn’t know jack about me.”
“Is it parents that don’t know shit or adults?”
“It’s that they get old and get to paying bills and being all responsible. They forget about normal stuff. You’re amazing. I swear I won’t tell anybody.”
“You won’t?” I said. “I, for one, wish I could tell everybody. Not a good idea.”
“You could make a lot of money. Magician. You could be a magician.”
“I don’t want people staring at me and applauding. Why would someone want to be an act?”
Bixby reentered the room, unannounced. “Not all night.”
“I’m getting off right now.”
“Arthur. I am your real dad.”
He slinked off into the other room.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Me too, Arthur. I think I’ll sleep better now, Arthur. Good night, Arthur.”
“Okay, Sandra. Good night, Sandra. Sandra.”
“I like hearing my mouth say your name,” she said.
Another awkward silence on her end.
***
“You showed her your rock star?” Ms. Kimbrel says, placing her fingers to her mouth in awe.
“I trusted her.” Arthur stands, lifts his chair, and walks back to the kidney table. He pushes the chair underneath.
“I had it wrong,” Ms. Kimbrel says.
“What wrong?”
“Your ability isn’t making things young. You animate things. You animate people.”
“Animating people and things are two different abilities.”
“Is that the word you use? Or do you call it a power?”
“Are they different?”
What she said flicks on a light bulb, a small epiphany—the wind has never left him. Bringing Raheem and Sandra back to life is no different than animating the deer or his old bear or the sand versions of himself and Sandra in the park.
“What does it look like for you to animate a person?” she says. “What’s that like?”
The question makes him turn his head to the side in thought. “It would look like raising the dead.”
She mouths the word “Wow,” leans back and folds her arms.
“It’s getting late. I’ve got a bunch to do, if I don’t cut corners, which I will.”
“Every day I wonder about that rose your dad gave me. I could be that flower. Beautiful yet dying one minute. Colorful and new the next. And you’re right here in front of me. Can’t get past that.”
“I can’t say it enough. I can’t make you young again.”
She places her elbows on the desk and her chin in her palms. “You don’t talk to many people, now do you?”
“Not about animating.”
“Keeping a secret that long probably takes a toll on a person. A secret that big.” She bites her lower lip.
“I’m not high on myself right now. I should be going. I’ve got to get gone. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“I wish you would.”
By the look in her eyes, she’s ready to forfeit her life for a younger one.