Malik is Shawn’s best friend. Shawn is only another prop in my life
I call my family. Everything in my life is a prop except my art and my world.
I am the creator of my world and my paintings are my subjects, and I am their
goddess. And yet, my eyes notice Malik, who as of yet is either a prop or subject
because I am apart of his special world.
I am antisocial, my mother says to her friends whenever I visit her in L.A.
They smile and look at me to see if I respond to my mother’s comments.
And I never do. My father understands me better because he loves me for who
I am and not because I’m just his daughter. They know Malik. My mother
pities him. My father understands, and yet I am clueless. I think my mother
doesn’t understand me because she hates herself too much to understand
I am like her. I hate myself too, so even though I see myself in my mother,
I don’t understand what I see, and I don’t understand what Malik
sees in me.
There are always little things left in my room, a silk rose, a gold necklace,
and special drawing paper; things that my family would never understand actually
that are important to me. And yet, I do nothing for him, but he still gives
me things. In this silent courtship, I do what I always do, paint. I come out
my room sometimes and sit outside with my pencils and papers and draw. His eyes
caress me gently as he walks by the windows. I know he is smiling because he
always is, and in the background, my brother, Shawn is talking to him, and wondering
how could he love a girl who heart is like stone.
Upstairs, my father is talking to my mother with tears in his eyes. He calls her everyday, if he can find out where she is. She refuses to take her cell phone because she knows he will call her. He loves her as much as he did twenty-five years ago, even though they divorced seventeen years ago, and he still wants her back. Yet, he never asks and she never answers because she never understood why he ever loved her because she hates herself too much to let him love her. I think he loves me the most because I remind him of my mother and not my other sisters that are only pale reflections of her. He is Italian and she was a poor black girl from L.A. Yet to him she is his Nefertiti and he was her Akhenaten. He lived for her and now she void in his life like vacuum sucking air. On his dresser was an empty bottle of Channel 5 and a black silk scarf; two things she left and he could never part with. Sometimes, I would catch him opening the bottle and holding the scarf in his hands.
Rumor is that Malik is an African prince, or at least that’s what I heard my sisters say, but I do not totally count what they say as the truth. If he was a prince, why can’t he find his own princess? I am only an artist, a creator, and my own Isis. Yet, I’m also a loner, a daughter and a stone.
Malik is saxophonist, passionate by nature, and Shawn’s best friend. He is a tall, yet curiously not an intimidating person. I see his muscles ripple under his smooth chocolate skin, as he walks outside to play ball with Shawn. My eyes follow him and I find my pencil still as my eyes dance to beat of the ball. He scores heedless as if Shawn wasn’t there, as the ball and him flow into partners in a complicated waltz. The beads of sweat on his skin sparkle in light when he stops to take a break. He pours water from a bottle over his head and world ceases as water flows down his cornrows and down his bare back.
My stoic expression fades as my lips curl into smile. As I look away, our eyes lock and what seems like a second drips off into lifetimes and possibilities where we fall in love, create a life together, grow old, and die in a thousand lives, times, and places. He is my eternal soul mate as we are joined by fate, forever, like stone and a river. He winks and our connection is shattered as I look down onto my blank page. He goes back to playing basketball, as my lips desire the pressure of his, yet my body stays unyielding to my mind’s wants. My images of my mother and father eclipse until the missing parts of my creation fall in place. And inside, I feel the gentle smoothing of my heart.
~fin~