A Love Like Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

the ampleness of his hips accentuated by his crossed legs. The eyes, filled with black sex and white powder, have been dazzled by the sun. He is taller than my father, approximately my height, and also could be considered older. Like a cactus that blooms late at night, he stands erect, ready, showing off a pink opening at the end of a tube. The act is beautiful while it lasts; however, the witness is unlikely to experience it again. A pocketknife, with the blade out, is under the picture on the shelf. A spreading coldness on my back shocks me. I snap around. He nods, head up, holding out a water bottle. As our hands touch in the giving, a splotch at the bottom of my palm distracts me, and I drop the bottle. Nowhere else do I see maroon.
    â€œThere’s a photo exhibit at the museum,” he says and picks up the bottle. “I drove by a billboard for it yesterday. We can go on Saturday.”
    â€œI will let you know.”
    â€œOkay. Can you bring your camera?”
    The word can so close to camera conjures khaniis up from the dead, and its thorns disrupt the conversation. I watch the word hovering above Brett. I want to choke it and leave it unfruitful. However, then, I hear the word flaming in my ear and the second word materializes on top of the first. More words appear. Maricon. Broke-wristed. Sweet booty. Soft. Sugar in the tank. Fruity. Funny people. Skeef. I imagine a fat-lipped vagina smacking open in between my legs, every time Father screams skeef. The coarseness of that word transforms how I see myself. I have to prove that I am separate from it, not because I am not attracted to men, but because Somali boys are divined to become fathers. And, fathers’ bodies are like God’s body. The body of an ungodly man is a coffin. Every time a woman we know womb expands for a baby, her family prays for a boy. Boys are kings that can increase their family’s wealth. One boy is worth five girls. One skeef is worse than having five unmarriable daughters. To say the word, emphasis is placed on the first four letters – skee (it should sound like a hiss) and followed by if. Then, add the ferocity of hungered people, and even ears that have never touched the Horn of Africa with their bare feet can hear women pounding sorghum with wooden mortars and pestles. They can hear it because the clamorous children have been startled into silence.
    Seeing these slurs glued together as if they are a bridge to eternal damnation, I tell Brett, “I should leave” and the soft air of sadness dissolves the letters into a handful of dust.

Chapter 6
    S tolen gooey creams, gritty scrubs, and slimy masks were my G.I. Joes years ago. I was a child soldier stealing for beauty. When no one was looking, I would dab cream under my eyes, at the bone, as if war paint and smear umber and verdigris clay on my body as if camouflage. I needed their language, their textures, and possibilities. Maroon blotches covered my face, arms, and legs yet my Mother, Father, and brother had even skin. The blotches had the appearance of inflamed freckles but were larger than freckles and smaller than a child’s front tooth. Our family doctor told Father stress was causing the blotches. Father laughed in his face while Junior invented a new nickname for me, Chester Cheetah. He would sneak and hide behind corners in our apartment, jump out, and scream, “It ain’t easy being cheesy.” I was seven then. Now I cannot walk down the snack aisle in grocery stores. Orange bags of cheese puffs cause my skin to itch, and I hear Father’s laugh and see the way he looked at the doctor, like a deranged man.
    Four weeks after my eighth birthday, father dropped Junior and I off at an Ethiopian-owned barbershop. I was sitting in the barber’s chair, caped, staring at the hair-covered floor. The barber angled my head down to line up the thick hair on my neck. A confident man paraded into the crowded barbershop wearing faded jean