Defacing Monuments

Written by: Sequana D. Whiteside

CW: Death, Suicide, Depression, Abandonment

“Defacing Monuments”

THE PROPOSAL

No one tells you how much jadedness can make you an actual danger to society. Sure, many comic books may hint at the possibility of a broken heart being the true cause of a villain origin story, but I’ve never really been into fantasy. No one told me that recklessly unhinged distress caused by your first true love’s heartbreak can create within a broken well-intentioned person the perfect storm of disillusionment and desperation. A storm strong enough to deface monuments as big and grand as the heart of someone you love...or at least tried to love. Had I known the wreckage I would create I would have just left after my best days with Leia.

I was able to catch nothing else of Camille’s when she ran from my marriage proposal but a flyaway paper bus pass that escaped her dainty red backpack while she was running, and it violently flew into my face as I chased after her for three blocks. I thought it would be more convincing to ask for her life partnership at the same temple we’d met at three years earlier during one of my father’s prayer and meditation ceremonies thus the reason she was comfortably dressed enough to sprint away from my romantic request. A dozen or so golden tea lights are strung in the red maple tree by the waterfall in the back of the sanctuary. I had arranged for some of the monks to softly chant blessings over us as we walked the path to the Takatsuki offering bowl I had hidden the ring in. When I asked her, her eyes darkened with the same grim hurt and disappointment I’d unfortunately been painting them with for years. “Oh, but Tristan, you’re not really asking me to be your wife now, are you? You don’t even see me!” And with that, she was off. Away from me and my abusive pining after my past.

Her eyes hadn’t always been so sad. Three years ago, when our eyes first locked in piqued curiosity, they had been bright, round, and happy. Always crinkled at the edges because she was always smiling. Bubbly. Vibrant. Fully of life. We were both returning to our zabutons after making an Oshoko offering to the Buddha. In our small town, it was rare to find other hybrids of African and Japanese immigrants though her Afrocentric features were slightly less pronounced than mine. She looked almost identical to my favorite actress Kyoko Fukada only her skin looked to be dipped in shimmering copper and her hair arranged in a million beautiful curly ringlets. I liked how she was so petite and only barely reached the collar bone of my solid 6’3” frame even on tiptoe. She made me feel warrior strong just by standing next to me. Gave me something to protect and I felt an immediate kinship with her over our shared heritage. Though the spark I felt for her was more superficial than anything I felt with Leia. Camille resembled my outer shell whereas Leia was a mirror to my soul.  

I never meant to treat her as such a consolation prize, but my true intentions slowly became more and more evident as time accumulated. Every suggestion, every comparison, every praise always pinned her against Leia, a woman I refused to ever let her meet but insisted that she somehow become. I had no right to be devastated when she ran but just the same, I was.

But oh, how swift was I, in that same moment, able to entomb the same heart I had only seconds earlier offered to her on a platter back into its original place of desolation. Though I was more embarrassed and ashamed than devastated. I had spent three years hacking away at all of Camille’s personality, soul, uniqueness, and entire being sacrificing what she was so I could have Leia in some form only to lose her anyway. What a vile thing to do to someone! What a wicked thing to do to me. The better part of me died in that rejection, she was my last hope. And now I lay back on a dirty bench trying to bury myself in the rain.

LEIA

I couldn’t steady my hands. No matter what I did I couldn’t calm the trembling. A decade and a half as a master carpenter and all my futile attempts at my usual dominance over the nail and hammer left me in a frustration that was pushing me to the brink of tears. I felt new and timid. Lost on what to do next. I was two weeks behind on finishing this project for my client. Before I got the news about Leia, I was moving through the blueprints plans of this split-level ranch with swift precision. Taking no breaks. No time to think in my usual cadence. Always so far ahead of schedule. Burying emptiness into laying foundations. Overwhelm and numbness into frameworks. Frustration into plumbing and electrical. Anxiety into insulation and interiors. My hands always moved to their own rhythm of determined escapism.

Two weeks ago, in my usual diligence, I was just finishing up the stone skirting around the exterior soaking in the same rain that baptized me after Camille’s rejection the day before, when my father quietly crept up to me with a caution, I had never witnessed from him. Without saying anything he gently took my face between his hands and looked into my eyes with a sadness in his own that had deepened in their hazel hues. I could feel the impending devastation in these moments although he had not said the words. At first, I guessed. I thought it could be news about mom since she had always been so sickly, but the fact that he was still standing told me otherwise. He took in a sharp breath before whispering “It’s Leia. They found her in the car in her garage…. There was no sign of suffering or struggle. Services are at the end of the week.”

Weeping escaped me before I was pulled to the ground by the gravity of immeasurable devastation. It was more like a howl--a disembodied death cry that was involuntary ripped from deep within my being. The abrupt mourning made my body tremor like an adrenaline response to having all of the bones broken in your body at one time. I had never encountered loss like this. Had never experience death at all and this was already my worst possible encounter with it.  If the death was kind, it would have taken me with her. But I was already searching for its scythe even through I had only been in this unbearable pain for mere seconds. It’s all my mind could think of between the twinkle to time between standing and falling to my knees.

My father was too frail to catch me. I heaved up my turmoil and grief into the soil with uncontrollable convulsions coming from a volatile pain, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I sent all of my begging into the wind. I grappled at the grass trying to find something to hold onto. My senses left me all at once. I forgot how to do everything. I couldn't stand. I couldn't walk to the car just yet where my father would graciously drive me to go see her body. Where I’d eventually have to police escorted from the hospital room that they’d used just as a formality to pronounce her dead. Though they’d predicted she’d been gone three hours before she arrived here. It was too late to save her anymore. Too late to put the light back in her like it was beginning to come back into my mother's. I sobbed for over an hour and a half kissing all over her cold face without reservation until the staff started their efforts to pull me away. She wasn’t stiff yet. Her arms still flailed about and curled around my neck ever so often as I tossed her about in howling hysterics. She was still here at least just enough for me to hold her a little longer. Before I had no choice but to let go forever.

She had been my single provision of hope and substance that sustained my connection to my humanity since Mrs. Henry’s creative writing class in the tenth grade. Usually introverted and crippling shy, looking into her eyes prompted me to a level of chattiness and vulnerability that no one had ever dew out of me before. Like me, she was selective in her communication. Though she was shy, she expressed herself quite loudly through the t-shirts and clothes she wore that always dawned some sort of bold statement reflective of her passion for social consciousness like: WOMANIST, PERSONAL IS POLITICAL, DIVINE FEMININE, BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL, ALL HAIR IS PROFESSIONAL, THE BLOOD OF MOTHER EARTH IS ON YOUR HANDS, VEGANISM IS SEXY, etc. Every day was something new. Every day she taught me something new.

But she couldn’t save herself. Couldn’t get that chemical balance in her brain just right so she opted to focus on saving the world instead and I was fascinated with her dedication to the cause. Her glossy brown skin, kept in ethereal condition with potions of coconut oil and shea butter, looked like a swirl of coffee, cinnamon, and peanut butter with golden highlights marbled in. Her kinky hair was always fashionably pinned in some creative design that showcased her natural curls in all their afro-textured glory. Her big brown round eyes with flecks of honey felt familiar to me. If I stared into them long enough, I could see the same kind of sorrow that usually held my mother in captivity. Leia reminded me so much of her in that way. At their best they both were giggling, creative, energetic flame throwers. Full of life. They were both tall like the Amazonian tribes, indescribably resplendent, intelligent black queens with a sadness that caused them to withdraw for long periods of time. It’s the only side of my mother I’d ever gotten to see except for our daily talks right before bed. She’d make room to smile then as I’d go over my day. But I could see it pained her. That trying to be happy when she wasn’t exhausted her, so I tried not to need her. She couldn’t handle the burden. Dad was good at shouldering that for her in a way that I could not. That’s what I tried to be for Leia. A salvation and place of faithful comfort like my dad was to my mom. He had tunnel vision with his work and with his marriage with no room for anything or anyone else in between including me.

 She resisted my affection for a while too afraid to trust having never experienced a steady masculine presence in her life. But something changed our senior year. So, she leaned into me. Took a chance to fully trust me. We leaned into each other and lost ourselves in love. I was her first and she was mine. We waited until our eighteenth birthday, hers came a few months after mine over the summer. It was how we christened adulthood diving forever into this “grown up” love. There was no going back for me. I had irrevocably promised myself to her.

We lasted until after college. I tried my best, but she had fallen into a deep depression and stopped talking to me. She was no longer responsive. Had given up. Became mean. Threw all our love letters at my head and insisted we never see each other again. She was no longer in love she said. I knew better but I had no more fight in me. I met Camille two and half years later still on the rebound. But even still I never missed a day of sending her flowers or care kits when she’d check herself into the psych ward every couple of months when the sadness got to be too much. I’d sneak away from Camille even after we moved in together to go visit Leia. Lay in bed with her, wrap my arms around her and try to squeeze out every drop of that wretched darkness. Every blue moon our hands would roam each other's bodies searching for solace and we’d find ourselves entangled in that same sacred dance we first started that summer of her birthday. I should have felt remorse, but I felt entitled to those moments with her. As if there could never be any sin in loving someone that much.

HOMEGOING

           I had to fight for her to be cremated. She never wanted to be in another box. Never wanted to endure any form of suffocation even after she was dead. Being obsessed with death as teenagers we had planned out funerals years ago in delightful morbid detail. We found a service willing to take part of her remains so we could bury her in the form of a tree. Force her back to life. The rest of her remains were divided into two urns. One for her parents and one for me. That was her mom’s idea. Wanted me to be able to have her with me after all. I still couldn’t speak when it came time for her services. I was still too much in shock. Couldn’t force myself into this type of harsh reality. I sat in the very back of the church as everyone said their goodbyes. I said mine under my breath until I fell apart again and laid down on the bench to hide my face in my moments of weakness. I felt the bench bend under the additional weight as my heart cracked open with endless mourning. A warm nervous hand smoothed my hair, and I caught a whiff of a sweet jasmine fragrance as I bent my head up to see who it was. It was my mother with my dad closely in tow in their usual co-dependent fashion. I let my head relax in her lap silently cherishing her touch and unarticulated reassurance that I hadn’t felt since I was a boy. Since before I met Leia. She brought her lips close to my ear careful not to draw an audience and said, "She loved you more than anything you know.” Her words made me whimper in bitterness. “No, she didn’t mom, she pushed me away...”. She pressed her head to my forehead at my words and let out a sob of her own. “Oh son, she didn’t push you away because she didn’t love you, she pushed you away to protect you from being pulled into a battle she knew she would never be able to win.” I stiffened with anger, “How do you know?” Her tears were now dampening my hair and seeping into my scalp. She let out a snivel before responding “Because she told me the last time, she checked herself into the hospital. I admitted myself too and we were in rooms across from each other.” I sat up and faced her hearing this revelation. Her eyes locked into mine desperately pleading “She really was a lot like me Trist and I’m so sorry if you ever felt like your father and I abandoned you. She told me that too. Made me promise to make it right. Baby, like Leia I always assumed that I’d lose my fight with this awful disease, and I pulled away so there would be less of me to mourn.” I pushed myself from her arms whispering my defiance, “And what about dad? Why didn't I ever have anybody there for me? Why couldn't he love me then?” I leaned forward to try to find my father’s eyes, but he had cast his face down in a gesture of shame. He looked worn and I pitied him. After a few long moments, he found his voice still gentle in his deliverance, "I have always loved your mother more than my next breath. Her pain has always been my pain. Her sickness my sickness. I have always loved her in the same way you loved Leia. I’m sorry I failed you Tristan, but I never wanted to break your spirit with my own weariness, so I stayed away. I had made a promise long ago that if your mom…. ever lost her battle. I would sacrificially lose mine too.  In life and in death me and your mother will never be without one another.” This new information made me uncomfortable, and I squirmed in my seat. As the last few people placed their roses on the alter, I asked without turning to my parents “So what should I have done? Thrown myself in the fire with her?” My mother grabbed my face again forcing me to look into her gaze “No Tristan! Don’t you see all the people who have ever loved you have spent their entire lives guarding you from you choosing that path? I know you're angry and you're sad and you don't understand but all me, your dad, and Leia have ever wanted was for you is to really live!"

EPILOGUE

After the services, I called into work and took a leave of absence. I’d be no good to anyone with hands that still hadn’t steadied themselves. Everything in me wanted to do something permanent so I wouldn’t have to face life and work through all this despicable pain. It took everything in me to keep dressing myself and leaving my home every day, but I eventually found my way into a therapist’s office. Better late than never. I now go twice a week and my mom and dad attend group therapy with me on Thursdays. We have pie afterward. A new tradition. I make offerings to Camille at the temple. Sometimes I see her there. Maybe one day she’ll forgive me.