We the Animals

We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful — little animals, clawing at what we needed.

We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.

This is your heritage,' he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about his own Paps, how he beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still steeping and snapping perfectly in time.

Always more, always hungrily scratching for more. But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn’t slept in two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all, might wake her, those still, crystal mornings, when we wanted to protect her, this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, this uprooted Brooklyn creature, this tough talker, always with tears when she told us she loved us, her mixed-up love, her needy love, her warmth, those mornings when sunlight found the cracks in our blinds and laid itself down in crisp strips on our carpet, those quiet mornings when we’d fix ourselves oatmeal and sprawl onto our stomachs with crayons and paper, with glass marbles that we were careful not to rattle, when our mother was sleeping, when the air did not smell like sweat or breath or mold, when the air was still and light, those mornings when silence was our secret game and our gift and our sole accomplishment—we wanted less: less weight, less work, less noise, less father, less muscles and skin and hair. We wanted nothing, just this, just this.

They weren't scared, or dispossessed, or fragile. They were possible.

I’m an adult,” the boy says. “I got rights.” “Everybody’s got rights. A man tied to a bed got rights. A man down in a dungeon got rights. A little screaming baby got rights. Yeah, you got rights. What you don’t got is power.

What happens when you die?" I asked. "Nothing happens." he said. "Nothing happens forever.

The magic of God is three. We were the magic of God.

Even later, I will come to doubt whether I ever really believed such a book would not be found--maybe my words were for all of them, that they might discover themselves, and discover me.

The son will not speak to her. She watches him, and she wants to tell him that he can put all his hate on her; she will take it all, if that’s what he needs her to do. Listen, really listen, and that’s what she is saying in her silence. The boy can’t help but hear.

...except for the stars and a toenail clipping of moon

The water was tripping over itself, splashing and hypnotizing, and I tried to fix my mind on a chunk of it, like each little ripple was a life that began far away in a high mountain source and had traveled miles pushing forward until it arrived at this spot before my eyes, and now without hesitation that water-life was hurling itself over the cliff. I wanted my body in all that swiftness; I wanted to feel the slip and pull of the currents and be dashed and pummeled on the rocks below . . .

mamá era capaz de retener las lágrimas como nadie; a veces se pasaba horas deambulando así, reteniendolas en los parpados, sin dejarlas caer

Do it to me." "What?" we asked. "Make me born.

Hours passed. A man came by twice and poked his head into my theater and looked at me questioningly. The third time, he came in and sat next to me and asked, "How many times you plan on watching this crap?" I shrugged my shoulders. He was wearing corduroy pants, and I would have liked to drag my fingernail across his thigh. "You hiding?" "I'm just sitting here," I said. "Yeah, never mind," he said. "I guess you're a bit young for that. What about your folks?

Each was radiant, gorgeous. How they posed for me.

When our mother was sleeping, when the air did not smell like sweat or breath or mold, when the air was still and light, those mornings when silence was our secret game and our gift and our sole accomplishment-we wanted less: less weight, less work, less noise, less father, less muscles and skin and hair. We wanted nothing, just this, just this.

[…] they were looking at memories, proud memories, blood memories, or else they were dreaming about their wild futures.

Everybody's got rights. A man tied to a bed got rights. A man down in a dungeon got rights. A little screaming baby got rights. Yeah, you got rights. What you don't got is power.

Why won't you look at me, my brothers, why won't you take my eyes

When we were three together, we stuck our fingers into each other’s eyes and pulled chairs out from underneath.

Todo el mundo tiene derechos. Tanto el hombre atado a una cama como el que está encerrado en un calabozo tienen derechos. Incluso el bebé que llora a moco tendido tiene derechos. Claro que tiene derechos. Lo que no tienes es poder.

Do it to me.' 'What?' we asked. 'Make me born.

God's scattered all the clean among the dirty. You and me Joel, we're nothing more than a fistful of seed that God tossed into the mud and horseshit. We're on our own.

...telling me how he had dreamt of kites-a whole sky full of kites, and he was holding all the strings. He told me how the good kites and wicked kites got all mixed up, how he tried to hold on to the good and let the rest float away, but after a while he couldn't tell them apart.

WE ALL THREE sat at the kitchen table in our raincoats, and Joel smashed tomatoes with a small rubber mallet. We had seen it on TV: a man with an untamed mustache and a mallet slaughtering vegetables, and people in clear plastic ponchos soaking up the mess, having the time of their lives.

Everybody’s got rights. A man tied to a bed got rights. A man down in a dungeon got rights. A little screaming baby got rights. Yeah, you got rights. What you don’t got is power.

I turned new eyes to them, a newly caustic gaze. I sensed a keen power of observation in myself, an intelligence, but sour.

And me now. Look at me. See me there with them, in the snow - both inside and outside their understanding. See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference - my sharp, sad, pansy scent. They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.