Free The Angel of History by Alameddine Rabih Page B

that I barely uttered a word, I didn’t tell him that I’d arrived in Beirut from Cairo, not some desert, no sand there, that I grew up in a house of sin but it certainly wasn’t the Muslim kind, the only religion going on was men worshipping holy pussy. Oh, but I worshipped my father, and if that meant I had to let the Word of Christ dwell in my heart or suck Jesus’s cross then of course I would. Muslim, Christian, I would be what you wanted me to be, I lived to serve, you know I did.
    So, Doc, you’re thinking you know how this is going to end, don’t you? You’re thinking a priest and me and only one possible conclusion, but you’re wrong, you’re an American, limited imagination. That priest and his coterie of nuns and priestlets took responsibility for my well-being or lack thereof; dumped in their reeducation camp, that house of torture of a boarding school, with no one to ask about me or inquire after my health, I, the boy with the broken halo, was never sexually abused by that priest, not that one, but there was a nun, Sœur Marie-Claire, who offered her benevolent attention, her gift.
    During a Christmas holiday right after I had sprouted a pubic hair or two, I ended up alone in the room, the other three boys went home for the break, and Sœur Marie-Claire woke me up every day of those two and a half weeks. Before the sun rose, my nun played with my erection, she climbed on the bed, lifted her tunic, and fell on her sword. She was fully attired, the whole drag except the underwear, I presume, I don’t believe I ever saw anything past the habit. Always speaking of herself in the third person, she would say, Youmake Sœur Marie-Claire feel good and Sœur Marie-Claire will make her
petit nègre
feel even better. Though technically I wasn’t, she called me her
petit nègre
because I was the darkest boy at l’orphelinat de la Nativité by quite a margin, and she was right because at the end I always felt good. I didn’t do much, I just lay there and she would touch me, her hand going under my pajama bottoms, and I woke up and she straddled me, smiling and staring at me with eyes so pale they seemed to be all alabaster, she bounced up and down, jiggled, must have been jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like that, so yes, she was the aggressor and I was not consenting, let alone an adult.
    When I looked into her eyes, which I always did at orgasm because I wanted to see, she wouldn’t be smiling, or I should say that the smile would have twisted into a strange grimace, as if she wasn’t happy anymore, and more often than not, saliva would drool down the left flank of her chin, not sure why that was so, and when I was done, she would just stop. No more bouncing nun. She wiped the drool off her lips and chin, looked left toward the door, climbed off my softening erection, adjusted her habit, Don’t be late to breakfast,
mon petit nègre,
she would say, her back to me, leaving me, leaving me in bed, and after the New Year she didn’t approach me ever again, I guess I wanted her to, I was the refrigerator abandoned on the pavement, I was the Haldol spreading within my cranium and I remembered, I remembered so much.
The Caryatids
    I have to say your mother was the evil of evils, Doc, ordained in untempered malice in that dark unbottomedinfinite abyss called California. The best thing I can say about her is that she left me alone to dispose of your body, which one might think isn’t much, but after what Chris’s family did, what with stealing the corpse and forbidding us to attend his funeral—well, you were there then, you hadn’t yet died, so you know. I wish your mother had stolen your body, cremating you cost so much, they charged me extra because you didn’t burn on the first try, and I couldn’t give you a memorial since there were so few left to mourn you. She left you because she didn’t care about your death, it was your life she desired, and mine, that queen of vampires, her heart distended with my