Free A Love Like Blood by Victor Yates

bag. My palms start to sweat. I tap my chest feeling for my camera, on a strap around my neck, and touch nothing. It’s in the car, I remember. The server’s eyes do not move from the man’s direction as he boxes the puff pastries along with mango chutney and fava bean salad. Following behind Father, I grab a container of caramel fudge with camel milk and cardamom. The man slinks past the tea, coffee, and dessert aisle to the next aisle in the back. Father huffs, dropping the take-out boxes on the front counter. I push the candies behind it and search for the man with the gold chain strands, but don’t see him.
    A minute later, the cashier mumbles, “khaniis,” looking in my direction.
    â€œWhat’s the problem?” someone says.
    The man with the gold chain strands stands behind me in line.
    â€œYou’re the problem. Get away from my son.”
    Father yanks me behind him. My elbow bangs against something flat and hard and throbs in pain.
    He hawks up phlegm, spits in the man’s face, and slaps two twenties on the counter, stomping to the exit.
    Looking over my shoulder, I watch as the man wipes the gob of spit from his cheek. He hands the cashier a single bill, but he throws his hands above his head.
    â€œGet to know me before you reject me,” the man says.
    Hearing that, I know I can be as strong as him. Strength is being honest in the face of death. It outlasts death. The world outside of the glass door comes alive with newness. The hinges groan as I open it.
    Fa-thud, I hear within the store, the sound of a body hitting the floor. One of the gold cuff bracelets rolls past my foot into the parking lot. The bracelet splashes in a puddle of black water.
    Turning to look, Father yells, “you see” and his voice stops me.
    The street before me stretches out like a country of the dead. A scream drops the plastic box I’m holding. One of the candies explodes, revealing red bits on its insides. The glass door slams open and I force my eyes to stay on the ground. But looking at the blackened gum doesn’t stop the screaming. I ball up the doilies and throw them in the puddle.

Chapter 16
    A matte black bible with thick gold lettering is one of the few possessions I have of my mothers. On the first page is the hand-written message, He who tells the truth doesn’t sin but causes inconvenience, love Fatima Tynes . My grandmother, Fatima Tynes was my mother’s babysitter from age two to thirteen. At age two, I learned that honesty could lead to violence. How I learned, is one of Father’s gift-wrapped stories to present to the family, gathered, eating dinner during the holidays. He starts the humiliating story snapping his fingers, a Somali gesture meaning long ago, then he says, “The first time I spanked Carsten,” in his storytelling voice.
    And the story goes:
    While reading a magazine alone in his bedroom, Father heard a crashing sound in the winter morning chill of our apartment.
    Next Father says, “Before checking in on you boys, I glanced into the guest bathroom.”
    He noticed a dark flat object smaller than his hand on the tiled floor. When he flicked the light switch, he saw the tip of another object sticking out of the toilet bowl. Submerged in the water was his prized Diana camera. The same cheap, boxy camera he used shooting soft dream-like pictures that his editor at the Chicago Tribune said made him breathless. Part of the back of the camera had broken off. The tube-shaped lens barrel, black on the inside, had broken off as well. Bits of pale blue pieces and black pieces, from the plastic camera, had settled in the bottom of the toilet.
    Junior loved sneaking into Father’s bedroom, stealing his cameras, and pretending to be a wild animal photographer in Africa. Naturally, Father thought Junior destroyed the camera. He busted into Junior’s room. Junior was snoring in bed and by default exposed me as the wrongdoer. To me,