Saturday and Sunday it rained. Friday bode hot and humid, with patches of cloud and brief, intense sunshine. Now, after two months of practically Mannerist sunshine and intense humidity, comes the rainy season. The year has not been deficient in rainfall: we have had, all this summer, periods of intense, soaking rains. In Roma, two counties away, the rains washed up and over the banks of long dry creekbeds and arroyos, flooding towns at the edge of the South Texas plains. Here, an intervallic morning of sun and clouds is quickly superseded by the welcoming sight of dark clouds on the southeastern or eastern horizon. Thunder disperses the quiet afternoon; the cicadas chirp louder and louder, as if summoned by the greater tocsin of rain. The grass moves. The smell of fundamental earth and rain. And then it does rain, for about thirty or forty minutes on average before moving away, leaving the sky white with anvil cirrus and a vast deep powder blue along the horizon. If it is closer the sunset, the sky becomes dusky brown and yellow at the edges, the filtered light passing through a higher layer of city haze and dust. The rains can be always expected to arrive either thirty minutes noon, when the depressingly intense heat is at its zenith, and last till sometimes long after dinner, obscuring the sunset in swaths of grey, or crimson, pink or violet. Monday of last week I noticed the sky got brilliant golden and red outside. Something told me to investigate. High in the eastern sky, against a backdrop of icy silverish rain, was a rainbow, deeply colored red by the rays of the setting sun, whose initial arc began in the south-eastern corner of the heaven and moved back up along the meridian of the sky, or close to it, it seemed, back down to the deep powder blue of the north-eastern sky, dotted with slanted castles of cumulus dropping sheets of inky rain. It was a sign. Being careful not to point at it (pointing at rainbows is bad luck), I took it as my own personal vindication of hope. Immediately afterward, as the rainbow faded in the sky, I thanked God for the rainbow. In Jewish halakha there is a blessing for the rainbow:
Blessed art Thou, O Lord our G-d, who remembers His Covenant with His people.
The covenant being of course the one in Gen 9:8-13, in which the Lord explicitly states His will to never again harm the Earth and its inhabitants. Personally though, at least for me, it is a sign that the tribulations which have marked my life these last years have finally come to an end. Now is a period of transition–though not as turbulent as the one which has late passed me–a time of renewal and forward movement. Similarly, it is a statement as to the nature of how I have lived these last couple of years. There have to be profound changes, as there have been, a continuous moving forward to better and brighter things. I know I have recieved signal graces from both my friends, who want to see me in a better place, and God Himself, who has broken down walls and barriers for me.
Ever since the hurricane ended CJ’s presence at this house has placed us in a difficult situation–primarily in terms of actually living with a fourth person in this house since the death of my grandfather back in the early part of last year. At first the difficulties were small ones: several towels went missing after the debacle of the hurricane, and CJ, being the typical 17 year old girl that she is, decided to most of them to dry her small body and short haircut after her bath. Then they became more substantial, as time went on. After a sudden rainstorm, she found a small dog running around the neighborhood, stirring up trouble for the other dogs, and brought her inside the house. This naturally stoked the ire of my aunt, who had been pressing my little brother Paul and my mother for payment of $150 for some bond money that she had given to my mother to get Paul out of jail. Meanwhile, CJ’s relatively new skills as housekeeper and cook irked both me and my mother. I tried to stay away from the house most of the time to avoid having to be reminded of the house’s now blank and sad looking appearance. Then one day, about the 11th of this month, my aunt brought our absolutely intolerable neighbor over to gossip and complain as she usually does. Her two daughters, my cousins were there as well. When she heard the dog, whom CJ called Star inside the house, she stormed in and berated me for having her inside the house. As I was already tired of her immensely condescending attitude of CJ, Paul and my Mother, I got defensive. I had a verbal altercation with her, after which she threw a water bottle at me. For the first time in my life, after years of being held down, I told her to “shut the fuck up”. The neighbor, absolutely astonished, was agape as I lost it right in front of her. She went back inside to yell and complain at CJ that Paul needed to pay her back as soon as possible, her greed naturally knowing no logical end to anything, and threatening to call the police, as she did earlier most likely for harboring CJ as a runaway (she cannot be such a thing, she freely left the house of her own accord). When I intervened again, saying that if she wanted to get paid she ought to call Lennard, she took a bottle of insecticide to apparently spray on me, but then her daughter intervened and told me to calm down. She was physically intimidated by me; she of course would have been unable to deal with me, as I am both bigger, taller and stronger than she was if she had indeed chose to physically attack me. It was all a very harrowing ten minutes.
The first thing I did afterwards was call my Mother before she did. If there is anything that my aunt has done before in order to absolve herself from any negative involvement it is to proclaim to anyone and everybody (her silly housewife friends, or younger cousins, whom she talks to all day on the telephone) that she is a victim, and therefore is worthy of their support and attention. I was practically in tears and my Mother was infuriated that her sister, my aunt, had decided with absolute abandon to even attempt at hurting me. She said to her later, “You know, he lifts weights. He’s a very big guy. Why do you think he helps you to remove branches from the garden on his off days? What were you thinking?” And she replied that all she wanted was her money, that that was the most important thing for her at the moment, and that was all. And of course this is to be completely expected from my aunt, as other entries in this account have shown. Once a lying, stealing bitch, always a lying stealing bitch.
This compelled me more than ever to leave the house. My bags have been packed ever since. I said to my mother after she came home from work, “today is the last day she will ever set eyes on me ever again.” My aunt, naturally called me overgrown and a sick faggot, which of course is laughable and aside from the sick part, absolutely true. My other aunt very wisely stayed an absentee to all of this. Now I am thinking of places to stay, and am saving up capital for moving.
I was depressed for two weeks. Only now am I beginning to realize my potentials again. Lennard said to me in a chat a couple of days back that he doesn’t know how it is possible to survive under the conditions, both abstract and physical, that I have survived under for years. I said to him simply that I didn’t know either, and that even though most of it killed off whatever hope I had for myself outside of anything purely reasonable, it has made me stronger, faster, and definitely more good-looking. Ryan, whom I spoke to for the first time in two weeks yesterday, said I was moving up and out. Now, as fall approaches, I am confident my little escape plan will work. And then, when I am far away in the mountains, away from all those inbred little battles with my family and with the world, I will laugh and laugh, knowing I freed myself from everything that had held me back. It’s daunting, but it can be done. And I am now making it happen, very very gradually.
