Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

This time, however, I was alone and cold rather than connected and warm. Dreading myself for that emotion, that awful uncertainty following an evening of faith, I looked desperately at the clouds above my school. Now I was soaring through those clouds in an F-15, the jet I would someday fly as a U. S. Air Force pilot, the epitome of American aircraft. I was carpet-bombing all the hoods and losers that had the chutzpa to call themselves my peers. Everyone around me was blasted away for good. I had the girl, I had the best girl there was to have. She danced with me . I knew I’d see her again.

That night, after the dance, I cried. I’d been holding back tears all night, but once alone in my room, I couldn’t help it.

I smoked a cigarette to calm myself down, but I kept on crying. All at once my nerve endings deserted me and I couldn’t feel a thing except for an intense pain in my forehead and the smoke wheezing into my lungs. I felt like I’d been hit in the head with a wrench, my skull compressed on all sides. When I closed my eyes, I saw lightening and heard thunder. My arms and legs felt like tired lead, my stomach like a black hole. It was a cold night outside but I was sweating anyway. I reclined on my bed, pressing my face into the pillow, which grew damp from the perspiration on my brow and tears on my face. I turned over onto my back and the sweat from my brow mixed with the tears slowly streaming from my eyes, producing a road-slick of saltwater on my cheeks.

I fought with you that night, Mom, remember? It was about my smoking, which you always suspected and I always denied. As usual, you randomly brought it up at the worst possible time— during the car ride home. “Girls don’t like boys who smoke,” you said. “It’s disgusting.” It was typical of you to ruin a good night by mentioning something like that. You are good at that. And you are such a hypocrite, too, because you used to suck down two packs a day. The result was the same old scene on a different day: I yelled at you, you yelled back, and then I kicked the dashboard as we parallel parked in front of the house. You didn’t say a word after that.

But that’s not what upset me to tears. To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly made me cry. I remember sprinting straight up our creaky wooden staircase to my room once I got home. I didn’t bother to turn the stairwell light on as I ascended, because I knew the stairs well enough the climb them with no problem. As usual, I felt like someone was chasing me up the stairs, like a hunter, so I hopped up two steps at a time, trying to escape.

As I reached the top step I was already out of breath, and some tears had started falling from my eyes. I turned quickly and tried to stare down the stairwell toward the bottom step; I saw nothing but murky darkness. I was still scared, though, as if someone had followed me up the staircase, crawling on his belly, eager to snatch my legs out from under me.

Reaching toward the wall I felt for the light switch and flicked it on. Suddenly, it was so bright that I was forced to squint my eyes for a moment, simultaneously releasing what seemed like a thousand fireflies behind my eyelids. My heart was still palpitating, and as I turned to walk away from the stairs toward my room, I looked back one last time to check for the hunter. But all I saw was my shadow waning as I turned the unlit corner toward my bedroom.

As I fell on my bed more tears seemed to fall with me. I was helpless. I’ll never see Maria again , I thought. I would die that night, I just knew it. There is nothing, I thought. Nothing . No God, no hope . No fate, no destiny . I was alone in the world. Had I been in a crowded room, I would’ve felt like Robinson Crusoe. I couldn’t face challenges. I couldn’t win. I couldn’t kill the hunter, he would always be chasing me. I was strengthless .

I lay prone on my back for a while, looking at this poster above my desk—the same one I’m looking at now, although back then I didn’t know what it portrayed—of a plane flying through thick clouds high above what looked like a city. Below it was a caption that read: V-J Day! Dad, you gave it to me on Victory in Japan day a few years ago, because you knew how much I liked aircraft and how fascinated I was by World War II. Right next to the poster was a black and white photograph of you holding your combat helmet under your arm in Vietnam, standing at the nose of a B-52. What a cool fucking picture.

You said it was taken right after your last mission, right before you left for Hawaii, and then back to New York. You looked so proud, so strong, so dignified. You looked like a man who could jump the highest hurdles. And you did. You hated the war but ran your mission while there. You never complained or even cursed about it. You did what you were asked to do by an unforgiving country, a deceptive President, and an arrogant commanding officer. And you persisted with your mission once he got home. Only weeks after your plane landed in New York, you married mommy and bought a brick colonial in Queens.

You wanted to leave Queens but mommy wanted to stay. So you drove to Newark every day and put in forty hours a week, not counting the commute. You never once bitched or moaned. You did your duty for family just as you had for your country. You worked silently, day-in and day-out, without recognition, like a gymnast who trains endlessly for the Olympics and doesn’t even win a bronze, but trains even harder right afterward.

Hey Mom and Dad, I often wonder if you guys really went through the same stuff as me when you were my age. You may think so, but I say probably not. Hell, I don’t even know what you guys saw in each other when you met. These days, no two totally different people would ever fall in love like you did. When thunder marries lightening all you get is a storm.

Occasionally, I blow the dust off of your old, musty high school yearbooks in the attic and stare at your pictures. Mom, you beamed like Megan Tyler Moore. And Dad, you glared defiantly like James Dean. You guys actually look normal and attractive.

But, Mom—and this is where I get so fucking confused—you must have been a mental case back then, too! That’s an awful thing to write, I know. But it must’ve been true. As far back as I can remember, you were always a little crazy. You never beat us, and you bought us everything we wanted, but you just couldn’t control your mouth.

You were never like all the mothers I saw on TV. On all the other shows the moms were the same—pleasant and gentle and caring. But you were never like those moms. I’ve always been pissed at you for that. I mean, there was dad who had fought in the war, and he was really cool and collected. Even when me and Tracy were bad, dad always understood and never went crazy. But you, Mom—holy shit! If you couldn’t control yourself, why did you bother to have children in the first place?

I admit that I forgave you, Dad, for your mistakes very early in life. Any other woman for a wife and you never would’ve cheated, I know that. Your flaws never affected me. You always kept yourself in control. Mommy, on the other hand, even though you didn’t hit as much, you never had any control of yourself. I remember one time you got angry and actually went at me with a fork. Maybe I was bad that day. I don’t know. But why couldn’t you just hit me and send me to my room? Why’d you have to go crazy like that? And that’s no exception to the rule. That shit happened day-in and day-out. You couldn’t control her mouth, either. All the moms on TV would ask nicely for something the first time, and then yell later if the kid didn’t do it. Not you. You’d yell the first time, or even curse, and never asked nicely for anything.