Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

I didn’t know how to respond. If I said something like, “Oh, I know, I’m much better than all those guys,” it would sound really conceited. But before I could think of what to say, she continued.

“What I’m saying, A.J., is that I feel like I can trust you. I mean, I feel like I can tell you anything. Anything at all.”

“But you can,” I said.

“But that’s the thing. I can’t. I mean, I hardly know you, and it just wouldn’t be right.”

“You shouldn’t be afraid. I wouldn’t think less of you if you opened up to me.” That’s where I really put my foot in my mouth, because Maria didn’t mean it that way at all.

“No, no,” she said, “it’s not that. I’m just afraid that the more I tell you, the more vulnerable I am, and the more you have to use against me. What if this doesn’t work out? What if we wind up never going out again? Or if we only date for a while? How do you think I’d feel if we started dating and I told you about my life and my family, and then you just left me, or, even worse, hurt me and made me leave you. That would kill me, A.J. That would kill me more than it would if a guy raped me.”

I felt like I was having a heart attack, but I had to keep my cool. “I understand,” I said. She continued as if I hadn’t even interrupted.

“I told you before that my father’s Italian, right? Well, he’s one of those really strict Italian fathers. Real old-world, ya know? He got his citizenship when he was young, because he wanted to be an American very badly. He actually wanted to be in the military”—this comment piqued my interest but I didn’t want to interrupt—“but he never lost his old world ruggedness or whatever, ya know? Still, even though he’s strict, I love him, because I’m his little girl. And that’s what he calls me to this day—his little girl.

Well, one day, in the seventh grade, I came home from school crying, because all the kids in my class had stood up in front of everyone and read poems. But when it was my turn to read my poem, I got so nervous that I just ran out of the room crying.

“But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was after school all of my friends made fun of me. Even my best friend Rosie said, ‘You can’t read, Maria.’ And she laughed at me. And that wasn’t the last time she laughed at me, either.

“I got left back a whole year because I was so afraid of speaking in front of the class.” She paused and gathered her thoughts. Again, I was dying to interrupt, but thought better of it, and encouraged her to continue. “I never told anyone this before. But that’s the thing, A.J.: I want to tell you. I really do. I want to tell you all of my secrets. But I keep thinking about what my father said to me that day when I came home from school crying. He said, ‘Maria, no matter what happens, always remember that your only true friends are your family. You can’t rely on anyone else but your family. Me and mommy will help you read better, okay? And you’ll be the best reader in the school.’ But I was still sad. I kept thinking, Rosie and I are friends, so why did she make fun of me? And then my father pulled me close and looked right in my eyes—I will never forget how serious he was—and he said to me, ‘Always remember: Amici con tutti, confidenza con nessuno .’ I didn’t speak Italian back then, so I asked him what that meant. ‘It means,’ he said, ‘friends with everyone, confidence with nobody. Just remember that, my little girl. Remember that you should always be polite and friendly to everybody; but the moment you tell someone outside your family—even a close, close friend—a secret, the moment you let them see the weakness within you—that’s the moment that you give them power over you.’”

I was dumfounded, so I let her keep talking.

“ Amici con tutti, confidenza con nessuno ,” she said, in the most perfect and beautiful Italian I’d ever heard. “And that’s why I’m suspicious of you. That’s why I’m afraid. I’m afraid you’re like Rosie, and that guy in the playground, and all the people my dad warned me about. I’m afraid that the moment I allow you to get close to me, you’ll turn your back on me. But not before you plunge a dagger into my heart.”

I wasn’t just dumfounded. In shock is more like it. I pride myself on being able to communicate pretty well in all situations, but I had no idea how to respond to Maria’s revelations. She seemed so serious, so ominous. She stared at me intently, anticipating a response. At first I thought that the date was simply shot to hell, that we’d never, ever go out again. But then I realized that she was trying to send me a message. That the words she’d just used were very important. I think it was the first time a girl had said something to me like an adult, and the first time I’d ever understood something like that. It was pretty amazing.

“Maria,” I said, “I’ll never hurt you in any way. Trust me, there will be time, and in that time you’ll learn that even your father can be wrong, and that there is someone out there you can trust and believe in.” I didn’t say that that person was me, but I sort of implied it, I guess.

She took a deep breath and paused for a minute. “I’m really happy to be here with you,” she said with a huge smile.

“I’m happy to be here with you, too,” I said, and then took a deep breath. And then I did the strangest thing. I grabbed her hand and placed her palm against my face. I felt like I’d just gotten off a roller-coaster and needed the reassurance, I guess. She smiled. Again. Come to think of it, other than during her story, she smiled the entire day. I’ll never forget that smile, and the feeling of making someone smile all day. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime feeling.

Suddenly, it was six o’clock. The air cooled, as the sun began to set in the orange sky above the pond. We sat in silence for a few moments, and then held each others hands on the walk back to the subway.

On the ride back to Queens I was exhausted, even though I’d spent so much time laying down by the pond. So I asked her if I could lean my head against her shoulder and close my eyes, and she said yes. It was beautiful. The ride was bumpy and noisy, and the subway had its usual stench of urine and garbage, but I didn’t mind. As corny as it sounds, I felt like an angel nestled on a cloud in the sky and quickly fell asleep on her shoulder.

She woke me as the train pulled into our stop. I decided to be a gentleman and take her all the way back to her house, instead of just letting her get on the bus by herself. As we walked up her block toward her house, I leaned forward like I was going to kiss her, and she poked her little head up, ready to kiss me back. Then I sort of dodged her head and whispered into her ear: “I want to kiss you, but I won’t until I break up with Lynn. There will be time.”

Gracefully, she smiled and said thank you and then walked up to her door and went inside. I must have stood there for twenty minutes or so before I actually left. I didn’t want the moment to end because, deep down inside, I guess I knew that our relationship had reached its zenith.

It was sort of around then, I suppose, that I started to lose my mind. Not go crazy, but literally lose my mind. Most teenagers, I think, were still learning stuff at that age. Not me. I think that I learned up until around that time—around my junior year in high school—and then, slowly and steadily, I stopped.

Thing is, my grades stayed about the same. As you know, I’ve always gotten straight A’s. I excel in History and English because I love to read and write and memorize interesting facts. My vocabulary has always exceeded my years, and that’s invariably helped me get terrific grades. Although I never liked school much, it was always easy to get A’s because I knew how to give teachers what they wanted. Until sixteen or seventeen, I was always a great student.