Christopher Prato - Little Boy or, Enola Gay

Panting frozen air, standing at the top of the filthy, grimy staircase, I saw her. People were shuffling by, but she was sitting on the bottom step rather complacently.

In a flash, I jumped down the stairs like a super hero. Grabbing her left shoulder from behind, pressing my fingers through her bulging coat, her little face turned back toward me, almost in slow motion. She screamed.

I slammed the palm of my hand over her warm, wet mouth. I felt her teeth clenching beneath my fingers; for a moment I thought she was going to bite me. Kneeling down on the step beside her, I mashed my body against hers, squeezing her against the filthy tiled wall of the stairwell.

“Please, Maria,” I said, beginning to cry heavily, “please don’t make this happen. Please don’t ruin a good day.” She squirmed around like a gerbil in a vest pocket.

“I’m in the palm of your hand!” I screamed through my tears. My face was dripping—whether it was sweat and tears or tears alone I don’t know.

For those few moments in the stairwell, not another soul existed in the universe. I barely heard the footsteps of families walking down the steps behind me; nobody, thank God, bothered to wrestle me away for her. Thank God New Yorkers mind their own business , I thought. Had somebody tried to stop me, I’d of killed him, I swear.

“Remember the poem I just gave you! Goddamn, you buh—, please, please stop it. You’re hurting me so much. I—I’m sorry! I’m not perfect either, I swear I know that’s true.”

With that said, she stopped squirming. But she stayed crunched up against the wall in a little ball of coat and hat and pants. Pressing my face against her ear, I began to breathe hard. I thought I was having a heart attack and I probably was. I must get her back. I have to go home with her. She will come to my house for dinner tonight, just as planned . I wasn’t ready to give her up. I couldn’t.

Whispering roughly into her ear, I said, “I’m in the palm of your hand, I swear. I’m not perfect—you own me. You control me. You are my religion, baby. I need you. I’ll tell you everything right now that I’ve never told you before. Remember that girl, Rachel? I told her I loved her. Just once, but I didn’t mean it. And when I went out with Kyle last weekend, I got drunk. I didn’t mean to, I swear. I just—I don’t know—I just missed you so much. I know we’ve been getting along okay for a while, but it just hasn’t been right, you know? I miss you. I miss us in Central Park—remember when we went to Central Park last spring? I even think about us drinking together sometimes, you know, and it scares me. I just—I’m so sorry, Maria—I just want a girl who laughs for no one else. I want you to be mine. I love you, angel. I really love you.”

I continued to cry, using her hair to sop up the tears. My hands were so cold and chapped they were almost bloody.

“Why do you do this, A.J.?” she wailed. “You’ve changed so much. We aren’t in love anymore, don’t you see that?” Forcing my body against hers as if I were one half of a vice and the wall the other, I clenched my teeth and—and growled.

“Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that again.” I wasn’t talking; I was snarling these words to her. It was an awful sight, now that I think back on it. Just terrible.

We remained there for a few minutes, against the wall, both of us sobbing, too exhausted to budge. Finally, I felt overpowered by her. I was on the verge of collapsing. I struggled to stand up, lifting Maria with me as if I was a human forklift. She clung to my jacket, but I wasn’t sure if it was to keep from falling or because she’d forgiven me.

“I’m sorry,” I kept repeating, “I’m so sorry. Let’s just go home and forget all about this. Please. I promise it’ll never happen again.”

Silently, Maria descended the staircase, allowing me to follow close behind. Not a word was spoken on the subway back to my car.

We went back to my house and had Thanksgiving dinner with my parents like nothing had ever happened. Creepily hushed by the day’s events, neither Maria nor I spoke to one another the rest of the day. Luckily, she spoke to everyone else as if we’d just returned from a fun-filled morning at the parade. I knew she wasn’t happy with me. But she was back by my side and that’s all that mattered.

Maria gave Thanksgiving new meaning. I was so thankful for her, because she loved me even though I was imperfect. But she was perfect. She was an angel. She was my guardian angel, and I had to use her strength to protect me from myself, and to get me through all of my worries.

As I drove her home in silence that night, I thought to myself : What kind of person is stupid enough to hurt his own angel?

If Thanksgiving was fucked up, Christmas was a nightmare. If I'd only put as much effort into my behavior as I did into the gifts I bought. As usual, there was a calm before the storm.

Roaming the gigantic, crowded Queens Center Mall several days before Christmas, numbed by sheer desperation, I explored store after store, aspiring to unearth a gift that would drive Maria's memories of Thanksgiving into extinction. Fortune struck me when I lumbered into a cruddy jewelry store on the basement level. A lot of the girls in her high school, I'd noticed, wore gaudy necklaces with something called name-plates. They usually read "Vito loves Domenica," or “Lakeesha loves Carlos,” or some shit like that. Picture a golden street sign dangling from a guinea princess's neck.

I'd always hated these things, not to mention the chicks who wore them. So, being the innovative guy that I was, I decided to do something a little different. I asked the Iranian guy behind the counter if he could carve out numbers instead of letters. About ten minutes later, after explaining in phonetic English the difference between numbers and letters, the guy finally said yes. One hour and eighty dollars, and seventy-eight cents later, Abdul handed me the result: the date Maria and I met— 2-8-92 —scripted in 18 carat gold, attached to a gold necklace.

Fast forward to Christmas morning at Maria's house. Her parents are sitting on a new, plush green sofa in the living room—a gift, Maria said, from her dad to her Mom—as Maria, pigtails and all, looking like a nine-year-old expecting Santa to appear, kneeled anxiously beneath a garishly decorated Christmas tree. Before you could say Kris Kringle, shredded wrapping paper was spread before her and the “date plate”—my own personal invention—was on her neck. She was so happy she burst into tears. She adored it.

“Great gift, guy!” Mr. Della Verita said.

“Oh, Mah-Ree-Uh, it’s so beau-tee-ful,” Mrs. Della Verita prawned, her Brooklyn accent as thick as the olive oil in her baked ziti.

I asked Maria to wear it in school from now on and she said she would. Now everyone would know the day that we met. It would become the national holiday of a nation inhabited by two young lovers. Maria would wear it with pride, I knew, because that’s just the way she was.

But, as I said, I like to be innovative. In addition to the date plate, I'd purchased two tickets to the opera at Lincoln Center. We were going to see The Barber of Seville, or, as her father said, Il Barbiere di Siviglia , or something like that. Crouching beside Maria, as if I was about to ask for her hand in marriage, I handed her the pair of tickets. She smiled tranquilly and nearly strangled me with a hug. Her father placed his arm around her mother, all smiles, as if to say, Say hello to our new son-in-law.

Mission accomplished! Maria had never been to the Metropolitan Opera, I was certain, and this was a classy gift to show my cultivated side. I am grinning even as I write this because I really don’t have a cultivated side. Honestly, I didn't care much for the opera myself, but Maria did. In one of our many conversations, she'd mentioned that her father listened to Pavarotti, and that she'd grown to love opera. Bingo! I thought. A gift waiting to be given! Her father, watching intently from the sofa, had never given her something like this. Appearing suddenly disquieted, Mr. Della Verita stood up and peered in our direction, first at his daughter, then at me. He took a step toward us, remained still for a moment, smiled, and placed his giant calloused hand on my sweaty back. "You know how to give a gift," he said with a quick wink of his eye. I think Mr. Della Verita was happier with me that Christmas than Maria was.