My sister was a sensitive woman from birth. As children, we would walk the thin streets, would lay on the sand and watch the ferries drop their frenzied tourists off, and pick the exhausted ones up. I noticed even then the way boys looked at her, though I could never imagine an attraction to her budding breasts, to the gaunt protrusions that her nipples made in her shirt, so flamboyant, proclamatory, and without mystery. She was ignorant of her displayed sex in the theatre of our small town, and only became embarrassed when she noticed me observing. When we returned home at the end of the day, the tenderness with which our mother delicately rinsed our filthy legs in the bath brought her to tears.
The women of my family were deeply religious, as many were who had nothing to do during the war aside from gossip and pray for the return of their husbands, sons, and lovers. They had nothing to attach themselves to aside from their children, and in the absence of grown men to dote on they turned their sons into tiny gods, and their murdered soldiers into folk saints. When my father left us, I remember it was storming. The lightning came in, looking to tear pieces off of everything. Birds dove furiously, and I observed them, wishing they would turn him back to our doorframe. Instead, he just kept walking towards the port.
One night, I woke up to white plaster from the ceiling falling on me in fine pieces. I turned on the light and saw our mother jerking around, packing the valuables. Sveva was screaming in their bed, hiding her face. “Go find your cousin.” Those were my orders. She picked up my sister and the bag to bring into the basement. Without putting my shoes on, I ran out the door, almost slipping on the worn stones of our stairs. I was the fastest child and the only boy in the building, so it was known without saying that I would act as the spy, the hunter for eggs and the gatherer of bread, the communicator, and the general source of intelligence for my mother, the other mothers, and the old lady on the first floor. I had run these few hundred meters to my cousin’s house so many times that I knew exactly where my feet would have to fall on the cobblestones to avoid spraining my ankle in one of the gaps, even though the street lights were blown. When I arrived at Antonio’s house, I hurled myself through the courtyard and threw open the door.
“Calm down, kid.” To call me “kid” when he was only four years my senior was quite presumptuous. I would have told him so if I could breathe. Though I was not aware of the fact, there was still so much I did not know. So, it was just an earthquake. The scratchy sound of humming snaked itself out of the bathroom. “So much for a restful Sunday. And the sun hasn’t even risen yet.” A boy his age wandered out of the bathroom holding a pail of seawater. He was naked, dark, and dripping. His sun-lightened hair was plastered to his swollen shoulders. The light of our moon played off the water pooling in his clavicles. He had been washing himself. His arms, fingers, and cock fascinated me, so much larger and thicker than the statues I had seen at the museums. For what felt like minutes, he watched me stare at him without words.
Suddenly, my eyes were filled with tears. I felt my whole body grow red, and I was struck by the feeling that I was one with the boys I looked down on, those who I felt were subhuman in that they could not control themselves, those horrible, jeering classmates of mine who would stare at my sister — her young, taut thighs, her strong fingernails, the small curve of her ass, whose only disgusting purpose was merely to shit — those who stared at her straight through, across every inch even of her scalp, every grain of dirt in her braids.
Without a word, I closed my eyes, turned around, and left. The air felt so heavy that it would suffocate all language. The only thing I knew to do was pray, and I walked, defeated, ashamed, embarrassed, and swollen, to the altar of San Gennaro on the corner of the tailor who used to make my dad’s suits, back when the world was so simple that men would choose their jobs. I knelt in front of the saint’s image, eyes low and avoiding contact.
After a breath, I raised them and began to pray. “O Great San Genaro, we have recourse to your power during times of disaster…” As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, they found the details of his icon. His garments were golden, bejeweled, and fell over his broad shoulders with graceful and generous authority. Beneath them, his tan skin shone without blemish, anointed perfection from birth. His broad nose suggested a strength that was so much greater than the paternal strength of soldiers and borders, and his eyes, risen like mine, were a rare, clear blue to me, who had only known the countless black irises of my own city. Brown hair fell over his ears in smooth curls, complementing his thick eyebrows, so much like the boy in my cousin’s apartment. He was just slightly illuminated by the fading blue light of a lantern placed on the ledge of his altar. He was beautiful.
My cock was hot, struggling against the seam of my underwear, feeling awkward and too big for me, and my abdomen was throbbing with the kind of urgent piss that pools in you when you feel so embarrassed that you can hold nothing inside. I put my hand around it and began to move it slowly back and forth. It didn’t feel wrong. My body was racked with shivers, as if my skin was turning over. My mouth had frozen in prayer. I was looking at San Gennaro, but San Gennaro wasn’t looking at me. He knew what I was doing, just like God knew what I was doing, and he wasn’t looking at me, because he didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. Cum flew out of me first, and then a hot and uncontrollable stream of piss that darkened the lines between the cobblestones, coursing over the city’s debris. I pressed my forehead to the saint’s, overcome by the good work of his miracle. That, I thought, must have been my blood made liquid.
