We the Animals

Justin Torres

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780547577005
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

An award-winning novel in stories surrounding a young, half-white, half-Puerto Rican boy grappling with life, love, and identity as he comes of age.

In this groundbreaking debut, Justin Torres plunges us into the chaotic heart of one family, the intense bonds of three brothers, and the mythic effects of this fierce love on the people we must become.

NOWA MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

"A tremendously gifted writer whose highly personal voice should excite us in much the same way that Raymond Carver's or Jeffrey Eugenides's voice did when we first heard it." — Washington Post

" We the Animals is a dark jewel of a book. It's heartbreaking. It's beautiful. It resembles no other book I've read."—Michael Cunningham "A miracle in concentrated pages, you are going to read it again and again."—Dorothy Allison "Rumbles with lyric dynamite…Torres is a savage new talent."—Benjamin Percy, Esquire "A fiery ode to boyhood…A welterweight champ of a book."—NPR, Weekend Edition

"A novel so honest, poetic, and tough that it makes you reexamine what it means to love and to hurt."— O, The Oprah Magazine

"The communal howl of three young brothers sustains this sprint of a novel…A kind of incantation."— The New Yorker

The Night I Am Made

THEY GREW UP wiry, long-torsoed, and lean. Their kneecaps, their muscles, bulged like knots on a rope. Broad foreheads and strong ridges along the brow announced their resemblance. Their cheeks hollowed, their lips barely covered their teeth and gums, as if the jaw and the skull inside wanted out.

They hunched and they skulked. They jittered. They scratched.

Out on the loading dock, in the lamplight, they watched the night. They watched their breath chill before them and float out into the cold dark. They stood hoodless in the snow, pinching the cotton filters from their cigarettes. They talked about breaking and entering. They loved to say about a thing that it was laced—their night, their drugs. Later, one of them will smash his face into the locker-room mirror over a girl, another will slice up his arms. They’ll flunk. They’ll roll one car after another into a ditch. Later they’ll truck in all manner of pornography. Soon they’ll drop out. At work, they’ll fall in with all the other boys like them, boys with punched-out teeth, bad breath, easy winks. They’ll skunk around in basement apartments with grown men who keep pet snakes in glass aquariums. Later still, they’ll realize that those boys are actually nothing like them at all. Who knows this mutt life, this race mixing? Who knows Paps? All these other boys, the white trash out here, they have legacies, decades upon decades of poverty and violence and bloodlines they can trace like a scar; and these are their creeks, their hills, their goodness. Their grandfathers poured the cement of this loading dock. And downstate, in Brooklyn, the Puerto Ricans have language, they have language.

Later, they’ll see, ain’t no other boys as pitiless, as new, as orphaned.

But out on that loading dock, they looked into the future and saw otherwise.

They felt proud to be the kind of boys they were—boys who spat in public, boys who kept their gaze on the floor or fixed on a space above your head, boys who looked you in the eye only to size you up or scare you off. When they bit the chapped skin from their lower lips, when they chewed up the web between thumb and pointer, when they scratched inside their ears with house keys, they were looking at memories, proud memories, blood memories, or else they were dreaming about their wild futures. Out on that loading dock they chanted, Nah, man, Get out of here with that shit, Fuck that, Let me tell you how it was, Let me tell you how it’s gonna be.

They weren’t scared, or dispossessed, or fragile. They were possible. Soon they’d be sailing right over them ditches. Soon they’d be handling that cash. They’d decide. They’d forge themselves consequential. They’d sing the mixed breed.

And me now. Look at me. See me there with them, in the snow—both inside and outside their understanding. See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent. They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.

Look at us, our last night together, when we were brothers still.

MIDNIGHT

WE FINISHED OFF the liquor, hopped down from the dock, and Manny tossed the empty bottle Hail Mary into the line of trees. We didn’t hear it come down, we didn’t hear a single rustle or thud—and we reveled in the joy of this silent miracle. Manny invented a black hole; Joel suggested that the bottle landed perfectly in a raccoon’s yawning mouth; I just razzed, That’s the stupidest bullshit I ever heard. We stepped into our shadows and the echoes of our laughter, headed nowhere. The alcohol warmed our bellies; the snowflakes thickened the air before us.

Around the corner there was the four-barreled steel Dumpster, and in the Dumpster’s shelter hid the eight-nippled stray cat. We dug into our pockets for milk money; Manny had seventy-five cents. Fifteen minutes’ walk to the gas station, no one was cold. At the counter we slid the change to the attendant, a Near Eastern man the hue and hulk of our Paps.

“You could be our father,” I said, and Manny and Joel busted up into coughing laughter.

The man looked at our coins. “You’re short.”

We patted pockets, pretended to fish, came up empty. The lights inside cut into our smooth buzz; the counter’s veneer had been coin-rubbed raw. This man wasn’t nothing like our Paps.

“Go on, take it,” he said. “Get out of here.”

So we ambled back to our stray, grabbing at whatever we found along the shoulder and tossing it into the trees. If something—a rock, a flank of rubber—landed without making a sound, we erupted into cheers. Sometimes we pretended not to have heard the crashing; we cheered on anyway.

For a milk bowl we used the plastic lid of a five-gallon tub and the milk thinned into a shallow layer. Didn’t look like much. Our stray barely raised her muzzle to sniff the air.

“She’ll eat later,” Joel said, “when we’re gone.”

This was our own Ma’s pledge, when we used to worry for her.

The kittens clawed and pushed in the suckling pile; some seemed to be asleep at the tit; they were ugly, desperate things.

“How long before them kittens forget they’re kin, start fighting and fucking each other?” Manny asked. “How long before they jump the runt?”

They both sniggered, and they were sniggering at me, the fay, the runt of our litter; we were once those kittens—three thick, three warm. And we blood-fought over a tin can of pet milk. And jump the runt was a trick mean as any they pulled on me.

“Fuck you,” I said. I hadn’t drunk half as much as either one of them—I took hesitant swigs or kept my lips closed and only pretended. But still I had drunk enough to be surprised at the sound of my own voice, and at the venom. “And fuck this creeping around. What are we doing out here anyway?”

“Hey now,” said Joel.

“Chill,” said Manny. “You’re twisting up your panties.”

They snorted out little chuckles from their noses.

“I’m tired of this. This is bullshit. This creeping around.”

“Who’s creeping?” asked Manny. “I’m just standing here.”

“You’re a creep,” I said. “Look in the mirror. Can you even see yourself? You’re always going on about God. And then the next minute you’re talking about hos. As if you know shit about either one—as if God wasn’t as disgusted by you as girls are.”

“Oh shit!” said Joel, delighted.

“What, that makes you happy?”

“Kind of,” Joel replied.

“Kind of,” I mimicked. “You are so fucking ignorant. You embarrass me. Did you know that? That you embarrass me?”

“You hear that?” Manny said to Joel. “We embarrass him.”

Look at my brothers—their saggy clothes, their eyes circled dark like permanent bruises, their hangdog hungry faces. I felt trapped and hateful and shamed. Secretly, outside of the family, I cultivated a facility with language and a bitter spite. I kept a journal—in it, I sharpened insults against all of them, my folks, my brothers. I turned new eyes to them, a newly caustic gaze. I sensed a keen power of observation in myself, an intelligence, but sour. Both Ma and Paps had held private conversations with me about my potential, about this bookishness that set me apart from my brothers; both encouraged me to apply myself—they hinted that I would have an easier time in this world than they had, than my brothers would ever have, and I hated them for that.

But the worst was pity.

“You know what? Forget it,” I said. “Never mind.”

They wouldn’t abide my pity.

“You’re fucked up,” said Joel.

Manny scooped down and packed a snowball in his bare hands. He took up a branch, pitched the ball to himself, and whipped the air. The snowball exploded, and we all three watched the effect, a little storm within the storm.

“He’s right,” Manny said, turning on me in a flush, pointing the branch. “You’re fucked up. Admit it.”

He held the branch there, an inch from my nose. “Admit it.”

Then Joel was behind me, locking my arms in a full nelson. I tried to shrug him off, but it was no use. They were both drunk; Manny held that damn branch right in front of my face. I imagined the welt of it slamming across the side of my head. And I wanted it.

“Either you’re fucked up, or you’re getting fucked up. Which one will it be?”

Look at us three, look at how they held me there—they didn’t want to let me go.

“Go ahead, Manny, beat me with that stick. See if it makes you feel better.” My voice started strong but ended soft, a whisper, a plea. “Just fucking beat me with it.”

Manny pumped two fake swings; I flinched each time. Then he sighed in disgust, and Joel slacked off his grip. The stick dropped.

“Seriously,” Manny said, quieter now, “you’re acting fucked up. There is something seriously fucking wrong with you in the head. Let’s talk about that.”

But we didn’t. We couldn’t.

We let the snow fall on us some more, white piled up on our hair, our heads like miniature mountains, until finally, in silence, we agreed to move into the shelter of the building’s eave. Manny distributed a cigarette each to Joel and me, and we went about pulling out the filter. Still no one spoke, but the ritual eased the air between us—the spark of fire, the noisy exhalations, our little clouds of smoke.

Then, slowly, the jokes and shit talking picked up again, and I waited on the edges, as always, until Manny turned to address me.

“You know what she said to me the other day?”

I didn’t ask who, because I knew who.

“She said you were capable of anything.”

“Yep,” said Joel, “she said some shit like that to me.”

“She said you were so bright.”

“So bright!”

“And you know what else? She said you were capable of destroying yourself.”

“The way she talks about you,” Joel said, “like you’re a fucking crystal vase.”

Manny roped his arm around Joel’s neck. “In her mind, we’re two of a kind.” He pointed at me. “And you, you’re—”

“A fucking golden egg.”

“She wants us to protect you from the other kids.”

Joel laughed. “Right? I told her it ain’t like we’re all still playing in the same goddamn sandbox, woman.”

“And to protect you from yourself.”

“It ain’t like we’re little boys.”

“‘He’s still your little brother,’ she says, ‘he’ll always be your little brother.’”

Look at me, how I itched to leave that loading dock; how I itched to leave that snowy hour.

“‘Only if he wants to be,’ I says.”

“Fucking sacred lamb.”

I held my hands up in front of me, surrender style, and walked backward, keeping my eyes on them, until I reached the building’s edge.

“Where you going, girlie?”

“Where the fuck you think you’re going?”

I made it to the corner and turned, down the sloping path, away from their taunts. They called out after me, putting an angry question mark at the end of my name. Their voices boomed huge in the dark cold air—like waves pounding me from behind.

They called and called and cackled, and the trees echoed with their noise.

Shit, let them bark.

Maybe it was true. Maybe there was no other boy like me, anywhere.

LATE NIGHT

I SLIPPED AWAY and walked the three miles to the bus station. Snow fell gently and swiftly, and when I looked behind me, my tracks were already snow-covered. This was what I’d been up to behind their backs, sleazing around the bus station’s men’s room. This was the scent they’d picked up.

I left the road and took a footpath that had been trampled through a hedge. The path led straight to the back of the bus station. If the lot was full enough, I could emerge from the hedge and walk between two parked buses to the men’s room without anyone’s seeing. There was no one to explain any of this to me; I figured out the routine on my own, in small, paranoid steps. For weeks I’d been sneaking to this bus station, lurking, indecisive. I hid in the stalls, peeked through the cracks. At the sink, I washed and washed my hands, unable to return the frank stares in the mirror. I didn’t know how to show these men I was ready. The closest I came was with a man who held my chin and tilted my face up to meet his and told me I was a cute kid.

“You’re a cute kid,” he had repeated. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

But this night only one bus idled in the lot. The driver inside spotted me and opened the release, and the door made a loud quick fart of pressurized air.

“New York?”

I pointed to the station. “I gotta pee.”

“Not in there. Not at this hour.”

“Why not?”

The driver ignored me, kept his eyes on the falling flakes. He wore the uniform, blue polyester slacks, a blue wool cardigan with the bus logo embroidered onto a pocket. A middle-aged man thick all over, down to his fingers, one of which he aimed at the windscreen. “Was scheduled to leave an hour ago, but the snow put a stop to that. Some snow this is, though, beautiful.”

A blizzard. The air was warm; the flakes were wet and puffed and sticking; they cut in smooth, relentless, gentle diagonals to the ground. My brothers will lose themselves tonight; they’ll search for me in the whiteness; they’ll drown.

“Is the building closed?”

“Sent everybody waiting for New York on home. You want to go to New York, you come back in the morning. I’ll take you there myself.”

“No, sir.”

“You got to pee so bad y...