Write a 1-page story emulating Torres’ style (diction, prosody, sentence structure, tone, themes, voice, point-of-view, etc.); let the experience of Torres’ story prompt a story from your life, but since you are reading fiction (not nonfiction), take freedoms with fictionalizing the personal. I am especially looking to see how your critical investment in the novella is conveyed through your creative piece.
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“Can I have another soda?” “Where’s dad?” “What’s for dinner?”. “Please! We don’t have to tell him!” “But I’m hungry NOW!” “Can you call him and ask?”
“When’s dad getting home?”
That’s What I’d like to know, too.
At one point, I was among that chorus of incessant, hungry questioning. I was another voice in the cicada song; I was familiar with the desperate cries for answers, for attention; The way we climbed over each other and clawed at our mother to be seen, entertained, like mewing kittens fighting for her milk, was a not too distant memory for me.
It was, however, still a memory. And before I knew it, I would take the place of our mother.
No longer allowed the privilege of being receiver, I am now the unfortunate object of the mob’s interrogation, expected to bend to their demands and expectations. I was to know what to do, to watch them, protect them, provide them, answer them, care for them, entertain them, feed them.
Sometimes, when it becomes too much, I try to outrun them, trying all I can to turn the lock while they push back against the door with their combined force. Even if I succeed, I can’t escape the music.
“Please, leave me alone!” I beg for mercy, like a fool. They answer my plea with the pounding of their 8 little fists against the door.
“When is dad getting home?” one of them, maybe Jackie, probably Ella, repeats.
“I don’t know!” I admit.
This does not satisfy them. It never does. The song continues to play and play and play until I come back.
I remember going down to the lake by Louis’ house. My cousin’s and I would follow him like we were his sheep and he were God.
He would start to strip just before water rose up on his toes. My oldest cousin, Joy, watched intently as clothes turned to raw skin. My brother, Daniel and my other cousin, Kip, even Joy, we have known Louis most of our lives. Even in the eye of danger, Louis doesn’t know fear. He rejects the name, the feeling.
I could never figure out why.
His Ma always said “He was born that way, I couldn’t tell ya, we treat him like an angel, the devil inside of him is natural”
I tried. I wanted him to be an open book so I could outline the pages but as the days went on his pages became empty and soon there was a lock and I never tried to open it.
The cool breeze of the early morning swept through my hair as my eyes stayed locked on Louis’ bare back. His shirt fell to the ground and was now covered in thousands of grains of sand. From such a warrior I expected to see battle wounds on his pale back from a battle he must have faced to be so powerful and strong, but alas all I see is smooth skin.
Perfection.
Joy sees it too, but in a different way than me. She sees it as a good thing. I cannot see it that way. Where is the pain? Where is the suffering? Is he pretending to be tough when he has nothing to prove for it? I want there to be scars of past conflict. Show me he is human and not some God we all believe him to be.
I want him to be a fearless monster.
He grabs his shorts and down they go. Afraid of nothing. All of us, fully clothed, paces away from him and there Louis is, free. I try to rationalize my jealousy but it escapes me. He does not shrink in fear of being seen. There is no barrier between him and our eyes. He does not ask us to look away so we don’t. He does not ask us to follow in his footsteps, but we do. Like a robot I am tearing off my clothes. Almost like he is whispering in my ear: “You will do as I say, even if I don’t say it” But it’s not just me, Joy, Daniel and Kip follow suit.
I feel the cold water hit my toes all I follow Louis into the depths of the lake. I am the first one to follow him. He looks back at me and he does not smile, he only stares. He stares with something so evil.
He always looked at me like I was less than. “Girly” he would call me, like it was an insult. Like I was prey. Maybe I was. The lake was his cave and I walked into it every year and I never knew why. There must be an instinct inside me that wouldn’t let me run away.
I stand completely still and my breathes are shallow unlike the water I keep walking further into. Louis watches as I get closer to him and I can’t stop myself from the way I am pulled to him like a magnet. I realize all I want to do is sink my head underwater and never come up for air. Afraid Louis will be there waiting for me with those hungry eyes.
My mom ran to me and held me in a hug that, if I had to estimate, lasted for eight minutes. We have never been a “touchy” family, maybe a quick hug between each person, but even that was a rarity. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom hold a hug with anyone, maybe her mom, but that could also be my imagination. But I had been gone for a month, and her only connection to me was her ex-husband’s mother’s Facebook (which, when I really think about it, it’s something that would have sent me into a spiral). We stood at the baggage claim (Boston-Logan, I had stood there a million times) and she squeezed the breath out of an eight-year-old who’d just flown for six hours. I didn’t realize then how much she actually loved me. I don’t even think my brain could process that sort of love at that point. Of course, I knew, but it had never really crossed my mind. My mom was just always a constant, driving me everywhere, making meals, and generally being the unrecognized rock in my life. She sat with me for hours while I cried for my father, my father who had done nothing to deserve it, who had abandoned any responsibilities, who had, in ways I can only recognize now, left a hole in both of us. She squeezed that eight-year-old who couldn’t possibly process the love she was always given,
“I can’t breathe, Mom.” “I don’t care,” she kept a bear-like grasp on me, “I don’t get to hug you enough.”
I reached for the chocolate I had brought home for her, “I know you like the white chocolate!” The average eight-year-old technique of shifting the subject, she didn’t seem to mind, likely finally realizing I was actually here, not some figment of her imagination. “My dad said it was your favorite.” And there he was, still finding his way into our relationship. “He’s right.” He wasn’t. White chocolate is his favorite, my mom likes dark. I’d learn that a few years later, and maybe it isn’t that important. But, isn’t it? Why did a few minutes in a candy store with my father create a fact in my brain, but eight years with my mother still left me with questions. She stuffed the chocolate in her bag, grabbed my hand and led me towards baggage claim. We stood and waited, and waited, and waited, and I got so hungry we broke into that chocolate. “You should have some too, Mom.” “Don’t worry about it, I ate on the bus.” I took my first bite, and searched for the nearest trash can. I was so confused at how anyone could stomach white chocolate, especially my mother.
Maybe it was purposeful for my father to give me to wrong information, maybe he really just forgot. But either way, it created another link in the chain separating my mother and I from my father.
We had dinner together that day. My mom cooked a meal too extravagant for the occasion. It was just a regular weekend. My baby brother and I played in our small backyard. We sat outstretched on a blanket atop the grass. I ran around feeling the blades of nature on my bare feet. He could barely stand. He stood and wobbled and fell. He crawled to explore the surroundings. Jazz music and laughter came from the other side where our parents sat. The sun dimmed in our neighborhood.
Later, we sat on our L-shaped suede brown couch as we always did on Sunday. Sunday evenings were reserved for watching football. Or soccer, I should say. Within Turkey, soccer team rivalries ran deep. My dad rooted for Fenerbahce. By default, my whole family did. We decked out in canary yellow and navy blue to represent until the colors leaked into our bloodstreams. Our pious duty was to cheer and to facilitate a win.
My dad drank as he always did when watching soccer. He started long before the game. He asked my mom to pour another raki. I hated the cloudy white Turkish liquor. I didn’t understand the concept of alcohol. I just knew it always caused problems. Ruined many nights. I watched the ninety minutes of the game tick by, hoping the other team wouldn’t score. The night was always worse when we lost. I went up to bed after halftime. I had school on Monday, and I was buzzing for my first day of first grade.
Sleep was hard to come by amidst the noise downstairs. I tossed and turned my small body until a light sleep shut my eyelids. I twitched back into consciousness upon resounding yells. The yells took a turn for the worse. I sensed the angriness behind them. I kept tossing, becoming more restless. After 45 uneasy minutes, the match was over. By the erupting raucous, it wasn’t hard to tell. We had lost.
My mom cautioned my dad, “You’re being too loud. The kids are sleeping.” In his altered state, he didn’t take that well. I muffled the sounds with my pillow. I knew they were fighting. It was a familiar feeling for me. I didn’t react strongly to it anymore. The eruption usually released the uneasiness in my stomach. I felt it building this time. I heard a yelp and a cry from my mom. The night was deviating from the usual. A couple exchanges later, I heard the door slam shut. The noise died down. The silence was oppressive. But calm.
My mom came up to my room. My small eyes were bright and open in the dark. She turned the lights on, and I saw that she was crying. I had never seen my mom cry before. I felt sadness and resentment setting into my soul. She gave me a hug. I hugged her tight, thinking I would never let her go. I would never let her be hurt again. She slept in my bed with me. The twin full hybrid was cozy for the two of us. In the morning she asked me if I still wanted to go to school. She offered to take me shopping or to the doctor or therapy. I wanted to go to school.
One sunny afternoon, my abuela took me outside and placed in my hands a granada, a pomegranate, ripe, and picked from the tree in her backyard on Mingo Way. I sat, my skin clinging to the plastic lawn chair, and watched as her scarred and weathered hands peeled the fruit and dropped the full and bursting seeds into a metal bowl. She draped a borrowed shirt over my slight frame saying “pontela ma, ‘pa que no te manches esta blusa que tu mami te compro.” And she was right; by the time we had dissected all of the pomegranates, I was all but covered in their sticky, sweet juices. She placed the pieces in my small, unmarked hands, and flashed me a devilish grin – she too remembered a time when her own hands were as small and unmarked as my own. Now, she bore the scars her life brought her, and watching her slightly bent, slightly crooked fingers deftly separate the pomegranates was familiar, and comforting. She pulled me into her lap, and I knew that I was Abue’s protector that day, clad in a baggy t-shirt stained deep red, and armed to the teeth with pomegranate seeds and their thick, syrupy juice. I knew that it was my job, and my job only, to listen intently to her sweet verses, to nod and sing at her songs, and to follow the curves of her soft hands with my fingers – reading the unsung history impressed upon her palms.
I ran inside proudly showing off my red-stained battle wounds, where my brother Mateo sat on the carpet. “Look Chippy!” I called, using our shared nickname. I pressed my forehead to his, leaving residue on his cheeks as we peered into each other’s eyes and bursted into laughter. We tried again, pouting our lips and widening our eyes to make the image even more exaggerated, and laughed ourselves to the ground. I gave myself up (surrender style) to the floor, my limbs splayed alongside Mateo’s.
“Will we always be Chippies?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
We have vivid memories of Barbie Dolls, thick Vogue magazines, and handmade doll clothes. These objects oozed femininity and seeping sensuality and homosexuality which were brought to our home not by me or my sister and not for us either but from and for my brother; his homosexuality viewing the images with desire other than carnal.
Before I was 7, that’s as close as I could approximate, near a birthday lost to the recesses and the caverns of my memories, we went on an excursion to Toys “R” Us. He bought me, though more for himself, a Blonde-haired, white-skinned doll. She was his stand-in, his shadow, his replica, although not too obvious, hidden within her the desire to dress as they did in Vogue. His annoyance welled up when we incorrectly posed the doll, like we turning him and his dreams into yet another standard out of his control. But he was more than an object to us. He was like a gateway to femininity. He was a rushing, graceful, river delivering us to a stop called “girlhood,” a guiding hand to an otherwise perilous journey.
I remember always thinking he was feminine. I saw his club in a group picture of all girls and him in the middle. He kept it framed in his room. “They just talk about gross stuff” he’d say about boys. My mom said “Pues es que si es cierto.” She was convinced as could be, holding onto every word, believing every possible lie of my brother’s life. She was like a woman blind by choice.
My sister said, “It’s even more fucked up of you to say he might just be exploring his sexuality.” His sexuality, the discovery of homosexuality, and the hidden away sexuality of my brother newly connected in the folds, the wrinkles, and the neurons of my mind. It was my sister’s discovery, her hidden secret, while also by no right hers. We were nervous and giddy in the thick air of the room in a foreign feeling called vulnerability. To us, the discovery made perfect sense and completed the art piece of what was my brother. He was like a relic lost to time, pushed away further by the gap between us, and us, like archaeologists trying to piece together the lives of humans, we sought from him a piece from us that could be found in what was lost from him.
We never knew who he was but at the same time always knew. We waited for who would say it first, say the word, in admittance to my parents whose weight of the Mexican ways waded through la sangre, the soul, the self, who he was. They figured it out themselves. Through the bumpy texture of the paper-thin walls, the gaspingly cold surface, and the thick gap between the floor and the door, seeped his tears, sobs, and fear. It was our vulnerability too, to a family invulnerable, callous, hardened with tradition and repetition; the pressure of old ways.
The women perhaps always knew. Despite conservative ways never for a second could we have discriminated against the thick covenant every living thing with a feminine soul is born into in a place ingrained with the views of Mexico. It was like my mom, who once chose to turn a blind eye begged Jesus for help and he, holding power over evil, cured her. She was different from what we expected. She was supportive, she reassured him. On this day we melded together into one greater work of art.
I slammed the door. Me and my brother stood for a moment in silence. We knew she was out there, enraged. She might pretend that she wasn’t mad. Or, if we went out there and apologized she would make us feel worse. There was no right answer. Maybe she was mad anyways. I didn’t like it when my mom had to go on a work trip and left us with Auntie Mia. I loved my mom. I missed my mom. Auntie Mia was just ok. I wanted my Nana, she was so much kinder than Auntie Mia. We didn’t fight with my Nana, ever. We fought with Auntie Mia. A lot. I looked at my brother, there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in mine, too.
“I want her to leave,” he said.
“Me too.”
“I want mom.”
“Me too.”
I hated it when Auntie Mia yelled at me. I didn’t do anything, I was a kid. She was the adult. It wasn’t my job to do all the chores. I didn’t know how. My mom took care of us. My nana took care of us. Auntie Mia expected too much. She would be in the house, but it was like we were alone. I could barely even reach the kitchen counter.
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be,” I tried to reassure him. I was scared, too.
I wanted to stay in our room forever. I knew my brother. I knew our room. It was safe there. The carpet felt soft under my feet. It felt like my mom’s sleeping shirt I was going to wear later. I loved the pink walls. Our beds kept us tucked away at night. They lined the walls. We stood in between them. I held my brother’s hand. He coughed up a sob. I felt like maybe it was time. I opened the door. I walked into the kitchen, that’s where she was. My brother followed behind me. He sniffled. She turned around from what she was making for dinner. I looked her dead in the eye. She had tears, too. I knew she was mad. Really mad. I wanted to make it worse.
“We want mom,” I said.
“Of course you do, you little shits!” She screamed. My tears started flowing. I choked back a sob.
“I wish you would just leave!” I said. She started walking down the hallway. Not walking, power-walking. My brother and I had to jog to keep up. She was so much taller than us both.
“I want mommy!” My brother pleaded. She couldn’t help us. She was there, my mom wasn’t. She didn’t want to be there, she told us over and over. I felt like a burden. I wanted my mom. I wanted my Nana. Anyone else.
“I hate you! I wish mom was here!” It was true. I felt like I hated her. I wished my mom was there.
“Me too!” My brother added.
“Fuck you both! I’m leaving!” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She was as hysterical as we were. She went into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. When I caught up, I opened it. She was throwing her things into a bag. She was sobbing.
My stomach dropped. She couldn’t leave. That would be bad. We needed someone.
“Wait, don’t go!” I pleaded
“I’m gonna! I’m going to the airport right now!” She told us. She started walking towards the door. My brother was sobbing. I wanted my mom. I didn’t even know where my mom was. Tokyo? Prague? The world was too big. I was too small. I barely even knew what a time zone was. I didn’t know anything. I just knew the airport was big. The airport was real. Auntie Mia was going to the airport, and she was going to go away, too. Just like mom. I watched as she zipped her bag. She was on the phone with the taxi company. My vision was blurry. She opened the door, and it slammed as she stormed out.
Crinkled bright eyes giving an iridescent reflection. Against the dark gloomy hallway, that felt cold of concrete. Clustered within a crowd of people, I smiled. Peeling away the shell I encapsulated myself by pretending to be someone else. We walked to the bright red building, our steps just out of sync. The sun glimmered, and shone, as we dusted the light away from our eyes. Through the ropes of translation, I understood her. She seemed to understand me, all of the parts, the broken, the bruised, (the hidden), the scared. She held open the door as we walked into the photography dark room. All based on light burning shadows within paper, chemicals soaking in the water. It was dark, our eyes adjusted though. We took photographs of our hands and fallen flowers extracting the lights, and soaking the paper to wash everything off. When we went outside our eyes prickled sour from the static light. It became a routine, of dark, to light, to nothing. Week after week, we only saw each other in the dark. Until day by day, I felt safe again: to run around, get excited seeing weeds grow between the cracks of the sidewalk, point at bright colored flowers, and care indefinitely about animals. We talked for hours, upon hours, we expanded from one, to two, to three, to six. Seats slowly closing in amongst the chatter. I found my people, my friends. I felt normal; perfect. The way high school was supposed to be, not hidden away in computer boxes. Turning my voice on and off; my education represented as a picture. Locked away eating lunch in bathroom stalls and stairwells, scared someone would find me alone, and know that something was wrong with me. Sleepless nights filled with slammed doors and my dad screaming at my mom until he was beet red, spitting his words to slide across the floor. To become free, leaving home early; and finding a place where I was happy, belonged. It’s funny to think about memories, because you can’t remember one without a chest of memories falling out. All encapsulated within each other.
We crowd and we don’t crowd. We swarm up to the side of the bed in an urgent, seething wave of concern before retreating, chastened, low tide. We watched her come home after not coming home, but we must not overwhelm her now. We take up alternate perches.
Like Amy, like little Amy from Little Women, the youngest is sent away, to a grandparent’s house, away from the suspended breath of a sickroom. She doesn’t want to go. She is better for having gone. She is spared. I don’t think she knows how much she is spared.
We who are left learn to hover.
Knowing the pain lurking on the other side of speaking, we learn to balance on the edge of a word, waiting, waiting, watching, wardens. A lark and an owl, we find our natural assignments. My father. Waking up early to help with meds in the dark of the morning’s infancy. And me. Sorting near-identical pills into divided plastic boxes to match an ever-changing schedule of painkiller after steroid after anti-inflammatory after after after.
I sit with her in the darkness that is orange and white. Orange sticky notes. White paper. Orange bottles. White labels. White pills. I see more than she shows me. I listen to more than she says.
Instead of meeting speaking with strain, we exchange notes. A small army of notebooks and too-bright Post-Its fill over time with the sloping handwriting of a doctor turned patient.
We plan a book, just for us. A patient’s diary crossed with medical notes crossed with the observations of the caretaker. We hope that someday we will be able to look at this scene, these two heads bent close over a set of evolving spreadsheets, as a frame from a story with a neat little bow of an ending. We don’t know yet. There is no ribbon offered in the midst of a shattering. There is no reassuring period that sits centrally in a sentence.
There is no sentence, only a question every day, the same question. Is she getting better? It is on our tongues when we wake up and deep in our chests when we fall asleep, one at a time across the house. Tired from being up earlier than the sun. Laden with the exhaustion of a slow recovery.
And–not asleep. Not asleep but too drained to stir. Curled up on a beanbag, lonely in the chilling absence of the younger sibling’s brightness, the livelier sibling’s laughter. The music playing on repeat in my headphones strays into melancholy, into the contemplation of despair. It will stay that way for a year.
A year characterized by helping her leave social events after intermittent flares of pain, waiting at home while she travels across the country to a heart specialist. A year punctuated by fights because we never quite learn to accommodate the emotional swings caused by her combination of meds. We are never given the chance. Never told when the dosage will change and rear a spiky head and meet disagreement with a callous joke or an inability to let it go, let us go, or a suggestion of leaving that falls somewhere between offer and threat. The moments of conflict are far from consistent, far from frequent, but so cutting and so far out of any of our control. But that is the year. That is the year, and this is about the week.
Because after a week, our Amy March returns and the question changes. We no longer have to worry about if she’ll get better; now we just ask How long will it take?
“Please, like you even know what you’re talking about,” Papa muttered.
“More so thank you!” My mother yelled back. They always fought like this. Fought in the morning. Fought in the afternoon. Fought at night. Always fighting until my father was sick of it. This time, he let himself sit and fume, as my mother continued to berate him. He was a lion, and he was about to pounce. His eyes were red with anger.
“You don’t know when to stop, do you, stupid bitch!” His fiery temper was unparalleled. He watched mother, waiting for her to say more, begging for her to say more so he would have some semblance of an excuse to attack.
Tamana and I heard this before. My mother tended to recount these instances. She explained stories over and over again. Driving us to school, she would ask for our opinions on these outbursts the two of them would have. Tamana laughed at her mother’s attempts to get children to wall up to her defense. Mother stretches out her hand, desperate for the support of others, even if they were feeble children.
Papa geared up to charge- like a bull. His eyes popped out of his head. The loud smack came crashing down, my mother’s face red in response. She wailed, like a small kitten. Desperate again, she looked around searching for our help.
“I am gonna call the cops! The police they’re gonna come. They will take you away! You need to stay away from my children! Get away from me!” The bruise was already forming on her face. I could feel the heat radiating off her cheeks, it was coming in waves towards me. Tears blazed down my face, emulating my mother’s. I was paralyzed in complete fear. Yet I also felt the need to laugh. Tamana’s face ballooned up, struggling to keep her laughter in. She got just as crimson as my mother and father- the lack of oxygen in her veins appearing visibly on her.
“Fuck you and your stupid fucking kids bitch!” Papa terrorized. I wanted to hug him in the hopes he would calm down.
My mother looked around again, she looked up at God; how badly the mother wishes to be back home with those who loved her. And how badly her kids wished the same for her. How badly they wished for her to escape this.
The music blared as we drove down the interstate, the sky darkening to an ominous midnight blue as the dim moonlight replaced the sun’s shine as our guide. It was my turn at shotgun, the last in the rotation of children. Sam and Jack had succeeded at keeping Dad awake, had demonstrated their entertainment value, and now it was my turn to show what I was made of, this dusk leg a test of my value.
I sang along and danced a little in my seat, hoping my commitment to the music would convince him that it was worthy of his commitment, his enjoyment, his entertainment.
“Shit!” I looked over to see Dad’s face glazed over in panic, his eyes wide, his knuckles gripping the wheel, tense shoulders.
“What?” I asked, my heart lost to gravity as worry filled my stomach.
He ignored my question, so I tried to deduce the problem myself, frantically scanning the highway and surrounding landscape for peril. What I noticed was that the car was slowing down; the dark trees were gaining distinct leaves as our motion slowed and mile markers stopped flying by.
“What’s going on?” The nerves scratched Jack’s voice.
Dad left him unanswered as well.
We were now fully on the shoulder, and the stillness of the car was rattling. I reached over and turned off the music, feeling unsettled by the upbeat melody and lyrics; silence felt more appropriate.
“We’re out of gas,” Dad finally stated, bluntly.
“How?” I croaked. “I thought you always paid attention to that.”
“I was paying attention to it. Fuel gauges are always overly conservative,” he said, staring at the dashboard, frustration darkening his voice. “We should have had more time.”
“What are we going to do?” Sam asked.
“Call Triple A.” Then, he turned to us and said, “This is why you pay for roadside assistance.”
Suddenly, the car shook. A car had blown by us on the left, its momentum sending vibrations through the walls of the car, the seats, us.
“Get out of the car and climb up as far as you can,” he said, with urgency in his voice, pointing towards the hill shrouded in darkness to our right. “It’s not safe here. You can never trust other drivers, especially at night.”
We hesitantly got out of the car, the crisp nighttime air assaulting our cheeks, the wind going right through our t-shirts. As we climbed, I looked back at the car, at my dad, bent over, rummaging through the dash on the passenger’s side. As we climbed, he got smaller and smaller, and I felt ashamed. This was my leg and everything had fallen apart.
“It’s just like him to wait until the last minute to get gas,” Sam said.
“Gas gauges are made the way they are so situations like this don’t happen. It’s going to take at least an hour for the damn Triple A guy to get here,” Jack said, irritated to be out in the cold and for the trip to be off schedule.
“An hour?” I whispered, and hugged my arms tighter to my body, feeling each gust of wind more acutely.
I felt disoriented up on the hill, cars passing down below every so often. We should have been in one of those cars. Not out of gas. Not split up, with us children alone on a dark hill and Dad on the phone down below. Not at the mercy of Triple A and whatever wild animals lived on and beyond this hill. We should have been almost at the hotel, almost at the end of a song, almost ready to call Mom—Mom, who had trusted us alone on this trip—to say, “We arrived safely.”
“At least Mom isn’t here,” Sam said. It was as if he had read my mind. But I guess, standing on this hill, there was only so much to think about.
“She would be flipping out,” Jack said, and a smile crept onto his face.
“I can’t wait to tell her about this. To throw Dad under the bus.” Sam matched his grin.
My mouth couldn’t help but join in, too.
And suddenly, the wind gusts felt less cold, the trees of the forest behind us less frightening. It was us, the three of us, imagining our father’s future shaming by our mother. It was us, his children, who would always have Triple A coverage and never sit in our cars on the shoulder of the road. It was us, his sons and daughter, who would always remind him of this spot where the fuel gauge won. It was me, whose leg of the road trip produced entertainment for years to come.
“I want to start a garden,” he said.
I asked, “why haven’t you Rucker?”
“I want to start a garden but I don’t have flowerpots.”
So I carried terracotta half the way to his. Walking down the lane with warm sun and the rims pressing into my stomach like they were trying to get away from me, run all the way back home, past the honeysuckle and mountain laurel that could never be contained by their stunted diameters, back to the safety of my mother’s dead garden. She won’t miss these pots, I asked her and she said “why not? Everything I plant dies anyway,” and she was right. Only the pots grew to adulthood, the rest all molded and rotted and contracted rare tropical funguses and blights that ate away the leaves and the squirrels descended and chewed the stalks to nothing and then died in droves on the hot pavement.
Coming around the corner I frightened an old man, wispy and wild. “Lord!” he said, “you scared me, lord almighty!” The lord scares me too. “Sorry sir, I didn’t mean it,” I told him. Maybe I did. Maybe if I had known, I would’ve shaken those terracotta beasts like a death rattle and screamed until I was hoarse. But I was late to meet my friend, as we always were.
I told Rucker I’d walk to his house and he demanded to meet me halfway, as if by walking to his house I made him weak. So he dragged himself out of his nest, the room offset from the house with a rotting door and windows that closed cattywampus, so sometimes when I came by I would just open the green flakey shutters and tell him to hurry up because it’s hot out here. He met me less than halfway to my house. I still walked further with those pots, those urns, and when he met me he had a little wagon trailing behind like he was young again and he was my friend again.
He liked to pretend he needed no one and when no one still walked to give him a terracotta gift like an ancient Greek sailor, he got mad, madder than his drunk nurse mother and doormaker father. All day his father made fancy doors for rich people but the door to his room never closed quite right. An early, fucked up prototype that no one bothered to fix until one day the door decided break down, falling off its screaming hinges long after we stopped speaking.
I picked up those pots. We both had learned how to drive, though he never got his license because then he would have no one to blame but himself when he still wouldn’t leave. He came to the door, hair cut short, same wild look in his deep sullen, sunken eyes. Lord how I hated Rucker’s eyes by the end. Lord almighty. Loaded those terracotta beasts back into my arms and stepped down onto the gravel and left. I left and became my own, a better man than he was and a better woman too.
I don’t know where he went, but it certainly wasn’t into anyone’s arms. He was selfish like that, saving all his pity for himself. It’s why his garden never grew, why my ceramic pots stayed empty despite all the years he cared for them.
Azeb’s house had a trampoline that we could see over the fence from our backyard. Every summer afternoon, my sister and I would stand on our back porch, watching her bounce with her brothers. Up and down. Side to side. Up and down.
I studied how Azeb’s long black braids swung through the air like they didn’t know about gravity, like God was pulling them up himself. I ached to have that grace and freedom, where the world could not tie me down. Some days, she would see us watching and ask us to come play in their yard. We would heave ourselves over the tall, wooden fence, our palms riddled with cuts and splinters the next day. But on this scalding day in late July, my sister didn’t want to come with me. I wonder if she knew. I wonder if she sensed it. I should’ve. But how could I?
Azeb had to go inside. She had to help with dinner. Her brother stayed outside with me. The older one. The one with kind eyes and a crooked smile and dirty hands that liked to scar little girls. He watched me jumping. He saw me feeling so beautiful, so free. He wanted to destroy me, to devour me. He wanted to rip me from the clouds and pierce my heart with his cold, male fingers.
He lived in the attic, where it was hot and muggy and my sweaty bottom stuck to the floor. I don’t remember how I got there. I just remember sitting on the floor next to him, closer than we should’ve been. He grinned at me. He stroked my tiny, baby back with his ugly hand. And then he took out his phone.
He made me watch it. He made me stay. My discomfort made him hungry, thirsty, excited. He drooled over my squeals, jammed me back down to the floor every time I tried to stand up. When I closed my eyes, he pried them open. When I covered my ears, he pulled my hands away. So I sat there still, my eyes locked on the horrific scene in front of me.
I wished for Azeb’s braids, imagined them descending from the ceiling like Rapunzel’s hair, a lifeline for me to grab and be pulled up to safety. But she wasn’t there. She was downstairs. And I was up here. With him.
When the video was over and he let go of my little girl hands, I ran down the stairs and out of the house. I was worried he would want to act it out. I was worried he saw me like that girl in the movie. I was worried my mother would be able to tell what I had done and that she would never look at me the same again.
I never went back to jump on the trampoline with Azeb. My sister kept asking why. But I couldn’t tell her what happened. How his voice rang in my head every night before bed, his whisper: “I’m gonna show you something you’ll never forget.”
And I haven’t.
I didn’t know if I was afraid. “Being afraid is for pussies,” he said. I didn’t know what a “pussies” was.
He looked down at me, taller, older, bigger, stronger, better. He looked with something primal in his eyes. I said nothing because saying nothing meant less chance of getting a response back, less words to come off my tongue and be stretched and warped like nails into claws. But I could still scratch.
Max was less than a year older than I, yet it made all the difference. We were not equals. He never let me forget it.
The sky was blackened and fat, heat so thick I could taste it. It was salty and earthy and reminded me of how dirt tastes when you get pushed to the ground, violence-filled and bloody. The lake was especially murky that day, taunting us both with its siren-like call. My life-vest pressed tightly against goosebump skin, chubby arms puffed out, looking to his barren flesh and skinny limbs, hungry for that sense of maturity and approval I so desperately craved.
He looked back at me with a devilish glint in his eye and I knew that it was too late for me now, too late for whatever was about to happen, too late to grab onto the dock, too late because Max’s hands were shoving my back, too late to have a gasp of air, too late and I was already submerged under the inky water, shivering so loud my teeth chipped together.
I knew then I was afraid.
I squealed and shrieked. He laughed and pointed. My arms spat out to either side of me, frothing the water, making it pant like a ravenous dog. I groaned, snapped, barked, yowled, cried. Finally, Max had enough. He divded into the lake headfirst, no hesitation nor fear behind his movement, pulling me to the safety of the dock by my traffic-cone orange savior.
We were baptized in the stench of it all, the hunger, the fear, the filth, the growling of our bellies, the sound of breath stretching our lungs. I bathed in the humidity, words failing to form in my still-shaken mouth, teeth gnashing together, tongue licking at my wounds.
I learned that day to never let them know you’re afraid.
We played Desert Island in the creek behind their house, most Friday nights when we went over for pizza and a movie and something to do. Me, Sania, Reid, Sarah, Tan, we walked through the garden of Miss Katrena’s backyard. We climbed over the wood pile and jumped through drifts of leaves that went halfway up our scrawny legs and ran into the muddy water without worrying about dripping on car seats later.
We picked up rocks and thunked them back into the water, fishing, and we sat on the trees lying across the creek and we told each other that they had to find a new part of the island to live on because this one was mine. Reid and I sang the Gilligan’s Island tune at the top of our lungs, giddy, even though between us we had only seen two episodes of the show. Sania threw everything further than any of the rest of us, got the biggest splashes, and wandered over to the other side of the creek before the rest of us got bored. Tan dragged behind one of the big siblings, only moving back toward the game when Sarah started to rattle off nature facts.
It started off as a clamoring pile of skinny limbs and flying rocks, a perfect cartoon of being outdoors and happy and knowing everything. Always this game lasted for half an hour before it got ugly. We never agreed on anything for very long, the five of us, and we couldn’t resist a fight once we saw how to get each other mad.
Mom told us one time that if we couldn’t stop fighting with each other then we would never learn to be nice to anyone. We all nodded, waiting to be done listening, went back to what we were doing, agreed with each other that we only fought because it wasn’t with anyone else. At least three of us nodded along. We couldn’t ever yell at people we didn’t know. It would hurt their feelings, and hurting feelings was reserved for the people who would forgive you in a few minutes anyway.
Reid, one time when we were out at the creek again, said “There are aliens on this island”, pointed at me, then at Sania.
When we looked at each other, because when we were small and part of each other we looked to each other to make every decision, I saw how Sania wanted to be on her brother’s side fighting the aliens. Because I was older than her, I said “There isn’t anywhere for aliens to land”. Because he was even older than me, he said, “But you’re here anyway,” and Sania hopped over the mud puddle she had crouched and walked to the old tire swing.
I sat where I had been in my tree. Reid turned to Sarah and said “girls” and Sarah said sure but did he know that there are actually sharks that can survive in rivers? The two of them, trailed by baby Tan, began a new game, just the two eldest, where they killed the aliens with slingshots they had made from the plants on the island, watched their spaceships crash on the other bank, pressing violence into our island.
We fought again later, because I never forgave anyone and because Reid knew more than any stupid girl could. And like we always did, we yelled, tumbled, pushed, me and Sania against Reid and Tan, until someone scraped a knee and we all had to haul ourselves back to the house and interrupt our parents while they ate.
After we were told to get a bandaid, shooed out of the room to go fight about something else, we poured back outside for another round of our game. Sarah said we all had to stop fighting, and her order was law. She knew more than the rest of us: animals, planets, dinosaurs, hurricanes, all of the gods. She walked to the creek, pushed onto a hunk of concrete, held her head up like King Arthur.
Sania said, “We are aliens and we come in peace,” and nobody remembered after five minutes why there hadn’t always been aliens on our island.
We sat in the car after soccer practice, driving to dinner. “I have something to tell you about Farmor,” he said, allowing my elementary school mind to run wild; thinking about new genealogy, a “back in Söder…” story, a secret past, or another verbal manifestation of the little trinkets all around their house my dad called “junk” and “hoarding,” but that I secretly adored the dust and patina of.
“She has Alzheimer’s.” derailed that train of thought rather quickly. “That means she’ll begin to-” “I know.”
I was aware of the basics- I knew my mom was a brain doctor, and still asked her to tell “disease stories,” where we laid squished in my bed, with glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty squished to create kidneys and intestines, spines getting twisted and brains causing catastrophe. I remembered the BrainPop video I watched on my dad’s old laptop where the old man forgot his keys, and the animated cross-section where the brain started slowly rotting away like mold inside the blank-faced example character. (I never figured out if she looked like my Farmor, or if she just looked like the shared memory of “old woman”)
“She’s started to sign some papers letting us know what she wants, and the doctors at UCLA will take very good care of her, okay?”
I didn’t scream. Or cry. I think my dad wanted to. Or wanted me to, so he’d have an extra excuse. Emotions never came nicely for me, a blowup over nothing or a blank stare for everything. I realized what it meant. “Ok.” was the response I landed on. A bit of a mood-killer, but a reasonable fact for the time being. Shitty, but to a degree I hadn’t quite figured out.
Maybe I’d learn when I reminded her that her parents had died years ago over fika, or laying on an air mattress in their old room because the old one had become so stained with shit it had stopped pretending to be salvageable. Maybe when she sat with my dad and I in the family room close to midnight, asking if Börje felt sad that his father never loved him as much as her, not knowing the time of night or the year anymore. Or when I was told, over and over, how proud she’d be, how my humor is like hers, how I was lucky to remember her (sometimes, if I think really hard and block out everything, I can get close to remembering the sound of her voice, or the edge of her silhouette during weeknight Jeopardy, but my experience doesn’t expand beyond that).
But in that moment I sat, with him on the verge of tears, and me feeling nothing at all, over crappy food truck meatballs, talking about soccer practice.