That morning was a green rain, grass blades flashing like the smallest of swords, the hot hum of great golden bees laughing within the space between rafter and wood-beaten ceiling, the floorboards creaking and lonely. He was crouched like an aging orange peel, body one slim panel at the edge of the blue computer screen. Every so often he got up. Step, Step. Pacing the borders of our house, wrapping his feet around the dusty, threadbare stem of the living room carpet. The third time, or was it the fourth, he step steps through the peeling salmon door of the bathroom, closes the door, turns the click. Body tense as a runner, he flicks on the bathroom faucet, takes a breath, starts removing his clothes. Naked, he looks at the dim edge of blue razor, a curved scythe on hanging plastic caddy.
He used to wear a smile like a small badge, eyes large as rabbit ears, dancing like a girl on the living room couch. My brother. That boy. When he was ten, his right eye started to wander. His left eye would be straight and focused, moving like a single golden arrow, but the right one went off-track, played the tango-dance, walked orbits around his small world. The doctor gave him a patch, hot thick thing on the curve of his fragile skin. The boys at school made elaborate paper-wads for the back of his head. Later, he wore a top hat and filmed home-movies in which he learned to disappear.
Nineteen now, body a tall black reed, he is amazed that his awkward humor and bony height has suddenly turned into an attraction for the opposite sex. Girls give him the shy eye, voices breathy and earnest, watching the curve of his shoulder instead of dimly-shouted sermon, use their hymn books as telescopes to spy through to the back of his head. He finds his voice, sings loud and heart-breakingly, still laughs awkwardly, but feels invincible, loved.
He slips back into his clothes, moving backward through time, then re-emerges, tiptoeing like silent cat. My mother, taut lines pinching her face, comes out of her room, surveys the house, tight, dark ball moving to her chest. What will he think, she worries, starts nervously shifting papers into justified stacks, hands two fluttering white birds. She looks at my brother, his body a single slumped line. I already asked you to help out around here, she panicks. He doesn’t move. He does the nonvoice. Don’t act like you don’t hear me, she says, helpless, arms opening at her sides. He is stone. She tries to physically pull him out of his chair. They move into her bedroom, her shrill chirrups echo against the empty space. Then his lower, cracking, sudden sharp sobs breaking the violin of his voice. I hear it through the holes in the walls, my brother, that boy, sobbing, chest heaving, voice cracking. You don’t even know what i’m going through right now. A break, a pause. My mother breathing heavy on the other side of the wall. My brother again, crying, cracking like stone, split and vulnerable. I want to…. I want to kill myself. I want to kill myself. Three gasps, whisper. I tried to kill myself.
Step, step. He paces the bedroom above me. I listen empty, book laying open at my right hand, wrists exposed.
Concrete hot sun-bitten, sweat dripping, steam rising, the four of us walking down Keamoku, mid-day movers crashing into each other, cars buzzing past, the jutting, skyscraping distance distorted and mirage-like. Red-roof, white-sign, we walk towards the brick building, legs straining like paddles against the pavement. Thin pole trees, bare and peeling, sprout out from their enclosed cemented squares. Oh my god hey look, the girl with brown hair and small body fists my shirt and pulls me to a stop. I stop. Tiny grey feather-broken bird lies mellow on ground. A bird, she points out. We gather round like lost sheep, looking at the small sculpted cartilage flesh eyes dull flat head shifting up to us claw feet dangling helpless under weightless child body. Its going to get run over, the boy says, glancing towards the street. The first brown-haired girl looks at the third girl with the jacket. Pick it up with your jacket, she says. Put it in the grass. The girl edges back, I’m not going to touch it. She pulls her sleeves down over her hands nervously. A pause. I’m watching the fragile, damaged wing, which shifts trembles scrapes against the parking lot pavement, body lying like discarded bruised fruit. I’ll pick it up, I say, not glancing up. I change my hands into the shape of bowl, try to fit the body to me, to make our two pieces connect. I feel the birds heartbeat in the hem of my hand. Wait, I say. He’s scared. I walk the tight-rope walk from concrete to green edge, hands gentle on the soft-down plush, then kneel at the corner of street and grassy inlet, try to shift the body into the safety of pole tree and concrete harbor. He is voiceless, looks at me scared. Eyes dripping black, no smile. At some point the other girls and the boy already went inside, I stay and feel the hard flush of his gaze, wild and death-like, feel my own hallowed veins collapsing. I leave him there, a small speck of dark within the rush of the world, a fainted being, stick legs listless.
