by Ina Carter
I froze in time because I was staring right into the same storm. The song died on my lips but continued to play in the background. “You really know how to make me cry when you gimme those ocean eyes” – I whispered the last lyric and felt the wetness behind my eyelids because Kevin was standing so close, I could feel the warmth radiating out of his body.
My heart tried to remind me it was beating by blustering in my ears so loud that it drowned out all other noise. The intensity in Kevin’s eyes was a power that pushed behind my knees, and they gave way. He reached and caught me before I stumbled, and my hand found the counter behind me for support. Like in slow motion, Kevin’s fingers brushed over mine and then over the stem of the glass I was holding in my other hand. His eyes burned with an emotion I couldn’t pinpoint. When he pulled away abruptly, he broke the connection between us, and I landed back to reality with a thump.
He took a step back and then poured the contents of the glass into the sink. The odd action shook me out of whatever this was.
“Why did you throw away my apple juice?” I stared him down, dumbfounded. He was still holding the glass and put it to his nose, giving it a sniff.
“Why do you drink apple juice out of a wine glass?” He sounded baffled, too.
Oh, my God, the moron thought I was day drinking and maybe a bit tipsy. With his stupid presumptions, he made me mad again. I pushed at his chest to get him further away from me.
“Because I can’t reach the top shelf, moron.” I turned around to the cabinet, opened the upper door, and showed him where the water glasses were. “You and Liam are giants, and this might be eye level for you, but I have to climb my butt on the counter to get to them,” I explained. They were both over 6’3, and even though I wasn’t too short with my 5’7” height, I was not top shelf girl.
When I turned to face him, he was hiding a laughter behind his hand. “Ha, ha, go ahead, laugh at short people,” I said mockingly, but I was also pissed.
“Even if I was drinking, how is that your problem, Kevin?” I pinned him down. His smile disappeared, and he looked at me somberly.
“Sorry, Lauren… I overreacted… I keep doing that around you… keep hurting you,” he said remorsefully. This totally shifted the mood, and the seriousness of our stalemate hung in the air between us.
“Don’t you think it’s time the two of us sit down and talk?” I asked soberly.
He looked down, avoiding my eyes when he spoke. “I know we should talk, but not now. Not when I am still so mad at you that I can’t control my emotions and my temper. I can’t forgive myself that in my anger, I pushed you so far that day at the party that I broke you…Shit, Lauren!” he swore, and his fists clenched at his sides like he was in pain.
“Why are you mad at me, Kevin?” I whispered.
“Not today, Lauren. Let me sort things in my head. Give me space and some time,” he said without looking at me, then he turned around and stormed out of the kitchen, leaving me more confused than I was before.
A few minutes later, I heard the shower running upstairs, but I was still frozen in place. It was clear that Kevin was struggling with his emotions - anger, grief, guilt. Basically, how I felt. There was so much unsaid between us, and it couldn’t be resolved unless we stopped this nonsense and had an honest conversation. Not to mention I was not patient enough person to just sit and wait for him to take the first step.
My good mood was gone, so I did what I’d always done to cope – I grabbed my guitar and let the music carry out my emotions.
I sat on the terrace in my favorite spot where the wind carried away my voice and my desolation with it. When I touched the strings, the familiar feeling calmed me down. Another memory surfaced from when we were little.
(thirteen years ago)
We wandered into the park on the other side of town where the people with the nice houses lived. They had a playground, but I didn’t like the kids who played there because they were always mean to us. That day was Easter Sunday, so everyone was in church, and there was no one around. Kevin pushed me on the swing for what felt like an hour. I was a little dizzy when I got down, and I had to sit on the grass because my feet were wobbly. Kevin ran somewhere and came back hiding something behind his back. His lips twisted in a lopsided grin, and he pulled a balloon on a string and gave it to me. It was a bit droopy and not flying high, but it was red in color and had a bunny on it. All my favorite things in the world.
I took my gift, and my heart soared. I twirled around, waving the balloon and watching it fly in a circle when I moved the string. Then I looked up at the sun and I felt happy.
“Kevin, Miss Collins says the Earth goes around the sun in a circle. Do you think there is an invisible string that ties us to the sun up there, so we don’t float away?” I turned to him because Kevin was almost nine, and he knew all the answers.
“Yes, Jules. We’ve been studying the planets this year. It’s called gravity. It’s like an invisible force that makes us stay in place.”
I strummed the strings and sang about “Gravity” in the words of Sara Bareilles, every single lyric hitting me hard. I felt his presence before our eyes met. Kevin was sitting on the couch in the living room, TV remote in hand, but through the glass, he was watching me. I couldn’t look at him while I bared my soul, but I hoped he was listening to my confession.
I knew the song was written for a lover, but I’d never truly been in love, and it’s not what the words meant to me. I didn’t sing of romantic love, but of the strongest connection I’d ever felt to another person, and it was always Kevin. Even when I knew he was not my real brother, in my heart nothing changed. More than anything, he was my friend, and the memories kept him tied to me like a force that couldn’t be denied. Even at that moment, I felt the invisible string between us across the room while his pain merged with mine.
When I sang, “But you're neither friend nor foe, though I can't seem to let you go,” I looked at him because it was true at that moment in time. I couldn’t let him go. I couldn’t just sit and watch him suffer. I wanted to share his sorrow, to know what was hurting him, and to offer him my shoulder to cry on.
Kevin tore his eyes from mine, turned away, and pressed the button on the remote. The noise of some sport’s telecast filtered through the glass and the words on my lips died.
On the table next to me was the notebook with songs I was writing all week. I grabbed the pad and the pen and turned my back to freaking Kevin, letting the ink reflect my anger. An hour later, I was strumming on my guitar, testing the new lyrics to see if they produced some melody, but the words felt hollow, not turning into a song. I read again the short verse I had managed to scribble down and wanted to laugh at myself. I sounded like some emo teenager who got pissed at the world and was sinking into depression, contemplating how to end it all.
“Please bare my silence
Because in the dark
I hear my heart bleeding
My world falls apart
Words are futile when everything’s said
Your presence is painful, but alone I am dead.”
I had enough sulking, so I dropped the notebook on the table and headed inside to change and go do some grocery shopping. I passed by Kevin who was still watching baseball on TV with a pad in his own hands, taking notes. He didn’t look at me or acknowledge my presence. I glimpsed at the screen for a second and noticed the Trojan’s mascot visible in the background. He was probably watching reruns of his games, but it was not my concern, so my steps quickened. My room was right by the living room, so I forcefully shut the door behind me to let him know how I felt about his silent treatment.
I quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a loose gray sweater and grabbed my umbrella because it looked like it was going to rain. Kevin was still on the same spot where I left him, watching his game. I was not planning to go back into the living room, but I remembered I had left my guitar outside, and I was not letting my baby get wet.
I passed by him, without spa
ring a glance in his direction and went outside to get my “precious.” I was about to get my songbook too when my eyes glanced over the open page. No, he hadn’t! Some of the lyrics I had written were crossed out with a red pen, and words were inserted to change the meaning of my verse. I read over the text as my anger bubbled.
“Please bear share my silence
Because in the dark
I hear my heart bleeding beating,
My world falls apart spins around
Words are futile essential when everything’s nothing is said
Your presence is painful calming, but alone with you, I am not dead.”
Oh, the nerve he had to tell me that words were essential. His hypocrisy was unbelievable. I ripped off the page and tore it into small pieces. I kept the shreds in my hand and stormed inside like fire burned on my tail. He lifted his eyes to me when I showered him with the fragmented words. “Snowfall, Kevin!” I didn’t stop to watch his reaction, but with my peripheral vision, I noticed that he reached for the last paper shred lingering in the air. Kevin didn’t look at it but turned sharply, and before I left, he grabbed my hand. He placed the sliver into my palm and closed my fingers around it.
Our eyes met, and my heart skipped a beat. Kevin remembered our old game, and the shared memory was like a living thing between us. It had a power that made me want to grab his shoulders and shake him. I wanted to scream at him to speak to me, to tell me everything that his eyes were telling me. My hand trembled when I opened my palm and looked at the word in my hand. The irony was too much. The two words fully visible on the crimson snowflake were “bear share.” I placed the paper in front of him on the table “Read the signs, Kevin.” I whispered at him. If he was right and this game was magic, God had a good sense of humor. I didn’t wait to see if he picked up the piece, I rushed out of the room and out the door.
Chapter 11
I stocked up on a month’s supply of yogurt, and I had no idea what kind I got. I was mindlessly dropping things into my grocery cart, my head a thousand miles away – back in time, back to the place where we spent our childhood. I was in the car when my phone beeped with a reminder that I had an appointment with my English professor tomorrow, September 23. Which reminded me what today – September 22 was.
Exactly a month ago, Kevin turned twenty-two, the day I saw him in person. I cried my eyes out that night, and I told myself that if that guy was really Kevin, we had a month to reconnect, and I would celebrate his 22 ‘Soul birthday’ with him.
(fourteen years ago)
“Is your birthday really on Christmas, Jules? That sucks.” Kevin frowned. “You know what? Have you heard of the ‘Soul birthday?’”
“Soul’s what?” I asked, confused, but he was older, so maybe he knew things I didn’t.
“See, Jules, when babies are born, they don’t have souls yet. That’s why they only cry and poop and can’t do anything. In the first month, God picks the soul that best fits the kid and gifts it to him or to her. So, everyone has a ‘Soul birthday.’ And yours is on January 25, mine is on September 22. And from now on, we should celebrate both.”
I knew Kevin made up that story for my sake, so I’d have an actual birthday to look forward to, but for the next two years, on January 25 he bought me a cupcake with a candle, drew a picture on a piece of paper as a birthday card, and got me “soul presents” as he called them. Both were books. On my seventh birthday, he got me a worn copy of my favorite Velveteen Rabbit, but the book I got for my eighth, I could never forget. It was a spiritual book called The Little Soul and the Sun. It was not biblical, but spoke of reincarnation and eternal souls. We wouldn’t have known the difference because we never went to Church, so to us, this was a book about God’s creation. Kevin said he looked through the whole library catalog to find the most perfect present fit for my soul. Miss Jessie, the librarian, “sold it” to him for a dime and told him the book was too old, and they needed to retire it anyway. Thinking of how prophetic that story was - gave me chills. When they took me away from Mamma, one of the police officers must have gone back to our house to get my backpack with my schoolwork. The book was in there since I carried it with me everywhere. When my “new family” brought me to California, that was the only piece of my old life I took with me. The one material memory of Kevin I had.
Did he remember his made-up story? Was that why he was home early today – to mark his “Soul birthday” and spend it with me in some way?
I was driving back to the house when I saw his car pull out of the driveway. In a split-second decision, I decided to follow him and find out where he was going. If this day was significant to him, maybe he’d do something special, go somewhere that had meaning to him. If he was not going to tell me anything, what other option did I have to get an inside on him?
My Mercedes could have been easily spotted in traffic, so I drove a few cars behind Kevin’s Toyota. Before I went to college, my parents gave me Bianca’s old car which, like everything of hers, was flashy and superfluous. I had picked it up from the USC’s parking garage where it had been staying for weeks, but now that I lived in Liam’s place, I appreciated that I had my own vehicle to get to classes. Or to stalk stubborn men…
Kevin got on 101 Hwy, and I followed behind him until he took the exit to Boyle Heights. This was where Liam said he lived before they adopted him, so he was likely going to his old neighborhood. I was keeping my eyes on his car but couldn’t help to notice the rundown houses, graffiti-covered buildings, and homeless tents under the highway overpass. It was a bad neighborhood, one of those places in L.A. where you could get shot on the street.
Tyron lived in South L.A., another dangerous pocket of the city, and after I had spent only two nights on his couch, I felt safer sleeping on the Santa Monica beach at night. My heart was splitting into shreds thinking of how many years Kevin lived here and what might’ve happened to him. Even more upsetting was the fact that we’d lived less than twenty miles from each other – on the two opposite ends of I-10 Hwy. It could have been two opposite worlds for all I knew, considering the disparity in our surroundings.
Kevin parked next to a park, which looked like some recreation center with sports fields. I took a sharp turn into the closest side street and parked in the corner where I could see him. He exited his car, carrying his baseball gear. I noticed a group of kids and a few adults down the baseball field behind the park’s fence. It made sense – Kevin was paying forward what Liam’s father did for him – coaching some other unprivileged kids, possibly giving them purpose and opportunity for a better future.
My eyes watered because beyond his hard shell, he was still the benevolent and kind boy I once knew.
I should’ve left, but something urged me to stay. That idea I had that this might be a special day for him was not giving me peace, and I promised myself a month ago that I’d spend it with him. I parked on the other side of the park, my silver Mercedes glowing like a traffic light between the two beat-up pickup rusty trucks. Fuck it, if it got stolen – I didn’t care.
I snuck around the facilities and took cover behind the recreation center building. I was hiding next to the restrooms, and not many people were around here in the middle of the day – just the small group of kids down by the baseball cages. Maybe they were from some local elementary school because they were dressed in t-shirts and shorts, not a team uniform. I bet there was no Little League or softball teams around this neighborhood. Those little boys and girls looked like us when we were kids – disadvantaged, poor, and surviving the bad hand life dealt them.
They seemed to know Kevin because they surrounded him and hugged him like he was someone they loved. He returned the hugs, fist-bumped a few boys, and started his lesson. Kevin talked to a guy who looked like their PE teacher, and the man organized the small group, separating them into pairs of two. He gave some of them gloves, and the others baseballs. They started practicing – pitching the ball to their partners. It was funny to watch their uncoordinated moves when they
wobbled and fell, missed catching the ball completely, but Kevin was there to give them encouragement. He applauded loudly when one kid managed to grab the elusive ball, picking up the girl, twirling her in the air. Even from far away, the joyous laughter of that kid made my own heart expand.
One boy was sitting on the side of the field, his head lowered. Kevin walked up to him and crouched to his eye level. He said something to him, ruffled the kid’s hair, and gave him a hand to get up.
Then he took him aside, giving him his baseball bat. He started throwing balls, low and precise, at the boy, and the kid tried to hit them. After two misses, Kevin walked around him, adjusted his feet to a proper stance, and held his little hands to show him how to swing the bat properly. The dark-haired boy tried again, and by the intensity in his little body, I could tell he was determined. But he missed the ball again, and this made him snap. Angrily, he threw aside the bat and started running. Kevin charged after him.
The kid was running in my direction, and I panicked. My back hit the wall behind me, and I tried to blend in with the brick of the building. I examined my options; I thought of making a run to the closest restroom before Kevin saw me, but before I could move, I heard the tiny running feet maybe a few feet from where I was standing. They were followed by Kevin’s heavier steps. He caught up to the boy and stopped him right before he turned the corner and bumped into me. I held my breath, afraid that any sound I made might give me away. From my position, I could see the kid’s back and Kevin’s hand reaching for the boy.
“Hey, Andres, ¿Qué pasa?” Kevin asked, his voice breathy from running.