In those darkest moments, our two bodies worlds away, I would often think of you and feel a connection that I still can’t explain. I would think of the way your body would throw itself on the floor, furious, possessed. The mumble you’d make when you were unhappy. What did you say? Nothing, nothing. My heart would come back to you in these moments, at 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., while my husband and the city around me slept, and sometimes I’d reach for the phone before some other demon, more stubborn than the rest, would stop me.
IMAGINE: A FIVE-YEAR GESTATION and a twenty-four-pound birth. In the years and months leading up to your arrival, all our parents could do was talk about feelings of expectancy. Now that you were here, the days spoke for themselves.
Petaluma at that time was around 45,000 people, a demographic split between white and Latino, with Asians making up fewer than 3 percent. Though back then it was a sleepy farm town, nestled inland, forty miles north of San Francisco, some outsiders knew it from one of its two previous titles: the Egg Capital of the World and the Arm Wrestling Capital of the World, the former still commemorated with a spring parade and the latter with a statue and fall competition that you and I once attended at the Buffalo Wild Wings. We lived on the west side, near the town’s largest church and modest strip of downtown, but no matter where we were—waving at a car in the parking lot of the Petaluma Market, walking by the river that wound south toward the San Pablo Bay—we could always look up to find the hills surrounding us, fortresslike. They were minted green in the winter; in the summer they became big fat women in bed, covered by burlap sacks pulled taut. Our mother had you baptized and, in a few years’ time, enrolled in my Catholic school and, as you came to realize, the topographical map of your life became white very suddenly.
Crowds flocked to meet you. All the aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents you acquired overnight were fixtures in the house. Our mother’s friends from church came by with crucifixes and blessings, my classmates marveled at how impressively different my family was from their own. In fact, when the school year started up again in the fall, my first point of business was to bring you in for fourth-grade show-and-tell. I sat you on a stool and introduced you to forty white faces: this was my brother, and this summer I had traveled to an orphanage in Thailand to bring him home. You sat there politely, perhaps sensing that this was a big moment for me. When it was time for questions, I answered them with ease and authority, until a boy in the back raised his hand. How much did you pay for him? the boy inquired. That’s not how it works, I wanted to say, but a shame was already pouring in while our teacher corrected him. You smiled at the boy and in the midst of our audience I tried to understand if I had betrayed you. I took you off the stool and ushered you out to the hallway, where our mother was waiting. I had trouble explaining which of us I was crying for.
* * *
NEIGHBORS, FAMILY, teachers, friends: suddenly everyone was all questions.
Was life very different now with the new child? What was he like? Wasn’t I happy?
It’s good, I’d say, shrugging. He’s just my brother, just like anybody having a brother. I wondered why the simplest concepts were so difficult for adults.
But lately I found myself bringing these questions back to our parents; I asked them if the reality was much different from how I remembered it. Was it different? Was I happy?
What were any of us like, our mother said. There was a new baby in the house. We were bewildered. We were happy. We were tired.
Though on the weekdays, she added, you went to school and your father went to work. Often he traveled. I was the one who was home all the time.
* * *
WHAT I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE to describe to you or anyone else is how I meant those words growing up, He’s just my brother, that you were my blood, my coconspirator, my nuisance, my baby. That you weren’t different, some alien, a stranger or freak. I never wanted to talk about otherness because you weren’t other to me growing up, you were just my brother, but now I see how one-sided that is.
You were different, after all, in our house, in our school, in our town. I should have figured out ways to talk to you about how you were navigating that difference, a white family, a white life. I should have recognized my own discomfort, misunderstood for love or protection or sparing your feelings. Because how can silence ever be the better, more loving alternative?
* * *
LET ME TRY to start again.
When I think of the way I love you, the way I know you, how I might try to describe it, I keep returning to our beginning, those first years together in the house. One would think that given all the hours and days accumulated, there would be much to pick and choose from, but so much becomes lost in the act of living. Ask me now what I remember best about those early years and my answer is the same as our parents’: the tantrums.
You were angry, understandably, though we weren’t prepared for how you might show it. Here was all this change and no language to ask questions, demand answers. Biologically, you were already at an age where you were supposed to test us, on top of everything else you had on your plate.
But it wasn’t all miserable. Some of the things that made you happy right away were swimming pools, ketchup, trains, and the rewind button on the VCR so that you could watch The Three Musketeers on repeat. Ay-yah! you’d cry, running through the house with the broom, pointing its round tip at my heart. Finally our mother bought you a plastic sword from Kmart and you became a capable fencer overnight, slashing your weapon left and right along with D’Artagnan on the screen. For your second Halloween, you wore a blue tablecloth, rain boots, a hat with a feather, and tucked your sword into your toddler-size belt. I’d never seen you prouder.
But then you’d remember yourself. I could never account for the sights, sounds, or things denied to you that would bring on the reminder, but a phantom wave would cross your face and drown all the joy that had just been lounging there. Suddenly you’d seem to recall the confusion of your situation, the chains of your body, and, to exorcize the pain, you’d beat those tiny fists: on the floor, on the furniture, on our mother’s stomach. You would cry and scream.
* * *
GRADUALLY I BECAME RELIEVED when they’d start up at home instead of in public, especially once they became longer, louder, more frequent and difficult to contain; I could at least find solace in the privacy of your pain. The phantom wave could appear at any time, and did: in the cart at Ross Dress for Less, in a silent pew at church. Once it happened in the car in front of school and I slid down in my seat so that none of my classmates would associate me with the terrible sound of you.
I don’t remember any of that, you used to say. You don’t remember how the sound of your pain had incredible range. It always seemed to be retuning itself, finding limitless ways to unsettle you, and us. To say scream is actually misleading, implying a single note carried through, on-key in a horror film. From your mouth the devil, with his untrained ear, played all his instruments, stamping a cloven hoof on the pedals of the piano while his elbow banged the keys, his singing voice like microphone feedback, fingers strumming a chalkboard.
Our parents started putting you in your room when it happened; sometimes they’d sit in there with you, waiting for up to an hour for you to cool off. Once I ran in and screamed, Shut up, shut up, shut up! but was scolded by our mother and didn’t do it again. I would hear you in there, the sounds rising, shriller, the orchestra pouring from your mouth, while your face was soaked in sweat, tears, and snot. And in the later months, I’d hear the trajectory of tiny trains, tiny shoes, more tiny fists, end against the door. It was impossible to remember anymore the quiet of the house before you had come; I could hear you wherever I went. Often when the noise settled down I’d come in to find you asleep in the detritus, your room and your little body a wreck. You’d awake later, staring blankly, as if you’d left yourself during the incident and were unable to tell me what had happened.
* * *
OUR MOTHER saved
copies of the home studies from Rosemary Pascal, the social worker who continued to visit us every few weeks once you came home. These reports were faxed back to the agency for the first six months. They sat among your paperwork like entries torn from a stranger’s notebook, the four of us sketched like paper dolls. The mother enjoys childrearing. The father works in sales. The children like to play basketball. The Larsens live in a rented house and remain in good health.
I don’t remember much about her, our mother said, except that whenever she came I got nervous. She was always inspecting the windows and outlets.
This afternoon I drove to the west side of town to visit the family in their home. The street is safe and quiet. The house itself was tidy. The family was sitting in the backyard, where Daniel was eating an apple from the tree. Some of his new words and phrases are: up, this way, more, so handsome.
I never knew how much to clean, our mother said.
He’s a smart boy, very compassionate, too. When his sister was crying about something, he went over to her and put his little arms around her to console her.
Crying? our mother said. I wish I remembered more. The beginning was so hazy.
Say, then, that Rosemary lived on the east side of town, past the old Tuttle Drugs, past the drawbridge and the brick silk mill, out by the municipal airport, where we used to go to the Two Niner Diner on special occasions to watch the planes fly in. It might have been a twenty-minute drive to our house. Say that Rosemary woke up to her own family, two kids already at the table, their heads in their breakfast, without a thought for how they might look as they sat there together, what their conversation might have signaled, what could be said about the way they handled their spoons. Rosemary kissed her husband goodbye and did not consider how her own home would hold up under scrutiny. Instead she walked into our yard to find a similar scene: two kids outside eating breakfast. The older one would go to school late and the father would take the morning off so that they could complete the tableau vivant. It was September, and in a month this beautiful weather would change, but this morning the family looked as though they always took their breakfast outside. She asked the parents about life with a new toddler. He eats like a horse, the father said, which didn’t sound like something he’d say at all, and I wondered if Rosemary, in transcribing the scene later, allowed herself a few artistic liberties. The mother reminded Rosemary that the boy had three parasites when he arrived home, but that was all treated now. Rosemary asked the young girl about the changes at home, and she said that she loved being a sister. The boy moved to his mother’s lap. Daniel had kicking, screaming temper tantrums when he was first placed but those have diminished, he is much better able to express himself now.
Oh no, said our mother. They went on for months after that.
He eats like a horse, says his father! She took a few steps back and snapped our photo. Enclosed are the pictures requested. He feels very much at home; he has adjusted beautifully.
* * *
YOU WERE ALWAYS BRINGING SOMETHING into the house: some disaster, metaphoric or literal, tragic or comic. Once, on a comprehensive search through the suitcases in the garage, a task that served no concrete purpose, you brought one small piece of luggage into the kitchen to show our mother. No, no, she began to scold, because the suitcases brought in cat hair from the outdoor male stray you and I called Peaches. We’d crack the garage door at night so Peaches could sleep in the suitcases next to the cat bed. As our mother began to wheel the suitcase back to the garage you said you’d brought it in because you had something to tell her. There was something soft inside, you said, and then our mother followed your lead and opened it.
You didn’t begin screaming until she did; it wasn’t until her shrill cries registered in your ears that you realized something was terribly wrong. Out ran the baby opossum, blinded by the cruel light of the afternoon, clearly in a place he didn’t belong, so far from the dark cover of the luggage. The opossum waddled its way through the kitchen, the den, hanging a left into the laundry room, and then our mother collected herself enough that she was able to follow its horrible rodent tail through the house. How could you have screwed up so badly by showing off what you had found? You cried. And our mother did her best to soothe you, picked you up, and ran outside to find the man who had been hired that afternoon to paint the porch.
Help, our mother cried. She cried the words for both of you. And the porch painter became an unexpected hero that afternoon while our father was away on business, as he pushed the washing machine from the wall so our mother could gently whack the tush of the little creature with the broom, spanking it out the back door, where it scuttled, gratefully, into the cool cloak of the bushes.
Then, of course, there was the crow, but you’ll argue that one wasn’t your fault. You simply heard scratching in the chimney and opened the flue. And coming down for breakfast, I discovered our mother running through the house, broom raised high over her head, as she tried to spank that creature out, too. This time, rather than crying, you sat on the couch, mouth open, eyes fixed on the crazed black bird. It was either trying to free itself or find its place against the walls of the living room, though which we couldn’t seem to say.
* * *
SOMETIMES I WONDER if your first memories turn on right after that trip to Disneyland. Perhaps it was the paper plates of steaming french fries, the star power of Mickey Mouse, the hotel pool. It made a deep impression. If it hadn’t already been deemed the Happiest Place on Earth, you would have invented an equally joyous tagline. There’s a photo of your first ride on the teacups, shoulders hunched, knuckles nearly made white by your grip, and those teeth flashing. Everything about you says you are alive and thankful to be. There’s an autographed photo of you and Mickey, in which you stand shyly next to his red trousers. Incidentally, none of us can recall any tantrums occurring in our three days there.
When we came home from that trip, language truly began to find you, and you reported back that french fries were now your favorite food; you confessed your unabashed love for the large male mouse. Either in solidarity or heartsickness you watched a Disneyland musical on loop, songs that haunted me in deep dreams. When people asked where you were from, you now happily provided them with an answer. Disneyland, you said.
* * *
JULY 4 became an important day in our calendar, the anniversary of the day we met. All the books our mother read instructed us to celebrate the anniversary date, to make an occasion, especially the first few years.
Those first anniversaries were wonderful, actually, almost better than Christmas, because we would drive you to the top of Suncrest Hill, where my best friend lived, a spot that provided the best views over Petaluma, before the new developments came in. We would park at the top and open the sunroof so that you and I could poke our heads out. The sun would go down and we’d forget the hot day and pull on our sweatshirts. And as we watched the colors come up from the town and into the sky, I would tell you that the fireworks were for you. Look, I’d say, and you’d look. I’d tell you that everyone was celebrating that you were here. And you’d stare up with your eyes big and your little mouth hanging open, as if you couldn’t believe your good luck.
* * *
OF COURSE THERE WERE the strange things, too, like the interest you took in sweeping when you first arrived home, the deep concentration that appeared as you directed the broom like a dance partner, innocent enough to be labeled endearing. There he goes, I’d say, as you’d take off for the dust bunnies in the corner. Occasionally I would lead you around the kitchen, the bathroom, opportunistically ticking off items on my chore list.
Until one morning when our mother took you with her to work. The toilet had overflowed in the office and the janitor left out his bucket and sponge while he went outside for a smoke. Our mother came around the corner to find you with the wet sponge in your hand, rubbing precise circles along the wall. You hadn’t yet turned four, and from there the joke turned sour.
I can admit t
o you now that in the fog of day-to-day living, I sometimes forgot that there was so much we were missing from those first three years of your life. At times it seemed an amount impossible to measure, all the secrets you could never explain to us.
* * *
WHERE’S PAPA going with that ax? asks Fern in Charlotte’s Web. You were unsure about Wilbur’s story when I read it to you, maybe because it always opened in the same, ominous way, with Mr. Arable walking through the wet morning grass, a weapon in his hand. Maybe because for Wilbur the first hour of life was already uncertain, while the rest of the young pigs spent a few seasons growing fat by their mother’s side. I would skip to the part where he’s taken in by eight-year-old Fern, who nurses Wilbur on a bottle and wheels him around the farm in a baby carriage, until he’s sold to Fern’s uncle for six dollars. By the time Wilbur reaches Mr. Zuckerman’s farm, we would both be anxious, wondering: Who will tend to the little pig now?
Then Charlotte would appear, full of charm, wit, and courage, transforming from friend to maternal figure overnight. Wilbur’s mother, we were always left to assume, still lived with the other piglets on the Arable farm. Wilbur never asked about where he came from, but always worried about who would protect his future. You had no patience for the ending, I remember, asking why all Charlotte’s children had to fly away.
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