Hazard

by Margaret Combs

  If he, a stranger, knew what I was laughing about he might take offense, seeing my behavior as mocking and making fun of a disabled boy—but my sister and I are not strangers to each other or to our brother, and we share a tie deeper than disability, the bond of siblings twined by familiarity, exasperation, and affection. Our mirth holds all the tenderness of family, of deeply internal moments between the three of us. It’s as if Rod is here, telling both of his big sisters to get over themselves. He has that ability to humble us and to soften our edges. He often steps in this way, albeit unbeknownst to him, helping me to see how silly and irrelevant is my current complaint.

  “Okay, Bob!” I bellow, holding the cell in front of my mouth like a microphone.

  We keep this up for several minutes, laughing and coughing. Nothing more about the key needs to be said; she knows I’ll bring it to her, if not today, then tomorrow. And if I lose the key again, she’ll help me, even if it means holding the ladder so I can crawl through my kitchen window. And if my brother needs us, when he needs us, after my parents are gone, she and I will be there, as our younger sister is now. We will have to be. Some things are not chosen.

  I hang up, still laughing, having accomplished nothing. As I strip off my sweatshirt and tie it around my waist, I strike off toward the trailhead and take the Upper Loop. Steep and winding, it pulls me higher, like a giant, thick vine. Dollops of rain splatter on my head. Destruction is everywhere: hulking branches flung across the trail, whole root systems ripped from the soil.

  There was a time when I believed, fervently, that to bring an afflicted child into the world was unconscionable, and I would have done everything to keep that from happening. Seated across from my parents in a booth somewhere in 1972, in the wake of Roe v. Wade, when I was a junior in college and newly married, I shouted, “Yes, of course I believe in legalized abortion!”

  My mother had gasped, “But why?” Her delicate features crumpled, her eyes reared back into her head, horrified and deeply pained.

  I felt no mercy; I looked right at her. “If you don’t really want the child, don’t bring it into the world. The chances are too high that something will be wrong, that it will ruin your life.”

  I was speaking from a hardened fear. That I could conceive a child like my brother and that it would break me. Growing up with a disabled boy in a time of ignorance had wracked my family, crippling our rhythms and feeding our sense of shame. It’s hard even now, in this age of genomes and awareness. No matter how informed a new mother or father might be, the word “autism” hits like a blast wave, concussing the family and altering every sibling’s life. The memory of my mother collapsing, of my father lifting her from the floor, of my brother crying in my mother’s arms for a Sherry-friend, still pierces my lungs, making it hard to breathe.

  And yet. And yet. In the calming company of trees that wear the scars of a hundred storms, I miss my brother. He carries all these complexities, which will not go away, no matter how far away I am from him. I think of him a continent away, slipping under the covers, clutching my valentine, my papered love. I feel the comfort of his smooth hands lotioning my back. I hear him barking for coffee, standing up to my father, his courage breaking through. I see him lunging, arms outstretched, catching our youngest baby brother rolling off the couch. I see his gaze, steady, penetrating from across the kitchen counter, at me, an intensity that takes my breath away.

  As a woman, I still adamantly believe in the right to choose. I have come to know another truth. If my mother happened to be beside me now—a young woman of twenty-four and pregnant with her third child, a boy with brain damage—I could not say, “Abort, Mother. Do it for yourself, for your baby boy, for all of us.” Knowing my brother, I would not say it. There again, a surprise. A fortuity.

  This is what I know. Every cell in my brother’s body wants to wake up and try it again, to give life a whirl. Just as I do, with my imperfections, struggling every day to figure it out, to know why I’m here. Why life is the way it is. Why I’m fortunate enough to be alive inside this moment. Barbara Ann, me, Roddy: we get to wake up and go at it again. Just as we’ve always done. Just as our elders, our parents, and our lives together have taught us to do.

  I’m no longer trying to make up for the one thing that pulled my family sideways. I have arrived at the place where I see not just one thing—the worst thing—but the ten thousand things that make up a life. I don’t have all the answers, and in some distant place, my urgency for answers, for restitution, releases. Not all at once, but gently, fortuitously, one breath at a time. Perhaps this is why I’ve lived this long—long enough to accept surprise. To give in to what cannot be undone. Genes happen; they happened to my brother, and they happened to my family, and to me.

  I round the last corner and, through the blackened trunks, spot the green hood of my car. I feel a kind of surrender, a deep relief that my parents did not send my brother away. A surprise and a solace. As fraught and arduous as the journey has been, and will be, they let me know him. My story does not include a brother who was sent away, a ghost who was lost to me. My desire to run from home was not because of my brother. I didn’t flee him as much as I fled my parents’ anguish and sorrow.

  My brother’s gentle voice, Yaas, Mossie, stays with me as I slip into my car, and for whatever reason, I suddenly recall the pleasure on his face when I visited his group home in Florida a few months before. There I was, with Barbara Ann and Cami, following Rod through the front door and down the hallway. Wearing his tilted smile, he showed us his bedroom and where his clean clothes belonged, every shirt and every sock, every pair of underwear. He opened and closed his bureau drawers, smiling shyly and whispering to himself. It took forever. Then, we toured around his room, and one by one, looked at his photos, picking up the frames and saying the names aloud—Mom, Dad, Barbara Ann, Margie, Cami, James—our family. Other families had other special moments. But this was ours.

  Inside that sliver of time, that small ritual, he felt cherished. And so did I.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my family—especially my parents, Ray and Bertha Ann Combs—for their indelible strength and enduring love. I am deeply grateful to my older sister, Barbara Ann, who has been there from the beginning and generously helped me navigate through life, love, calamity, and the making of this book.

  Many thanks to my astute and perceptive editor, Olga Greco, and to everyone at Skyhorse Publishing. I am indebted to my agent, Sarah Jane Freymann, for her deep knowledge and guiding hand.

  A warm thank-you to my generous and talented teacher, Brenda Peterson, for her sage wisdom and guidance in this journey. An enormous thank-you to my fellow writers in the Salish Sea Writers collective, who generously and honestly steered me through numerous revisions.

  I want to thank my friends, many of whom read and reread my work or simply sat still long enough to listen: Laura Foreman, Amanda Mander, Elisa Rhodes, Cestjon McFarland, Judy Tingley, Suzanne Brassel, Amy Hughes, Amy Weber, Laurie Sugarman-Whittier, Anne Murphy, and Patti Murphy.

  Many thanks to the librarians of the Bainbridge Island Library who put up with my continuous presence and patiently plied me with answers to my questions.

  Finally, a special thank-you to the staff at the Marketplace Café at Pleasant Beach for providing me with a coveted corner in which to write, and likewise, to the trees of the Grand Forest, for offering me the sanctuary to ponder and the serenity to see.

  Portions of this memoir have appeared previously: “Aileron” in Lost Magazine, Summer 2010, Issue 38; “Aileron” in the North American Review, Spring 2011, Vol. 296; “Cracker Jacks” in Secret Histories: Stories of Courage, Risk, and Revelation (2013).

  With the exception of my siblings and parents, all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned in this book.

 

 

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