Who We Are

by T. J. Klune

  “Shut up.”

  He grabs me by the arm and stops me. “Look, Bear, I don’t have time for bullshit. I never have, and I never will. If you’ve been through what I’ve been through, then you’d know that’s true. If I tell you something, I mean it.”

  “Uh, thanks. I guess.” I almost want to ask what he’s been through, but I don’t know why I should care. It’s confusing.

  Isaiah pulls a pen out of his pocket and grabs my hand, holding it palm up. He starts to write, bent over in concentration, and I can feel his breath on my palm, the subtle stroke of the pen, and I miss Otter even more. When he raises his head, his face is mere inches from my own “That’s my number, okay? You call me if you just want to talk, or whatever. I promise I can keep my hands to myself. Sometimes, it’s better to talk to a stranger than those that are closest to you. I know shit can get rough sometimes, so just let me know if you need to vent.”

  I nod, and am about to turn away when he says my name, and I look up, and suddenly his mouth is on mine, a short hard kiss that catches me off guard, and before I can do anything, it’s done and over with. “And,” he says with a glint in his eyes, “if it’s ever over between you and Walrus, you can call me for all kinds of reasons. I’m curious to see if this Bear has claws.

  See ya on Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday?” I choke out as he walks away.

  “Class, Bear. We’ve got class,” he says over his shoulder.

  Fuck me.

  It’s not until eight that night, when I get home from work, that I get a terse response to another of my texts to Otter.

  Be home late. Don’t wait up.

  Ow.

  The Kid noticed something was up but allowed me to dismiss his question after Mrs. Paquinn had left, telling him that Otter would be home when he could. He asked quietly if Otter would be there in the morning before he went to his first day of fifth grade. I told him of course he would be. Otter wouldn’t miss it. He was just as excited for the Kid as I was.

  The Kid almost looked like he believed me.

  After he went to bed, I waited and prowled the house, looking through the windows every few minutes or so, sure that the headlights rolling by would be Otter, that he’d be coming home and that he’d open the door, and his eyes would find mine, and I’d say I was sorry, and he’d say the same, that grin on his face lighting up the gold-green, and I’d make him believe that there was no one else, that there never could be anyone else. That it would be okay because it was just me and him, Bear and Otter, the way it was always supposed to be.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And eventually ended up in the bathtub because the earthquakes in my heart got too hard to handle outside of this false haven that was our home. I shivered against the cold porcelain and wondered what would happen if Otter didn’t come back. We would have to move, because I couldn’t afford to live in this house by ourselves. I’d have to get the Kid and pack up as quickly as we could because staying here any longer would do nothing but crack my soul. I needed to figure out what I’d say to Tyson, how I would explain that I’d fucked up yet again, that his older brother was a fucking failure at everything he did. I’d have to make sure I wrapped myself around him so that when he broke apart, the pieces wouldn’t fall too far away, and I’d be able to pick them up like I always did. Even if I had to leave pieces of myself behind.

  Always with one foot out the door, it whispered in the dark. Always expect the worse because one day, the worst will come.

  I lie down in the bathtub, facing away from the door because watching and waiting and hoping for him to walk in is impossible. It’s improbable.

  He’s not coming in. He’s not coming home. He came to his senses, I think.

  He probably just sent that text that he was going to be home late, that I shouldn’t wait up because no matter how late it got, it would always be too late. I shiver because I’m cold and because of so much more. I ignore the tear that slides from my eye across my nose because if I don’t, not even the bathtub will stop me from breaking. It’s only then that I fall, and I remember—

  I REMEMBER once, that my mother came to me with a favor. I was—

  thirteen i think i’m thirteen

  —older then, and she came to me after I’d gotten home from school. It was in the fall, and I was wishing—

  better coat i wish i had a warmer coat

  —it was summer again because I couldn’t stand the cold, not with a jacket that was three years old and too small now. Mom said we couldn’t get me a new one because the baby needed diapers. She said it was more important than a coat. If I was cold, she said, just wear two pairs of socks and a hat because heat escapes your feet and head. I told her that it was my arms that were cold, not my feet and head. She’d just laughed and said I was funny, and I—

  dumb baby the stupid fucking kid ruins everything

  —looked away, muttering that I wasn’t trying to be funny, that it wasn’t meant to be funny. But she’d laughed, a Marlboro Red dangling from her lips, the smoke a blue-gray fog above her head like a storm cloud.

  I came in from outside, rubbing my arms, trying to get the gooseflesh to disappear and the hairs on my arms to lie back down. I wondered if I had gloves, if gloves would even help, and I was stuck on that thought, thinking maybe Otter would have some extra in his closet I could use, I could just call and ask him. He was at school, and I didn’t—

  want him to be so far away why did he have to leave me

  —want to ask his parents or Creed, because I didn’t want to see the look on their faces, that look of pity that I knew they would have. They didn’t mean to do it, and it wasn’t their fault. I just didn’t want it. But if I called Otter, he would tell me if he had some in his room, and maybe a coat, too, that he’d let me borrow, and it would—

  smell like him

  —be big on me, but that would be okay. It would remind me of him.

  I passed the dingy crib and looked down at the baby, who stared back up at me, and when his eyes fixed on my face, he smiled so wide you’d have thought I was the sun coming out on a cloudy day. Tyson gurgled and kicked his legs, cooing and babbling at me like he was talking to me. No one ever understood that reaction, as it only seemed to happen with me. He never did that with Mom. Or her friends, what ones there were. The doctors, the neighbors. The gruff men that came into our apartment with an air of cold indifference. Ty smiled at none of them. But whenever he saw me, for some reason it set him off, and he would laugh and coo and kick his chubby little legs. If I’d walk away without talking to him, he’d squawk in anger until I came back and rubbed my hands across his cheeks, his little hand grabbing onto my fingers, playing with them like they were the greatest thing in his world.

  My hands were cold now so I blew into them so the baby wouldn’t freeze. His eyes lit up as I dropped my hand toward him, and I cupped his face, and that smile—

  i thought i could hate you but i can’t i won’t

  —came out again, bright and gummy, little teeth starting to poke through. I stroked his cheeks with my thumbs, and he laughed and laughed and laughed, which caused me to snort because there’s nothing like a kid’s laugh to set your own self off. It’s a free sound, a sound that doesn’t carry the weight of the world. We chuckled as we watched each other, and he tried to stick one of my fingers in his mouth, but I hadn’t washed my hands all day so I shook my head and gently pulled it away, and he yelled at me in the way that only an eight-month-old can, his forehead scrunching up, his nose flaring.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I told him. “Don’t shout at me.”

  He did anyways.

  “Derrick, that you?” I heard her call out.

  “Yeah. I need to use the phone,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t be that easy. If she said something to me the moment I walked into the door, then that meant she wanted something from me.

  “In a minute. Come here. I need to talk to you.”
r />   Shit, I thought.

  I walked into the kitchen, ignoring her as she clinked the ice cubes in an almost empty glass of Jack. I went to the fridge. An old block of cheese.

  Mustard. Beer. Formula. The freezer has a carton of cigarettes. Two ice cube trays, each half-empty.

  “I thought you were going to go shopping today,” I sighed, shutting the doors. She said she would, dammit.

  “I forgot,” she said, finishing off the glass and getting up to pour another. “I’ll leave some money for you on the counter, and you can go later. Just get what you need. Nothing fancy. We’re not like the Thompsons, you know.” She said this last part with a nasty curl of her lip, her opinion of the Thompson family well displayed. I was used to it and able to ignore it by that point. Otter told me it didn’t matter, that as long as I didn’t believe it, as long as I knew what was real, it would all be okay.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” she said, and that was when I knew I was fucked. “I need you to watch the baby.”

  “For how long?”

  She looked down at her hands, bringing up the left to chew on the thumb nail. “A couple of days.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “Joe wants to take me out of town. Just for two days.”

  “What about school? I can’t take Tyson to school with me!”

  “I’ll write you a note or something,” she said. “Tell them you were sick.

  It’ll be like a little vacation for you too!” She smiled at me.

  “But—”

  “Derrick, can’t you see I need this? This whole baby thing has taken a lot out of me. I just need to get away for a couple of days. I’ll come back, and it’ll be right as rain. You’ll see.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you, out of town.”

  “Yeah, but where?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That’s none of your business. God, why the hell are you so fucking nosy?”

  “I’m not going to watch the stupid baby.”

  She laughed, a short harsh bark. “You are because I told you to. I’m leaving—”

  A knock on the door. More of a pounding, really. My mother smiled, and for the first time in a long time, it looked real, like she was actually happy, that she was actually smiling because she felt like it. She was getting away and she knew it. It might have only been for a couple of days, but it was two days she felt she needed, that she felt she was owed. I never really saw that smile much.

  “That would be Joe,” she said, and only then did I notice the small beat-up overnight bag next to her.

  “You’re leaving now?”

  She sighed as she finished off her drink and stood up. She took a wad of bills from her pocket and dropped it on the table, crumpled ones and fives.

  “Derrick, don’t make a scene. I don’t have time to deal with your bullshit right now.” She took the fives out of the pile of money, leaving fourteen dollars on the table in ones. “That should be enough for a couple of days.

  There’s diapers in the hall closet, and Tyson’s food is in the cabinet.”

  “Wait—”

  Pounding on the door again. Harder, angrier. Tyson started to cry.

  “Jesus Christ,” my mom muttered as she picked up her bag and started walking down the hall.

  “Mom, you can’t leave me here alone with him!” I was panicking, my voice coming out high, and it cracked like it was a fragile thing. She’d left me alone before when she’d felt the need to get away, but not since Ty had been born. I thought that was the one good thing about him coming along, that he’d somehow made her stationary, that he’d put roots down for her like I’d never been able to do. I was wrong.

  “Derrick, you’re thirteen years old now,” she said over her shoulder, never stopping. “It’s time for you to act like it.” She opened the door, and Joe (I’d met him once, he’d shaken my hand and then promptly forgot I existed) looked cross as he asked her if she was ready to go. Tyson began to scream in that way he did when he was crying and no one was paying attention to him. My mom looked back at me, and I could see the relief on her face as she started to close the door behind her, the tension dropping out of her shoulders, the lines on her forehead disappearing, the smile once again on her face. “Just for a couple of days,” she told me.

  “You can’t do this!”

  “Babe!” Joe snapped. “We’re running late already. We gotta go. Shut the fucking door!”

  “I love you, Derrick,” she said as she closed the door behind her.

  Tyson screamed louder, demanding attention.

  I walked over to him and looked down into the crib, and the moment he saw my face, the crying stopped, the yelling stopped. Those crocodile tears dried from his eyes, and he kicked his legs up again and started babbling at me, reaching his hands up, wanting me closer. I told myself not to hate him.

  I told myself it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t ask to be born. He didn’t ask for the mother he was given. He didn’t deserve my anger, no matter how much I wanted to give it to him.

  I sighed as I bent over and picked him up, and he laughed as he was lifted to my shoulder, his hands immediately going to my hair and yanking it as he talked in my ear in that way that only he could. I walked around in circles, trying to get him to calm down, talking out loud, telling him stories made up on the fly, telling him about my day, telling him about something stupid Creed had done. And before I could stop myself, I told him how much I missed Otter, how I wanted him home, how everything seemed different with him away at school, how different it was when he was near. I told him that Otter was so cool, that he was the greatest guy, how scared I was to meet him at first because he was bigger than me, and that I’d never met a big brother before, and I thought that he would hate me. I told Tyson that Otter made me want to be a good big brother too, that I was going to do whatever it took to make sure he was taken care of. As I spoke, he sat back in my arms and watched my face, and there was such a spark there, such a recognition of my words in his eyes. I knew he couldn’t understand me, not really, but he looked as if he did. That look was everything.

  “Gotta take care of you,” I told him quietly as his eyes started to droop.

  “You’re just a little guy. Just a kid, you know? I may not know what I’m doing all the time, but we’ll figure it out. Otter taught me, so I think I can teach you, I guess. Okay, kid?”

  I placed him back down in the crib and covered him with a blanket, and I watched him for a moment, hating my mother but never him. Only then did I realize how much I needed to speak to the one person I knew who could understand.

  “Hello?” he said as he answered his phone.

  “I thought you’d be in class,” I mumbled.

  “I am,” Otter said. “I saw it was you and stepped out. What’s up, Derrick? You sound upset.” His voice was warm, concerned. It was Otter, and I was immediately calmed.

  “Am I going to be a good brother?” I asked, hedging.

  He laughed. “The best,” he said. “You learned from me, didn’t you?”

  I picked at a chip in the countertop. “Yeah.”

  “Now tell me what’s really wrong.”

  I thought about bullshitting, but I knew he would see right through it.

  “Mom went out of town.”

  Slight hesitation. “Oh? She left you alone again? Why don’t you just go over to my house? Mom won’t mind. Do you want me to call her for you?”

  “She left Tyson too.”

  Silence, and for a moment, I thought we’d been disconnected. But when Otter finally spoke again, his voice had lost the warmth and had become something else entirely. “Where’d she go?”

  I didn’t know if he was mad at me too or not, and my own voice was small when I said I didn’t know.

  “Did she say when she’s going to be back?”

  “Two days.”

  “I’m coming home.”

  I was alarmed. “Wait, Otter, you don’t have to—”

&nbs
p; “Derrick,” he said in that warning voice of his, that voice that already drove me fucking crazy, “this isn’t up for debate. You have school tomorrow, and you need to go. I’ll watch Tyson while you’re in school.”

  “What about your school?”

  He laughed again, but it had an edge to it. “That’s the difference. You pay to go to my school, and they don’t care if you miss a day or two. You can’t do that. You need to go to school.”

  “Okay,” I said meekly. Then, “Otter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  No hesitation. “Never in your life,” he said. “You listen to me, Derrick McKenna, and you listen good. Are you listening?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ve done nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, you’ve done everything right. You are strong and brave and kind, and I am proud to call you my little brother. You did the right thing by calling me because it means you trust me to help you. It means you know I can be there for you. And that makes me happier than I could ever say.”

  There was a lump in my throat, and I couldn’t make it go away.

  “Otter—”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “I….”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Yeah.” Because I did.

  “Good. I’ll be there in a few hours. Hang tight, okay?”

  I wanted to tell him I loved him, because right then I didn’t think it was possible to love another more. But that was stupid. That was gay. How faggy would that sound? He’d laugh at me and tell me that I shouldn’t say things like that, that guys didn’t speak that way. So instead of saying what was in my head and heart, I just said good-bye.

  I DON’T know how much time has passed, and I think I’m dozing and dreaming (surreal and bright, everything gold and green and warm and right, and even though she’s trying to poke her way through, he keeps her at bay) because I hear a sigh come from the doorway and footsteps walking toward me. Someone steps over the ledge to the bathtub, and suddenly I’m being crowded against the side, a large mass at my back, a big arm sliding over my chest and pulling me back, another arm sliding under my head to act as a pillow that’s as hard as the tub floor. Lips press against the back of my neck and trail up to my hair, and a nose is pressed against the back of my head, and I’m inhaled, I’m breathed in, and there’s another sigh, and this one sounds more content, more like the feeling of coming home after a long day.