These Gentle Wounds

by Helene Dunbar

  Time jerks me forward, and I’m in the water looking for those twirling eels and minnows. I’m angry at Mom because she lied. They aren’t here. All I see is garbage, and algae, and an old sneaker. The car sinks lower and lower and I have to get out.

  There’s no air. There’s just … Wet. Cold. No …

  I gasp, my heart pounding faster than I thought it possibly could, my hands clenched around the blanket as I lie on the bed. Everything looks like a ghost when I’m coming out of a spin. The past superimposed over the present like an old photo that’s been messed up when they developed it.

  Screw Mom for reading Sylvia Plath to a five-year-old.

  “Breathe,” Kevin says from his desk. The computer keyboard makes a sound like he’s hitting the same single letter over and over.

  It takes a minute for the spin to totally fade and for that minute all I feel is anger and a crushing loss. I miss my mom. I miss her poetry voice and her arm wrapped around me. I want this all to stop.

  My eyes refocus on Kevin, sitting at his desk and attacking the keys like he wants to hurt them.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yeah, he’s gone,” Kevin says, spinning around in his chair. My father being gone should make him happy, but he definitely doesn’t look happy. It’s also painfully obvious that he isn’t saying anything else. In fact I start to make a list in my head of everything he isn’t saying while he gets up and moves over to the bed.

  He isn’t saying, “Don’t worry.”

  He isn’t saying, “He’s never coming back.”

  He isn’t saying, “He’ll never hurt us again.”

  When he does speak, it’s to say, “Get up. Let’s go for a walk.”

  I glance at the clock. It’s six. I’m not sure how long I’ve been out of it, but there’s something knocking at the back of my brain. Something I need to do, but don’t remember. It isn’t like I have to be anywhere. I don’t have a game until next week.

  The house is quiet as we head downstairs. It’s Saturday night so Jim must have gone to play poker with his buddies. Kevin is as quiet as the house. It’s never good when Kevin is quiet.

  He ducks into the kitchen and takes something out of the freezer, and we stand there waiting like two gunfighters in an old western to see who makes the first move. Kevin pulls a chair out and sits in it, leaning his elbows on the table.

  Then he says, straight-out, for the first time in five years, “Look, I get it about Mom … I mean, what she did. And yeah, he used to use me as a punching bag. But—”

  “Kev,” I beg, shaking my head slowly. I lean against the counter for support.

  He looks at me, tired and washed out against the fading and peeling wallpaper.

  My legs start to shake. I’m praying that he’s going to stop. I don’t even want to hear the question he’s about to ask, because I know what the general gist is.

  “But he never hit you. So why are you so afraid of your dad?”

  There are things I’ve never told Jim, or the counselors at school, or anyone. I’ve never told them how disappointed I was that life underwater wasn’t what I’d been promised. And I’ve never really told them about the spins. I know it would get me put back on their drugs, or worse.

  But most of all, I’ve never told them about The Night Before. I’ve never told anyone, not even Kevin. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to start now.

  I charge out the front door and focus on how the cool evening air feels on my face. A couple of deep breaths and all those bad thoughts go back where they belong.

  Once Kevin catches up with me, I concentrate on how our steps are mostly synchronized and how good it feels to be outside with my brother when he isn’t being a total dick. I’m glad he isn’t ruining everything by pressing me for an answer.

  I don’t have to ask to know that we’re walking to the monastery. It doesn’t look like the ones in the movies. It isn’t some huge gothic marvel. It’s more of an old school that’s been turned into a non-denominational meeting hall. Two levels, red brick. Nothing cool. There’s a playground outside with all of the usual stuff you’d imagine. Swings, and a merry-go-round, and a wooden train you can climb on that looks like the engine from some oversized toy set.

  Jim used to bring us here all the time. I guess he didn’t really know what to do with kids in general and me in particular. I sometimes forget how hard it must have been for him to take us in.

  Before That Day, Jim would only see Kevin a couple of times a month, and he always used to buy him stuff. Kevin always chose things he could share with me, like candy or comics. So Jim started buying me something too and getting Kevin the stuff he really wanted: CDs of loud angry bands I didn’t like, or books on the lives of military guys who would find themselves in enemy territory and have to escape.

  As always, I follow Kevin over to the swings and we each take one. Before we sit down, I stick my hand into my pocket. My fingers hit paper and I pull it out. Uncrumple it.

  Seven numbers. Sarah’s number. I never called her.

  “Crap, I need a phone,” I say, pressing on my temples to stop the sudden pounding in my head.

  “Do you see a phone around here?” Kevin asks sarcastically.

  I hate that neither of us has a cell. Kevin’s allowance all goes to buy gas for the guzzling monstrosity he calls a car, and presumably toward saving for college, and Jim won’t buy me one. Not like I usually have anyone to call anyhow.

  “No, but … ” I know he can’t just wave a wand and make a phone appear, but I need to call her and I know that thought is going to hound me until I can’t focus on anything else.

  “You don’t really need a phone,” he says, in a tone that makes me want to rip his throat out. “Why, anyhow?”

  I show him the paper but he doesn’t get it.

  “Seriously. Come on,” I say, taking a few steps back toward the house. “I need to go back.”

  Kevin grabs my sleeve and pulls me down so I’m sitting on the next swing over from him. “Gordie, shut up for a minute. Just take a deep breath and stop talking.”

  He only calls me by name when he’s pissed or trying to make a point. I wonder which it is this time. I slump down and swing gently forward and back while I bite at the inside of my cheek to keep my mouth shut.

  “Okay,” he says. “First off, whose number is that?”

  I glare at him. “Sarah’s.”

  “The Sarah from English?” A look of surprise dances across his face and then disappears. “She gave you her number?”

  “For school.” My right foot kicks off the ground and pushes me higher. The swing set is creaking. It isn’t made for kids my age, but I’m pretty skinny for fifteen so I’m not too worried.

  Kevin looks at me with his mouth open. It’s clear he doesn’t believe what I’m saying. Fine. Whatever.

  I do my best to ignore him and just enjoy the way it feels to close my eyes as the swing falls backward toward the Earth. Eventually the pressing urge to call Sarah fades and becomes just something I need to do later.

  Next to me, Kevin clears his throat. “Thursday, Ice,” he says, which puzzles me. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  The swing propels me up and past him. The whole planet seems so far beneath my shoes, and even though I know it isn’t true, it seems like if I just jump off I’ll land on someone’s roof or get stuck in the top of a tree.

  “Hey,” Kevin calls. His voice is no-nonsense enough to get me to drag my feet in the dirt and slowly bring myself to a stop. “Did you hear me?”

  “You said something about Thursday.” I do my best to think about the word and not what it might mean.

  Kevin doesn’t play along. Instead he kneels down in front of me, holding on to the chains of the swings, one in each hand.

  “You have to go see your dad on Thursday. After school.”

 
; I breathe and relief floods through me. “Can’t. I have practice.” For an optimistic minute I expect him to shrug and accept it, but instead he shakes his head.

  “I know. Jim is going to have to call your coach and tell him you won’t be there.”

  It’s true that bad things all happen at once. Just like That Day happened, but The Night Before happened too. And neither could have happened without the other.

  Up until this minute, I thought that having to spend time with my father was the very worst thing that could happen to me. But I was wrong. Missing practice on Thursday means being benched during our last game of the season on Friday. I need hockey. In spite of my recent actions, I need practice too—the speed, the chance to turn off my brain and let my muscles do the work. Going too long without skating makes it harder for me to concentrate and harder for me to bounce back after a spin.

  “I have a game on Friday. If I miss, they won’t let me play.” My voice is a whisper eaten up by the wind. “Come on, please,” I plead, but I know there’s nothing he can do. I sometimes forget he’s a kid just like me. Well, not just like me. But he doesn’t get to call the shots either.

  “I know.” Kevin’s voice is sad. He means it, but it doesn’t change anything. “My dad is working, so I’ll take you to DeSilva’s office after school. They say it’ll only be twenty minutes, and then it’ll be over and hopefully he’ll just crawl back into whatever hole he’s been hiding in.”

  Twenty minutes is the length of a period of hockey without stoppages. Worlds could be created and destroyed in that amount of time.

  Kevin pulls himself to his feet. Grabbing a handful of stones, he whips them, one by one, at the dead center of a tree. Each time one hits, my stomach twitches.

  “What do you think I’m supposed to do there?” I ask.

  Kevin rubs his temples and sighs loudly. “I don’t know, Ice. Just talk to him. Or let him talk. Maybe all he wants is for you to listen to him and then he’ll go away.”

  My thumb starts twitching. There’s nothing my father could say that I’d want to hear. I’ve heard his vulture voice enough to last a lifetime.

  I push the swing off the ground, but every time I fly up, my stomach stays below. I pump my legs until I’m as high as the swing will let me go, and, just as it starts its descent, I jump. For a second, I’m free. For a second, it’s just me and the air.

  I hear Kevin yelling but I know how to land, bending my knees so I don’t break anything. Once I’m on the ground, I walk over to the bushes and puke my guts out. It’s probably the only thing that keeps my brother from kicking my ass.

  When we get home, Kevin’s still muttering under his breath and I have to take a gulp of water to wash the taste of puke out of my mouth. It’s eight o’clock. I wonder if that’s too late to call someone on a Saturday night.

  I expect him to yell at me some more, but instead Kevin says, “You might feel better if you talk about it,” really softly. This is funny coming from him, because my brother never talks about anything that happened.

  I shake my head. If I told him everything, he’d know it was all my fault. He’d hate me and even though it’s probably what I deserve, I think that actually would kill me.

  “You don’t have to talk to me. You could try talking to someone else again,” he suggests.

  I stare at him. Given the number of hours he’s had to spend with the school shrinks and the equal number of hours he’s spent bitching about it, his suggestion is almost funny.

  “No.” I say. “I’ll be okay.”

  I’m sure Kevin doesn’t believe me. I don’t even believe me.

  “Fine. Here, Romeo,” he says, tossing the phone to me, his version of a peace offering. I think about the chances of my pulling it together to call Sarah now, and about what I could say.

  My heart is beating a little fast. I know I’m looking at the phone like it’s some giant vat of ice cream that I want to eat and eat until I pass out.

  “You really like her,” Kevin says. I can tell he’s relieved to be talking about something that makes sense to him. His little brother crushing on a girl.

  “It’s just school,” I say, but we both know I’m lying, and that feels weird. I get up, so I don’t have to see the look in his eyes, and find the paper with the phone number on it. Then I stare at each digit, waiting to see if they’ll tell me what to do.

  “Sure it is.” Kevin says. “Go ahead and call her. Maybe it will help.”

  I nod, because doing what he says seems easier than trying to figure anything else out.

  There’s a dull buzz as I mechanically punch each number into the phone. A part of me hopes no one answers. A part of me is scared no one will. Somehow, where Sarah is concerned, I always seem to be feeling two opposite things at once.

  “Hello?” I’m pretty sure it’s her.

  “Sarah?” My voice is all choked up like I’ve been smoking or something. I have to cough to clear it.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Gordie.”

  I wait for her to say, “Gordie who?” or to ask why I’m calling or to tell me to go away.

  “Hey, I was hoping you’d call,” she says, and it makes my stomach flip.

  I suddenly realize I have no idea what to say now that she’s on the phone. The line is filled with silence. Too much. My hand starts to tighten and a shadow that may or may not be real moves across the room.

  “Are you there?” she asks.

  “Yeah. Yeah, just … sorry.” I shake my head and the shadow disappears.

  “Oh, okay,” she says. “So, what do you think about going and taking photos tomorrow afternoon? Maybe somewhere around the monastery?”

  She talks for a while about the things she can photograph. I’m not really paying much attention to what she’s saying, just to the rhythm of her words. Eventually there’s a pause and I know that I need to add something.

  “Sure.”

  Kevin raises an eyebrow. I turn to face the other direction so that he doesn’t see the small, embarrassed smile on my face.

  “Does one o’clock tomorrow work?” she asks. “I can meet you there.”

  “One sounds perfect,” I say, and I mean it.

  Nine

  Sarah is right where she says she’ll be and already bustling around. I don’t know exactly what she’s taking photos of. And I don’t know what types of “harbingers of doom” I’m going to photograph. It’s snowing huge white flakes even though the sun is shining, and it looks like we’re in the center of a snow globe. I know I need to care about the assignment, but I’m not sure I really do.

  Sarah rushes around checking angles, shadows, and light while I climb up to the roof of the old wooden train and lie down, watching the snow fall around me like feathers. It’s not cold out, for Michigan anyhow, and the snow melts as soon as it hits the ground, so I just look up at the blue, blue sky and watch the flakes and the clouds.

  When we were little, Kevin and I would go into the yard with Mom and play the cloud game, trying to figure out what each cloud looked like to us. Mom would always see something funny: a rabbit with a top hat, or a flower being nibbled by an elephant. Kevin was always practical. To him the clouds were shaped like a truck. Or a cigar. Or a mailbox.

  Sometimes I saw dragons, and castles, and elaborate scenes with moats and armies of knights. Sometimes all I saw were clouds. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the clouds that made the game fun.

  A plane flies overhead somewhere in the distance. If I try really hard, I can hear Sarah’s camera clicking away as she talks, to herself and to the things she’s taking photos of. She even talks to the sun. I wonder if she really expects it to move just so that she can get a good picture.

  I close my eyes and press on my eyelids, watching fireworks of color explode behind them.

  I’m off, lost in the sounds and colors until Sarah’
s voice pulls me back as she climbs up to the top of the train.

  “I wish it wasn’t so bright out, but I think I got some good shots,” she says, sitting down next to me.

  I want her to keep talking, but she doesn’t. So I sit up and watch her watching the sky.

  It isn’t just that I think she’s pretty. It’s that she seems more confident and sure of herself than anyone else I know. I can’t even lie to myself about it anymore. I want her to like me, even though I’ve never cared what anyone thought about me before. Even though there’s no reason she should.

  “You could do something with that darker cloud over there,” she suggests, pointing off in the distance. As she turns her head, a charm swings from a chain around her neck. Framed like a little painting is a bird with multicolored wings, wings that stretch out toward the side of her neck. It reminds me a little of the photo she put in my locker.

  “Thanks,” I say. “For the picture.”

  She breaks into a wide smile. “Glad you liked it. It won an award at my old school.”

  I feel a weird surge of pride swell through me, followed by something cold and empty. The more I learn about her, the less I understand why she’d want anything to do with me.

  “Don’t miss the cloud,” she says.

  I follow her finger and try to get my head back into our assignment. It’s a good idea. People always used to try to get hints of their future by looking at the sky or following the weather.

  I nod. She takes the camera from around her neck and hands it to me, but I’m not sure what to do with it. Mom had a camera when we were kids. I’m not sure what happened to it. We don’t have many photos of anything since That Day, and the old ones are mostly packed away somewhere.

  Plus, the camera Mom had was a little thing you could put in your pocket. This is different. This is more like what real photographers use, with lenses that come off and flashes that clip on.

  “So how does this work?” I ask her.

  She drapes the strap around my neck and moves behind me, up on her knees. I bring the camera up to my eye. When she leans over to show me how to adjust the lens, she rests her arms against my shoulders and my heart thumps double-time.