Hurt People

by Cote Smith

  The room was mostly dark. The lights were turned off, and only a few bars of daylight slipped through the blinds, striping the yellow walls white. My dad rose from the chair and greeted my mother with a hug, burying his puffy face in her neck, her yellow hair. He pulled away and whispered something that I couldn’t hear or see behind my mother’s head. But my mother nodded and the two turned to the opposite wall, to a bed I thought was empty until I stepped deeper into the room. In the bed I saw two feet and when I followed those feet I saw my brother.

  It took a moment to recognize my brother in the body in the bed. I had to look past so much. His starved body, thin as me. The long hair that swept over his shut eyes. He had bruises up and down his arms, dark purples stained on his neck and wrists. A tube snaked up his arm and disappeared in the hospital gown. His face looked sucked in, his cheekbones stuck out, and he was as white as a ghost. I didn’t believe them when they said he wasn’t dead.

  My mother fell to her knees, rose with the help of the bed rails and my dad. He put his arm around us both and we watched my brother’s chest rise and fall. We watched his mouth hang open, the drool that pooled off his lip. His face flinched as he slept. I wanted to put my finger in his mouth, to feel his breath. I wanted to dip my finger in the cave of his lips and watch him dream.

  * * *

  The next night we took him home. My mother’s insurance ran out. My dad offered money but my mother wanted him out of here, she said. She wanted this to be over. A stern doctor cleared my brother, prescribing a lot of rest, food, and water. He looked at us with pity and sent us on our way.

  All of this after my dad filed the police report. After my brother woke and answered my dad’s questions. When he did wake, to me, he was a different person. Gone were the faces he made, the looks I recognized. He had no attitude or emotion and answered each question yes or no, or with the smallest of sentences.

  Where were you kept? House.

  Were you held against your will? Yes.

  Where exactly? House.

  Where in the house? Basement.

  Did he hit you? Yes.

  Where? My arms. Legs and face.

  Were you tied up? Yes.

  You could not move?

  No.

  For how long? All the time.

  My mother held my brother’s hand the entire interview, but this didn’t seem to comfort him. He didn’t look at her, or me. He looked at the window, even though the curtains were closed, and even if they weren’t, the room’s view was just another brick wall.

  My dad continued.

  This will be difficult, he said.

  Did the man touch you, in an inappropri—? Yes.

  —ate way? He did? Yes.

  My mother stifled a cry.

  OK, it’s OK, son, my dad said. Can you tell me how many times? A few.

  Can you show me where? My brother pointed. Down his front, between his legs. He rolled over and pointed down his back.

  My dad let his head drop, but only for a second. “It’s OK,” he said again. “It’s OK. It’s over now.” He took my brother’s hand and rubbed his thumb over the bump where the IV entered his skin. “I just need you to do one last thing. When you’re ready, I need you to come with me and identify the man. His body.”

  For the first time, my brother turned his gaze from the window.

  “The Stranger’s dead?” I said.

  My dad turned and gave me a stern look. “Be quiet,” he said. “No one’s talking about that.”

  I looked at my brother, to see what this information did to his face, but he was through looking at any of us. Later, when I couldn’t sleep, I let my mind imagine Chris’s death. I put Chris in the woman’s chair, instead of behind the camera. I made Chris take her place and I let the Stranger, whoever he was, whisper how I felt. You need to tell them. They need to understand that you deserve this. I made the Stranger put the gun to Chris’s head. I made Chris beg and cry. You know me, he said. You know me. Do I look like a stranger?

  I made the Stranger say shut up. I made him shoot and I watched Chris fall to the floor. Do you know me? the Stranger said. Do you know me?

  After my dad put his notepad away, after my mother hugged my brother for hours and the doctor said we could go home, after my mother made my brother a bed on the couch and lay next to him, so he wouldn’t have to sleep in the basement, so she could watch him—after all this, when it was just me in the basement, me and the spiders, I let the Stranger loose. I brought Chris back to life and let the Stranger kill him over and over. In all the ways I could think of. In all the ways I’d seen villains die in movies.

  Nobody knows anybody, and if you think you do, this is what you get.

  In my mind I made Chris suffer the worst, and I tried to make myself believe that this made things better.

  You deserve this. You deserve this.

  seventeen

  THE STRANGER WAS FOUND weeks later, states away. My dad never mentioned the story, but it was all over the local news, the front page of the paper. He was caught hiding in an old barn on a random farm. The barn was rarely used, apparently, and had been all but abandoned. Boards were missing or cracked, the paint was worn off, and the roof had gaping holes and dents from suffering decades of storms. The land’s owners might never have known about the Stranger had their teenage son not snuck a girl and some wine to the barn. They discovered the Stranger sleeping behind an old bale of hay, wild cats circling his head, meowing for food and water. The son told his dad and the dad, too old to deal with squatters anymore, told the sheriff. An hour later the Stranger was on his way back to Kansas. Back to Leavenworth.

  We stayed with my dad, and the city continued to heal. Every day the news ran a different heartwarming video telling the story of some small miracle related to the storm. A dog was picked up by the tornado and thrown two miles. Its owners gave up the dog for dead, until last week when they heard a whine at the door. The dog had crawled its way home, broken legs and all.

  By September, when school was ready to start, there were few signs of the tornado’s damage. You had to know where to look.

  My mother took me by the apartment to gather the rest of our things. When I had put the last trash bag of our belongings in the van, I went to the pool. It too might’ve looked the same to someone who didn’t know better. The water was calm and blue, and every pool chair was in its row. But the diving board was gone. Ripped out, I assumed, by the tornado. All that was left were rust-colored holes where the board had been bolted in. Four small circles that showed what once was.

  Instead of going back inside the apartment when I was finished, as my mother instructed, I sat at the deep end. A dead leaf descended from some tree and floated in the water. I thought of Chris. How he died. My parents never told me directly, but of course there had been articles about my family in the paper. I wasn’t allowed to read any of them except the one that told of my brother’s return. It was brief and dealt only with facts, listing them in a way that didn’t assign blame. The police officer’s son had been found. Locked in the basement of a vacant house close to the city pool. Officers were led to the house after discovering the body of a twenty-year-old Leavenworth man, Adam Sharp, drowned in the city pool. An apparent suicide. A neighbor had seen Mr. Sharp leaving the vacant house on several occasions, but thought nothing of it. The officer’s son, my brother, was in stable condition.

  So here was the leaf. Here was Chris, Adam, facedown in the pool. I thought of the time my brother and I went out to the apartment pool and found Chris in the same position. How we knew he was joking, but still grew worried. How when my brother swam out to make sure Chris was alive, Chris dove underwater like a shark and grabbed my brother’s legs, pulling my brother down with him. I tried to imagine what it felt like when whoever found Chris poked at his body, waiting for him to roll over, to come to life. I thought of my brother, how he was changed, and tried to imagine what it would feel like when you realized someone was no longer alive.

 
; * * *

  My dad was waiting when we got back to the duplex. He eagerly helped us bring our leftover things inside, lapping us multiple times and carrying cartoonishly large loads. When the van was empty, he slammed the doors, and for the first time since my brother’s disappearance, his mouth wasn’t dragged into a frown.

  “Well,” he said, “is that it? We’re all moved in?”

  My mother and I looked at each other, at our dad, who was doing a terrible job hiding his excitement. Behind him the van rattled, even though it was parked and the engine was off. I grabbed the last bag out of my mother’s hand.

  “That’s it,” I said. “We sold all the rest. When you left and we were poor.”

  My dad’s face fell. For a moment, I felt what my brother must have when he knocked Rick out with his words. For some reason it felt good to hit my dad, and a part of me wanted more.

  My dad checked the van’s side door, to make sure it was locked. “I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll go clear some space inside.”

  He went in, and my mother followed him, but not before giving me a long, serious look. A warning maybe. Or a worry. Either way, she didn’t say anything, and when I finally went in minutes later, I caught her and my dad whispering to each other in the living room. They shut up when they saw me.

  * * *

  My brother did not return to school with me. No one told me for how long, but for now he would be homeschooled by my mother, who ditched the bathrobe for slacks and her golf course polo, the closest thing she had to teaching attire. The encyclopedias were the schoolbooks, the kitchen was her classroom, and by the time I left each morning my mother and brother were sitting at the table, leaning over the day’s lesson. The sound of my brother’s voice was a comfort, but he still talked only when he had to. Every day I tried to think of something to say to him, something that would inch us back to the way we were, but every word or sentence I thought of sounded stupid in my head, worthless aloud. It was like the dialogue I forced upon my G.I. Joes, small and meaningless. Words that took up space and nothing more.

  A few weeks into school I came home and my brother was in the basement. His things gone from the couch. I found my mother on the back porch, staring at the weather. The sky was gray, but the threats were gone. Storm season was over in Kansas. The dumb weathermen could relax.

  “It was his idea,” my mother said. “To go down there. I asked if he was sure.”

  I looked up at her. A light rain misted our faces.

  “How was school?”

  “Fine,” I lied.

  “You like your class?”

  “I guess.”

  The rain stopped, started. The clouds watered the sun white, and my mother turned to me. “I got a call, you know. From Miss Scott. She says you’re not paying attention. Not doing your work.” I lowered my head. “Is this true?”

  I turned my back toward her, thinking of the haze of each school day. The musty classroom. The windows pulled open. The low drone of my teacher’s voice.

  “It’s not my fault,” I said. “I don’t get why I’m the only one who has to go.”

  My mother smiled. “Hm. I always loved school. Especially the beginning. The new books. The new supplies.”

  “Yeah,” I said, as mean as I could. “Well, I’m not you.”

  I moved to the corner of the porch. Opposite my mother. I heard her drum her fingers on the porch railing for a moment.

  “Come here,” she said, and when I didn’t move, she came to me. “Listen. You need to hear this.” She turned me around and put my head in her hands, her palms cupping my cheeks. She looked me in the eye. She said, “You can’t carry this with you.”

  “But—”

  “No,” she said. “I know how much you love him. But you have to leave it behind.”

  Rain ran down her forehead, dripped from the tip of her nose. In another minute or two, we would be soaked, but my mother wouldn’t let me go. Not until I met her stare and told her I understood. That everything that had happened, happened. That it was in the past and that the future, if we let it be, was open.

  “Tomorrow is always different,” she said. “Understand?”

  I nodded, and through the rain did my best to meet her eyes, hardened over the summer, but still my favorite shade of blue. “Yeah, Mom,” I said. “I get it.”

  “Good,” she said.

  * * *

  When we ate dinner that week, we looked like a family. The TV was off, and my dad sat across from my mother, and I my brother. We chewed our food and my parents discussed their days. My dad talked of the Chief, who at the last minute pushed back retirement another six months. My mom spoke of my brother, telling my dad how smart he was, how studious. It was obvious she was hoping to spur him to speak, and when he didn’t, she would look at me, eyes raised, my cue to try.

  After dinner my brother would go straight to the basement and lie in the dark, sleeping or not, I couldn’t tell, while my parents did the dishes in the kitchen. I didn’t feel like I belonged in either place, so sometimes I went out back and sat on the porch, stared at the stars. If the night was clear, I found the constellations I knew, the ones I’d learned from Chris. The Little Dipper. Ursa Major. Orion the Hunter. And even though I knew the brother stars wouldn’t come out for some time, I looked for them anyway. I found the hole in the night where I thought they belonged and wished for them to appear, holding my fingers in the sky. Two dots. Though I didn’t know what the stars looked like, or how far apart they really were.

  * * *

  My brother’s birthday was the week of Thanksgiving. This year, it fell on the same Thursday. There was little fanfare for my birthday, but my mother made two pumpkin pies for my brother’s, one for my dad and me and the other for the birthday boy. We gathered around the circle table and did our best to look happy. We sang, and when we were done my brother blew out the candles, the one and the one. There were no presents given. We couldn’t think of a single thing my brother would want.

  After dessert, we sat on the couch and watched a repeat of the parade. My mother convinced my brother to stay upstairs with us, at least for a little while. Have a second slice, she said. It’s your special day. You deserve it. But five minutes later, when my brother’s plate was clean, and he dropped it noisily in the sink and went to the basement without saying thank you or good night, it was clear that the second slice, him spending an extra moment upstairs, was his gift to us, not the other way around.

  My mother poured herself a cup of coffee and sat on the love seat. She’d been sleeping there since my brother was found, but now that he was back in the basement, she had no real reason to. Or not the same reason. More than once I heard my dad invite her to sleep upstairs. To take his bed. He would gladly sleep on the couch. It’ll be like old times, he said with a smile, you upstairs and me in the doghouse. But as comforting as a full bed sounded, my mother kept telling him no. She didn’t want to be too far away from my brother.

  The parade ended. The streets of that big scary city cleared and the floats were taken down. When it was all over, it was way past my bedtime. I closed my eyes, wanting to stay upstairs as long as I could. Not wanting to spend another night with my brother, listening to his troubled breathing, feeling his tossing and turning. I pretended I was asleep and listened to my parents talk close to each other. At first, they talked about anything they could so they wouldn’t have to talk about my brother. They talked about things they read in the paper, things they heard. They talked about how the state was losing some of its funding and would have to let a few officers and guards go at the end of the year. They talked about my mom’s job, what she wanted. They talked about my mother going back to school to get her teacher’s degree, though she said she didn’t know. She kind of missed her work, missed Sandy. They talked about other people I didn’t know, places I had never seen or heard of. They talked about things I tried to understand.

  But they couldn’t ignore what was everywhere. The thoughts of my brother, their son
, which drowned out our days, despite our best efforts to smile, to wade, to stay afloat.

  My mother was the first to speak. “What are we going to do?”

  A few weeks ago, my dad would’ve said, Give it time. Give him some space. But we had tried that and it had taken us only so far.

  “Maybe he should talk to someone,” my dad said.

  “Like a therapist?”

  “He won’t say any more to me or you. We’ve tried.”

  “I know,” my mother said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Part of me doesn’t want to make him relive it. But what else could he be doing down there?”

  A week ago I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was happy because I couldn’t place where I was, what life I was living. The feeling didn’t last, however, and when I remembered all we’d been through, the burning returned to my chest and I sat up. My brother’s half of the bed was empty. I thought about sneaking upstairs, spying on the world and finding my brother, who for some reason I assumed was sleeping on the couch again. Maybe he couldn’t take it, I guessed. Maybe being down here with me was too much after all.

  But when I put my foot to the floor, I heard a noise from the wall by the stairs. A hiccup. A choked sob. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw the shadow of a boy, balled up in the fetal position. I went to him, part of me thinking this was still a dream. And when I touched him, he didn’t slap my hand away and his heavy breathing told me I was right; this was a dream. But it was my brother who was dreaming, not me. He was the one who couldn’t wake. Who moaned and moaned, terrified by some unseen force. I tried to put my arm around him, but that only made him wail louder. A siren, calling closer and closer. I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran back to bed and hid under the covers. I listened to him cry for several hundreds, as I counted sheep after sheep, praying for someone to take me to sleep.