On My 35th Birthday

I let a hand lead me home for grace,
and were it not for grace I would have
stayed to see you pass the time.
But I am old in my young years,
and 35 seemed much too fine an age for me.
I left it for you to do, as for me, I had
to walk the soft lips of eternity
and could not stand the gravity of earth.
It hurt my feet. It pounded my ears. It made me heavy.
I lay my weight with you, my sister,
with our brother, our mother, and our father.
I lay my weight with you, and
sit for a spell under the river birch
to rest and watch as life blossoms into night.
I write in my book of you and press my dreams
onto your spirit like flower fragments
forgotten in an old dictionary somewhere.
And you will be bright like red stain paper.
And you will be tough like a pig skin bag.
And you will write in your book of me
and follow grace home when the hills call.
And I will catch you there, on the flip side.

Surfacing

I can't write this story. At least not right now, not this minute. No, probably not any minute. Every single time I start to think I'll write the first line, I feel that sensation of everything inside of me pushing out. I felt it that morning. 

It was definitely that morning.

“Come in here.” 

I don't know if it was a whisper. It was Daddy's voice and it could have been a whisper. It must have been because Meghan and Jennifer and Michele kept sleeping. Poor Michele. She remembers everything and had to sleep on the top bunk alone, separate, always. She was never allowed to play with the big girls. She always had to sit, and watch, and remember every wrong thing we'd ever done.

“Come in here.”

Granseur is sitting up in bed and wiping his eyes. Momma is sitting on something in front of the window. No, she's sitting on the edge of Granseur's bed. I don't know where I am. I mean then I didn't know where I was and I still don't know where I am. I think I'm standing, next to the bed. And Daddy's standing, in front of the window. 

This isn't real. This isn't real. 

I already know and this isn't real. I always already know and I hate knowing.

I knew that Nanny wouldn't make it through that last week of life, and I already knew that Granddaddy wouldn't make it long without her. I knew that Daddy was gone before he left. And I knew that something was very wrong this morning.

“What is it?” I say, annoyed, disguising the fear inside of me with a tone of anger. Pressure builds in my ears, everything inside of me, pushing out. I can't believe Daddy can speak. Can Daddy speak?

“Your brother's been in an accident.” Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?

“Is he going to be okay?” I felt four. I felt three. I felt small. My voice comes out in a whimper. A true whimper. It's raspy and frightened even in my throat. It pauses at the roof of my mouth before everything inside of me finally pushes it out.

I have no idea what he said. I have no idea what my father said to us.

Momma hugs her arms close to her. Her fingers are just beginning to look old, like Nanny's. The ring hangs there loosely. Nanny's ring. One gold band so thin it will eventually break, but Momma wears it loosely there on the one finger whose knuckle hasn't yet swelled too large to fit a ring over it. She's holding herself tight and stroking her arms with those skinny fingers and I have no idea what Daddy said.

“No.” That's it. That's what whatever he said meant, anyway. “No, he didn't make it.”

Granseur is everywhere in my mind. Jonathan is dead and I turn to Granseur, whose lips, heavy with sleep, dangle in shock. His understanding eyes stare straight forward, out the window and into nothing. We are not the perfect three any more. We are two siblings left of a trinity that was meant to make it all the way through life with one another to rely on. It will be only us for the rest of our days. The middle brother has become the eldest, so what now, am I? I fall into his lap and cry seventeen tears for every year I had with our brother before realizing we're all crying, and I cannot have that.

“You're it, then. It's us.” I say to Granseur. And I wiped my eyes and did not cry again for a month.

“I watched you when Mabel and Aaron passed, and I watch you now, and I'm just so proud of how strong you are,” Uncle Eldon whispers in my ear. His breath hints of liquor. He smells like Thanksgiving morning, and I wanted to cry then but Daddy had tears in his eyes so I stopped mine. I did not even cry when the bagpipes started playing. There was no body to see. We burned him up.

“You just look so like him,” Heather said to me at the visitation. She has loved him since she was born. I will play a song for her and the words will be different from when I sang them before. We sit outside by the fire pit because I cannot stand in a row in the house and receive the guests who want to cry on my shoulder. We had traffic control for my brother. The cars made the alfalfa in the field lie down in such a way that it looked like dogs had been playing there. Everywhere and all over the tall grass had been laid down by people who wanted to tell us how much he meant to them. Everywhere and all over, it had been laid down.

“Meghan, wake up.” My confidante in crime lies there sound asleep. She hates this part. She would have me never tell this story.

“Meghan. I need you to wake up.” I do not sound like my mother. I do not sound like my father. I sound like drowning. I cannot begin to compare a parent telling a child they've lost a sibling to telling your best friend that the man she meant to marry has died. They are different, and the same, and I am drowning in the possibility of words. 

“No. What is it?” she mumbles. Hot breath. My face is cold but I had no idea until her hot breath hits my face. She wakes me up.

“Meghan, wake up,” I say. “Jennifer, wake up.” I grab the bunk post and shake it. I shake it with gentle urgency. “Michele,” I call out. Strong. “I need you guys to wake up.” Their sleepy faces greet me, and I wonder how Daddy felt, only moments ago, when all it took was a whisper to raise me from this bed. I wish now more than ever that telepathy were a gift of mine. I'd place the words in their minds, gently, and never have to say them aloud. I'd never have to tell Jennifer and Michele that their favorite boy cousin drove a white Cadillac straight off a curve into a tree. I'd never have to tell Meghan that we wouldn't be sisters, because Jonathan has died. 

“Is breakfast ready?” asks Michele. 

There is no breakfast. We wouldn't be having country ham or eggs. We would be having the Thanksgiving dinners of too many families. I ate chips and pound cake for three days. Meghan and I hungrily gobbled the Nance's Boston Butte for a solid seven minutes. When Meghan handed me Jonathan's guitar I threw it all back up. It looked like confetti, and I couldn't smell anything at all besides fire pit. I played Say It Ain't So by Weezer and the words were different than when I had sung them before. Each lyric caught in my throat, burning worse than all of the smoke of the world inhaled at once. 

The fire was lit before I went outside that morning. Daddy had stood beside it long enough to already smell like smoke when he told me that my brother had died. 

“Is there a fire?” I ask Jimmy, on my way down the stairs. One of my father's oldest friends knows the history of everything. He knows how we fight, and how we pretend we never fight. He knows the cars we buy and the schools we went to. He knows my favorite color is purple. His face is round, and kind. 

“There is.” He smiles. We wont say any more. 

“We almost got him there,” my Daddy tells me. The next spring we sit under the umbrella on the porch and Daddy tells me how he feels like we almost got him there.

“Almost got him where, Daddy?” I ask. I always thought Jonathan and I were where we were. It hadn't occurred to me that there even was a “there” to get to.

“Almost got him there. Almost got him better,” Daddy says. He is referring to legs broken during drunken falls, and the plague of reason that strangled Jonathan each day of his quasi adult life. He is referring to the final semesters that would have completed Jonathan's eight year attempt at a bachelor's degree. He is referring to a relationship between father and son that would not mend with ease, to a relationship that simply would not mend. Almost is a comfort word. It means failed without saying failure. But to my recollection, no one failed. 

 

“I think he was there, Daddy,” I tell him, and hold his hand. “He was there, and I guess he is there.” 

 

I have been wearing Jonathan's glasses. I know his astigmatism is worse than mine. I know he was near-sighted, where I see mostly far. But I want to see like him. So I wear his glasses. And I wear his sweaters with scarves and my AP English teacher tells me I look Hobo Chic.

“Don't you mean Boho Chic, Mrs. McKissock?” I ask her.

“No, Cynthia, Hobo Chic,” she says. She calls me Cynthia and she is the only teacher I do not correct because when she says my name it feels soft and circles into my ears and calms my mind. Her voice is melodic, like Jonathan's, and gentle as a breeze pushing hot air out of the way. It soothes me. She reads Shakespeare aloud and makes us memorize the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Middle English dialect. When I go home I stand on top of Jonathan's trunk in the room that will not change for six years and belt it loud as bagpipes. I shout it for the story he never finished, for the degree that does not hang on his wall. I shout it for the memory of a shared love of words. I shout it for him. I spend hours a day trying to hack into his computer. I go through the drawers of his desk and find that Granseur has already been there and removed anything that would upset our parents. I sit in front of his bureau and stare at myself in the mirror, trying to find the parts of my face that look, like Heather said, just so like him.

Sometimes I think I am becoming him.

Granseur wrote a poem the morning our brother died. My parents found it and thought it was the last thing Jonathan wrote and worried over rumors that it was suicide. I was ashamed that they couldn't tell it wasn't his style. It didn't mean it wasn't good poetry. It just wasn't Jonathan's. I try to write like him, but it doesn't fit. It looks the same sometimes but the placement of the words is all wrong. Everything is all wrong. 

 

It's all wrong. It's all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Everything inside of me begins pushing out. I'm at Appalachain. I walk the same hills he walked. I stand in front of Walker Hall when it's snowing and take a picture, smoking a cigarette. I fuck up. I drop out. I move home. I don't break any legs during drunken falls, but I think about it. I wait for things to get worse. I become the black sheep piper and this house is falling rocks, and I laugh my way out of it. I get married. I get divorced. I read The Atlantic and pretend like I care. I cry, sometimes, when no one is looking.

And then, I lose my brothers glasses. I've moved too many times to find the silver ring he gave me. His lighthouse lighter runs out of fluid and I leave it in a box marked “trinketry: to remember”. I stop trying to write like him, and the writing gets better, easier. I remember like wet paper dried on a surface remembers the shape of the thing it dried on. I do not forget his face. I do not forget “tickle toes” or riding his back around Mawmaw's living room floor. I do not forget the piercing sound of tenor drones invading my ears when I am trying, desperately, to finish a paper. I do not forget the roughness of the stone wall leading us to the games, and I do not forget his warm legs during cold rain. I become a simile of the man that died. I act like Jonathan. I read like Jonathan. I look like Jonathan. But I am not Jonathan. You can look at me and see him, but only because I am the surface his wet paper dried on. 

 

No, I cannot tell this story. Not now, and perhaps not ever. But maybe, I can begin to explain why we never died.