Some mornings, before I take her to pre-school, Lily asks about our parents.
“Where did Mama go?”
She phrases it the same way every day, but every day I stumble for the answers.
“She had to go away.”
But she didn’t. She was beat up and lying on a couch when I snuck Lily out the back door.
“When did she go away?”
“When you were little.”
But it wasn’t, only in the regard that she is still little, and I am still big. It was only a year ago that we moved out for good. Of course I started taking her away before that.
It started with that one time, when I came home on my 16th birthday, picked up Lily, she made me bend way far down so she could kiss my cheek, and we got to the house and could hear our parents inside. They were usually both at work when we got home, so I thought they were home so we could all go out, go out for dinner. I scooped her up and ran up the steps. I put her down in front of the door, put a finger against my lips, and opened the door in inches, millimeters, some quiet unit of measurement. We stepped on all the floorboards that would not creak, towards the kitchen where they were probably taking my cake out of the oven, where they were taking out a separate smaller, one for Lily because she’ll only eat vanilla. We were so clever, so simple, it was so clear, Lily and I had equivalent brain juices, and it was all so clear. Then we heard the crash of plates. We heard my mother say, “I hate you,” steady enough so we all understood.
There was a thud, a crack, and my mother, bruised just last week when the Packers lost, bruises again. As I turned, grabbed Lily’s hand, we heard my father’s voice, boiling and soon to make the teakettle whistle, it is the boxer’s ding, and he says, “I will not have you break this family apart.” And she says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you.” And there’s one more crack as we, still silent, close the front door.
That was the first time I took her away. The weekends at our aunt’s became more frequent, spread out into weeks, then months, but she started to say things, started to say how all her neighbors, all her friends at the flower shop would say things, started to look at us with vicious hyena gossip hunger, and we needed to leave there too. Emancipation came for me, I got a job at a local grocery store. I took Lily from there. Our parents never reported it, even though they haven’t seen her for more than a year.
It makes me so angry, a big brother, a little sister, washing up and out of the world, it is toxic. But sometimes I am toxic too.
It was simple start. I spent one day all day sleeping crazy. The night before had been Strip Bingo at my friend’s, but it was more than that. I got home at five in the morning, T-shirt smelling of my friend’s dry-heaves, and the salty memory of kissing someone I didn’t know. My friend had dispersed his weight like Roman architecture, his crotch an arch, and leaned down, tapping the back of his tongue with a colored pencil. He asked me for water, and I got it, and when I got back, he had made a slit on the back of his knuckle and sat on the backs of his ankles. He took out a Ziploc bag from his pocket, and tilted the blood from his knuckles into the bag, closed the bag, squished the bag until blood mixed with white powder. I tried to offer him water, but he knocked it over, saying, “Fuck you. I don’t need this.” Then he looked up at me, and his eyes were greasy, but his smile was sober.
“I can get high off your blood too,” he said. “Want to see me try?”
He shoved me and I drove him home, and then I drove home, to our apartment, and there are no lights on. I collapse and sleep and when I wake up, I remember her.
I go out into the kitchen, and there she is, PB&J in hand, coloring dutiful, it’s me she’s coloring, I’ve got pink hair. We’ve, I’ve, missed her doctor’s appointment, she was supposed to get a flu shot, I had saved up for it. I missed it. I walk outside and tear at the pillow that’s still in my hands, my stupid fucking sleeping hands. Our neighbor comes outside twists a dishcloth around her fingers and asks if everything is okay. I go back inside without saying a word.
Another night, Lily comes into my room looking for water, someone to give her water. That night I got bored, I thought she was asleep, so I let my friend, Grace, in because she says she likes to give blowjobs, and even though I know she doesn’t, I let her in anyway. I make myself say, “I love you” twice, loud, once in the moment, once just after, and Lily heard it and wandered in. Grace quickly took the blanket, covered up her chest, but the blanket wasn’t big enough, and her other bits show. She is naked now, and I get embarrassed, get aroused. I stumble into pants, no underwear, and usher Lily outside. I feel so much taller than her now, my arms can just barely skim the top of her head. She doesn’t look at me. I get her water. The glass has white spots from her drinking milk earlier that day and from my not knowing how to wash dishes right. I hand it to her, she cringes as I move to hug her. We don’t talk about it, but then, as she walks away she slips a little because the sticky grips of her footie pajamas are dried off and gone. My heart grows out into my lungs and suffocates my chest, and I make a mistake.
“Lily. I love you.”
She turns back to me, her eyes are normal-sized but there’s a white rim about them like her mind is tingling and she doesn’t know what to say.
“But. We didn’t do that.”
I’m about to ask her, do what, but then I realize. We didn’t fight, we didn’t fuck, we didn’t love.
“Lily. People don’t have to—”
But I can’t explain it, can’t finish it, she’s supposed to have this conversation with her mother, no, fuck that, she’s never supposed to have to think this way.
I stand in the kitchen, say goodnight. She walks a little slower to bed, I hear her close the door with aching caution. Grace comes out naked and tries to lick my earlobe. I grab her wrist, wrench it, she cries out but I don’t let go and I tell her to get out.
A few days later is when it comes.
I come home late again. She’s asleep and I’m a little drunk. The door slams behind me a little too loudly and she hears and she wakes up and whenever she wakes up she needs water. She asks for water, I get her water, she asks for a sandwich, I make her PB&J, but she’s still not full, she’s still thirsty, she still can’t get back to sleep, which makes me so angry.
“Rick,” she says, “Tell me a story.”
But I don’t know any stories, I’ve only bought her one picture book and after she ate French fries in the car one day she threw up on it. I start to walk away, back to the couch, and she tugs at my sleeve.
“Rick, tell the story Mama tells me.”
And I tell her I don’t know what story that is, I ask her what story it is and then maybe I can tell it, but she gives me half-rimmed strained eyes and strains her words, her mouth gets tight and turned down at the corners, and she’s too tired and too cloudy-brained to say what I need her too.
“But Mama always.”
I jerk around.
“Where you your Mama, Lily? Is she here?”
And I push her.
She falls silent on the floor, quickly pulling her legs into criss-cross applesauce, always so attentive in class, gold stars all the way, she’d be someone attentive and great if she hadn’t been born here with us. She begins to cry, silent sobs at first, gasping for air, then full cries, whispering Rick, and I would have killed myself right then but she needs to be picked up, and she needs to be carried to her room, and she needs someone to rub her back. So I do all that and I say I’m sorry, and she gives me the good-day eyes, the princess-day eyes, not the cat-day eyes. She stands up a little in bed after she’s done crying and rings her arms around my neck and I can feel her cheek, it is warm and red and feels like if I could I would leave us there, lock the door and no one would ever move and I would be perfect, I would always be everything she needs like I am right then.
But I know.
The next morning, I take a brush to Lily’s hair and feel the tender tug. I take it to the side of her head, pull down, pull her ear down, and she cries out, “That’s my ear, that’s not a knot.” She smiles. I help her pick her clothes, make myself stand outside as she dresses. I don’t take her to school; I go the long route that I sometimes take when I get her donuts before school. I get her donuts, three for her three for me. We splurge. Then I drive down the road, and miss the turn for her school, and somehow she knows what way we’re going, and she begins to cry. I walk with her to the doors, ring the doorbell, hug her, she’s so close, she’s so perfect, we’re so in sync, but then I leave her there.
I get back in my car, and that’s when my parents come out, see her there, look up and see me turn on the engine. My father nods, he’s gotten bigger, meatier arms to hit my sister with. My mother nods, my sister clings to the hem of her skirt. There is a fury as I shift off the brake, I want to call Lily back into my car, take her away, I try to convince myself that I can be what she needs, but I can’t, I know that, and so I just nod instead.
