T. Johnson: Hold It 'Til It Hurts

THAT EVENING AFTER HIS FATHER’S FUNERAL, ONCE THE LAST MOURNER BID solemn farewell and vanished into the foggy grove separating his childhood home from the nearest neighbor, Achilles’s mother summoned him into the kitchen, the only room free of streamers and balloons, and handed him a big blue envelope that bore no return address or postmark, only his name spelled out in his father’s heavy-footed block print. They sat opposite each other at the small oak table, bare save for the mail stacked in the shadow of an empty chair, far beyond reach of the day’s last rays sneaking through the vertical blinds and fanning across the tabletop in fat sandy bands the color of his father’s coffin. He handed it back. She pursed her lips and drew her shoulders out as she often did before a big announcement, but said nothing, for which he was grateful because he didn’t want to have this conversation again. He’d always insisted that he had no use for his adoption paperwork. She’d always insisted that he would regret never meeting his black blood relatives.

“None of us is here forever,” she said, as if that statement alone explained everything. Her tone had been equally matter-of-fact when relating the circumstances surrounding his father’s death: killed instantly in a head-on collision while giving an employee a ride home. Even in moments such as these, his mother was steely as a sergeant, beyond surprise, never even commenting on why his father had been halfway across the state, driving an employee home at midnight on a Saturday. She’d scowled during the eulogy, and now looked again on the verge of anger. When Achilles didn’t respond, she continued, “I don’t want you to regret leaving this undone.”

He didn’t like the idea of being undone, but didn’t see how crawling back to someone would make him done. Regret? He didn’t think so. Having been to DC and seen how they lived, he couldn’t care less about his birth parents. Even if tracking them down wasn’t treasonous, what good could come of crisscrossing the country to confirm that his biological mother was a junkie whore and his sperm-donor dad an ex-con? And other than the occasional elementary school joke because he’d been short, black, and chubby while his parents were tall, white, and thin, race had never been an issue in his neighborhood or his school. “Burn it.”

He’d hoped she would finally accept his decision, feel cheered by his fidelity, but instead she cringed. Her lips pulled tight, her head dropped a notch, and her expression passed from reserved and proud to stricken and mournful, and then, for the first time since he’d arrived home, to pained. Achilles moved his seat closer and clasped her hands in apology, though he didn’t know what for. Why should he track down people who obviously didn’t want him? Achilles didn’t grovel.

“I just don’t want it, or need it,” he said. Accepting that paperwork was like pulling the pin out of a grenade.

“Think about it …”

Achilles excused himself, turning on the light as he left. He passed his brother in the hall and warned him away from the kitchen. Troy shrugged, offering his usual response to the topic: “Fuck it!”

Yet barely fifteen minutes later, Troy strode into their bedroom holding a blue envelope. Their parents’ house was a two-bedroom ranch, so the brothers had shared the same room since Achilles’s eighth birthday, when his parents first brought Troy — then six years old — home. Refusing to budge, Achilles sat on the edge of his bed as Troy stepped over him and ducked into the closet, tucking the envelope away behind the loose baseboard where they’d secreted their prized Matchbox cars, the shiniest samples of mica and quartz, and the porn magazines traded for pilfered cigarettes.

Troy avoided Achilles’s eyes as he stepped over him to get back to his bed, which was so close to Achilles’s that they couldn’t sit facing each other without their knees touching. Troy flopped down and the mattress sank to the floor with a thump. In that room, they were like Gulliver in their favorite bedtime story. After reading to them, their mom had coaxed them to sleep by promising that dreams were real and that in them they could do anything, even fly, and they could be anyone, princes or kings or warriors or magicians, or ghostbusters as Troy had demanded one night. They could make up imaginary villages, design spaceships and castles, construct entire cities — tiny towns, she called them — secret places they would always carry with them. With him and Troy and the blue envelope in the room, it felt literally like a tiny town.

“Ass.”

“She wants us to have them,” said Troy.

“You believe that?”

Troy busied himself shuffling the DD214s — discharge papers — and other forms scattered on his desk, which only came up to his knees. He was a giant in a funhouse, his arms thicker than the desk legs. “It’s like money. Just because you don’t need it right now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take it. Did you ever turn down your biscuit in Goddamnistan because you didn’t need the money?”

Achilles shook his head. That was typical Troy, defending bullshit decisions with bullshit excuses. Couldn’t he wait another week, a day even? It was a breach, a leak, inviting a ghost into the family. And biscuit ? Troy sounded stupid using slang. “We have direct deposit.”

“What? You don’t know everything,” said Troy. “Just because you take it doesn’t mean you’ll spend it. You never know when you might need it. You wouldn’t dump all your rations just because you’re full. Besides, give her a break. Be responsible for your own shit.” He was fidgeting now, picking at the calluses on his palm as he did whenever someone demanded to see his aces. Troy pointed around the room, his arm long enough to reach most of his possessions from where he sat: the children’s books, action figures, Black Sabbath and Public Enemy posters, roller skates; the rucksack, desert boots, flak jacket. “This is my home. Biops? Fuck ’em eight ways!”

But the next morning, only two days after they returned from active duty, and only one day after their father’s funeral, Troy was gone.

He should have stopped him. Achilles had heard his brother get up and thought he was going for a jog. Alone, they jogged. Together, they ran and usually ended racing, as had happened the first day back as they neared home, Achilles’s shorter strides almost doubled to keep pace with Troy’s long legs, kicking the air, their noses pushing into the wind, chest to chest and neck to neck until Troy stole a strong lead by nodding toward a leggy brunette and puffing, “Janice,” sending Achilles ducking behind a car until he could confirm there were no dolphins tattooed on the ankles or hearts behind the knees, by which time Troy was so far ahead that Achilles didn’t catch up until he was already crunching up the gravel drive. Achilles wasn’t trying to avoid Janice in particular, he just didn’t want to see anyone else he knew until the funeral, where circumstances would demand brief condolences and he wouldn’t be expected to endure stories about a father whom everyone suddenly seemed to know better than he, or to suffer such pity he would have thought himself the dead one.

All the while they were growing up, their father’s motto was “be the ones to beat.” So they had been competitive, especially with each other. But when Troy distracted him on that run, Achilles sensed something new was at stake, something he didn’t want to win, but he couldn’t run without trying to win. So as Troy dressed the morning after the funeral, Achilles remained motionless, holding his breath for the long moment when the room grew still and he felt Troy standing above him deciding whether to call Achilles’s bluff of slumber and kick the bed, the floor squeaking as he shifted his weight from leg to leg, grinding the grit underfoot, before at last creeping out.