Cote Smith - Hurt People

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You did and I know you did.”

“I didn’t mean to. How did you know?”

“Because you’re my brother. And I would have done the same thing if I was your age.”

“Stop acting like you’re that much older than me.”

“I am.”

“We’re only two grades apart.”

“Yeah, but I’m smarter.”

“I’ll be just as smart when I’m your age,” I said. “No, I’ll be smarter. So I told Dad. It was at night. He was asleep. He doesn’t remember.”

“Good.”

“So you should have already known that. If you’re so smart.”

My brother shrugged. “When a secret is shared, people get hurt. That’s what we said.” He kicked a rock into the creek. “And Dad wasn’t asleep. He was drunk.” He walked away, leaving me by the water. I saw my wet reflection and thought of my dad. How he looked that night. The crooked shape his mouth took when I said he smelled like strawberries.

“I hate you,” I said to my brother.

“No, you don’t,” he said, examining the woods, looking for the right way to go. “I’m not what you hate.”

“Yes you are. And I’m going to tell Mom what you did.”

“No, you won’t,” my brother said. “You don’t know your way back. Or who’s out there.”

He crooked his hands into hooks, the same shapes he made a moment ago, playing the Stranger. I turned away and looked into the woods, the sea of trees before me. Nothing was familiar. But I told my brother I knew where I was going, and so what if I didn’t. What did he care? I brushed past him and stepped into the woods, thinking of the scene where I told my mother what my brother did, the terrible things he said to me, and how he wouldn’t let me go. My mother would stop helping whatever dumb customer was at the counter and storm after my brother. She would catch him under the arm and drag him to a dark corner. She would have hooks of her own. How does it feel? I would say as my mother slapped him, or hit him with her shoe. She would scold him and ask what kind of brother are you anyway? What kind of brother does this? And my brother would cry, but I wouldn’t. I’d be sitting next to Sandy, Rick out of the picture. I’d be drinking a soda all by myself. I’d have the last sip. I’d have the last word. I’d say, Who’s laughing now?

I smiled to myself and took five steps into the woods before my brother stopped me. “Hey, dummy,” he said. “This way.”

I turned around and followed.

OUR MOTHER HAD TO WORK the following morning. We reminded her that it was her birthday, her special day, but she said we needed the money, so she picked up an extra shift. Before she left, she pulled my brother and me out of bed and gave us our orders for the day. We were to ready the apartment for her party. This meant we had to clean the place up, make it presentable for others. I asked what about decorations, and she said we didn’t have the time or resources to worry about that.

“And don’t even think about going to the pool,” she said. “We’re supposed to be under a tornado watch all day.” She threw her keys in her purse and her purse over her shoulder. “Remember, if you hear the siren, you know what to do.”

Yes, we told her. Go downstairs to our building’s bottom level, where the washers and dryers lived. Crouch down and cover our heads until the siren is silent, the danger is gone. We had practiced this many times.

“And just in case,” our mother said, “I’ve asked our neighbor to check in on you. So you better be here when she comes by. Got it?” We nodded. “Think of the neighbor as your guard,” our mother said. “And I’m the warden. I don’t want any pool activity in the guard’s report.”

She kissed us on our cheeks, and a moment later we heard the van come to life, whine out of the parking lot, and sputter down Limit Street.

“OK, she’s gone,” my brother said. “Time for the pool.”

He disappeared from the kitchen and came back with two towels and my trunks. He was already wearing his.

“What about the guard?” I said.

“If you believe that, you really are as dumb as Rick says,” my brother said. “When’s the last time you saw Mom talk to anyone around here besides us?” He threw my trunks at my face. “She doesn’t know anybody. The only friends she’s got are at work, and who knows how much she even likes those people.” He paused, perhaps thinking about what we’d seen yesterday, the way our mother and Rick looked at each other. “Now go change.”

* * *

We locked the door on the way out and my brother put the key in his fanny pack. We didn’t keep the key under our doormat anymore because of the prison break. The mat was left over from our family life. It read, “Wipe Your Paws,” and there were dog prints on it.

As we stepped out into the hallway so did a neighbor lady I’d never seen before. She had long greasy hair, and her body was drowned in baggy sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. I looked away. Later, my brother said the mistake we made was we didn’t make eye contact. He said if you want to get away with something you have to act like the thing you’re doing is something you do every day.

“Hey there,” the lady said. “What are you two up to?” She fished for a pack of cigarettes in her sweatpants and waited for our answer. On the hallway walls were poorly framed pictures of painted flowers. “Well? Do they speak?”

“We were just going to wait outside,” my brother said, “for our mother.”

The lady exhaled her smoke, a wispy cloud that reminded me of the tornado watch. “Well, here’s an idea. Wait inside.”

She smiled at her response. We couldn’t think of anything smart to say back, and the lady didn’t wait for us to say OK or sorry. She snuffed out her cigarette in a Coke can cut in half, and went into her apartment. My brother pushed me back inside. We leaned against the door and slid down on our butts. I asked my brother what do we do now.

“We’re trapped,” he said. “We wait.”

* * *

We spent the rest of the morning prisoners of the smoking lady. My brother took turns bad-mouthing her, our mom. That’s the lady she gets to watch us? Gross. We thought of different ways we, or some higher power, might rid us of the smoking lady. Next time our mother took us on a trip I would “accidentally” leave a toy at the top of the stairs by the smoking lady’s door, and then let’s see what happens. Or she would go into the hospital for a typical physical and find out she had cancer all around her lungs and bones. That was how our mom’s dad died.

While my brother made a list of all the ways the smoking lady could die, I started cleaning the apartment. The first thing I had to do was pick up all our toys. There were fighting men everywhere, all left behind by my brother, all players in his never-ending plots. I had wanted to pick up many of these toys before, but knew if I did, my brother would yell at me. That guy needs to be there, he would say. No, don’t move him. You’ll ruin the ending.

Once all the men were put away in our room, I wiped everything down. I dusted the bookcase with the encyclopedias, not peeking in the book with the naked lady, the one who looked like my mother. I moved quickly to the TV, writing my name in the dust blanketing the screen, before wiping it all away. When I was done, I reported to my brother, who was up now, doing push-ups in his room. He told me great, good job; now do the floors.

We didn’t have a vacuum, not anymore. Before we moved into the apartment, our parents sat down in our old house’s empty living room and divided their things. My brother and I were supposed to be outside playing, but we’d gotten too hot and come in early, plopping ourselves tiredly on the floor. After little discussion, it was decided that my mother, the cleaner of the two, would keep the vacuum, and my dad would get the grill. Other items — the microwave, the record player, the VCR — were not as easily agreed upon. But they never really fought over anything either, like I imagined my brother and I would have if we had to split up the Christmas gifts addressed to both of us. In the end, my mother sat comfortably next to her pile of stuff, and my dad his, while my brother and I sat strangely in the middle, under the cool of the ceiling fan, unsure what pile our things belonged to.