To my stars
And I, in silent watch my four month old roll. She learned with ease all on her own.
A milestone once that was very hard for her sister to learn. Maybe I’m not ready. I fear the day when the differences might sting.
"So I say don't grow too fast” a whispered plea. As you reach for the stars my youngest.
So grow my two stars at your own pace. No race to win or lose.
My heart is like a garden full for you both where love is the only muse.
Chapter 2: Carl
Before we reached the hospital, the police had already made their way there. Emma and I took the elevator to the 4th floor. We turned the first corner and stepped in front of Room 405. The name placard read "Wren Sebastian" - my brother's name.
I ran my shivering fingers over the placard. Emma took my hand in hers and slowly pushed the door open. Officer Carl Ernest was the first to notice us standing at the door. He stopped wiping his tears with his handkerchief and made his way to us and took us into his arms.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I couldn't protect him. I couldn't keep my promise. I told you I would do everything to get him back. But I failed. I'm sorry, Kris. I'm sorry..." Carl hugged me tighter to his chest. I could feel his heartbeat. I could feel that his heart was aching, as much as mine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I, Kristina Sebastian, was born an orphan. My dad had passed away in a helicopter crash, 7 months before I was born. My mom had died, unexpectedly, soon after giving birth to me. I raised by my two older brothers - Wayne and Wren, and Carl.
Carl was the brother who was born to different parents. But, he had always been there for me even when my brothers couldn't. He was one amongst my closest family. Or possibly, the closest family I had now.
Carl was my brother's - Wren's - best friend - ever since they were babies. They had done everything together from showering to eating to sleeping. They had even entered the police academy together, graduated together, and joined work together.
Chapter 1: The News
Hot tears made their way down my cheeks, wetting them... as the news replayed again and again in my head. I felt my hands crash down to my sides, clutching my phone. I saw blurs of people around me, shuffling to get to their determined destinations. And here I was, standing in the middle not knowing what to do. It was as if, in that moment, the world had stopped for me. No, my world didn't stop, it had crashed down heavily.
I felt a pair of soft hands wrap themselves around me, embracing me with warmth. I cried into the shoulders, wetting the dandelion yellow shirt of my best friend and half-sister, Emma Seviour. "Why, Em?" I sobbed, feeling as if this was all my fault. But I knew it wasn't. But, I could've and should've stopped him from leaving that evening.
"I'm sorry, Kris. It'll be alright. You have me. I'll be there for you, always," I heard Em whisper in my ear. She was right. She would always be there for me and I would always have her. But, it would never be alright. It is never going to be alright. Nothing would be the same again, without him.
This had been the second terrible news we had received within the past three days. We couldn't bring ourselves to digest this news. The news wasn't normal. It had come in the most shocking way.
Slowly, I felt myself walking with Em, leaning on her to support me. We walked through the streets of our well-known town of Addison. I could feel my heart pounding as we kept getting closer to the place I dreaded the most. The place where you lose everything you once could've had. The place from where no one comes out of, alive. The Hospital.
Escape Plan
"How did we get here?"
He asks the question rhetorically, and she watches his face carefully. She's grown accustomed to his monologues, but she's never sure if he's seriously asking until she looks at him.
Her eyes dart from him to her fingernails. They've been freshly painted, but she looks for chips and waits for him to continue.
"It seems like only yesterday." He looks down at her and she catches his eye. She grins convincingly, and he leans down to place a hand on her head.
She ignores that it feels so very like when she used to scratch her dog.
"Do you need anything from the store, love?" His voice is soft, but she knows the kindness is only temporary. She is one missed que, one wrong word away from wrath.
Sometimes wrath pays a visit anyway.
"Could you bring me some peanut M & Ms?" She lays on a little charm, but not too thick. Puppy-dogs her eyes but doesn't bat her lashes. Lips set in just the right amount of pout.
"You've never asked for candy before! Certainly. Anything for my best girl."
She's reminded of that dog again, but she pretends to laugh good naturedly. "Thank you," she purrs.
He sighs. "It seems like yesterday when you hid in my little corner shop."
She nods. It was seven hundred and thirty two days ago, you fuck, she thinks, but can never say. "I love you," is a lie that slips past her lips so often that it leaves her mouth feeling oily.
"Be back soon." He leaves, and she sighs when the padlock clicks against the steel door. While not gilded, the cage is comfortable enough.
Buried twenty feet below the man's Brooklyn bodega, she remembers the night she dodged the cops and became a fly stuck in a far worse web. He let her into the store room, gave her a slushy, and she woke up a literal kept woman.
Her escape is imminent, though. For years, she'd studied him. Learned what made him angry, what made him happy. She feigned hope and good cheer, even though both had withered on the vine and rotted away long ago.
What he didn't know was that she nearly died in the sixth grade when she was at a slumber party. The host never considered severe allergies when she served peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies to the kid who didn't pay attention before taking a bite.
She'd never asked him for candy before, and she felt lucky to know she would never need to ask again.
Quietly Loved
Today starts the same as any other, with the sound of a whispered “I love you” walking out the bedroom door. I lay in bed as the room rumbles with the movement of the garage door. I miss when we had few weekday obligations and woke up in each other’s arms. I wrap myself tighter in the empty sheets.
My heart still flutters when he texts me good morning, just like when we lived states apart. It starts my cold morning on a warm note. I smile and begin to pry myself from the comfort of our bed. I miss the time when I woke up feeling rested, but I miss the days when we woke up together so much more.
I brush my teeth and throw on the work-from-home special, a dress shirt with sweatpants. I look at myself in the mirror and am glad he isn’t home to see the witch hair I tried to tame into a ponytail. Then, my commute involves walking across the hall and into my home office. I sit down and the house is silent save for the occasional mild creak when a strong gust of wind blows through. There’s just something missing.
I preemptively wince when I open my work laptop. I already know what I’m going to see, a day full of back-to-back conference calls. The screen flashes on and shows me I’m right, much to my dismay. I start my first call with an artificial smile plastered on my face. The smile wanes along with my patience with each passing call.
After five grueling video calls, all I have to show for it is an ever-growing task list that I can’t tackle until the barrage of conversations finally ends. I have an hour-long block on my calendar to respond to emails and work on a presentation. It tricks me into feeling like I’m taking a break because finally, I don’t have someone’s voice chirping in my ears.
It’s hard to quiet down an anxious brain. My mind is filled with questions. Why did I choose this line of work again? Are there any remote islands I can move to? What time is it? God, it’s only 2:00 PM. My mind may shut down if I have to do this any longer. Have I begun to hate people? I ask myself this every day.
Then, I hear a familiar voice downstairs call out my name. I couldn’t hear the rumble of the garage from my office on the other side of the house. His calm, smooth voice cuts through the sea of nagging demands I had been drowning in. I run down to give him a kiss.
“What are you doing home so early?” I ask. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
He looks down at me and grins. “I snuck out of the office early to hang out with you.”
I smile, then immediately frown when I remember the mountain of work I need to dig myself out of. The boundary between work and home is blurred to the detriment of the remote worker. Even when I step away from my desk, I still get a constant flood of emails and messages to my phone.
Then I remember how I was checking emails at Disney World and responding to a “fire” on Christmas Eve. I think of all the trips I had to postpone to accommodate work needs. I think of my kids asking me why mommy never has time to play with them. I can’t let that happen. I give him a kiss and ask for a few minutes to wrap everything up.
I put my laptop and notepad away and sit down next to him on the couch. “Afternoon nap?” I ask him.
He nods and pulls me toward him. My head lies on his chest and nestled into his shoulder. I can hear every steady heartbeat thumping alongside mine and my breathing slows to match his. I wish life could stay just like this.
Summer
Summers is the worst. Now, trust me on this, I'm no teacher's pet. I like school as much as the next kid, but I prefer the school months to the summer ones. I live way off the beaten path as ma calls it. My bus ride into school takes over an hour, though I've never timed the trip. I'm sure you can see where I'm leading. Nobody's parent wants to drag their kid an hour out of town down a dirt road that's made of more potholes than gravel. And neither ma, nor dad are going to drive us. It means me and my brothers are alone for two months.
Alone, however, doesn't just imply boredom. I'm sure my brothers and I could entertain ourselves alright. But dad has other ideas. It's the job of us kids to keep up after the chickens and drag the goat back to the homestead after he gets out for the third time this week. We've got weeding, watering, pruning, and harvesting to do. The tractor quit two years ago, so even in the spring, when we used to be free, we were up early and up late trying to plant all the produce.
Ma couldn't even help this year because of the new baby. She was off her feet for weeks. Dad was more upset than I thought it was alright for him to be. Ma's absence meant extra work for all of us. Dad even dragged Kit, who used to be the baby, out to the farm this year. He's only four or five, but Dad said his father forced him out in the fields when he was even younger. Dad is always telling us how lazy we are compared to him as a child. Grandma would be ashamed, or whatever family member he tries to condemn us with that day.
The verbal lashings are better than the real ones. They don't come often, but when the day has been real hot, and dad's got a cold brown bottle in his hand, one little slip up of the tongue or even a slip of the feet could land us in trouble with dad. There may not be many trees around, but he'll find a switch, that's for sure. It stings bad.
I wish I could say we get days off, but even Sundays, when we don't have to get up too early, are miserable. We all pack into the truck. Us kids are too many to fit in the cab now. Will and Mickey have to sit in the back of the truck on the way to church and pretend that the sun-drenched metal truck bed isn't burning their skin off when they sit.
We're always late to church. Dad chews everyone out when we get home. Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest, I think. But dad drives us out to collect the eggs, milk the goat, pluck the pesky yellow worms off of the zucchini, and water the thirsty plants. The last day of school has me counting down to the end of August. When I heard they were drawing out the school year last year, I got excited. Dad was real mad, and even more upset that I was grinning while he shouted. He switched me real bad that day.
Today was Tuesday, I think. Missing church always messes with my memory. Ma and the baby have the flu so we're not allowed to bother her. It was all okay for dad, though. He woke us up with the sun and drove us to the yard without breakfast. Without ma, we can't feed ourselves more than bread with whatever jam is on the shelf. She won't let us touch the stove. The gas is broken so the flames shoot real high. She gets burned all the time and won't let us near it.
I knew the day was gonna be a bad one when dad flicked Kit hard for whining about breakfast. The sun was hotter than normal. My skin has already been burned to a crisp. Dad says the sunscreen will kill us faster than the sun, so he won't let us use it.
After a few hours in the sun even Mickey, who idolized dad and did whatever he asked with reverence, was begging for a break.
We chugged water and made a couple mayo sandwiches. Now, I don't like mayo sandwiches one bit, but after a morning of hard work in the hot sun with no water, I could've eaten ten of them. Kit barely had three bites of his sandwich when dad was ushering us back out into the field.
One of the ties on my braid snapped and dad wouldn't let me go in the house for another one. He said he had half a mind to cut off my pigtails and be done with it. So, I tied the ends of both together with the one I had left. If I have one thing I like about myself, it is my hair. It was as blonde as ma's and real long too. I wore all my brother's old hand-me-downs. Without my braids, I'd look just like a boy. Dad couldn't cut my hair. I knew he'd forget about it if I dropped the topic altogether.
Dinner was nothing but sandwiches too. We had one bowl of chili left, but dad said that was for ma. But at least this time we got to put some tuna on our sandwiches. I was downright starving.
Bedtime followed shortly after. Now, most kids hate bedtime. I don't hate the sleeping part. I hate sharing the bed with Kit. He still acts like he's not even potty trained much and wets the bed at least once a week. Now, I suppose I don't get too mad, except when waking up in the middle of night. Laundry is my job, so it gets me out of the sun a day or two a week. Anyways, I guess I just like going to bed because it makes me one day closer to the start of fall and the end of summer.
Why does it feel so real?
I dreamt about you talking to me again. You were telling me about your day in your therapies as we were leaving. I can’t forget it.
And I loved that when I had awoken my tears couldn’t have filled up oceans. Not this time.
Perhaps because a part of me is starting to believe you may talk disability and all.
Then again, this time around the taste is bittersweet. Perhaps because I can still hear it your voice and it’s beautiful.
I can’t forget it.
In Bloom
The peach trees are in bloom and her birthday was last week.
They're vibrant and pink and remind me of cherry blossoms in Japan or DC. They almost don't look real; they're spatters of paint on otherwise bare limbs. Some modern artist randomly touched a wet brush to knobby wood.
I figure we'll have another frost before April, and those pretty little bits of pink paint will droop and drab and go sepia.
I didn't wish her a happy birthday.
Clinton was in office the last time we spoke, but I still remember how she smells. Her laughter echoes in the chuckles of others.
Grief isn't always about death.
It's absence.
I mourn alone with others every day, and today, the peach trees are in bloom.
I tell myself that I don't care that her birthday was last week.
Frost will come for those trees as surely as some lies keep me warm.
I Am Most Like My Dad When….
I hated my dad’s classes. He would take out his “Black Tapes”, his Black Law books, and his printed-out thick packets of information from whatever minister or professor he liked then and turn on his computer. It was only occasionally, but the topics of our history always left me feeling uneasy. As I’ve grown, I realized it wasn’t his fault the topics were oppressive to deal with, but I am fortunate he tried to prepare me for the outside world I was entering.
He is good at that.
I was homeschooled and in one of our many classes, I remember he made my brother and I draw a circle on the page in front of us and write these words.
“The space inside this circle represents my realm of knowledge. All that I think I know about whatever I think know is depicted right here within this circle! I must keep in mind that there is more to know than what is within the circumference of my awareness.”
I admired his way of storing and sharing information. His eyes lit up when he had the chance to but other times, he just kept his head in a book or focused on the new installment of monitors on his desk; only to interact again when his friends were around. The people who seemed to matter most.
What he does to me, I do to him. Even though in the deepest parts of our hearts all we want to do is hug each other. We choose to dance around it. We hurt each other, but we do it with love. I know it makes no sense, yet it’s true. I say nothing to protect us and he tells me nothing to keep my image of him from being damaged forever.
Everything he taught me I absorbed. I stood on a podium and to 300 people. I told them that quote he told me. I made them make a circle with their hands and recite these words, again.
“The space inside this circle represents my realm of knowledge. All that I think I know about whatever I think know is depicted right here within this circle! I must keep in mind that there is more to know than what is within the circumference of my awareness.”
I saw him watch me and I could feel how proud he was without having to look. There are moments when I love him with my whole heart and there are moments when I can’t because it hurts. But I always listen to him, just like I know he listens to me.
I love you in the way rain always escapes the forecast. It surprises me how much I always forget my umbrella. I love you and it’s hard because it’s hard to love myself sometimes.
We talk and clash because we both want to be right and since he can’t respond I will part with a piece of his song:
"A baby boy, amazing grace. The 20th of July, a special day. A father’s smile and mother’s tear. Through that special reunion, I appear. So full of life and so many dreams. Raised in the ghetto the eldest of three."
This sounds like me:
"A baby girl, amazing grace. The 25th of July, a special day. A father’s smile and mother’s tear. Through that special reunion, I appear. So full of life and so many dreams. Raised in the ghetto the youngest of three."
And this part sounds like us:
"Plans were made to visit Grandma and them. But underneath pops’ wings is where you’ll find me. Right before bed was the best of times. I swear moms can read a book and make it come to life. But maybe life pressure got to Mom and Dad. Made them change directions from the ones they had. Buckets of tears running down my face as I watch in pain my hero’s separating."
But with me and you, there are no separations.
I WAS BOOOORN
Premature, a whole month prior to my expected due date.
This is the story, as I know it by the scant details, of my Mother. Because I'd dare say, she deserves all the credit from hereon in. Of this passage and for some after considering, I was completely to the mercy of two adults. Who spoke an altogether foreign tongue, who in some ways, were still ill-adapted. To this country and this language, this form that I use to communicate.
I was an active child, utterly empassioned and utterly blind to a world that was not myself. Which is why it didn't matter how or which way I kicked. I simply wanted more room.
It was late, dusk would barely crest over the horizon and in a tiny little house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, all on a flat singular floor my Mother was in likely the worst manner of pain.
There was probably fear too, she knew enough I'm sure to realize, had been told, her precious girl, the princess of the family should not be born, not so early not so small.
My parents absconded, without my brother and the brother who was confused and concussed in her own identity. But that is a whole other novel and a much more outlandish title.
They had a babysitter don't worry.
And they were not jealous.
They were not surly.
They welcomed a little sister. They would adore her.
My Mom spent hours in labor as is normal.
Here is, a measure of speculation, my Mother beautiful and warm as she is was in the range of risk. Where the strain of a child may yield complication and risk. And she was four weeks early.
I can imagine there was some scant hour or so of fear. I hope less, it's painful to think, so unbelievably selfish to wonder if she cried. When the doctors had to take her tiny little baby, only just out of her belly and likely screaming already spoiled for her mother's company. Because she was too small.
She was so small that even after pushing ten days worth of formula this tiny little prayer answered and given life, fit in the palm of the calloused, burnt hand. From her Father.
She lived.
She lived and she grew. Grew quiet. For a baby.
Dare it be said she would grow to be contemplative, a little too aware and forthwith for her age.
That said she made wondrous little noises as if casting a spell over those around her.
Her young brothers her knights and vassals often at her beck and call never far from her side.
Coddling with her, entertaining her why she must be special! Just must be!
And her parents well if anything, were weaker to her charms.
What those were I couldn't completely fathom a clue. Especially as her Mother, among eight total siblings herself, soon held another baby in her arms. A boy and the youngest then of one of her sisters.
This boy and this girl, learned in walking and in the enumerated fact that they could, played together quite mischievously and chaotically.
The girl, whose name meant moon, who as a daughter was held in high esteem as if royal, laughed and burbled. She spoke and tended to baby dolls, watched friendly little monsters with a smile on her face.
\\Seven years old//
Some teachers begin noticing.
The small things and the not so small. That though she talked it was... tilted. Somewhat turned in a wholly different direction. Not exactly. okay or right.
Her talk few and far between and never a word for those her own age.
She simply drew and read. Desks placed into four, massive truly for such little children.
And providing quite an excellent amount of room for the girl all her lonesome. Who hardly seemed bothered by that in fact. In fact, as these teachers didn't seem to understand she in some ways liked it this way.
Because she was drawing and she liked drawing.
Could she then-- get back to what she was doing?
These questions, these sudden addresses and attention paid to her, were not normal and so she'd like to not deal with the thought if so acceptable. She'd rather not be treated like she was perhaps in trouble or had done something wrong.
She was about certain she knew the rules.
And she knew it was appreciated to be quiet. She herself didn't mind being quiet all that much either.
So, this entire speech pathologist and three hour test time for easy, already burned to paper material had no basis.
Learning disability? Autism?
"Special" needs.
Well yes, I am quite special.
Yet in this way, well, it doesn't make sense. It really, really doesn't make sense.