Brevity

By: Erin Wright

Why won’t Brother talk to me? I always wonder in my head. We’re a small family; just Mother, Father, Brother, and me. My dear Brother, you sure know how to grab my interest for someone who won’t talk to me. No, you reserve your attention for sports and hanging out with your friends. I’m just your bothersome Little Sister. Even now at the dinner table, the two of us eat like total strangers while Mother and Father have their own conversation. You don’t even spare me a second glance as you eat. All too soon though, you’re done with your food and head upstairs for the night. I finish shortly after, and Mother helps me get ready for bed while Father cleans up dinner.  

“Why won’t Brother talk to me?” I ask aloud this time to Mother. She pulls the blanket to my chin, sits at the foot of my bed, and stares. After a brief moment, she responds. 

“Well, honey,” she begins, “your brother is older than you. He has his own interests and friend group he hangs out with. That doesn’t mean he’s ignoring you; it’s more like a…,” she pauses, “...lack of relatability. He just doesn’t really understand you, is all.” She suddenly pounces on me, tickling me. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to be around all those smelly old boys!” I break into a fit of laughter at her actions. 

“Hey! Do I count as a smelly old boy?” Father stands in the doorway of my bedroom, wearing a fake pained expression. 

“No, Father! You’re not smelly,” I reassured him with another laugh. He releases a dramatic sigh. 

“Well, that’s a relief.” He takes a place next to mother on my bed. “It’s getting past your bedtime. Goodnight, Butterfly” Father kisses my forehead, then he and Mother leave the bedroom.  

I can’t help but smile at the warmth that blooms in my chest whenever I have these moments with Mother and Father. I like these little snippets of our days spent together, even Brother with his radio silence. Our small family, living together under one roof--me, Father, Mother, and Brother…but now it isn’t.  

Mother and Father don’t talk to each other anymore. Last night, she sat on the couch with us kids while Father was packing some things into a bag. When he came downstairs, I asked him where he was going.  

“To a friend’s house, Butterfly,” was all he said before walking out through the front door.  

Now, Mother, Brother, and I are living with Auntie, Uncle, Grandma, and Cousin. We don’t go home to see Father for months. Well, I guess Auntie’s house is “home” now. It’s really fun here! I get to see Grandma all the time, and not just after school anymore. She always says I look beautiful every morning before I go to school with Brother. He still won’t talk to me, even more now that he’s always around Cousin.  

We spend every afternoon playing outside after school. Cousin and Brother are playing basketball with their friends, while I ride my bike and occasionally pause to watch them. I’m watching Cousin shoot a three-pointer when someone shoves me off the bike onto the ground. It’s that pest Cousin’s friend calls a little brother! He points and laughs at me. His taunting gains the attention of the boys, stopping the game briefly to witness the spectacle. The overwhelming number of eyes on me fills me with embarrassment and causes tears to well up in my eyes.  

Cousin is the first to run over to me. He asks if I’m okay while Brother laughs like this is the funniest thing he’s seen in weeks! I want to punch him, scream at him even, but I think the chewing out he gets from Grandma later suffices. 

Another year passes before Mother announces that we’re moving into a new house. A year of dinners prepared by Uncle, sitting in the middle backseat while Brother and Cousin try not to kill each other on the way home from school, and mornings of Grandma straightening out my school uniform before I headed out for the day. I’m not too upset because our new house is in the next neighborhood over.  

Ten years then go by in the blink of an eye in the new house. Brother begins to interact with me more as we get older. My bedroom is across from his, which means he comes in for no reason just to hear me yell at him for bothering me. Sometimes, he’ll even take something without me knowing to see how long it takes for me to notice it’s missing.  

Our family also begins to expand; Mother allows us to get a dog. She and Father eventually remarry other people. Brother and I gain two stepbrothers.  

Despite living together, Brother and I still, even in my teens and his almost adulthood, rarely spend time with one another alone. We have a strange relationship. The silence between us speaks volumes; it goes without saying that we’re there for each other. Moreover, it isn’t the most physical, so when Brother returns my hug for the first time, in a long time, when he’s about to leave for college freshman year, my body seizes up, and it takes a huge amount of effort not to cry. That hug is his way of reassuring me, telling me “I’m here if you need me, and I love you.” I cry because Brother does so much in actions rather than words to convey that he cares. He drives me places I need to be if no one else is available. He even has a silly little nickname for me on his phone.  

I miss him while he’s gone to school. He comes home for the holidays, but it’s too brief. It’s a feeling of having completion for a mere moment before it fades away. The sadness begins to ebb away after the first year. When Brother comes home for the summer though, I’m reminded of all the reasons he used to annoy me when he was in high school.  

I would give anything to go back to those days… 

I approach steadily and peer down. 

He looks exactly as I imagined he would. Sitting in the casket in his navy-blue suit, adorned with the checkered bow tie that Mom sent into the funeral home. The tie looks exactly like the one he used to wear to his middle and high school dances. My brother looks as if he is taking an eternal nap, but I know otherwise. The moment his eyes closed after being shot would be the last time he viewed the world alive. 

I wonder what he felt in his final moments? Did the bullet shoot him clean through, or was he in pain, and for how long? Was my brother able to see his roommate above him, or was his vision obstructed by the dark night sky? I can’t recall if there was a full moon that night, but if there was, did it shed some of its light down onto him? 

My lips quiver. 

I so want to believe he didn’t suffer long, but my chest tightens as I must accept the fact that I’ll never know. I wonder if he knew he was dying that night, and who he thought about while waiting for the paramedics to arrive.  

The overpowering smell of formaldehyde present at the casket reminds me of dissecting a frog in freshman year biology. The tang of formaldehyde wafts through the church exactly how it did through class and the hallways. The same way that frog was just a husk of what it once was, is it horrible of me to view what’s lying in the casket now the same way? My parents would be appalled to hear me speak these words about my dead brother, but I can’t help thinking otherwise. My Brother’s soul is wherever it is, and the body is just the remains of who he once was. The memories are present, but the body we’re putting in the ground today is just a husk. His beaming smile was extinguished by the bullet. 

Between the formaldehyde and the noticeable absence of warmth from his skin when I held his hand for the last time, I despise that I cannot bring myself to tears for my Brother. Nonetheless, the way the sun is shining through the stained-glass windows of the church obstructs my view of the casket.  

I like to believe this is a small mercy. One that temporarily allows my conflicted feelings that come with viewing him to dissipate, if only for a moment. 

It is often said that you don’t notice you’re in the good times until they’re gone. I wish someone would have told me that I was living in the good times while they were happening. Maybe I would have cherished the little time I spent with Brother just a little more.