The handlebar wobbled in my grip as I followed my brother pedaling through the dust of a dirt road. It shot straight to a silica-sand mining plant our father worked at. When we reached the swampy lake Mom forbade us to swim in, we dropped our bikes down in the bushes. Cheap Sea, my brother called it.
. . .
We sit in the depths of the basement at the town’s Mental Health Department, Mom and I, as my father drifts on the corridor. Above the shrubs of his hair, I study a dark, damp patch in the corner of the vomit-green ceiling. My brother would say it droops like an octopus, floating in the smell of chlorine.
. . .
My brother pressed slick, smooth stones in my palm, as cool as the bottle of Cherry Coke we nicked from the corner shop, and showed me how to skip. He said the trick was to not think about drowning.
. . .
My father’s slimy cough cracks the silence. He always does that when Mom and I don’t say a word, which is often. He asks if we want any Snickers from the Deli outside. He always does that when he needs a drink, which is often. Only my brother would still say Yes to that pretend question. As if our father wouldn’t return with bitter breaths and a slurring tongue every time – no Snickers. As if his words weren’t just bubbles around a sinking body. Airy. Easy to pop.
. . .
My brother’s stones skated on the flashing surface like flying fish. Mine plunged. I flung the stones at him, fistfuls, yelling this was not even a proper sea and we would only ever see a beach on Discovery Channel. He said it was a sea if we wanted it to be. He said stones could rise if we believed in them.
. . .
My father’s out for “Snickers”, even though nobody said yes to it.
Mom scrapes the side of her thumb, digging her navy blue nail in the flesh until the skin peels off like a shiny scale.
My brother used to descale himself too. He would scratch, carve, chew off his nail beds when he wasn’t allowed to ask about the absent Snickers. Or when Mom told him You’re just like your father, every time he dropped something. Or when he dropped out.
After that, his nail wasn’t enough. He needed something sharper. Pointier. Crocodile teeth.
To avoid looking at me, Mom stares at her thumb, studying the remaining parts of herself.
. . .
My brother clanked his Coke against mine.
I sucked on the cold, black sweetness that stung my front teeth.
My brother said one day we would figure out how to skip stones that never sink.
“That’s stupid,” I said.
“One day,” he took a gulp and burped, “You’ll see.”
. . .
In the basement, I watch the octopus-blot on the ceiling twitch-twitch-twitch in the blinking neon light. With a loud crunch, one of its tentacles tears off the concrete and extends all the way down the corridor, stretching and slithering deep into the building’s belly.
I believe it furls around my brother’s torso.
I believe it lifts him up to the surface.
Published in Passages North, Issue #45
Photo credit: Noemi Scheiring-Olah
Noémi Writes 