Brother: Nineteen Years, Zero Days

Twelve years, zero days: that was to be the only thought running through my mind by the end of the day.

I was in awe of how he had bottled up the sun—seven of them, in fact. Each owned a small podium, all of which jutted from a sea of shallow white spirals. Vanilla, my favourite. The optimistic beacons grasped at the endless blue above them, undoubtedly seeking comfort in their celestial mother. She heartened the grass that laughed and tickled my soles, and her seven children imitated by warming my chin, my nose, my forehead as I neared. I inflated my cheeks with a taste of the same breeze tiptoeing through my hair, displacing the locks just enough to convince me that my scalp had enjoyed a refreshing glass of lemonade. Forming a slit between my lips, I forced the first burst of air to sprint into the dancing flames—it was a beautiful dance, intricate, perhaps ballet. I blinked, and the display ceased. The clusters of golden orange were replaced with a light grey wandering upwards to meet its mother. On the other hand, as I realised whose breath had reached my candles first, mine was as far from the peaceful nature of the smoke as could be. Of course, a seven-year-old me couldn’t quite grasp just how far from peace things could possibly stray.

“You had your turn last month!” I never did enjoy sharing my moment in the spotlight.

“Last month! That was like…” Sister paused, undoubtedly trying to apply the math she so miserably failed to grasp. “That was like ten years ago. How am I supposed to live ten years without birthday candles?”

“Sit down, both of you.” He tried to play fair, but anyone who could spare half a second to glance at the three of us knew: I was Brother’s favourite. Sharing a birthday was certainly something to bring siblings closer together—he had even let me blow out his nineteen candles that morning. It was so clear that, on one occasion, Mrs. Greadurly ceded her scouting position behind her plaque of grime called a window to offer my sister some attention. While she had declined, no doubt in fear of the ancient woman’s half-dead eye, she hesitated for half a moment. “And stop chewing the wicks. We’re going to relight them.” This, I thought, was the exact way in which Mom would have handled it. He’s learning.

He jogged over to the driveway, passed the far more used red car, and ducked behind the blue chunk of metal collecting heat—Dad’s minivan had become a storage unit. It took Brother a handful of minutes (possibly a giant’s hand, certainly not a human’s) to find the lighter. Probably fidgeting with those brakes again. 

Sister and I made good use of our time, picking at the icing with alternating fingers. We sat at opposite sides of the picnic table in order to have a reasonable excuse to ignore the other’s impropriety, masking the fact that children aged seven and nine simply don’t care for such inconvenient rules when an unwatched cake sits helplessly before them. 

Sister always said that she had been able to identify Mom’s homemade cakes in a crowd. She claimed that they had always been hidden behind a mound of icing and icing-covered fruit, that the candles—representative of the birthday person’s age even when it reached the upper nineties—had never failed to be organised into a perfect circle. I suspect that was why Sister was so on edge today. Far less knowledgeable of Mom’s idiosyncrasies, I saw nothing but perfection as I looked upon the messily arranged, smoking battlement atop the baked tower.

When he emerged from the cluster of hot metal, Brother was carrying the source of his seven small suns, apparently not genuine stars. Still, I couldn’t help being in awe of how he had seemed to conjure fire from thin air, as if having access to some invisible realm abundant in vanilla birthday cake and hopeful summer warmth. Whatever would I do without Brother’s vanilla birthday cake and hopeful summer warmth?

I thought about this as he said something about taking the minivan for a ride, about seeing his handiwork in action. Soon, we were off on the joyride of all time, the lemonade breeze zipping through my hair, Mrs. Greadurly tracing us with her one-and-a-half eyes until the sky turned black. 

This day would forever be known, at least to me, as the day the thought began to count—eleven years, zero days.

✦ ✦ ✦

Nine years, zero days. Those were the numbers that tore through my mind like metal ripping through metal: zero days. 

No calendars here, not one in a million, billion years. That was the upside, of course, to spending the past month in the blandest home of them all. Obviously, there was no shortage of downsides, no shortage of downsides at all. 

It was stale. I would have bet my life’s savings (37$ and a piggy bank of IOUs from Sister) that the air had been chemically altered to coat my taste buds in expired, mouldy dust. The windows were opaque, and they paralysed the summer breeze I hoped was trying to rescue me. It would have tried to fend off the muck which I imagined was settling itself on my tongue every time my mouth plummeted open in revolt. Only marginally more manageable was the constant sneezing that erupted as I attempted to breathe through a quickly clogging nose. Of course, it was impossible to distract myself from any of it, as the dark walls were lined with no toys or dolls or cars, only the uncountable cobwebs that had survived the most pathetic of cleaning attempts. Still, as long as the house was bare, I was free from the calendar, free from time, free from whatever day may be looming around the rodent-infested corner. Yes, whatever day. Of course, I couldn’t know the day without a calendar. That’s right. It would be impossible. It could be any day, any day at all.

Worst of all was the eye. No matter how many times I had escaped the nightmare of Auntie’s and ran into this one, I never got used to looking at Mrs. Greadurly in the thick pocket of black and blue where I guessed had once resided a beautiful young lady’s eye.

“Isn’t your sister coming?” It was less of a voice and more of a growl—a dirty, mucus-filled growl. “I thought you said she was coming.”

“She’s indisposed.” The word was a novelty to me, but it was the one Sister had used. “She has important business with Auntie.”

“A shame—she won’t get to see you open your gift.” For no more than a second, the already monotone walls seemed to blur together, and I had been confident that, were it not for the snot still cramped in my nose, my hostess would have heard an abrupt exhale.

“Gift?” The days are lost. There is no calendar. The days are lost and it could be any day, any day at all. There are oh-so-many days for gifts.

“Forgive me, I’ve gotten a little ahead of myself. I’m just excited.” She turned. It took her a full 4 seconds as she decided whether moving her neck would suffice or if she would have to make a full turn—she decided on the latter. Her back facing me, she pointed to a dust-encrusted collage of different types of papers propped up on a window sill. I approached to see large lettering (very large lettering) written in a variety of different coloured pens. About halfway down the right side of one of the lines pages, a message was written in green sparkles: AUGUST FIRST, 10TH BIRTHDAY. Moving my eyes the width of a candle below that, I saw the marks of a red sparkle-less pen: TODAY. This time, the blurring of the walls didn’t disappear so quickly.

No, before and behind, above and below, to both sides of me, crashing wave after crashing wave of black, brown, black-brown popcorn walls, walls growing, growing taller, wider, larger, thicker, louder, louder most of all, louder than the growling eye,, the eye that shouldn’t have been watching, that shouldn’t have been privy to the secret, the birthday, the calendar, the calendar that shouldn’t have been there, not in the bland, bare, black, brown, black-brown, bland, bare house, the house that was supposed to hide me away, hide me away from the day, hide me away from August, hide me away from the memories, from the cake, the icing-covered cake, the cold cake, the cold vanilla cake, from the suns, the scorching suns and their melting, crumbling podiums, from the sticky, windy lemonade falling, staining the grass a yellow as it picks, picks, eats away at my soles, as the walls close, the black, brown, black-brown walls close, crush, crushing my soul under the weight, the crushing weight of a hot, blue chunk of metal that should have had working brakes, brakes that don’t break hours before the break of dawn, before the break of dawn when it’s too dark to see the lights from the chunks of metal, the hot chunks of metal, the hot chunks of metal running, running too fast to use the broken breaks, too fast to stop the breaking of bones, the breaking of hearts, the breaking of birthdays, birthdays today, anniversaries of broken brakes, broken bones, birthdays today, anniversaries of goodbyes, of wishing we had had the time for goodbyes birthdays, Brother’s anniversary, Brother’s anniversary of broken brakes and broken bones, Brother’s anniversary of death.

I hear screams, screams of Brother, screams of Sister, screams from chunks of metal, hot chunks of metal falling, burning, burning like suns, suns scorching, suns screaming, screaming—

“Surprise!” They came from all sides, surrounding me, trapping me. They invaded my bunker, sending bullets over the highest walls and into the deepest trenches. Like water (diseased and unwanted water, not the kind that refreshes and rejuvenates) overcoming a dam, they utilised their sheer quantity to sneak through the cracks, to break apart the defences before releasing the rest of the force and allowing them to run rampant. Do they understand nothing? Have they learned nothing from the past two Augusts? “Happy birthday!” I probably knew them—neighbours, classmates. I didn’t recognise them. Their faces became one, one horrible figure, hurting, bleeding. Is that metal? Their features blended and moulded until all I could make out was the three-story-tall tower holding up the searing, blistering fires that somehow managed to hold together their crumbling wax well enough to prevent the fondant from devolving into a puddle of chocolate fondant.

Chocolate fondant revolted me. Sister thought the same way. I wonder how Sister is doing with Auntie. She had never cared much about the calendar, not as much as I did, but I couldn’t imagine she was getting much done, either. My stay with Mrs. Greadurly coming to an end, I guessed I would return to Auntie’s to find Sister hiding under the stairs, curled up in Brother’s blanket, and wondering how it was that we came to be in the care of Auntie.

That day, day nine years, zero days, was the worst of the birthdays after the counting began.

✦ ✦ ✦

Zero years, one day.

“It’s the thought that counts.” This, Sister had adopted as her mantra as another birthday surprise was unveiled, year after year. Now, she stayed silent, leaning equally against me and the wall.

Tick. The bedroom was large, larger than anywhere Brother had lived. Tick. It was white, pure white, whiter than the snowfall of the most untouched of valleys, of the most unspoiled of mountains. Tick. The walls, the drapes, the bed, the closet, the dresser, the chandelier—they were all the white of an angel. Tick. It was just the way Auntie liked it. Tick. Would she notice if the white was blemished? Tick. Would she notice if the angel were to leave? Tick. Would she care if the angel was hurt, his heart pierced? Tick. Would the hot, blue chunk of metal leave a mark? Tick. Would it leave a trail for Auntie to follow? Tick. Would she know about the blemish? Tick. Did she care? Tick. She didn’t care. Tick. Why should she? Tick. She doesn’t enter the room, merely feeds its inhabitants, nothing more. Tick.

The clock ticked, ticked, ticked away until its white light shone down to tell us that it was—

23:55, I thought, half a second before the next tick. The clock was slow by half a second. It was slow and useless. I didn’t need the clock to count. I didn’t want the clock to count. The thought counted for me. I couldn’t stop it. Every day, it counted. It counted the years, the days, the hours, and now, the seconds. How long would it be until the room was blemished? How long would it be until my clock struck nineteen? How much time did I have before my path met with hot, blue metal? I knew the answer—every minute of every day since the joyride in the minivan, the joyride of all time.

284, 283, 282, 281, 280… 263… 199… 113….

✦ ✦ ✦

My head hurts. It doesn’t hurt like it’s been hit with metal—I’m quite sure of that. I think it might be a good kind of hurt, a call to attention of sorts. Yes, yes, that’s it. It’s not so much hurting as it is calling. It’s calling me to action. It doesn’t really matter what action (or maybe it does—I haven’t figured that part out just yet). The point is, there’s some sort of action to be had. There will be action past him, past Brother. He paved my path for nineteen years, and now, it’s my turn. I wasn’t counting down to the room’s blemish or to the candles’ quenching, but to goodbye and to the freedoms that it offers. 

Day one.