Stoker

FROM THE SIDELINES

I don’t belong here. Sometimes I feel I’m the “EYE” that’s watching and at times I can’t tell the difference. Nothing makes sense anymore. Not the memories, even the few I remember. Hidden in the trunk of my darkest memories lies dormant the real me. The one I don’t recognize. The one that died again on that one of many traumatizing nights. My memories are drenched with darkness and black outs that drown out the lived moments of my life. Moments I hope to one day remember.

It’s the early 80's, the setting is dark, I can’t remember much noise, just a strange and uncomfortable silence. Directly in front of me is my brother (for now I will omit his name) who was over six feet tall. One of eighteen children between two marriages between both my parents. Yes, the days were challenging and intense with so many of us. I believe we are in the kitchen. She's been drinking.

My mother is sitting down in a rocking chair. I can almost hear the chair squeak as she rocks back and forth against the wooden hard floor…

It was an old house my dad had bought and fixed up in Brooklyn, NY. It was three stories high and beautiful. In those times it was a luxury you know? They had hard times with drugs and alcohol everywhere. Poverty was evident in the streets of New York. We were across the street from ‘the projects’ which were way out of control in those times. The neighborhoods we lived in were a drug zone but it was home and like everything in life we got used to it. That house put us up a level and we were oblivious to that at the time. Nonetheless it was a great house and we were so happy for a time. It had a basement, a driveway and a backyard. At night though it was another story. It was eerie and unwelcoming for the children and their very vivid imaginations. Many things happened in that house. I have both good and bad memories. It is unfortunate for me that the bad ones outweigh the good ones by far more. It feels like I’m either hiding and listening but I don’t feel small (which is weird because I was just a child at the time). My brother walks in late and he asks our mother for her blessing which she gives him. She was drunk. She struggled a lot and in her defense had a very rough life.

“Merry Christmas mom,” he said.

“Merry Christmas son,” she answers.

He continues, “I have a gift for you”.

“She answers, “you didn’t have to”.

He hands her a white cardboard box that's pretty big. She opens it and I want to say it was about two feet long that I remember. Forgive me I have lots I’ve blocked out and this is tedious work for me just to remember, but I know it is also therapeutic.

She continues to take it out of the box and it’s a beautiful crucifix of Jesus with a halo in a glossy brownish color and dark brown for shading and depth. I can see from the unpainted back it hangs on the wall and is made from a chalky material. She seemed very happy and went on to thank him. Unknown and unexpected was what came next.

Although I was very young it’s one of the few memories that I can still remember after so much that went on in my childhood years. Most of my life is a “Black Out”. Until this day a lot remains hidden.

So he stands there quietly fiddling his fingers and staring at her, she is pretty much “out of it” to notice that he was very distant as if he wasn’t there. However, I question if she would have ever noticed? She barely knew him. He visited summers and I can’t remember seeing him younger than that summer when he was nineteen years old.

My brother is there with an absent look on his face. He has ‘checked out’ and the quiet was disturbing. Now my mother sounds worried and she asks:

“Son, what is wrong?”

“I have another gift for you mom.”

_____

“I will take my life.”

I can’t tell you what I felt because I believed I was already numb, but I was stoic, in shock. I recall my mother asking him please not to say that. “It’s a sin,” and she cried.

I remember the grown ups talking about him having a girlfriend and that girlfriend having cheated on him. He didn’t take it very well; he was depressed, and emotionally unstable. I’m sure along with all the other fucking dumpster bullshit in our lives only added to his PAIN.

The words after that statement became a blur; it’s been so long. That night that he made that disturbing statement I remember my mother telling three of my eldest brothers to look for him. No one knew where he was or had heard from him since. The house next to ours was abandoned and my dad had his boat tied up with this thick but old rope in front of the house. The rope had been missing but no one noticed. My older brothers searched most of the night treading softly and slowly through the cracking and the floor that was barely hanging on. They searched with flashlights that night. They called out his name in and around the abandoned house, but there was no answer.

The next morning came and I remember staring out the kitchen window where I could see our neighbor, a young boy. He liked going over the fence. He was always looking for stuff, old toys or balls that would go over the fence like on this particular morning. So I can see this boy whose name is Jimmy; running and carelessly coming over all those piles of debris and surely rusted nails and broken window glass. He has a look of horror in his eyes. He jumps. He nearly flies over the fence to our yard. He screamed, “there, there is a dead man over there!”

My mother opens the door to the backyard and asks, “what did you say?”

“There is a dead man in the other yard!”

My mother grabs her chest and runs back in to go around. There’s too much debris through the backyard. It was basically a junk yard with no entrance from our side. No one is even allowed in there.

The next thing I can recall is running after my mom and breaking through the yellow ‘do not cross’ police line screaming, “that’s my son!” I tried to run behind her but wasn’t allowed to but not before I could see his body from a distance.

I was a child and he was a nineteen year old teenager. I remember he was sweet and always playing with us his younger half siblings. He was so tall he would raise us up and we could touch the ceiling. Or he’d have to bend by the doorways so as to not bump his head. He was very handsome with a beautiful bright smile. I see my middle son resembles him quite a bit. Which I never really share but it warms my heart.

I see with the writing of this story I allowed access to a file that had been locked away so long ago that I was forgetting my brother’s beautiful bright smile. I can almost hear his voice. A voice well mannered and a calming effect that made you feel safe. I miss you brother and I wish things would have turned out differently for us. Too many questions and no answers but the heart demands to feel… whether uncomfortable or not. In my filing cabinets the memories are often mixed up or missing pieces. I’ve even borrowed memories maybe because I’ve memorized others memories or maybe they gave a voice to what I couldn’t name like the ring around your neck. The proof that you hung yourself with the rope to my father’s fishing boat. To then learn that it was so old that you hung for a bit before it snapped and you were still alive but couldn’t move… paralyzed. The thought that you were alive for sometime and were even being eaten by rats is a disturbing image in my head that was accompanied by a recurring dream.

Decades have gone by since and I am grateful that I can revisit this. It seems I have healed to some extent because I have self control about how to process this pain. Eternally happy with said manifestations no matter how difficult, because I understand we can not have growth without these experiences.

Agent Jay

aka

Stoker

September 2, 2025