When her older brother pulls the knife, the same one he uses to cut himself, she traces the bruise on her arm, a pink sunrise —just like the ones on postcards from California-- and thinks of calling 9-1-1, but if she does nothing, It will end, so she won’t try to stop anything, she tells herself, this time, or ever. As her brother presses the knife, the same one he uses to cut himself, against her father’s throat, she laughs, as though its blade is tickling her skin, and measures her deliverance in centimeters. He should do it, she thinks, and feels weightless, almost free, looking at her father slumped against the wall. Maybe her brother is as crazy as she suspects, as crazy as the ragged swastikas carved into his arms, but he has resolve, now, and should hurry, she thinks, because their mother is in the kitchen, dialing 9-1-1, not to protect herself or anyone else except the trembling man slumped against the wall. She wonders which member of this Unholy Trinity, She Hates the most. This could end, she thinks. Her father could be buried, her brother in prison, her mother gone somewhere. It would all depend on what she said to the cops or the woman from social services. She’s covered in bruises, her brother screams, and she wonders at his hypocrisy; her brother has his own violent streak —one she knows so well—and could be screaming about her, as well as their mother. (He has learned from their father so well.) We Are Not, She Hopes, The Same. She dreams of living in friends’ basements, finishing high school, maybe moving to California and sleeping on a beach. She’s never seen the ocean, but San Diego is warm, she imagines, and California seems so close, now, as her brother leans into the blade and talks about Race Traitors and Cowards, What This Country Used to be, the Black People next door, and The Growing Conspiracy, and then she hears the Pause, the silence of anger exhausted. Her brother drops the knife, the same one he uses to cut himself. His rage and resolve, she knows, have been replaced by contempt for a man not worth killing. Nothing has changed, except that she’s more ashamed than ever of what she imagined and wished (only seconds ago), and, in her shame, alone. California’s fading, now, and she knows the cold will always be inside her, and knows, too that she will testify against her brother, talk about the swastikas and his hunting knife, the same one he uses to cut himself, even though he’s her brother and Family Should Stick Together, Always. She slips out of the house, unnoticed, stands barefoot in the snow until numb, and, when the police arrive, sits in the back of their car and studies the salt crusted on the windshield, talks about her brother and his hunting knife, the same one he uses to cut himself, her mother’s prescription drugs, the ones she uses to numb herself, and her father, the old man slumped against the wall. |