This House is Ours, Ch. 2. (Feb, 2023) (Patreon)

(Table of contents.)

Chapter 2.

Malagash hasn't changed. It's us that did.

There is still the one long winding red road. I remember there was something shocking about seeing a red road for the first time. Like if you stepped outside and the noon sky were a solid, cloudless purple. But a road can't be strange to you once you've walked it barefoot in the middle of the night. The middle of the night is when you understand things without words getting in the way.

Simon and I stay in our bunk beds, across the hall from where our uncles sleep. They are still talking, quietly. It is so dark that we can see the light from under their door, under our door. They are still here. Our father died eight months ago, and they were only supposed to stay for two weeks.

But our mother won't leave her room. She is going to kill herself. And so our uncle Frank couldn't leave. His wide, soft eyes always seem about to spill into tears. His husband Jonah stayed, too. My mother is locked in her room. Simon and I have gone mute. What are they supposed to do? How can they leave? We're family. At night we can hear them whisper the words again and again. They're needed here.

My grandmother is glad to have them. Frank's loud warm laugh in the kitchen. Jonah's soft and reasonable dry humour. She loves them. She loves the company. The family. Someone to take care of her while she takes care of us. The three of them stay up nights, playing cribbage while Simon and I sit on the stairs and listen. Half to their voices, and stories, half to the silence behind our mother's door.

And then we climb into bed and wait. Eventually Jonah and Frank go to bed. The light goes out. Their voices get quieter, as they talk one another to sleep in the dark. Sometimes laughing. Sometimes just an indistinct murmur that drifts in and out and finally stops. We wait longer than that. We wait until we're sure.

Simon climbs out of bed first. He begins to dress as I climb down the ladder. He doesn't speak, and neither do I. He hasn't spoken in a month. Not to me, not to anyone. Our uncles are worried. But they don't know what to do. There is talk about seeing a doctor. Talk about a psychologist. My grandmother takes him to church with her now. Everyone is at a loss. But I knew what to do. Wherever my brother was going, I was going to go with him. So I stopped talking, too.

Simon waits patiently as I find a sweater in the bottom of the trunk we share for our clothing. He touches my elbow cautiously. And I can hear the sound of the bathroom door downstairs. Our grandmother climbs the stairs, and we wait until we hear the small click of her bedroom door. Then we move quiet through the house and out into the night.

Malagash hasn't changed since we moved here. It's us that did. Once you've cut your feet on the road, that road is your road. That dirt bike leaning up against the shed with no windows? That is your dirt bike. Those are your empty windows. The eyes behind them are not afraid of you. You aren't afraid of them.

The ice cold Atlantic ocean is our ocean now. We own it and it owns us. We can see it from anywhere. It blends into the air we breathe, like Malagash is a beach that the tide covers once a day. Every night we walk beside it, holding hands in silence.

This all belongs to Simon. This all belongs to me.

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