Elizabeth Finn - Brother’s Keeper

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Days start ticking off the calendar, and I stay as busy as possible, putting in ridiculous hours at work to avoid being alone with my thoughts more than I have to. But every night I end up fighting my despair the second I lay my head on my pillow. It is then I miss her the most—when my brain stops moving for the day and the memories of her are allowed to flood my mind, causing agonizing grief. It has been nearly three weeks now since I last saw Rowan, and I’m desperate for the torture to end. It must at some point, but it hasn’t faded an ounce, and I can’t help but wonder if it ever will. I can’t imagine her sharing this pain, and I wonder if it is as awful for her as it is for me. The idea of her suffering this, too, only makes my own anguish all the more palpable. I pray she’s doing better than I am.

I hate my life. The six weeks since Logan left have been the hardest I've experienced, overshadowed only by the memories of my mother’s death. Ronnie and Sara seem intent on dragging me everywhere and anywhere, trying to perk me up, but I’m hopeless. I want them to believe I’m fine so they’ll just leave me in peace, but I can’t pretend I’m not in hell. Smiling makes my mouth hurt; laughing is impossible.

So when Ronnie suggests a shopping day in Grand Haven, I inwardly groan but outwardly try to be a good sport. The trip there fills me with anxiety. I dread the images that will plague me from my last time there. I want to see nothing of that time as it will be more excruciating than I can stand. But the images and the memories are everywhere. We eat lunch in the harbor on the very same street Logan and I enjoyed the farmers’ market only a few months ago. It is warm and sunny, but my heart is cold and dark. The lighthouse is visible a few miles down the coast, and I swear if Ronnie suggests a drive out there, I will scream. All I want is to be at home in bed, sleeping. It is my only safe haven—though even my sleep is often interrupted with memories of Logan.

He is doing well, so Ronnie says over lunch when Sara asks. Involved in a big case and staying very busy. Her eyes are on my face as I refuse to look up from the spot I’m studying on the table. I don’t want Ronnie to see the pain in my eyes, and I know she is searching for it. I’m glad he is okay, but I want to hear nothing more about it. The reminders hurt, and in some ridiculous way I resent him for being okay. I’m not okay. Why the hell should he be? It isn’t fair, and I resort to throwing a temper tantrum inside my head while I focus on the worn and scratched surface of the table in front of me.

When Ronnie drops Sara and I off later that afternoon, I have a letter waiting for me from the admissions department at the University of Michigan. They need a copy of my social security card for their records, and my guts clench at the realization this will mean a trip back to home sweet trailer park. If Logan were here, he’d kill me for even considering it… But he’s not here, and I have little choice but to go. It is mid afternoon on a Tuesday, so my father should still be at work. There’s no time like the present, and I tell Sara where I’m off to before running out the door.

When I arrive and enter the trailer, I’m taken aback by the state of the place. Not that our trailer was ever anything to write Better Homes and Gardens about, but I have never seen it in this state. There is garbage strewn about from room to room. The stench is overwhelming; many months’ worth of Styrofoam take out containers, fast food bags, and old pizza boxes litter every piece of furniture and every square inch of floor space. Well, if I didn’t want to stay any longer than necessary, the smell of this place was all the motivation to work quickly I would need.

I proceed first to my father’s bedroom closet. And while I find a collection of gratuitous porn magazines that are more terrifying than they are sexy, a hand gun—again frightening given who it belongs to—and a strange collection of old rusty nails, what I don’t find is my social security card.

As I wander back out to the living room, my eyes land on the side table that sits next to my father’s old smelly recliner. It has two drawers, and I’ve seen my father stash many an odd piece of paper in there. It’s as good as any place to look. The trailer is small, and while cluttered all to hell, there simply aren’t that many places that my social security card could be hiding. I approach the side table, and doing my best to touch only what I absolutely must, I start rifling through the contents of the drawer. I find more overdue bills than any grown adult ought to have, numerous scraps of paper with bizarre notes and messages written on them, and a rather large amount of receipts from the nearest liquor store. Again I strike out finding my social security card, and as I slam the drawers shut I unleash a slew of expletives at the poor old side table.

Giving up is sounding like a better idea by the minute. There may not be very many logical places to keep the card, but unfortunately, there are a good deal of obscure and unfathomable places it could be hiding. Being here is unsafe, and I can just imagine Logan laying into me, but the idea of Logan yelling at me for risking my safety just brings on the all too familiar stab of pain … and a bit of resentment. What can I say; anger has become a very effective means of coping with my loss of him. I often find my daydreams of him becoming charged with fury at him, fury at myself, and fury at life in general for pulling us apart from one another. And my fury now compels me onward. Onward, in this case, means the file cabinet in the kitchen that the microwave sits on.

As I enter the kitchen, I find that it is in an even worst state than the remainder of the house. What looks like a city dump in the living room is a full-on explosion of garbage in the kitchen. Every inch of the counter is consumed by dirty dishes and rotting food. The stench is a solid mass that hits like a blanket smothering your face as you plummet into the stench. There are mice feces all over the counters, and I’m suddenly very attuned to the scurrying sounds that surround me. I approach the file cabinet ready to hold my breath and dive into one more disgusting filth pit, but as I tug on the dusty old handle it doesn’t budge. Awesome. Locked. Of course it’s locked. I let go of another inanimate object tirade before completely throwing in the towel, and as I storm back into the living room still cursing, I walk right into the meanest man in the world. He looks more demon than man at the moment, and given the virtually empty whiskey bottle in his hand, I’m guessing he’s beyond the point of any sense and reason.

As I stumble backward into the kitchen, he grabs me with one hand around my throat and virtually throws me back into the living room. I hit the side of the recliner and fall over it to the ground. I’m on the opposite side of the chair from him, but trapped in the living room with no way to skirt around him quick enough to get out the front door. As I pull myself up from the floor, he moves around the recliner and grabs me by the throat once again. He squeezes tight, and I’m suddenly overcome by images of myself being choked to death. The sting of the constricted air passage sets my brain to panic mode, and just when the pulsing vibrations of hypoxia start to take over my brain, he punches me hard on the temple. The very best thing I can say about being punched is that it forces me out of his suffocating death grip.

I fall back, hitting my head hard on a wall shelf behind me, but not hard enough to knock me out completely. I’m almost upset I’m not unconscious at this point. I thought people weren’t supposed to feel pain when their bodies were in fight or flight mode. Instead, I can feel every last ache and throb. My eye feels like it’s outside of my socket, the back of my head feels like it’s going to explode, and my throat is still burning with fire. As I fall to the floor on my knees, grasping the back of my head, his foot makes first contact with my gut, and what little breath I’d regained from being nearly choked to unconsciousness is forced back out of my lungs, leaving me gasping loudly and desperately for air. And before I can regain any use of my lungs, the next kick lands in nearly the same place.

I now crumble to the floor, unable to support my body any longer. As kick after kick lands, I continue to beg my body to take in air, but with every second I’m losing a fighting battle, and what little air I manage to gulp down is horribly expelled from my chest every time his foot makes contact with my abdomen. With every kick, I’m getting further and further away from consciousness. And as my consciousness fades, so, too, does the pain, and I’m only slightly aware of the thudding sound that his foot makes as it meets my body.

Suddenly the dull thudding stops, and I can feel myself being pulled by my ponytail across the carpet. The carpet is burning my face, and I’m losing hair in ripping clumps as he pulls me along. But every sense is dulled, and while I know what I should be feeling is excruciating, I’m struggling to feel anything at all at this point. And a very sad and defeated part of my mind is resigned to the fact this likely means the end must be near. Logan’s face comes to the front of my mind, and as my father’s torment continues I focus on Logan. I know now I won’t see him again, and I regret in a way that is nearly unbearable that I ever let him slip away. But relief is coming soon.

Death will take me and end the pain and sadness I feel for my loss, and I’m thankful the suffering will be over soon. I hear the zing of scissor blades as he pulls me by my ponytail upright. I’m hanging limply from my ponytail, the hairs tearing from my scalp as the weight of my body is too much for the thin strands to bear. And as I wait for the stab of the scissors, wondering where he’ll mutilate me and how he’ll kill me, I hear instead the scissors releasing me from the hanging force of my ponytail. Once he’s cut through my ponytail, shearing off my long hair, I collapse back to the floor. In my numb haze, I wonder why he cut my hair off. Perhaps he wants me as ugly and repulsive as possible in my casket.