thicker than blood

1.

First time I asked about my brother, I was five and sitting on Momma Penelope’s knee. She was one of the nice ones, kept me ‘till I was seven years old and had skin like paper that’d been folded too many times.

I didn’t remember my brother much, still don’t, but Momma Penelope knew enough to not want to talk about him. I remember her mouth pressing tight when I asked, and her looking down at me with those old eyes.

“Luz, mijo,” She’d said, “You don’t want to know about your brother. He was a hard man.”

She shook her head slow, and even then I knew not to pry, but privately I swam through my memories and plucked out the ones with my brother in them. None of them seemed “hard”.

I remembered eyes that glinted like junebugs crusting the windowsill in August, rough hands on the ends of wiry arms. I remembered burying my face in the crook of his neck and listening to him shout out the lyrics to songs I didn’t know. Memories that had been run through my mind too many times and were beginning to bleach of color.

Then I remembered that he was gone, and that he didn’t say goodbye, and that his rough hands hurt me sometimes.

I rested my cheek against Momma Penelope’s chest and didn’t talk much until bedtime.

2.

I meet him at the playground.

We’re both too old to be here, him more than me ‘cause I can still pass for twelve if keep my head down. I’m here because the man running my current group home gets irritable after a couple beers and really, where else would I have to be. I wonder what his deal is.

He’s a scary looking guy, the kind I usually steer clear of. A tattoo’s peeking out from under his shirtsleeve, and he looks like he hasn’t shaven in a hell of a long time. I must have been staring, because he catches my eye and looks away quick with something like guilt on his rough-hewn face. I make sure to keep him in my peripherals after that, but it’s hard when we’re the only two left in the park.

I’m not a wimp. I’m not. But the man scares me, just a little, with the murky night-light background of the inner city and swings creaking in the mellow August wind. He just keeps right on staring, not even trying to hide it when he thinks I ain’t looking.

I go back to the home around ten thirty because I got school tomorrow and my social studies teacher’s been on my case lately about sleeping in class. The man stays in the park, leaning on the jungle gym, and even though I don’t look back, I feel him watching me leave in the pit of my stomach.

3.

I go back to the park on Wednesday and the man’s still there. This time he’s wearing a tank top that shows off the tattoos on his shoulders and his wiry arms, rough hands. Looking at them too long makes my stomach hurt a little, so I snap my head away and take a seat against the fence.

It’s still early, so kids are at the park with their jangly keychains and missing teeth and hand-me-down backpacks, and parents who aren’t much more than kids themselves scattered through the mob like chickpeas in the rice a foster mom of mine used to make. There’s an amiable rustle in the air that seems to radiate away from the man, leaving him in his own on-edge bubble.

And he’s still staring.