In the Summer, My Brother

At lunch a dog walks into the kitchen and eats my brother’s fruit and leaves. My brother feeds it to the dog himself. When the dog is done my brother wipes sloppy thick spit from his hands and says the dog needs it more than he does. I say, but brother, I cut that fruit for you.

 To slice an apple, hold the apple with its stem facing upright. Position your knife slightly away from the stem as to not slice through the core and slice straight downward to the cutting board. Do this on all sides of the apple. To make smaller slices, position the apple face-down and chop to any size desired. Give your brother the apple core. He will suck off the excess meat to get you your money’s worth.

In the summer my brother plays soccer and baseball and hockey with a half-dozen neighborhood kids and an ever-present symphony of cicadas. Though heat presses in from all sides—I always keep our kitchen is stocked with three fans to keep a decent temperature—my brother plays Horse until his shirt is soaked-through and he smells decidedly like a dog. A wet dog. He goes out in the morning and plays until lunch and comes back to eat lunch and goes out again.

At lunch I ask, “Why do you play so long out there?” I peel the skin off an orange.

He sighs. “It’s better than being here all the time.”

In my heart of hearts I do not blame him.

They play in the field behind our row of houses, a sunbaked field of grass between one neighborhood street and the next. The grass is brittle and scratches my brother’s legs and pokes his soft flesh when he falls. At lunch he has pear-green bruises.

Some neighbor had put nets there, and hoops. The kids produce their own balls and bats and pucks—my neighbor’s son has no hockey stick, and my brother, on a whim, gives him our own.

“Why couldn’t you have just let him borrow it?” I ask as I place a fresh bowl of blueberries before him.

He shrugs. “I just felt bad.”

Later that summer my brother punches that neighbor’s same son in the face.

            To cut a pineapple, place the pineapple on its side, and with a sharp chef’s knife remove both the crown and the stem of the fruit. Place the pineapple upright, and begin removing the spiny outer skin. Be sure to follow the pineapple’s contours instead of chopping straight down—this will result in the most possible meat. The brown eye spots must be removed; cut a V-shaped groove along the diagonal line and discard each set of spots. Lay the skinned pineapple on its side again—cut into ring-slices—cut the ring-slices into chunks—

            Feed the pineapple to your brother. He will be disgusted. It will be too sweet and it will coat his tongue with bumps he can’t get rid of.  

            At breakfast my brother will not talk to me. I wake him up at seven after my mother leaves for work, and he rolls over and rises slowly. He sits at the table and rubs his eyes and grunts at things I say; he yawns and doesn’t say himself much of anything. He and eats oatmeal with brown sugar and bananas. He finishes. He leaves.

            It is seven forty-five. The neighborhood kids will not begin to arrive until nine, and until then he plays basketball by himself. I can hear him through the window as I wash dishes at the kitchen sink: the ball falls dully on dry grass, sharply on rims, swishes slightly as it leaves his hands. The clock ticks slowly behind me. I turn off the water and I listen some more.

            In mid-July my brother comes in for lunch and he speaks. I pop cool grapes into my mouth.

            “Why there? Why just play games every day?”

            He props up his head with his hand.

            “You don’t need to talk much when you’re playing soccer, or baseball, or whatever. You say what you need to, and then you just do it. It’s all about the game. You don’t need to do anything else.”

            “Do you really hate talking that much?”

            “Yeah,” he says, “guess so.”

            I think, you didn’t use to.

He finishes, and he leaves, and the clock ticks some more.  

            In the summer days stretch on into infinity. To my brother there is nothing to expect before or to remember behind. There is only a pick-up game in a field of low-cut grass and sunlight. There are people around him, most of the time; there are people who do not ask and people he never tells. He holds himself steady. In his mind he can lose himself by kicking a ball toward a goal again and again and again.

After lunch I remember my father, who had a muddy baseball mitt, and loved conversation, and hated cranberries—my father who gave my brother extra chewing gum and with my brother played catch every night until dark.

To dice a papaya, lay the papaya on its side and chop off the top end. Slice the papaya lengthwise—it will smell funny to your brother, who cannot quite put words to the sensation. He will say the inside looks like a cantaloupe, besides the smooth black seeds. You will disagree a little bit—you’ve dealt with enough fruits this past year—then you will change your mind and say, well, you guess does after all. Hold the half-papaya firmly in one hand and scoop the seeds and sticky membrane into the trashcan. You will be absentminded, and forget there is no bag. Clean the trashcan. Put in a new bag. Your brother will help you. Slice the halves into halves, saw each section’s skin off, and dice the whole thing until your arms start to burn.

Eat the whole thing with your brother. He will have never tasted it before, but he will eat it all the same.

            My brother runs races with the neighbors’ kids and after lunch I leave the kitchen and for once I go and watch. It’s hotter out there than with my three fans. The grass is sharp. It tickles my feet over my flip-flops. The kids make a line with baseball bats and hockey sticks and they lean down as the oldest says ready-set-go. I can see beads of sweat on my brother’s face, on his forehead and on the tip of his nose and on the line of his upper lip; his freckles seem darker than they once did. His brow furrows deep, and as they burst away, his face holds the same expression.

            Near the soccer-net goal a boy suddenly shoves my brother out of the way.

            “What the heck?” says my brother. He is angry. His brow sinks lower and he gets in the kid’s face and the kid is the neighbor’s son who now owns our hockey stick.

            “Look, it was an accident, okay? You were right in front of me, I was gonna trip!”

            My brother scoffs. “What a lie—you think anyone’s gonna believe that?”

            My neighbor’s son boils. His chest puffs in indignance. His eyes open wider ever slightly, and his mouth presses together in a thin line.

            “Look, just because your dad died doesn’t mean you can be such a wuss!”

            My brother stands stock still for a moment, just a moment. Then he recoils, and he punches my neighbor’s son in the face.

           

            There is anarchy, for a little while. Other kids have to pull my brother and my neighbor’s son apart. My brother wipes away a stream of blood from his nose and stalks away. He walks past me. I turn to him. He avoids my eyes. He leaves.

            To open up the heart of your brother, wait until just before twilight. As you’re chopping celery for dinner he will return from the day’s sport and sit and the table and cry. Finally, he will cry. He will take a deep breath, at first, then wrinkle his nose; the bottom of his lip will tremble, and he will cover his eyes with fists like a child. He is a child, as he has been all this time. He will wheeze. He will breathe hard and fast. His whole body will shake, and you will place down your kitchen knife and you will hold him.

            Say to him, brother, it’s hard to live beneath thick citrus skin. Let me peel away your problems upon my cutting board; I will chop up your loneliness and lay it there on the kitchen table. I can’t swallow it whole, brother—I must do it piece by piece.

            He will say to you, I miss him. Oh, God, I miss him.

            To your brother you will say, I know.

            To your brother you will say, I miss you more.