It’s not like we were getting into trouble, not really anyway. Sure, there were more than a few bad influences around Tristan Circle, that wide loop of road dotted with single-floor homes, some impeccably kept, others practically spilling trash onto the street. There was a row of squat apartments behind us, just across a short span of creek, and that was where most of the trouble started. Sallie saw her first fight behind those apartments: two fifteen-year-olds, shirtless, spitting, rolling in the mud until they tired out and just sort of gave up. She took her first puff of a cigarette back there with me, though neither of us felt compelled to keep it up after that. We both saw our first thirty seconds or so of a porno in one of those apartments, a grainy VHS that showed something so anatomical I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it. We walked back into the daylight shaking our heads and questioning whether it was real or just some kind of kinky special effect.
All this is to say that, yes, I was a bad influence on Sallie. I never held a gun to her head, but just being in my presence was enough to rub off on her, as if my upbringing and inherent griminess were somehow absorbed into her skin. Over time, she opened up more about her mom, specifically about her mom and me. It was a pretty simple concept. Ruth didn’t want us to be friends anymore.
“Forget her,” I told her, and I meant it too. I’d gone my whole life without a mom. So could she.
But soon I started to see a change happening, some kind of backlash against a backlash, you might say. Having me for a friend was, in many ways, a middle finger to her mother, a knife to cut a hole in the blanket that was smothering her to death. This was all well and good for both of us, but after a while, Sallie began to revert. It’s hard to explain, but she started to turn… childish. I mean, we were kids, I have to stop and remember that, but we were just old enough to not feel like kids. We knew what we were doing, we knew who we were, and the last thing we needed was for Ruth to stick her pointy nose into our business and tell us what to do.
The source of the whole thing was my inability to grasp what Sallie’s life was like. I guess I couldn’t really understand the power of parents the way she did. My dad was more of a nonentity than anything else, a swell guy I truly loved, but not a major player in my day-to-day. I woke myself up, ate a bowl of cereal, caught the bus to and from school, and let myself in with the key we hid under a rock next to the porch. In other words, I was calling the shots.
But Sallie relied on her mom and dad for everything. They took her to movies. They ate dinner at a table. They had family game night once a week. There was power there because, quite simply, there was love there as well. I didn’t see that when I was nine. How the hell could I? But I see it now, and in hindsight, that change in her makes more sense now than it ever did before.
She started carrying a doll with her when she came over. Started quietly snuggling with it when we finally went to bed. She didn’t lug it around nonstop, but it was always there, in a backpack, waiting for her to sneak it out when I wasn’t looking. It was a girl, all felt, in a pink dress with yellow yarn hair. I’d leave the room for a minute and catch her twining the gold locks into fat braids. It wasn’t like my bear. That was mine, something secret, a thing I kept hidden from Sallie whenever she came over. We were girls now, not children, and so I hid my toys away.
But this.
This sudden reversal to silly girlishness felt wrong somehow. A betrayal even. A slap across my face.
So I made it very clear that I hated the doll, hated all toys in fact, hated how childish they were. Hated them even as I hid my own away from her. It was a wedge, a sliver of distance between the two of us, a thing carefully slid into place by none other than Ruth herself. It was a very clever thing, a reminder of who it was that truly loved her more than I ever could, and it might have been enough to do the job by itself if given enough time. But something else intervened and did Ruth’s work instead.
It was a Saturday in late May. I can’t remember the exact date, but I knew that school was almost out for the year, maybe just a couple of weeks left, I think. I remember it so clearly because we were putting on an end-of-the-year show in my living room, a big production like kids do. There was a musical number (Sallie), a deep, well-rehearsed monologue (me), and a dance number performed without consent by my fat, tiger-striped cat named Memphis. Sallie had brought her dad’s video camera, a small one for those days that recorded onto small tapes about half the size of cassettes. We meticulously set it up on the end table near the back door, one of the few places open enough to record our masterpiece. The two of us made hand-painted title cards, selected the music, and rehearsed until we were nearly bored of the whole thing.
By the time the actual show time rolled around, it was nearly eleven, and after yawning through the first two acts, we prepared the stage for Memphis, who was sleeping next to the water heater, just as I knew he would be. The stage was a three-sided wall of cardboard lit by a pair of flashlights. The words, Kitty Kat Dancin’ were crudely scrawled on the back wall. Andy strolled out of his room to get a drink while we were setting it up, and he just shook his head.
“What?” I said defensively, suddenly feeling childish, something I hated.
“You’re asking for it,” he replied. He didn’t joke with me very much, and generally, my brother seemed to want to stay away from me the older we got. Still, if the moment struck, we could have some good times, the sort of deep belly laughs that only siblings could inspire. It had been years since I had seen him really smile at me, and he didn’t smile then, not quite, but I could tell he wanted to.
“Asking for what?” I demanded.
“Have you ever met Memphis?” he said sarcastically.
“Uh, he’s my cat, ya butthole,” I replied. Not very clever, but right along my usual operating speed.
Again he shook his head, and I fully expected him to stroll off into his bedroom. With a grin, he poured himself a glass of Coke, pulled up a kitchen chair, and waited for the show to start. He didn’t have to wait long.
I’m still not entirely sure what our plan was, but I was certain, once the cameras were rolling, that Sallie and I would be able to make a convincing dancing cat. I scooped Memphis up from his endless nap, and he purred and curled into me, no doubt expecting me to bring him to bed with me like I did most nights. Instead, I carried him to the clear spot near the back door where his stage, his chance at stardom, awaited.
“Action!” I told Sallie, and the show began.
As the director of this particular piece of art, I took the majority of the scratches myself. I felt like it was my duty. In his defense, Memphis was surprisingly slow to anger. It wasn’t until the second verse of ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ that he really dug his claws in. The whole thing was a disaster, but the truly amazing part was hearing Andy’s laugh. I had forgotten what it sounded like.
“Shut up!” I demanded, but it was too late. It was like my brother had sprung a leak, and the laughter was just pouring out uncontrollably. My face was red, and blood was dripping from half a dozen small cuts on my hands. I could have walked away, could have joined in and laughed myself, but instead I walked over and slapped him hard enough to leave a bloody print across one cheek. He was, as I well knew, the mean one of the two of us. I’d seen it, the way he could instantly grow violent and threaten the people around him, so I flinched, waiting for it. He only let his head drop a bit and slunk back to his room. Still fuming, but a little ashamed, I grabbed Sallie by the arm, and we stomped off to the bathroom to tend my wounds.