I never knew how to tell you when we first met.
Those long silences we exchanged had such meaning behind them,
I was afraid to remember myself.
It was so different back then,
in those memories of youth
now turned to sickening realization.
In the beginning you would always ask me to show you pictures
or tell you stories about my past,
but how could I explain something
I didn’t want you to ever have to understand?
How was I supposed to bring up Bobby J?
You didn’t even know he existed.
How could I begin to tell you about how he and I would sneak out, without bursting into tears?
We would sneak out
after dark had just covered the rooftop of our house,
down to the riverbank that was just feet from our backyard.
On warm summer nights we would dip our hair in the water
and pretend we were sea creatures,
back to rid the world of humans
and giggle for hours.
He would always call me Chrisy back then,
a name you’ve never known.
“Chrisy,” Bobby would say quietly
as the stream whispered in our ears,
“when’s that man getting out of the house?”
I would splash him then and tell him,
“When you stop lettin’ him bother you!”
and we would continue to play
in the wilderness of our imagination;
pretend we were soldiers in the deep of a war,
or wild cavemen with swords made of wooden sticks.
Momma always caught us coming back
but it didn’t matter none back then.
She would catch us sneaking in the back door
and she’d grab us and throw towels over our wet,
creek watered hair
and say what trouble we were.
“Just two bundles of trouble these two!”
she’d always say to us and to no one in particular.
We’d go to bed then,
afraid he would be coming soon,
and then all of Momma’s logic
would go up in that crystal pipe he’d bring over
that got black as Momma got stupider.
How was I to tell you about the night everything changed,
when the bad got badder
and Momma didn’t make it?
I didn’t want to remember the good days;
I didn’t want to remember any of it.
I just wanted to forget the sound of his gun,
the way Momma screamed,
and how he shouted for us to keep quiet or never see her again,
and Bobby J was never good at being quiet.
How could I tell you that one night
I kissed his ***** bruised face and walked away?
That I left that horrible man,
the only home I had ever known,
my real name,
and my baby brother,
and I never looked back.