Chapter Four
On a Saturday morning when I was eight years old, my father announced that he needed to go to the airport. No matter how I begged, he would not bring me with him. Nor would he tell me why he had to go.
“Take care of your sister,” my father told Bear.
We stood on the front porch. It was still early in the morning and the sun was low enough in the sky that we had to squint at each other. It would be a rare hot day. The fog that blanketed the land at night had already burned away, and at my side, Pal swung his gaze from one of us to the next, panting.
In response to my father’s request, Bear only grunted. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. He did not have a shirt on, and his wide chest was covered in swirls of brown hair that turned amber in the rising light. He was eighteen now, but it seemed to me he was the same non-child, non-adult he had forever been. He would not play with me, and he would not take care of me. He must have felt me studyinghim because he turned toward me, and I dropped my gaze to my feet.
“I’m serious, Bear,” Dad said. “See that Merrow gets something to eat. I might not be back until late tonight.”
I looked up and stared at my father. I could not remember him ever leaving us for so long a stretch of time. My father was steadfast in his routine, and he seemed as much a part of Horseshoe Cliff as the cottage, or the cliffs, or the sea. Would the whole place disappear when he drove away? It did not seem impossible.
Tears threatened to spring to my eyes, but I held them back. I could see that Dad would not bring me with him, and if I began crying now it would only serve to stoke my brother’s disgust of me. It was the last thing I wanted to do before we were alone together.
“‘Something to eat’?” Bear echoed. He coughed up a wad of mucus and spat it off the porch. “What do you suggest?”
“I’ll make myself an egg,” I said quickly. “And an apple.”
“There’s a loaf of bread in there, and peanut butter, too,” said my father. My spirits lifted. I loved peanut butter, and Dad knew it. “Don’t let Bear eat it all,” he told me. Then he looked at my brother and muttered something under his breath. My father usually had patience for Bear’s sullen moods, but lately he seemed more frustrated with my brother than usual. I thought that perhaps he was just tired. It had been another poor season for the farm. He whittled late into the night and used the money that Rei gave him when she sold his tiny houses to buy provisions from the Osha co-op.The chickens were my responsibility, and it seemed to me that their eggs were more important than ever. I took good care of them, singing to them each evening at dusk. I did not go so far as to give them names. There were nights when we ate chicken, and I did not want to connect a name to my dinner.
As I watched my father’s truck grow small along the drive away from our home, the rumbling of the wheels along the dirt path echoed within me. I decided I would spend the day pulling weeds from the garden. This would serve the double purpose of pleasing my father and keeping me far from Bear, who was unlikely to do anything resembling work without my father’s urging.
After weeding for most of the morning, I joined Pal in a patch of shade under the row of cypress trees that I called the Old Ladies. My skin was hot from the sun, and the cool dirt below the trees was a welcome relief. I snacked on a few of the small tomatoes I’d found while weeding. Though I craved a peanut butter sandwich, I had not seen Bear leave the house and I did not want to cross his path. I wished I’d thought to bring a book with me. I curled up beside Pal and looked at the tree’s crooked spine. My father had told me that he and my mother chose this spot for the garden because the line of cypresses protected it from the gales that blew onto the land from the ocean. I called the trees the Old Ladies because they looked like a huddle of tough old grandmothers, their green bouffants flattened into funny shapes by the wind.
Hidden within the shadow of the Old Ladies, I soon fell asleep.
I was not sure how much time had passed when I awakened. My stomach felt hollow with hunger; it drove me toward the house. I breathed out in relief when I saw that Bear was not in the kitchen, and quickly set to making myself a sandwich. Bear had already made a dent in the peanut butter, but there was plenty left to spread a thick layer on two slices of the brown bread that my father always purchased. I was not particularly fond of that bread, with its strange, seedy lumps and thick crust, but my father had once told me that it had been my mother’s favorite, and knowing this allowed me to take some pleasure in it. I sat down at the table and took a large bite. As I swallowed, I heard a racket coming from Bear’s bedroom. A moment later, he threw open his door and stumbled toward me. Even if I hadn’t seen the cans of my father’s beer that littered the floor behind him, I would have recognized the smell. On my father, the odor of beer was a light presence that arrived only after sunset, but Bear smelled like he hadn’t so much drunk the beer as bathed in it.
I felt the urge to run, but my legs would not work. I sat very still, holding the sandwich in midair, wishing myself invisible.
Bear’s bleary gaze narrowed. He lurched toward me and swiped the sandwich from my hands.
“Who said it was lunchtime? I’m in charge.” He kicked at the chair beside me and sat down heavily in it. Then he began to eat my sandwich.
“Hey!” I cried. “That’s mine.”
“No shit,” he said, and kept eating. In three bites, the sandwich was gone. He stretched his long arm to the counter andpicked up the peanut butter jar. Why hadn’t I hidden it somewhere? I was full of regret as I watched my brother jam his dirty fingers into the jar and scoop out an enormous lump. He wrinkled his nose as he ate it and spoke with his mouth full.
“I don’t know why you like this stuff.” His mouth was a dank cave of wet peanut butter. He began to clear his throat so loudly that at first, I thought he was choking, and I felt my body seize with worry for him. I put my hand on top of his, but he swatted me away.
Then he spat a huge brown wad of phlegm into the peanut butter jar.
A noise emerged from me, a sort of strangled howl that made Pal jump to standing from where he’d been watching us from the floor.
“Don’t cry,” Bear warned.
“I’m not,” I said, but of course I was. I could not believe that of the entire brand-new jar of delicious peanut butter, I would have only one small bite.
“Stop crying!” Bear bellowed. Specks of spit and peanut butter hit my face. “Stop! Stop!” His eyes burned with rage. His hands encircled my arm, and he began twisting it.
I wailed in pain.
And then he was dragging me across the room. He opened the door to the linen closet, threw me in, and slammed the door. I tried the door handle and it turned in my hand, but the door would not open. I pushed my shoulder against the door and shoved as hard as I could. It did not budge.
“Bear!” I screamed. “Let me out!”
There was no light in the closet. The sound of my frantic breathing filled the small space.
