Some nights, Bear shut the door to his room and turned on the radio that he had taken from the kitchen. Others, he would walk down the driveway and I’d watch the night close around him and wonder if he would come back. He fought with my father almost every day. It was clear to me that hehated Horseshoe Cliff, hated working the land and answering to my father. I didn’t understand why he stayed.
It wasn’t long after Amir arrived that I realized I’d stopped flinching when my brother approached. I was no longer his target. Amir took the brunt of my brother’s violence from the moment he came to live with us. Every time Bear shoved Amir, I cried out, expecting to hear Amir’s bones cracking as they hit the ground. But Amir seemed made of rubber. He’d once made the mistake of scrambling to his feet while Bear was still nearby, only to find Bear’s thick hands on his shoulders again, tossing him back down. After that encounter, Amir learned to wait where he’d landed until Bear was gone. When I yelled at my brother, he just swatted me away like I was nothing. I would kneel to the ground and wait with Amir until Bear was out of sight, my whole body throbbing in anger as though I’d been knocked down, too.
When my father was nearby, Bear ignored Amir. I waited for Amir to tell my father what was happening, but he never did. He seemed so content when Bear was not around, and took such obvious pleasure in life at Horseshoe Cliff, that it was almost possible to believe that he forgot Bear’s abuses as quickly as he was subjected to them. But there were nights when he groaned as he fell into bed, and I knew he was not sore from his chores. Without my father stepping in, I worried Bear’s aggression would only worsen.
“I’m going to tell my dad,” I said one night, blinking through the darkness toward Amir’s bed in the far corner of our bedroom. “Bear is hurting you.”
Amir sat up. “No. It doesn’t matter what Bear does to me. You can’t say anything to Jacob.”
The desperation in his voice surprised me. From across the room, the bedsprings complained as he lay down again. I heard him turning from side to side, restlessly.
“It’s quiet here,” he said. “At the orphanage, I slept in a room with fourteen other children. Some of them would yell and cry in the night. It was hard to sleep. In the morning, I was always tired. I was small, and the bigger kids took my food. There was a courtyard to run and play ball in, and that was the best part of the day. A lot of the children were nice. Some were not. The man who watched us was not a good man. We called him Uncle. From one minute to the next, I didn’t know what might happen to me. Uncle didn’t like to hear us—singing, whispering, chewing our food. He didn’t like our smells. He laughed to Cook about how dirty and stupid we were, about how nobody wanted us or would ever want us because just look at us. We were disgusting. When we looked at him wrong, he took our food away. Or he hit us on the shoulder or the back of the head or behind the knee.
“One day, I convinced Cook to let me deliver Uncle’s lunch to his office. I was quick and quiet and I stood completely still outside Uncle’s door while he ate. When he called for his plate to be taken, I did so silently. After that, I delivered Uncle’s lunch every day. He never hit me again. His bowl always had a few bits of rice left in it when he was finished, but I never ate them.
“Maybe Uncle told my mother to choose me, or maybe shehad no choice at all. One minute I lived in the orphanage, and the next I lived in a house with my mother and three other American women who were in India to help children like me. They said they had waited a long time to be able to take me in, and I still can’t understand that because all that time they were waiting, I was waiting, too. If we were all waiting, why couldn’t we have waited together, away from that man at the orphanage? I was six then, I think, but I don’t know. Maybe I was older and I lived even longer in the orphanage than I remember. I hope not. All I know is my mother and her friends cooked food that I had never had before. I grew bigger in that year but a part of me always thought it could not last because it did not feel real to live with them in that quiet house.
“I was right. When I was seven, my mother became sick. We moved to New York City. Her father didn’t want me to call him Grandfather. He didn’t like me in his home. He wrinkled his face when he saw me. I tried to stay out of his way so he could pretend that I wasn’t there. It was cold in New York, and then it was hot, and then it was cold again. And then my mother died, and I came here to live with you.”
I listened, astonished. It was the most Amir had said about his past. I understood that Bear’s treatment of me over the years was small compared to what Amir had been through. Even at eight years old I understood that I was listening to something profound. Bravery and strength had resided quietly within Amir the whole time that we’d been running around Horseshoe Cliff, exploring and laughing and playing.
And then I understood what he was trying to tell me.
“You love it here,” I said.
“Yes.”
“My father wouldn’t make you leave. He’s not like your grandfather.”
“Bear is his son. If he learns Bear doesn’t like me—”
“Bear doesn’t like anyone! And anyway, that doesn’t matter. My father wouldn’t send you away. I wouldn’t let him!” This was true. In that moment—and, really, from the moment I met him—I felt fiercely protective of Amir. It was why I felt the urge to step in front of him when Bear approached—I’d rather Bear hurt me than him. I was used to it, anyway. But I guessed what Amir was trying to tell me was that he was used to it, too.
But he was not done with his story. “In the orphanage,” he said, “there was a corner of the courtyard where bird droppings streaked the wall. Every day, I used a rock to scrape the poop from the wall onto a little slip of paper, and then I folded the paper and kept it in my pocket. Cook saw me do this. It was why he let me bring Uncle his lunch. Uncle always complained about Cook’s food. Every dog is a tiger in his own street, Cook used to say. I did not know if he meant Uncle was the dog believing he was a tiger, or if I was. When I dropped that bird poop into Uncle’s lunch each day, I felt like the tiger.”
I laughed until my cheeks ached. My body was still tingling with delight at Amir’s story when Bear’s face flashed in my mind. I thought of the irritated expression my brother wore when he skulked by the three of us sitting cozily on the porch.
“Did you ask my dad to teach you to whittle just to annoy Bear?”
Amir laughed. “I also wanted to learn to whittle. It wasn’tjustto annoy Bear.”
I smiled. Amir might not read as well as I did, but he was clever in other ways.
“You won’t tell your father about Bear?” he asked.
“No. I promise.”
Amir was silent, the bedsprings still below him. “I’ve never had a friend like you, Merrow.”
I could not see him in the darkness of the room, but I knew he was smiling. I smiled back. “I’ve never had a friend like you, either, Amir.”
THE NEXT MORNING,before the sun rose, before my father could tell us not to, we put on bathing suits and grabbed towels and hurried outside. Fog hung in the cold air. Pal barked at our heels, nearly tripping us at every turn. We raced down the switchback path to the beach and straight into the ice-cold water.
Amir was ahead of me, but I’d already discovered that I was a faster swimmer and knew I would easily catch up. The water was black and freezing, and we kept moving so our limbs wouldn’t grow heavy with cold. All the while, Pal barked anxiously from the shore. The sea was calm, roiling gently around us. We dove along the surface of the water. Amir’s stroke was getting stronger, but I easily swam past him, grinning.
We dragged ourselves out of the water and collapsed breathless onto the sand, teeth chattering. The moon and the sunwere both in the sky. The speckled sea stretched out before us like a frost-covered meadow. Glossy ribbons of purple seaweed hung from the rocks, a gift that would be taken back as the tide rose. I pulled off a piece and ate it. Amir watched, wide-eyed, then did the same.
“Salty,” he said. He yanked off another piece and handed half of it to me. We chewed and looked out at the water.
