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Iris dragged the toe of her sneaker along the uneven pavement. She crossed her arms and her eyes sheened. He didn’t know if it was from the breeze, or she was just feeling some type of way.
“What happened to you in foster care, Jude?”
“They were doin’ weird shit at one house, porn and orgy parties. Swingers. Not lockin’ the doors. I’d just walk right on past and see five people all fuckin’ each other. People can do what they want, but you gotta be mindful of the children.” She nodded in agreement. “Thankfully I was never molested, but it messed me up. I saw shit no kid should be seeing. Fetish shit, like people pissin’ on other people, and cummin’ from that. My little brain couldn’t wrap around it. Another place had me as a babysitter while my foster parents went on weeklong drug binges. Marked truant, but I couldn’t leave ’cause my thirteen-year-old ass was in the house tryna feed babies cow milk instead of Similac and change diapers using dish cloths since the Huggies had run out. We were just a check to most of these families. They got paid with taxpayer money to take us in.”
“When did your grandmother come get you and Cain? You said you lived with her later on.”
“My grandmother got involved when Cain had to be taken away again after somethin’ happened that neither he nor Grandma would talk about. She decided to just get us both, so we could be back together. There was a therapist, a police officer, and a doctor that came by… a lot of whisperin’. That’s when Cain stopped talkin’. I’m sure you can put two and two together. He ain’t admit it to me, not then, not now, but he sure as hell ain’t deny it, either.”
Iris hung her head as tears fell from her eyes.
“Was Eli still at that home when all of this happened? You didn’t say.” She looked up at him and sniffed.
“Eli was taken out of foster care after a month and put in a home for kids with special needs, over in Knoxville. It actually was a half decent place from my understandin’, and he tells me emphatically that nobody ever hurt him in there, but we were split up, and that made me angry, like I told you.”
“Jude…”
“What?”
“Please tell me what happened to Eli. I know it was a car accident, but how did it happen?”
Jude took a deep breath and leaned against the building. He looked up at the sky and watched the clouds move around, drawing closer as if they, too, wanted to know what broke him in half.
“The accident happened a few months before our parents passed away. He’d gotten hit by that car. That added a whole ’nother level of stress at home. My mama was at her cousin’s house helping with laundry that day, if my memory serves me right. My father was God knows where,” he shrugged, “but I was playing baseball at my friend’s house up the road. Eli was home with Cain. Cain was supposed to be watchin’ him, but he wasn’t. Eli was little. Cain was young and bein’ a kid. He was playing a game on one of those old electronic doohickeys that took batteries. You know, the handhelds where you could play like Donkey-Kong and stuff.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Eli somehow got outta the house and started playin’ in the front yard. The front screen door must’ve been open. He had a ball with him apparently. The ball ran out in the street. He went after it. He was so small, especially for his age. He’d been born a little premature. The guy drivin’ didn’t see him and ran right into him.” He could feel his head throbbing and the heat in his body rising… rising… rising… “Eli became airborne. He landed right on his head.”
Iris shook her head, sobbing louder now.
“I came home, about ten minutes after that. Everyone standing around was afraid to touch Eli. He looked like a broken porcelain doll, just lyin’ there, twitchin’. The guy who hit him put a blanket over him and was tryna talk to him… red in the face as he was… panicking… Cain come outta that house from all the screamin’ and carryin’ on. He was in shock. He was looking at Eli’s little chest rise… fall… rise… fall… blood all over the fuckin’ place.
“A woman screamed and said she was callin’ for an ambulance. Most people wasn’t sayin’ nothin’. It was like being trapped in a television screen… like it was a movie, but real. It was surreal. I picked him up in my arms, screamin’ for somebody, anybody to help me take him to the hospital. Ambulances took forever comin’ out that way. People died waitin’ for help all the time. The driver didn’t want to go to jail, so he just stood there beggin’ us to not tell the police. Said he’d pay the hospital bills. All he cared about was himself. I started yellin’ at Cain, but he was just standin’ there crying, and staring into space. I started runnin’ with my baby brother up the road, towards where I knew the hospital was. Wasn’t no way I could run fifteen miles to it, but I was gonna damn sure try.
“I was cryin’ out! HELP! HELP MY BABY BROTHER! Finally, I saw red and blue lights, and he was taken from me, put on the gurney, driven to the hospital. He had frontal lobe damage. Swelling. Seemed like everyone thought he was gonna die. Somehow, by the grace of God, he made it. He survived. But not without his life bein’ forever changed. Eli went from being super talkative, silly, an early reader and walker, to barely able to spell his name. He’d forgotten how to walk, talk, just about everything. He was jumpy and fearful. For a few weeks, he didn’t remember who our parents were, nor Cain—but he rememberedme.” He held his chin high and pointed at himself. “I knew for sure at that very moment that we had a special bond. I vowed to always take care of him and protect him. Then, before we could catch our breath from that, all the physical therapy and surgeries and stuff Eli had to have, our parents died.
“’Tennessee Bonnie and Clyde caught. Shot on scene.’It was all over the damn news, Iris. I couldn’t go no damn where without people asking me about it. I don’t have proof of this, and it’s just a theory, but I think Eli’s accident is what helped get the attention of the police.”
“What does one have to do with the other?”
“Well, come to find out, they couldn’t find the man that had hit Eli. He’d run off, fled town after the police wanted to question him. Eli’s bills was stackin’ up, so, my Daddy went on and paid ’em. Daddy, from my understanding, said he got the money fair and square. Said he raised the cash by askin’ around the neighborhood, doing work for people, and wiped out all the savings. That didn’t sit right with some folks I imagine. Somebody thought it mighty suspicious, I think. I believe the police was probably watching my parents from that moment on, thinkin’ they were into something illegal to get their hands on that amount of money in such a short time period. They were right. Again, Iris, this is just a theory of mine. I think it holds water.”
He turned and spit in the trampled grass. “I was just a child, but my childhood ended the day my parents left this world. All we had was each other, but now, that was gone, too. Mama’s family, cept that one cousin of hers, had left Tennessee years prior. They moved back up North. Daddy’s family didn’t help. We had nobody to take us in. Cain was messed up after Eli’s accident, and even more messed up after our parents died. He started drinkin’ and takin’ drugs, and blamed himself for Eli bein’ how he is. He still does to this day. He can’t handle even talking about it. He ain’t seen Eli in years. He doesn’t call him, either. The guilt is just too strong.
“It didn’t help that Daddy, while drunk one night, blamed Cain, too. He said,‘Boy, you ain’t good for shit! We asked you to watch after your brother for one hour, and you let my baby boy go out in the street and get his brains scrambled.”Then, he picked up a belt and gave him a hard beating. Daddy was cryin’, wailin’ and carrying on. Mama came running in and pulled him off. Daddy spent the next day apologizing to Cain. They cried together, but everyone knew deep down he’d meant what he said. Including Cain.
“The truth comes out when you’re smashed. The shit Daddy couldn’t say while sober, the shit he had bottled up, he poured it out while intoxicated, and spilled it all over the gotdamn floor. We’d walk in, slip and fall on his drunken truth. Break our backs and hearts. The truth hurts.”
He hung his head and sobbed. Everything came out like an erupting volcano, and he simply couldn’t hold it in a second longer. He felt Iris’ warm embrace then. She smelled like sweet dreams and fresh baked forgiveness. He brought her as close as he could.
“Cain suffered. Eli suffered. We all… suffered. I was going to tell ya, Iris. Eventually. For real.”
She rubbed his head, kissed his cheek, and squeezed him.
“I’m sorry for all the pain you had in your life, baby.”
He kissed her back, then stepped away.
