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Show 7 nothing. As he has been taught, he turns around and prepares to scoot down backwards to reach what he thinks is a stair. When I look up-and Pele does grant me that, the moment when I turn from the hammer-falls and risk the possibility of letting the boards slip~what I see is my brother dangling from the second story of the house. His feet comb the air frantically for the next step. Twenty feet below is the unblemished concrete. Only his arms keep him held to the door sill. Dad, I yell and the hammering stops immediately. He looks at my hands for blood, thinking he has somehow hit me, pinched my fingers between the boards. Bryan, I say, pointing to the dangling legs far above our heads. Now Bryan starts to whimper. Like a missile, my father bursts from crouched to standing. Go get him, he yells. He cannot run up to save his son because he must wait below, sun blinding him, and hope that when that tiny body falls he will have the agility and presence of mind to catch him. He fears he will not make it in time, will have played his ace in the hole and lost. In the moment when time stands still and Bryan dangles above, he considers the wind, the slant of the sun, the velocity with which a tiny body will fall. Rooted under the struggling legs of his son, he sends his daughter instead. \ S I The responsibility for my brother's life is handed over to me with three words, and I run up the stairs. Do I think of the nail polish remover, the way his stomach was pumped, the scars left on his throat from the burning acetone? Do I imagine ways I might redeem the past? Or do I only do as my father has ordered? Balancing on the few boards 67 |