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Show old I was and the eight year old I have become. The gap is a secret, one I am willing to keep. I should not have been on the back of the couch. I should not have been fighting with my brother. I should not have lost control. They are standing over me, talking in whispers, feeling the bump on the back of my head. A goose bump they call it, pressing their fingers into hair tangled and matted by blood. The light is on, but I feign sleep in hopes my father will carry me from my parents' bed to my own. He does, holding me close enough that I can smell the pungent mix of food and alcohol remaining on his breath. ^_ ^^ When I awake the next morning, the world is split. I seejwo of everything: two doors, two beds, two hands, two heads. This, too, I keep secret. Within years, fallingin my family will become ordinary, a mark of hard play. On our second tour of duty in Hawaii, my brothers will fall like mangoes. Their medical records will grow heavy with each visit to the military dispensary, competing in thickness with my own. Scott will be the first to fall, from a rope swing as long as our backyard. Afterwards, home from the hospital, a cast running the length of his arm, he will say he hadn't known how to get off once he began his downward journey through the air. Letting go seemed like the only possible solution. So he did, splintering his elbow. Soon, though, falling will be so commonplace it will receive as much attention as the mail. At one point Bryan, holding his broken wrist and not uttering a singly cry, will be told by my mother to grab his medical records and meet her in the car while she locates her purse. Our neighbor, a childless man, will not believe the lack of compassion shown by my mother. My mother will not believe she is headed yet again to the dispensary. Bryan from plumeria, Scott from mango, they will be greeted by name at the 75 |