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chewingonmylaptop · 2 months

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What Happened Before

A prologue to a currently unnamed WIP I've recently dusted off

CW: mild mentions of drugs, child abuse, and death

My parents had more kids than they deserved. They were dubiously equipped to handle raising a goldfish but still they decided to try their luck on four human beings. I'm about ninety percent sure that they never would’ve had any children - or even made it to their one year dating anniversary - if it weren’t for me being born. So I guess that means apologies are in order for my siblings. I wonder if there’s an Edible Arrangement for years of childhood trauma and neglect.

Although my relatives would never admit it, I was definitely an accident. There's no way my nineteen year old mother decided on a whim to marry her twenty five year old boyfriend after four months of dating and then popped out a kid seven months later. And, no, I wasn’t a premature baby like my grandmother proclaimed to anyone who raised an eyebrow after doing the math. I was nine and a half pounds. There’s another Edible Arrangement I need to order.

They named me Dallas after the city where they met. Which was fine in Texas but when I was three weeks from my second birthday they packed us up and moved us to Indianapolis. I don’t know why I do, but I remember vividly what happened the day we moved in. I was standing on the ugly beige carpet of my new bedroom surrounded by boxes when I heard my mom scream from down the hall. Her water had broken and she was being a little dramatic about it. It was time for my new sibling to be born. I was ushered out of the house without my favorite stuffed fox. Of course, I threw a massive tantrum in the driveway. That was the first time I ever saw what was eventually dubbed the ‘rage vein’ in my father’s neck. The first time I was ever scared of him. I cried a lot then.

They named my sister Grace. For years she lamented that it was too boring but then she got over it. After all, you could only expect so much from a couple of white people from Texas. Grace Annaleigh Parker. Not kidding. I don't know if she still goes by Grace anymore. I honestly don’t even know if she still goes by ‘she’ anymore. It’s hard to talk about the important stuff. I try, but there’s something in our way. I wish I knew what it was.

We were close when we were kids. That's sort of what happens when you’re not too far apart in age. I think I was a good brother back then, all things considered. She’d steal my toys and I'd snatch them back but I wouldn't make a big deal about it. I never yelled at her or pulled her hair even though it was always in ribboned pigtails that were at just the right height for a proper yank of revenge. She didn’t make it easy for me, though. Whenever she got mad, her gut reaction was to fling the nearest object directly at my head. I still have a scar just above my eyebrow from a little metal train she hurled at me one day. I remember running straight to my mom screaming, sticky blood dripping down my face. I immediately stained the pretty pink dress she used to wear frequently but she didn’t say a word about that. She just held me tightly and rocked me back and forth, telling me I'd be alright and that it would stop hurting. She was always good at soothing us when we cried. She smelled like apples and soap made with honey. At least she did when we were that small.

Everything changed after Nate was born. He was the real premature baby. Grace and I weren't able to see him until after he left the NICU and by then he was nearly a month old. He was four pounds exactly when he came home and he cried for hours and hours and hours. Ao one could ever get him to calm down. He wouldn’t eat either. I vividly remember one day when my mom was sobbing on the floor with Nate red-faced and screaming on his back in front of her. I kept thinking: he’s so sad, why won’t she just hold him? I didn't know what to do. I was only six after all. But I knew what helped me when I was crying. So I picked him up. Maybe I'm making this last detail up to delude myself into thinking I was a better brother than I was, but I swear his crying got quieter. My mom's did too. but she still laid on the floor, her cheek pushed against the carpet, her puffy eyes staring at nothing. Word spread quickly through the family about the problems with Nate and, subsequently, the problems with my mom. He was born addicted to cocaine. And that was her fault entirely.

I didn't see much of my extended family after that. My father’s parents had already died and his siblings wanted nothing to do with my druggie mom. Except for my Aunt Leah. She was always sweet to us kids. She’d bring us treats and little dollar store toys every visit. I got the feeling that I was her favorite. Or maybe I just really needed to be someone’s favorite. My mom’s own parents shunned her too after piecing together what caused the problems with Nate. They were really intensely Baptist and thought she was walking down a path of sin. So from then on, they pretended she didn’t exist. Despite the complete ostracism from her family, my mom clung to Nate even tighter. It's like she was trying to prove that she hadn’t doomed him from the moment of his conception. He became her favorite child, especially once the endless crying ceased. Because of his size and overall pallor, he was dubbed the fragile one, the angel. We were never allowed to play too rough near him. Nap time was sacred and we were to be silent when he slept. We could never tease him, never chase him, never take his toys. His drawings held special places on the fridge and the walls. I was never much of an artist anyway. But this whole thing pissed Grace off and I was the outlet for her anger. She was much more likely to lash out both verbally and physically. But I took it all in stride. After all, I was the big brother. I was the protector. So what if that meant I took a few hits? She couldn’t actually do much damage, being so much smaller than me.

But I couldn’t really do much protecting. As the rage vein became a more looming visitor in our house, my mom shrank into herself. She lost a lot of weight and her eyes became more dull. She didn’t smell as sweet and she didn’t hold me as tight. I quickly got too tall to curl up on her lap and too heavy for her to carry around. But she carried Nate. Every day, She held him in her arms even when he was well into elementary school. His feet rarely touched the floor as he looked down on us from his throne in our mother’s arms. To be fair, he was always tiny and she didn’t have the strength to do very much. She spent most of the time resting. At least, that’s what we called it when she would lay in her bed silently in the dark for hours upon hours.

Grace and I would ignore days like this; it was easier that way. But Nate would wait outside her bedroom like a puppy, waiting for her to come out. He would make drawings or scribble little notes and push them under the door. He would sing songs or read stories to her, telling us that she would come out when the world was nice again. Our father didn’t like any of that. He very much had a ‘suck it up and get over it’ to this sort of deep sadness and mental distress. But no matter how he screamed, Nate stayed put. That is, until our father would drag him away from the door by his shirt collar. Or by his arm. Or by his hair. The latter became the more frequent occurrence once it was discovered to be the most effective. I felt bad for Nate. But all I could do was watch from my doorway and prepare to receive Nate back into our shared bedroom. He would cry and cry and cry. I kept my hair short.

Jordan was born my freshman year of high school. There was nothing particularly notable about his birth other than the fact that he was the only one of us born with hair. Lots of it. Dark brown like our father’s. He was a quiet baby, at least compared to Nate. That time is still a blur for me. I really only remember waking up for school two months later and somehow just knowing that my mom was gone. She left in the middle of the night. Didn’t even grab anything she owned. Just left her wedding ring on the kitchen table. I think Grace saw her leave. But she won’t talk about it even to this day. Neither would my father and he wouldn’t permit any of us to do so either.

It was Hell on Earth for a while after that. Nate cried every single day, screaming that he wanted her and no one else. I would try to comfort him, wrap my arms around him like she used to do to me. But he would shove me away, kick my shins, scream at me to leave him alone. When he was inconsolable like that, my father would just yell. I became numb to the harsh words and the sound of hands smacking against flesh. What could I do? I could've stepped in. I should've stepped in. It’s too late now.

Grace became really possessive of Jordan. People liked to say she was stepping up to play mommy but I knew better. She just liked to treat him like a little doll and, when he got older, a little puppy. She loved having someone follow her around and idolize her. And, to be fair, she was easy to be impressed by. She was smart as a whip, fast as lightning, and tough as a bull. No one got in her way. I was mousy compared to her despite noticeably being nearly twice as heavy as she was. Jordan rarely ever came to me when he was in need of a playmate. But if anyone was being an actual mommy to him, it was me. The moment I got my driver’s license I also got a car seat and a lecture about how I needed to be more responsible and by taking my siblings to school and anywhere else they needed to go, I would become a better man.

To this day I feel a little twinge of anger when I think about my father’s speech. I needed to learn responsibility? Hadn’t I been responsible enough? Hadn’t I been doing everything in my power to keep my family together for years? Hadn’t I been fighting to save my siblings from the literal Hell that had been creeping up around us for who knows how long? No. In his eyes, I was just a spoiled brat because sometimes at night I would curl myself up into a tight little ball, wrap myself in my blanket, and cry. I was a sniveling, sorry excuse for a son because I missed my mom. I was an embarrassment because I acted like a woman and coddled my brothers when they cried. He never gave me any fucking credit. And that’s why when his sister called and told me he was dead, all she heard from my end was silence.

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