"Things We Use to Get Through the Night"

The lights are out when I get into our bedroom and there is Jack hugging the spear under his Star Wars blanket. There is no way he is asleep squeezing that spear so tightly. He is playing the same game as our mother and I am more than okay with this. Seeing him like this brings me a notch down on the anger scale. Jack is much more pleasant unconscious or at least, pretending to be.


I strip out of my t-shirt and cargo pants and pull a long pajama shirt over my head. I remove the Disney card from under my pillow. In the half light from the kitchen I can make out the blissful faces of Prince Charming and Cinderella, untainted and smiling at each other, ignorantly assuming that no harm could ever come to either one of them.


I flop onto my bed. The card rests on my chest like it is a baby, like it needs me. But I know the only babies in this room are Jack and me. Call it a spear, call it a card, this is what we do to get through the night, to accept the unacceptable in our lives. Loss makes a person do crazy things like scare people you only want to befriend. It’s just hard to see crazy when it’s happening inside.


“I’m such an idiot,” I mutter to the glow-in-the-dark stars on our water-stained ceiling.


“No, you’re not an idiot. You’re selfish though, you’re very selfish,” Jack says all serious, like he has a PhD in idiot assessment.


“Excuse me, Midget?”


“If you didn’t want that purse you should have just said ‘no thanks.’ That’s all you would have had to say, ‘no thanks.’ You didn’t have to punch her in the heart like that. You didn’t have to put down her niceness you know.” His voice is tight, ready to break.


“I didn’t do it on purpose, okay?”


“Whisper, will you please? You see, this is what I mean. You are doing it right now, thinking only of yourself. This is what breaks mom’s heart.” He punches his pillow.


“I get it. Now just shut up and go to sleep,” I whisper and slap the curtain.


“That’s why you’re gonna get it tomorrow. Mom’s not finished with you. No way, Jose,” he says and throws himself back down on his bed.


“What the hell are you talking about?”


“And I’m not a midget, I’m ten!”


I fly off the bed and yank the curtains to the side. “Jack, what are you talking about?” I shake him. “Jack, what is mom going to do?”


“Please leave me my privacy or you’ll wake up mom and then you’ll really be in trouble,” he says calmly, like he’s planned for this moment.


“Fine, go choke on your spear,” I say and pull the curtain between us again.


I pull the covers over me and tuck the Disney card under my pillow. I am like a little girl the night before Christmas, all giddy with what mom has in store for me. All that anger means she cares. Besides, what could she possibly punish me with that could be so awful?