All That Remains

When I was young, I met three brothers. They were the first three I met on the way to what turned out to be a four year trip to Mexico. That first week’s stay on the border was frightening in that big house full of strange people, morning devotions, provisioned food, picnic tables at meals, women openly breast-feeding babies, scores of children for whom it was difficult to tell to which parents they belonged, afternoons naps in unfamiliar rooms on sheets that didn’t look clean, surrounded by hundreds of flies from which it was only possible to escape by covering yourself with a sheet to sleep, unbearable heat and a back field that stretched as far as the horizon.

I imagined escaping across that field.

To where, I didn’t know.

I felt caught in a funhouse where everything was distorted, unfamiliar, odd and strangely menacing. Under the sweet, soft voices of the scantily clad adult women, I sensed the same sadistic fierceness I’d felt from similar women in the school in Brazil in which I lived as a child. Their hair smelled like flowers, their skin was soft and they spoke of Jesus and love as they took off your clothes and beat you with a comb for wetting the bed, falling out of step with the other children during a performance, or not eating the liver which was heaped on your plate at meals.

Now, I was 13 years old. I unassuredly hoped that time and age would help me escape from again being the mouse in one of these new she-cats’ bathroom games. When I saw another teenager, a 14 year old boy, my hopes were lost. He was tall, a red-haired giant, but on the back of his legs just below the hem of his shorts, I saw the thin red and brown marks made only by the handle of a wire fly-swatter or wire clothes hanger.

I’d just spent four years in traditional school in the United States, made friends, gone to movies, excelled at some sports and even had my own room and slumber parties at one point. All that was now closing in on me felt dirty, and with each passing day I was miles and miles away from the life I’d known before. The realization that comes from the climb up a large rollercoaster was now setting in. Just close your eyes, hold your breath and wait for it to be over.

If you panic, it will only make it worse.

As I sat holding my breath, I saw the three brothers. They came into view – actors entering stage right at the beginning of a new scene. One was clearly the eldest, tall, dark hair, in charge. Their mother was out, and he’d been left to watch over the younger ones which were assigned to clean up the picnic tables and kitchen after the afternoon meal. The younger two were batting food left scattered on the floor back and forth between themselves with the brooms they were holding. The elder scolded the younger two, a scolding which included the quoting of scripture on foolishness, as he stepped between them and began lifting the benches onto the tables to facilitate the sweeping which had now become a game. In lovingly mocking fashion, the younger two quoted scriptures right back at him and continued their game, now with some effort to actually remove the debris from the floor after having their fun with it. The elder looked at me, rolled his eyes and smiled. Nothing was said, but an instant connection was made. I knew right away I liked these three. Not only were they not panicking, they were actually enjoying what they could of the climb up the rollercoaster.

Later that afternoon, the three brothers entered the stage once again, this time carrying crates of donated pineapple to prepare for everyone to eat at snack. In complaining of and discarding the rotten pieces of fruit which made up the majority, I realized that they too had recognized the roadside car accident with the fatalistic nature of the life in which they were living. Rather than parrot the propaganda of “praise and thankfulness” they were fed everyday, they could see and identify the rotten parts of both the fruit and their lives, the one in which I had just been re-submerged. The four of us – the tall, wiser elder brother, the thin, dark-haired boyish-faced middle brother and the blond, happy-go-lucky younger brother and I, all sat gladly eating and cutting pineapple and lemon and sprinkling chili powder until the crates were empty and our tongues bled. It was a light-hearted afternoon, while the adults slept in the various cavernous rooms around the main dining hall.

It was the last such afternoon I would enjoy for many years.

I always remembered the three brothers, especially the middle boyish-faced brother. He was quiet and quick-witted. I admired him and feared for him at the same time. A sharp mind and an articulate tongue was a dangerous combination in a society that valued conformity and readily quoted the mantra, “It’s not yours to question why. It’s just yours to do or die.”

I can’t be sure if I didn’t see the three again together, or whether my mind has successfully blocked it out, as it has many other unpleasant memories. It was certainly the last time I saw the brothers as care-free and open.

It was about three years later that the eldest brother and I came to live together in a school in Mexico. By this time, all traces of childhood things and light-hearted attitudes were gone in us. I’d become assimilated into all that’d I’d viewed years earlier as odd and freakish, and he’d gone from the lovingly disapproving, but protective older brother to the quiet unseen shadow who haunted the halls of the school doing his work and avoiding notice. He was smart. He’d learned what I had through many a painful lesson, which was the less you were noticed, the less pain you experienced. Strength and leadership was contraband to the drug-sniffing dog regime we lived under and they never failed to set the dogs barking. A bark with an even worse bite.

There was no connection between him and I which had come as easily as it had that afternoon years before. We didn’t even venture a glance or a comment. The walls had eyes. Yet, one day, without either of us ever expecting it, we found ourselves alone together in the boys’ dormitory. I can remember a bucket between us, which belonged to the work one of us was engaged in, most likely me. I was the one who had set off the dogs with the arrival of my flagrantly strong-willed character. Later, I remember reading a report to my step-father from the director of the school that described me as “hard-headed”. What was omitted was how they dealt with that.

I’ve always wondered if my step-father would have cared had he known.

Yet, in that short moment alone in the boys’ dormitory, surrounded by triple bunks, I reconnected with the eldest brother. This time we knew better than to make a remark which included a negative comment, or even so much as an opinion. We’d both learned better long before, some time between the pineapple and the bucket. Yet, even without the words to assist, two children recognized themselves and their mutual experiences within the other and bonded. I remember his kind looks. He was ever the loving elder brother.

It was in the winter of that year that I came full circle with regard to knowing the three brothers’ family. Their mother came to live in the new school where I’d been sent. She was alone. She was part of the displaced leadership, of the organization that controlled my life, which was being retrained in ever more stringent policies and procedures from individuals trained in Japan. The leadership trained in Japan was fierce, they made the women in the bathroom seem like wet-nurses. They were capable of maintaining the soft voice even while they applied a household implement to your body. Even one as well versed in what caused trouble as I’d become, I was incapable of foreseeing the enormity of what was coming.

Somehow, adults undergoing “retraining” seemed for the first time like companions. Our shared knowledge of complete lack of control and power, even over our own location and bodies, drew us together. The mother of the three brothers became my friend. Rather than fear her, I taught her to crochet. We crocheted most every free moment in the evenings after our work. Our crocheting was one element over which we had some control. Because the brothers’ mother was an adult, she had money to buy yarn. She bought some of the softest, most beautiful yarn I’d ever seen. She selected four colors, one for each of her boys, and set out to make them each a scarf. There was green, red, blue and one other.

It upsets me no end that I can’t remember the fourth color. I thought it was black, but that surely isn’t right.

It might have been grey.

I think my problem with not remembering the fourth color is linked to my lack of knowledge of the fourth brother. I never met him. I didn’t know he existed prior. I never gave any thought to the fact that there were four colors and four finished scarves before she left us to return home at the end of winter. It wasn’t until more than ten years later when I found the eldest brother again as an adult, that I learned the fourth brother had died. Since then, I’ve become obsessed with remembering the color of his scarf, as though somehow it would bring something back of his memory.

When I first learned of the fourth brother’s death, my heart stopped. I thought for a fleeting second it was the middle brother with boyish good looks who’d died. When his mother lived with us that Winter she spoke of his “problems” and efforts the new leadership were making to “help him”. I was too afraid to know more. From my own experiences and the things I’d witnessed, I could imagine what was being employed to “save him”. I’d always known it would only be a matter of time before his mind and wit drew attention to him. Yet, learning it was not the middle brother who’d died was only partly comforting.

Now, I am haunted by the need to preserve the memory of the fourth brother who I never knew. I can’t even remember the color of his scarf. At the memorial this year, they read his initials. His name was withheld at the request of his widow, as his children had not been told their father was gone. I found it odd that more than a year had passed, and they still didn’t know. Yet, her wish was respected. Only the two initials of the fourth brother were read. That is all that remains of him, two initials.

S.R.

I don’t know why it bothers me so much. I didn’t know the boy. There have certainly been others who have passed away I knew much better. Yet, I cannot live with the thought that something as precious as the existence of a fourth brother would go unnoticed, unknown or forgotten.

Regardless of how things ended, I know there was love for him. I saw the hours invested in his scarf. There was love in every stitch. From the place in my heart with which I love my own son, that place that is connected to every nerve, muscle and fiber of my being, I hurt for his loss. I imagine losing my own boy, and immediately my arms ache to hold him. I breathe deeply trying to remember the smell of his hair when I kiss his head. I feel the need to go to him and hold him so tightly that not even God could tear him away.

It is not natural to bury your child. Something in the world is thrown off when it happens, and nothing can repair it or set it right, just as surely as nothing can bring him back. My own grandmother did it. She buried her son, my father, when he was only three years older than I am now. She never recovered.

I just wish I could remember the color of his scarf. I wish I’d known him. I would never allow one of the three brothers to pass without notice. Even in our limited contact, they touched me and I was forever changed.

That is worth remembering and preserving.

And while I am ever cognizant of the impression they made on me and the precious connection we once shared, I am powerless to preserve any memory of the fourth brother beyond his two initials.

(Some background to this here - Ed.)