Pouches to Keep Things Cold

Fiction

Photo by Steph Q on Unsplash

My brother flew into these silent rages, where spit would ooze out the corners of his mouth, and his eyes would kind of cross like he meant to leave them there and he would take scissors and cut big chunks from his hair.

My mom made a silly dance show of taking the scissors to hide, scissors would be gone from anyone’s hands but hers.

I heard my parents talking about my brother needing help, and my father suggested quarterback camp down in Texas. He knew a guy, and dozens of kids from the camp made the NFL, and my mom screamed that my dad wasn’t paying attention.

The next morning my brother, who must have heard our parents too, went in the garage and chopped off most of his pinkie finger.

By the time he showed me the nub he had made a tourniquet out of the rubber bands for my braces that my parents yelled about every time the bill came.

My father found the blood in the garage next to his tools and when he confronted us and saw my brother’s missing finger he told my mother my brother needed help, and my mother screamed that they had to find the finger to reattach it.

My father told her it was too late, that judging by the dryness of the blood it had been hours.

My mother went in search of my brother’s finger, screaming and emptying drawers like my brother had just put the cut-off finger away as though he was tidying the house.

They took my brother to the emergency room and left me at home by myself for the first time in my life.

I wondered if my mom would give the scissors back so my brother would cut his hair instead of his fingers.

I drank the brown liquid in the jar in the freezer that only Grandmomma drank when she came over and I barfed on my mom’s needlepoint she always worked on but never finished.

A few weeks later I heard my father tell my Uncle Rory that the emergency room found my brother’s finger in his own butthole.

I thought it was a joke at first, but my dad wasn’t smacking his lips like he did before the punchline of a joke, and he was drinking Grandmomma’s brown freezer juice.

My mom thought I barfed because I was nervous being home alone, and I told her being alone didn’t make me nervous.

I might have barfed if I had known my brother had his own cut-off finger in his butthole while I was talking to him, but I didn’t know til my father said it, weeks later.

Then my father told my Uncle Rory he always thought I was the faggot, not my brother, and he couldn’t have two sons who was faggots or he’d die.

My Uncle Rory told my father maybe he was the one that needed help, and my father counted all his fingers to my Uncle, out loud, and told my Uncle Rory if he talked any more crazy talk he wasn’t welcome at our house any more.

Uncle Rory drove me to the Greyhound Station so I could go to quarterback camp. The whole way I told Uncle Rory that I had never thrown a real football, just a Nerf, and I didn’t want to go to quarterback camp, and they were gonna hate me and throw me out.

Uncle Rory kept telling me it would be okay, because my father knew a guy, that the guy my father knew would teach me everything and how getting out of my house was for the best, and to just relax and have fun.

On the bus I opened my duffel bag because my mother told me she put a can of Tahitian Treat in there in a little pouch that keeps things cold.

She said the pouch was what she was looking for when my brother cut his finger off, so they could save the finger.

When the duffel bag was open, I didn’t see the little pouch, I just saw my mother’s needlepoint. It was a pillow now, a little white pillow, with sunny side up eggs and two strips of bacon. One of the bacons looked like it had a bite out of it but it was just where my mother didn’t finish the needlepoint, and I could still see the brown stain where I had barfed on it.

***

This is the second story I’ve written today and the one I liked best of the two, if “liked” is applicable here.

Thanks to those of you who have ventured into the archive and left overwhelmingly positive comments.

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