Et Tu, Brian, pt2

The days of summer were coming to a close, and soon, I’d be entering school for the first time. I hoped with all my might that there would be more than one classroom so that I would not be stuck with her again. One afternoon over grilled cheese sandwiches, I asked my mother about this. Calpurnia sat much too close to my left and sipped a glass of milk as I made my inquisition. Mother smiled,

“Well, Brian, they do have several different classes at your new school. There are three, I believe.”

Calpurnia put down her glass of milk and smiled so widely, I felt my stomach turn.

“But we are in the same one!” she said, ecstatically. I slumped in my chair and said nothing more for the rest of the day. Just my luck, I thought, she’ll never go away. Once we’d cleaned up and washed our hands, Mother sent us out to play. Calpurnia grabbed me by the hand and dragged me with her as she ran towards the hill in the back yard.

Upon reaching the edge, she pulled me close against her and kissed me on the mouth. I grew catatonic and she pulled away, looking at me with those wide blue eyes. She smiled at me and I felt my stomach turn again. Without a second thought, I vomited all over the grass, just barely missing her little white sandals. Calpurnia screamed and my mother called out to us, hobbling down from the porch to see what was happening. I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my t-shirt and looked up at Calpurnia, glaring.

“Are you okay?” She asked me. I pushed her to send her tumbling down the hill, but she grabbed a hold of me and took me along with her. She laughed and screamed and held onto me for dear life. To protect myself from bodily damage, I did just the same. I could hear my mother yelling for us as we tumbled down. We came to a halt when the earth grew flat.

I wriggled myself out of her grasp and stood immediately, dusting the blades of grass from my clothes. She lay on the grass, giggling still and rolling around like an infant.

“Brian, look! Grass angels!” she cried, moving her arms up and down as if she had wings. I rolled my eyes and headed for the hill to march home.

“Brian, wait!” she grabbed onto my ankles and sent me toppling down into the grass again. “Make angels with me!”

I sneered and pushed her.

“I hate you,” I said. She only smiled more.

“Na uh!”

“Ya huh!”

“My mommy says that when boys are mean, they like you!”

“I don’t!” I shouted, raising my little fists in the air like a heated gorilla.

“You like me! You like me! You like me!” she chanted in a sing-song voice.

“No, I don’t. Shut up!”

“You love me!” she entwined herself around me in such a fashion that I’d have needed a pair of industrial pliers to pry her off of me.

“Brian! Cally!” My mother called. Startled by the sound, she gasped and let go of me. The relief was exquisite to me, better than any of the sweet treats my father brought back from his journeys at sea. I ran up the hill with great haste, doing my damnedest to escape her, but she followed with such vehemence, the task proved near impossible. I reached the top of the hill, breathless. I paused for a moment to catch it just before I felt her tackle me from behind, knocking the wind out of me all over again. We fell to the ground as a unit and she laughed. I rolled over and glared at her.

“Stop!” I insisted.

“Make me!” she stuck her tongue out at me and crossed her arms.

My eye twitched and, without a second thought, I swung my little fist hard into her eye. She screamed and wailed at the top of her lungs, writhing on the ground in pain. I got up and walked away from her and back to my swing, lackadaisical, apathetic, unmoved by her suffering. My mother ran off of the porch, screaming my name bloody murder as she rushed to Calpurnia’s side. I began to swing back and forth, escaping my reality into a world of thought and dreaming.

“He hit me,” I heard her wail through choked tears, but thought nothing of it.

I swung higher and higher, imagining what the clouds would taste like if I could reach them, how the sun would feel if I could touch it, how the world would look if I were above it.

“Brian!”

I ignored her.

“Brian!”

Still tasting the clouds and swinging above the trees.

“BRIAN!”

My mother pulled the swing to a halt, forcing me to come back down to Earth. Calpurnia stood at her side, sniffling like the baby that she was. I looked at her, then at the girl.

“Get off of that swing this instant,” she demanded. I stared at her for a moment before climbing down.

“Why did you hit her?” she asked. My gaze shifted to the sniveling little princess. I could see a bruise starting to form at the site of my mean left hook. I frowned, slightly, then looked back at my mother, shrugging.

“Brian, under no circumstances do you hit!”

“She wouldn’t stop!” I snapped.

“No excuses. Do not do it ever again. Do you understand?”

Calpurnia wiped her nose on her little pink dress and pouted. I sighed, saying nothing more.

“Well, apologize.” My mother said.

“What?”

“Apologize! Say you’re sorry.”

I crossed my arms and kicked gravel across the ground.

“No,” I said, lowly.

“Brian, I am going to count to three. You’re already in trouble. Don’t make it worse for yourself.”

I said nothing. Why be sorry for her faults? She’d brought it upon herself, after all, by irritating me so extensively.

“It’s okay, Brian. I still love you,” Calpurnia said. I raised my eyes to her to find her smiling. Somehow, that dopey grin coupled with her bruised, swollen face stirred a reaction in me. I felt the corners of my cheeks begin to burn as the muscles shifted. Somehow, the little princess had ushered a sickening smile out of me. I don’t know why nor how, but perhaps it had something to do with the twisted pleasure I gained from torturing her, yet always keeping her on my side. Perhaps this could prove useful for me as we entered school together. She would protect me, and I would give her the minutest pieces of myself to always make her beg for more. She’d do anything I said. Anything.

That night, upon the arrival of my father, I got the spanking of a lifetime. I think my backside was raw until the second month of kindergarten. The entire time, however, no matter how hard his hand met my skin, I did not flinch or shed a tear. I lay across the bed and took every lashing with a sense of pride. He taught me from a very early age to show no emotion, as many fathers often do their sons. Who knew how gravely it would affect me.

I lay in the bathtub that evening, letting my mind mull over the day as the bubbles swirled around me. I watched them dance, twirling around and around, waltzing, colliding, then evaporating into nothingness. In a way, it was exactly how I wished to be. I sank below the surface of the water and slowly opened my eyes. For a moment, the soap stung, but I recovered quickly. I glanced around, noticing how blurred and rippled everything now appeared, like a dream sequence in a bad movie. I saw my sponge creeping across the bottom of the tub, swimming like a bottom feeder, walking like a crab. I reached out to take a hold of it, but it slipped away from my reach. Not thinking, I breathed in a full mouth of air, taking the soapy water into my lungs.

I burst through the top of the water, gasping, choking, sputtering. Oh, I could feel the life draining from my very bones. I tried to shout, but could make no sound. I grabbed the bar of soap and threw it as hard as I could against the bathroom door, producing an epic thud. The air escaped me, the light turned to darkness. The end must have assuredly been nigh as I slipped below the water’s surface into slumber.

I woke in the same fashion I had gone to sleep: gasping, choking, sputtering. My father knelt above me, pushing on my chest. I looked to his left and saw my mother, sobbing and hugging her swollen belly. I blinked and took in a shoddy breath.

“He’s back, Janet,” my father said, resting a calming hand on my mother’s arm. She wailed and swallowed me in her arms like an infant.

“Oh, Brian. Thank God!” she sobbed. I shivered from the cold, still bare and wet. My mother wrapped me in a towel and dried my hair.

“Should we take him to the hospital?” she asked, “Brian are you all right?”
I looked at her, unmoved,

“I didn’t dream,” I said.
“What?”

“I went to sleep, but I didn’t dream. It was just dark.”

She did not respond to my statement, but simply carried me back to my bedroom and helped me into my pajamas. She kissed me on the forehead and stroked my hair.

“Get some rest, sweetie. You’ve got a big day ahead of you. School’s starting.”
She planted one last kiss on my forehead and closed the lights.

“Sweet dreams.”

I closed my eyes and drifted away to my most favorite of all places. Yes, I did dream in this sleep, and, oh, was it sweet. Who’d have known just how quickly I’d end up once again in the dark when my eyes opened with morning.