After the Storm, Columbus Day, 1962

After the storm, my brother (all gangly knees and elbows) bore the brunt of its ferocious aftermath. Every day after school I watched his wiry biceps bulge a little as his handsaw scritched against the tree which had fallen diagonally across our front yard. I witnessed the violence of metal on wood, the violence of The King of the Mountain’s smirk as he too watched, his greedy eyes taking in my brother’s razor sharp collar bone, with jaw set in furious concentration. This imposed punishment was meant to goad my brother, meant to tempt him to rage so that the next time the stepdad slugged him he would feel justified, holy even. Kneeling on scratchy couch to watch I scrunched my shoulders, Folding into myself like an accordion, gathering myself up to make of me something smaller; I pressed my knees together wrapping my arms around them and lowered my head, waiting for the sky to rain trees with swollen trunks, and branches thrust downward as if warding off a sickening impact with earth. My brother, it seems, must be punished for the crime of his existence; for this the stepdad’s eyes shone bright, bright as the heavy duty flashlights he begrudgingly loaned my brother so he could work far into the night. His eyes fairly burned with lust— The lust of sadism’s glee. I saw him lick his lips; You’d have thought he’d conjured up this Columbus Day Storm all by himself for the sole purpose of proving to my brother that he had no right to co-exist with him in the same universe. I watched until my eyes burned and my head ached dully and my brother, sweating and chilled, laid down his saw swiped his arm across his forehead, and straightening up, met my wary gaze with the scoured look of shame whittled down into hatred, sawn away into stumpy pieces like an old tree trunk. After the storm my brother cleaned up nature’s wrath. He stood a little taller and his eyes, when they met his abuser’s, burned unflinching. After the storm we feigned memory loss Pretended that nothing had shifted in our family dynamic. We sat down to meals silent and repressed and picked up our forks as if the stepdad hadn’t just won a major battle, as if my brother’s days in that household were not numbered.