Kelley

there were his baseball cards collected in a shoebox, his model submarines, and planes. he paced in a restless waddle from corner to corner in our bedroom. he could beat me at any game and always wanted to prove it. the five years separating our births often proved to be a continent. sometimes we slept in bunk beds and he would get the top bed. so often he was sick that mom & dad would worry until finally he would pull through. nervously he rattled and dogeared the corners of every comic book, every magazine he read. he collected baseball cards in a shoebox, model submarines, and planes. despite his love for sports, I hated them all. he played them a lot with his friends. it was so important for him to win. he always wanted me to come along. he wanted me to love sports, and I tried hard to like them. sometimes I thought I did. we played ping-pong and as with every competition, he always beat me. checkers, chess, Monopoly, and badminton. I lost every time we played. still, he never tired of competing with me. and he was always eager to include me in any game. he always tried to coax me even when I did not wish to participate, when I started kindergarten we would stand at the street corner waiting for the school bus. he wore a red coat. the big sixth-grade girls laughed and called me names. I would cry into that red coat I would cling to that red coat and feel protected. he collected baseball cards in a shoebox, model submarines and planes. sometimes he went to this big hill of dirt where he jumped off with his friends. he brought me once and I stood staring down that slope, white with fear. he kept coaxing me to jump, I could barely hear his words. I was already seven, I decided. that was when I jumped. he always wanted me there to help the other older guys build tree forts with bent nails, cracked boards, and long thick ropes. I also won’t forget our exploration of Hell’s Cave, our neighborhood Carlsbad Cavern. with candles and flashlights, we crawled on our bellies for fifty feet until the cave opened into the first inner chamber. at the swimming pool, he coaxed me up onto the high dive. as time stopped, I looked down from the end of the board, blind with dizzy dread. everyone at the pool that day watched my struggle. everyone cheered my panicked final leap, my body tumbling through naked space. I did it. he collected baseball cards in a shoebox, model submarines and planes. for a time, we shared a basement bedroom. I wouldn’t say I liked the way he studied and withdrew there. I would tease him until he hit me. mom always came down with the stick to break it up. one night, he had to babysit me. he sat upstairs and told me to go to bed. The house was flooded with the din of Beethoven. I snuck upstairs repeatedly. he laughed at first, but I was a persistent pest. he finally chased me down the stairs, grabbed me, and knocked me down. the floor was hard and cold against my head. I cried for a long time and went to sleep. when he went to college, he left his dirty baseball cards in a shoebox, his model submarines and planes.