Broken Haven

Broken Haven

The house we lived in didn’t do much for the neighborhood we lived in. The front yard consisted of mud and a few patches of grass that seemed to fight their way through the wet hard earth. There were no flower beds or nicely paved walkways leading to the front porch. Instead, the only things that served as décor for the front lawn was a metal flag pole with the American flag and a tall wooden light pole that flickered light on the house that the majority of the neighborhood wanted to see disappear.

Some of the siding of our one story house had fallen off over time, while the siding still intact lacked fresh paint. The steps made of old wood moaned and shook whenever stepped on, yet they gave a place to be alone and think. Also, it was the only place to sit. The closest thing we had to porch furniture was Uncle Ben’s old blue wheelchair. Its wheel, glazed with rust, constantly stopped to the point that Uncle Ben’s view of the world didn’t extend much beyond porch. Even so, the withering wooden staircase somehow always allowed me to think about how little we had. There were times that living in that house made me feel trapped, when the cold slithering through the floorboards, the rain dripping through the cracks in the roof, and the people looking at us like we were roaches crawling out of a hole made me feel paralyzed and unable to move forward.

But, in sitting on the chipped, old wooden staircase I saw the way the flag became part of the wind and saw dandelion seeds float into the unknown of the neighbor’s yard after sprouting from the weeds under the staircase. In those moments of thought, I was able to hear the steady breathing of my Uncle Ben before he would go into another one of his war stories, telling them as if no one were listening. With my head leaning against the white wooden post that held the porch roof, I would close my eyes and hear the screaming of my little brother Frankie and Sophia, his friend from school, as they ran through our house laughing. I would hear my adoptive mother Helen shouting for everyone to come to dinner, and if I listened hard enough, I could hear the angry yells of the neighbors behind the freshly painted walls of their home.

I see her almost every night crying there outside on her front porch, listening to her parents fight. There are nights when she just stares silently at the street, almost as lost in her own thoughts as I usually am when I sit out here. I don’t know her name, the color of her eyes, or what’s her favorite book, but I do know that she seems as lost and fucked up as I am. The only difference is that my family isn’t hidden behind a newly renovated house with a picket white fence. I may not know who she is, but I dream about her telling me one day.

“Tyler…Tyler,” whispers a gentle voice behind my closed eyes. I can feel her small hands brushing the hair out of my face. She breathes heavily, almost as if she were waiting for a monster to awaken from his sleep, but her hands still dance along my hair. I try to keep my face stone-still, but my lips begin to twitch, fighting a smile. It’s always hard trying not to smile around a four year old, especially one as unique as Sofia, the little girl who claims eating daisies keeps the fairies away and that she was far too young to have a prince in her life.

“Tyler…Tyler, are you dead? That’s what mommy said. She said when you sleep, sleep. You sleep like the sleepy dead. Tyler…” Half of my face is stuck in my quicksand pillow, but I’m able to open and close one eye quickly. “Hey! You wake, wake!” she laughs pulling up my cover to get a closer look at me. “Come on, Tyler! You need wake, wake,” she says. Before she can say anything else, I jump up, making her scream in terror and excitement.

Her laughter fills the small house, as I tickle her repeatedly until she’s red in her tan freckled face. Rosa comes running into the room, scared as usual, expecting the worse. Over time, I finally understood that she would always be that way. It was sad to some, but it was something I knew so well: being scared, wanting to be safe…needing to be safe.

“Jesus, Maria y Jose,” sighed Rosa, quickly forming the cross over her heart. “You two scared me to death; I heard screams and—“

“Aww, mama s’okay. Me just wake sleepy Tyler,” answers Sofia, shaking a few of her locks from her face.

“Yeah, sorry Rosa. We didn’t mean to scare you. My little alarm clock here just didn’t want me to be late for school,” I answer, picking up Sofia, who is hiding under one of my pillows, and place her in front of her mother.

“No, I’m sorry Tyler. Sofia shouldn’t be waking you up. Come on sweetie, I’m gonna be late for work at the diner, and I have to drop you and Frankie off at school,” she says grabbing Sofia by the hand. Before leaving, she stops at the threshold, “Ms. Helen made breakfast already. You better get up before she comes storming in here after you.” The last thing I see is Rosa’s teasing smile and Sofia’s small hand waving goodbye.

It isn’t long until I find myself in the kitchen. I don’t have to take more than three steps outside my bedroom door to find it. Our home is small, smaller than the rest of the houses on our block, but I know there is more love in this three bedroom home than the modern and recently renovated one’s that stand at our left and right.

“So, you finally decided to get up now did you?”

“I’m sorry mom I didn’t—Helen what’s he doing here?” I look at him sitting in the end of our small table that he and I had made last Christmas. We had built it as a gift for Helen.

“Tyler, don’t speak about your brother that way. Now, this is his house as much as it is yours. We have rules here, and you know my number one rule here. This home is always ope—”

“Open for anyone at anytime. I know.”

“Then don’t come in here telling me who and who can’t come into my house, especially one of my kids, your own brother.”

I ignore her words because I can’t get over the sight of him and how many times he’s screwed this family over. His presence changes everything, and always sets us in motion to another downfall. “Did you forget something? Is that why you’re here? Did you forget that you’ve screwed over this family far too many times! Did you forget to steal the few dollars that Mom stows away in her jewelry box for an emergency? What about Frankie’s piggy bank? I’m sure that’ll find you something on the streets.”

“Tyler! What the hell has—“

“It’s okay, Mom. I deserve that.”

“No you don’t,” she replies, glaring at me briefly before giving him a sad smile.

“Exactly. What you deserve is for me to grab you by the neck and throw you out of here.” Silence lingers after my words. None of us move. None of us say anything. Helen looks at me like she doesn’t even know me, like she doesn’t remember all the pain he has put us through. He doesn’t even look at me. He stares at the plate of barely eaten eggs placed before him. His skin is pale and his dark brown eyes look sunken into his skull, making him look more like a cadaver than an actual living being; he looks like he’s barely slept, much less has had a place to sleep in. The smell of his clothes only confirms my thoughts. His hands are shaking; when he looks up, he sees me staring them and hides him under the table. I want to grab him and hold him, to make sure he never leaves us again. I want to tell him I want my big brother back, that things have been hard since he left. All I want, is to see the same sober, goofy Eric that treated me like a brother when I first got here, when I didn’t have any family. I wanted my best friend back.

“We’ll be like brothers,” he had said with a grin the first day I had arrived here. I hadn’t answered him then, scared to maybe hope for the best, but to be answered with the worst, as usual. But over time, my walls grew weak. I began to have hope, and soon enough I was stupid

to give into it.

“How long? How long will it be before you leave us again? Before you take our money and hit the streets for drugs? How long?” My fists hits the kitchen table, making his plate jump as well as Helen, but he doesn’t move. He just sits there staring at me, his eyes growing redder as tears start to fall into his barely eaten breakfast.

“That’s it! Tyler, I won’t have you saying such idiotic things in my house. Now, you apologize to Eric, or— or...”

“Or what? You’ll kick me out? Seems a little unfair don’t you think? Kick out the son who’s only saying what everyone wants to overlook, but take in the son who has stolen money from this family repeatedly to only buy drugs.”

“I’ll go. I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.” The legs of the wooden chair stretch across the cold wooden floor. It isn’t until he stands that I want to take back everything I’ve just said. He looks nothing like he used to, but the traces of who he used to be are there, which makes the color red spread across my face in shame. His shirt is thin, worn down with grunge, but you can still make out that it’s his Rolling Stone t-shirt, the shirt he always wore. His pants look as if they’re being held up by his bones, and his unshaven face is almost hidden behind his once short hair.

“Don’t you dare leave this house and this family again, Eric. You belong here as much as any other child of mine who is living here and who has lived here. So, sit back down and finish your breakfast.” She said the words as if he were child, the eldest of us, aside from Rosa, who is in her mid twenties, a few years behind of Eric. “As for you Tyler, either you sit and have breakfast with your brother, or you go to school with an empty stomach. Now, don’t give me that look. Like I said, this is my house, my rules.” Helen is never someone I want to argue with, aside from the old lady being stubborn and scary as hell when she wants to prove her point, I just can’t fight her. She is the only mother I’ve known.

I take one look at both of them, before grabbing my backpack and walking out of the house. I can hear her yelling my name, telling me to wait, and just before the door slams shut, I can hear her telling him not to worry, that I’ll come around with time. She doesn’t even realize that he probably won’t be there long enough for me to come around to the idea of him actually being there. It’s always the same. People never change. The fucked up abusive relationship next door, my alcoholic mother that I barely even knew growing up, Eric...nothing ever changes.

I wait outside in silence. For what? I’m not really sure, but in many ways, I think it’s for an answer as to why? Why did he have to come back? When we were finally forgetting about him? I clenched my numb fists, angry at myself and at Eric. Sure, there were days when Frankie would ask if Eric was coming home that night. There were days when Uncle Ben would ask for Eric to go hang up the flag outside, and there were times when I found Helen crying in her room, praying for an answer as to how she had done Eric wrong. I looked out to the street, watching the passing cars, and the way my breath mingles with the frost air to form a small cloud.

“I hate you! I despise him! I hate everything he’s made you turn into! He’s a piece of shit and you know it, mom!”

“Hush, up Allison! Your father will hear you. The neighbors will hear you. They’ll think we’re trash, acting so uncivilized in public.”

“Not everything uncivilized is done in public, mother. Just take off your makeup. The bruises hidden beneath it would say enough.”

My eyes widen when the slap echoes into the otherwise quiet street.

“How about the bruises on your back?! Your stomach? He’s hitting you and you won’t even leave him! You won’t even leave him for me!” the words are barely understood from her sobbing. She’s fallen to the place she’s cried almost every night, and is left staring up at her mother looming over her.

“Get out of here. I don’t know where you’ll go tonight, but you’re not staying here until you learn how to respect your father and me. He loves me. I just wish you would too.”

“You make me wish I wasn’t alive,” her words are left for no one to hear except me, as she stares at the closed door of her broken haven.

I don’t know what it is, but I find myself standing in front of her, staring at her curled up, crying in her usual spot.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she looks up at me, and the first thing I notice are the color of her eyes, how even red from crying, the deep green never loses its intensity. Her body is as small as Helen, but it’s the intensity of her eyes and expression on her face that lead me to believe she’s close to my age.

“It’s okay. I mean most of the neighborhood probably heard my whole family just now as well. We’re normally the uncivilized ones.” She laughs a little and in doing that, I forget a little about my crappy morning.

"Is your mom always like that?"

"Yeah...She didn't always used to be like this. When she and my dad split up, she-she forgot who she was. She got into a lot of fucked up relationships, and got married to the most fucked up one.You know what my mom told me when I told her to leave my step-dad? I don’t know how to leave him, honey…I love him. What about me? I asked. Don’t you love me? …You can imagine what she said, or in other words, what she didn’t say.”

"I'm sorry. If it makes you feel better, I didn't even get to know my mom. I heard she mostly drunk through my childhood. I've been in foster home to foster home. It wasn't until Helen adopted me a few years ago that I actually found a family. It's a little screwed up right now, but it's better than nothing, better than other things."

"Better than mine, for example."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"It's okay. I wouldn't be angry if you had meant it that way.My life's pretty screwed up at the moment."

"So, what were you yelling about earlier?"

"You heard that?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing...Hey, do you want to go for a walk and I'll tell you about it?"

"Sounds good."

After our walk, we separate and go to our respective homes, our respective issues. I close my eyes, delve into the momentary comforting night behind them before, and rest my head against cold surface of the front door of my house. When I open them, I can’t help, but look for her. I find two spheres of green staring at me from across the street. Even from far away I can make out the deep green hues of her eyes. She had stopped before her door as well, her hand resting on the door handle. She had been there staring at me, for I don’t know how long. But her eyes are somber, frustrated, and worried. Her face seems like an open book, but her eyes…they were the narrator of the story. She gives me a smile and nods my way.

I fight the urge to smile back because I had learned long ago to never hope for the best. I’m not going to do it again. So, I turn around and make my way past the creaking wooden door. As I shut the door, I feel my lips forming into a small smile. I swear beneath my breath, but I can feel myself still smiling. I don’t want to let my guard down with anyone else again, not after Eric, but my smile and the warm feeling I have at the bottom of my stomach made the idea cross my mind once or twice. I fall asleep knowing her name and knowing the color of her eyes. I fall asleep having foolishly fallen into the hope of having the possibility of her, of healing this family again if Eric leaves, of Eric not leaving at all, only tomorrow will let me know. So, for now, I close my eyes.