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February 26, 2015

Bare. {A story of childhood trauma}

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The indifferent hand of a woman directs my attention to the uniform neatness of eggshell nightgowns and pajamas stacked perfectly in rows.

The locker housing the bedclothes is made of steel. It is as large as the woman standing beside me. She motions again to the pajamas.

There are narrow white stickers with black typeset to indicate the various sizes but I can’t remember mine. She removes a small pair of pajamas from the shelf.

The floors are concrete. The only footsteps I hear are my own, the staff donning rubber-soled shoes that make a soft-sticky ick-ick-ick sound. Before she escorts me to a bathroom to change she motions for my flip-flops. They are neatly dropped into a white plastic bag with my name printed on the tag where the bag is drawn together.

She is standing outside the door with an outstretched hand when I return so that I will quickly retrieve my clothes, which are then added to the bag with a final thump.

But where is my brother?

We live in Hawaii. I started kindergarten this year. I am the only white-girl (“Haole”) in a class of more than sixty students; you can easily find my pale face in our group photo.

When I win the Seymour Safety Coloring contest (even though my Seymour had one leg that was much shorter than the other), my mom takes me to dinner to celebrate. We sit at the bar in a restaurant at the mall eating nachos.

My brother’s name is Milo. He is just a baby. My mom makes me come inside to give him a bottle. Sometimes he rolls his gummy tongue around the nipple and I have to squirt the bottle in his mouth so I can go back outside and play. It makes a shhhhh sound and so I have to be careful that my mom doesn’t hear it or she will know what I am doing.

Where is my brother?
Where is my brother?
Where is my brother?

Our pajamas have a hundred tiny faded golden stars. Cuffs fall perfectly at ankle and wrist so that I think I have worn them my entire life. My bed is on the row furthest from the windows that are so high up in the sky that you can’t see outside.

She tells me it is time for bed and places her large hand on the bottom rail of the bed, staring expectantly until I move towards it. The sheets are wrapped so tightly around the corners that I have to pull them with all my weight and I dig my bare feet into the cold concrete and yank the determined corner with both hands, finally freeing the trapped corner. Tree shadows dancing on the walls move across my bed, tickling fingers and toes. I crawl under the covers and pull them up and over my head.

This is my favorite make-believe: I am the captain of a ship and I am sailing through a storm. The thunder shakes the clouds with great punchy fists. The lightning paints the water cobalt blue with bright flashes of white. I am the only one here on the ship that is sailing in the dark, but I am not afraid. The waves spill into the boat, weighing it heavily to one side and then the other and back again until my head spins.

It is my favorite make-believe. I was sailing when the police came and took my brother and me away.

My dad exhales another island.

The plumes of sere smoke dance slowly in mid-air, breathlessly changing shapes. I pretend the shapes are islands and then carefully map and then reroute the geography to the bathroom, the kitchen, my room, always avoiding the islands. I want to bring my brother with me but he is too small to understand the game and he would cry because I would have to drag him.

I pretend to be looking for something so that he will look too and then maybe follow me but instead he stands up and breathes in burnt-lawn clippings. I don’t want his eyes to go Chinese like daddy’s eyes so I pinch his doughy leg and he falls back to the ground screaming. Even though he is wailing, we can still hear the people at the front door yelling and pounding-pounding-pounding.

The baby bottle rattles on the glass table until it totters over when the front door is ripped from the seams.  There are policemen everywhere yelling, “Down. Down!”  Mommy and daddy fall to the floor with heads tucked inside of their necks and Milo is screaming. Apple-cheeks painted blood red, his outstretched arms reach to mommy. Ink-like hair wetted to her cheeks, she tries to console him but he continues screaming. Daddy is dragged from the floor by two policemen and placed in handcuffs.

Where is my brother?

They found the marijuana daddy was growing on the rooftop of our apartment building.

But what will happen to us?

They tell mommy we will be safe and that daddy will “get a lawyer.”

Anything.
But.
This.

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the reminders of ev’ry glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame: “I am leaving, I am leaving,” but the fighter still remains.

“We are working directly with your disassociation,” offers Kara when I ask why this is so difficult. Kara is my therapist. She asks, “What were you just thinking?”

“A song. I was thinking of a Simon and Garfunkel song. I don’t remember anything before that.”

~

Author: Stacy Shuman

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Courtesy of author.

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