Authors: Rachel Coker
Immediately, I regretted shouting at Cliff. It wasn’t like me at all. I never yelled, never lost my cool. I sighed and stepped forward. “Look, Cliff, I’m sorry, I …”
Shaking his head, he yanked open the door and ran inside, banging it shut behind him. The sound of the door slamming into place rang in my ears. I reached forward to touch the knob and saw that my hand was trembling.
What’s the matter with me?
Turning around, I walked over to the edge of the porch and sat on the top step.
Deep, slow breaths, Scarlett. Healing breaths
.
The look on Cliff’s face was ingrained in my head. That mixture of hurt, anger, and, worst of all, disappointment. Disappointment in me for not sticking up for him or for our family.
He just doesn’t understand. I squared my shoulders.
Cliff always says that I don’t need to be afraid of growing up. Well, this is it. This is growing up. Taking responsibility
.
Somehow, it didn’t seem that way.
I’ll just go inside and apologize to him after dinner. Read to him, if I have time. He’ll be okay once we can distance him from Grandpop Barley’s madness
.
I stood and brushed off my soaking-wet jeans.
We’ll all be okay
.
I folded Grandpop Barley’s clothes neatly and placed them in his old leather suitcase. His initials were still engraved on the front:
GFB
. My fingers traced the letters before I closed the case with a slam and locked it.
I wondered if they’d have peanut butter at the home. If they allowed red ties and good bedtime stories.
Grandpop Barley never heard the ending to
Peter and Wendy. For some reason, the thought pinched my heart. I sent up a silent prayer that the new home would have books about Peter Pan.
Old Clunker was running in the driveway. I could hear it all the way upstairs. As I started toward the truck, I noticed Cliff sat in the doorway of Grandpop Barley’s room and stared down the steps with a sullen expression.
“Knock, knock,” he said.
“Not now.” I brushed past him, refusing to look at his red-faced tears. I’d already apologized to him a few days before, and we were good now. We didn’t need another repeat of the crying and shouting incident.
“It’s not fair,” I heard him mutter. “Grandpop Barley’s not crazy. He just misses Mrs. Nice. It makes him sad.”
What does Cliff know about love? What does Cliff know about anything besides the Spanish Civil War?
I pressed my lips together. “It’s just not worth fighting, Cliff.”
And it wasn’t. Nothing felt worth fighting. I adjusted my grip on the suitcase. “Come on, Dad’s waiting for us in the truck.” I headed down the stairs, struggling under the weight of the luggage.
Dad honked the horn. “Kids!” he shouted.
My heart sank. Once I loaded that suitcase into the tailgate of the truck, it would be the last drive we’d ever take with Grandpop Barley. And after today, we wouldn’t see him much at all.
Cliff ran to the edge of the staircase, leaning over the rail. His hair stuck up on his forehead, as if he’d been trying to pull it all out. “No! Cliff’s not going! This is
family
. And family doesn’t leave family.”
I turned on the steps, sighing.
Really? More referring to yourself in third person?
“Come on, Cliff. You just don’t understand.” Cliff never understood when it came to dealing with people or situations. “Let’s just go.”
“No.” Tears glittered in his swollen eyes. His face pinched a show of stubbornness. “We can’t go with them. We can’t let them do this, Scarlett. Grandpop Barley is part of our family.”
I shook my head, unable to say what was replaying in my head:
But this isn’t really much of a family anymore
. I looked away and reached the bottom of the steps. “Coming!” I called.
“Scarlett, don’t!” Cliff shouted, leaning against the railing with one arm outstretched toward me.
What happened next is ingrained in my mind forever.
The first thing I heard was a horrible
crack
—the sound of breaking wood. A horrible rushing sounded inside my head, pounding along with my beating heart.
I froze, every muscle in my body tense. I wanted to turn around—I needed to turn around—but my body wouldn’t move.
The truck door slammed. Dad took a step toward the house, squinting at me. His face looked tense. “Scarlett? What was that?”
Finally, I turned. Cliff was sprawled across the floor, splinters of wood lying around him. His head was turned at a strange angle. I stared at him. At his motionless body. At the broken railing.
And then, as if someone had sloshed a bucket of cold water over me, all the nerves in my body woke up in a deafening scream.
I was on the floor beside him in less than a second and rolled him over. His face and hands were covered in blood from his mouth. It trickled onto my jeans, staining them red. The faint thought
crossed my mind that maybe he hit his chin on the banister. A few of his teeth looked chipped. “Cliff!” I shook him slightly. “He’s not waking up,” I muttered to myself. My voice rose. It sounded thick and clogged, like I was in a dream. “He’s not moving. Dad, he’s not moving!” I screamed.
Dad bounded into the doorway, clutching the frame with white knuckles. He swore out loud before collapsing on the floor and pushing me out of the way. “Don’t touch him!”
My blood flashed between an unbearably hot tingle and a paralyzing freeze. The room seemed to twist and spin. My eyes worked like two little cameras, picking up all of the details around me.
The wood chips on Cliff’s clothes. The jagged pieces of railing scattered across the hardwood floor. The blood smearing Cliff’s unmoving head.
Shaking, I turned toward the doorway. Mama stood in the threshold, her face white. Her shoulders heaved up and down in labored breaths as she stared at Dad cradling Cliff’s body. Wordlessly, her eyes moved across the room and met mine.
“He’s still breathing,” Dad said as he bent close to Cliff’s face. “He’s still alive. But he’s not opening his eyes.”
I attempted to speak, but no words came out. I glanced at Dad and tried to clear my throat. “What do we.?” The words were scratchy and weak. “Dad, what do we do?”
Dad’s tone was quiet and tense. He didn’t look at me or Mama. “Call 9–1–1.” Neither of us moved. His head snapped around, sudden anger contorting his face. He cursed and shouted again for us to call 9–1–1.
I sprung to my feet and ran to the kitchen where the phone was sitting on the counter by the refrigerator. My hands were shaking as I rang the number.
Oh
,
dear God, don’t take him. Oh, please let him be okay. Oh, please don’t—
“Hello?”
“Please help us.” I gripped the phone, my fingers turning white.
“What is your emergency?” The voice on the line was calm and clipped.
I fought back a wave of nausea. “My brother fell from the second-floor railing. He’s still breathing, but he’s not moving. I don’t know if his brain is okay or if …” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me.
“Would you please give me your address and phone number?”
My address? Why can’t I remember my address?
I gulped and racked my brain. After a few seconds, the information came back to me and I managed to give it to the operator before she hung up, assuring me that an ambulance was on its way. I dropped the phone and ran back to the hallway. I could faintly hear the handset hitting the cabinet door as it swung back and forth on its cord.
Dad was still on the floor with Cliff in his lap. Mama was sitting in the doorway, her head buried in her arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing.
“Is he going to be okay?” My voice sounded like it was a million miles away.
Dad didn’t answer. “Is the ambulance on its way?” he asked instead.
I nodded. My legs felt too weak to stand, so I collapsed on the floor.
“What’s going on?” Grandpop Barley shouted from the truck. I heard the door slam, and he came running into the house with his eyes wide. “What’s going on? What’s the ruckus? Did something happen to the peanut butter?”
He froze in the doorway, his eyes falling on the scene before him. A confused look flashed across his face. “What did you do with it? Where’s the peanut butter?”
I pressed my hand against my mouth to stop from crying out. My knees shaking, I got up and wrapped my arms around Grandpop
Barley. He resisted at first, pulling away from my touch. But then he stiffened and let me keep my arms tight around him.
“It’s okay, Scarlett,” he said into my hair. “They’ll bring it back. We’ll get that peanut butter soon.”
A siren sounded in the distance, on its way up our long driveway. I turned my face into Grandpop Barley’s shoulder and began to cry.
I’d never been inside a hospital before.
Grandpop Barley sat next to me on a bench outside of Cliff’s room. Mama and Dad were allowed inside, but the staff told us that there was a room limit and that the two of us had to stay out as long as the doctors were in there.
So we sat on the cold wooden bench and waited for someone to come tell us what was going on. Grandpop Barley was snacking on a banana that one of the nurses had given him out of her lunch box. He was also rubbing at the bandages on his hands that Dad had put on after the fall a few nights ago. I kept slapping at his fingers to keep him from pulling the dressings off.
The clock at the end of the hallway seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace. We’d arrived here at quarter past five. Now it was almost seven, and my stomach was rumbling.
I buried my face in my hands.
Not that it matters. I feel too sick to eat
.
Cliff opened his eyes when they pulled him out of the ambulance. He looked right at me with those deep brown eyes and blinked. But he didn’t see me. There was no recognition there. No pain or fear or excitement. Just emptiness.
I shuddered, tightly wrapping my arms around my chest.
God, please …
I gulped. Did I really have any right to ask God for
something? I never tried praying to him before, at least not like this, so wouldn’t starting now be like cheating? All those years of sermons came flooding back, warning me how God feels about people who take him for granted.
I didn’t care.
God
,
please keep Cliff alive. Please don’t let him die. I need him to be all right. Please
.
The door to Cliff’s room swung open, and Dad stepped out. Without saying a word, he scooped me up into his arms and gave me a big hug. My chest tightened.
Does this mean … Is Cliff …?
“He’s going to be okay,” Dad said, his voice muffled in my hair.
I felt my whole body loosen until finally my knees gave out, buckling like a folding chair. I let my father hold me tightly and started to cry.
He’s going to be okay. He’s fine. He’s going to survive
.
All the anxiousness started to drain from my head. I’d never felt such relief.
“Now, there’s something I have to tell you.” Dad pulled back slowly, guiding me back toward the bench. He knelt on the floor by me, holding on to my hand with a tight trip.
My stomach sank. “What?”
Grandpop Barley took one last bite of the banana and smiled. “I’m finished!” He attempted to hand it to Dad, who didn’t pay any attention to him. “Hey!” His voice grew gruffer. “I said I’m finished.
Take it!”
Dad shot him a quick glance before taking the banana peel and placing it on his lap. He reached out to grab my hand again, but I snatched my hands away and sat on them. The warm heat of my body sank into my skin. I could feel my pulse quickening in my wrists.
“What do you have to tell me?” I said again, my voice shaking.
Dad took a breath and let it out in a short huff. “Cliff’s body is fine. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. He’s going to have a few cuts and bruises for a while, but the doctors said he should recover quickly without any problems.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“It’s his brain.” Dad winced as he said the words, as if shielding himself from my sadness and my hurt. “He doesn’t recognize us anymore. Doesn’t remember anything about us. Whatever was …
wrong
with him is even more wrong now. Does that make sense?”
Sense? The words coming out of Dad’s mouth were not registering in my ears. I shook my head slowly. It felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“I don’t know how else to say this, Scarlett.” He sounded frustrated now. I wondered if he was upset at me for not understanding or at himself for having to tell me everything. He leaned forward and placed a hand on my knee. “Your brother is never going to be the same Cliff we knew. He’ll be alive. Breathing and walking and possibly even talking. But he won’t ever be Cliff again. He’ll be someone else.”
I felt sick again, like a kid who had eaten one too many pieces of cake on her birthday. Only there was no buzz, no excitement, and it wasn’t my birthday. It was the worst day of my life. God had kept Cliff alive, but he’d taken him from me. I’d lost my little brother.
Dad drove us home from the hospital that night in Old Clunker. I was glad to get away from the sympathetic smiles from the nurses and the clock ticking in my ears.
They’d let me go in to see Cliff before I left. He’d been lying in the hospital bed, bandages on his face from where he’d gotten cut from falling. He looked up as I came in the room but didn’t smile. I’d told him hi, and he didn’t say anything back. He didn’t look happy to see me. He looked scared, if nothing else.
The doctors had confirmed what Dad told me: that Cliff didn’t
recognize any of us. He had no concept of family or friends or conversation. To him, I was just a stranger with crazy hair, saying gibberish that he neither understood nor cared about.
I scooted as close to the car window as I could and pressed my nose against the glass. Mama sat next to me, her hands shaking in her lap. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fat tear roll down her cheek and fall on the edge of her black shirt, turning into a colorless puddle on the fabric.
I looked away, back out the window. We drove past the Leggetts’ peach farm. The smell of ripe peaches no longer filled the air. Nothing drifted through the truck’s open window but the smell of overturned soil and grass. All the peaches were picked. The farm was empty.