Sunday, June 23, 1996
When I Was 12,
My Sister Cut Off One of My Fingers
or
A Midsummer
Night’s Cleave
Our Fort had
stood, for the better part of two weeks, a proud testament to our collective
laziness. It was grand, it was
magnificent, it was deserving of the capital F.
It reeked of
body odor and dirty socks.
The Fort
began life as the fort, small f: An accumulation of bed sheets and extra
pillows on the big couch in the downstairs living room sitting directly in
front of the television, that grew from late night scribbled plans in a grade
school composition journal, into the Fort: A slightly more organized
accumulation of bed sheets, strategically placed pillows and cushions, dirty
laundry parapets, unwashed dishes, re-purposed broomsticks (for the banners,
obviously), and an ever increasing amount of disgust from our parents.
Marlin and I
slept there. Ate there. Turned ourselves willingly into mindless
drones of Hollywood, as we tried our very best to power through the extensive
and seemingly endless collection of VHS tapes[1]
our parents maintained, there. We did
not live in The Fort, we existed there.
Mom said a
majority of the tapes belonged to dad, but we knew better.
Somehow, we
came to an unspoken agreement that after any exceptionally cheesy movie, or any
particularly boring 80’s movie,[2]
we would watch a Kurosawa film. Although
we wound up re-watching almost every film, Toshiro Mifune’s mustache was ginger
to our visual palate,[3]
making the world a better place.
To watch
terrible movies in.
Mom and dad
worked extra shifts during the season and would, occasionally and after a
draining day, enter our bespoke dominion to enjoy the first hour of whatever we
happened to be watching at the time, only to pass over into sweet, sweet blissful
slumber within the comfortable confines our snug sanctuary.
Our long,
languid summer days reached a point at which they matured from a delicious
boredom into a plateau of inactivity of the type that bred the curious mixture
of exhaustion and insomnia.[4] Thus, nearly every one of our may waking, and
very few sleeping, hours were spent in the home within our home.
What I am
trying to say here is that we really liked the Fort. Capital F.
So, while the
order to tear the Fort down was, especially after the events of this morning,
inevitable, its issuance caused the two of us no less distress for having
waited nearly ten hours for it come.
The sting of
the command was made even harsher by the appearance of our younger brother
Soren, with whom the blame solidly lay in our eyes, making his was down the
stairs dressed in a Karate gui.[5]
Marlin looked
up from Toshiro recounting the bandit’s tale to notice Soren. “Why are you wearing that?”
Soren rolled
his eyes so dramatically that his entire head rotated, then shot back, “Duh,
because I’m the favorite.” The little
smartass punched the air with a loud, “Hiya!”
“No, dummy,”
I told him, “she meant: Why aren’t you in trouble?” an edge of exasperation and
a touch jealousy entering my voice.
Soren, unlike
his relatively sedentary siblings, established an active pattern of life from
the outset of summer. Aided by not so
subtle encouragement by the parental units, his days were spent among friends
doing Gods know what. Until very
recently, those activities left him worn out enough to sleep through the night,
wake up early enough to be gone throughout daylight hours, and return with time
left to do it all over again.
Unfortunately, those friends disappeared one by one as their parents
dragged them along on family trips.
This left
Soren, an energetic, tiny sarcasm machine, stuck with his own family. With mom working double shifts at the
hospital, and dad keeping the shop open at irregular late-night flight school
and college student hours, this actually meant that it left Soren with his
brother and sister.
Marlin and I
barely acknowledged our own existence, let alone that of our brother’s.
Without any
stimulus to occupy his hyperactive attention, Soren embraced the ensuing ennui
with an unexpected, but thoroughly exciting, destructive outburst to attract
our attention. It had been mom, with her
preternatural maternal timing, that interrupted what might have been a
fantastic sibling bonding opportunity disguised as a fiery assault on the Fort.
Mom called it
burning the house down. We called it
defending our land from an aberrant claimant.[6] I am absolutely certain that this had nothing
to do with letting Soren watch several hours’ worth of medieval movies with us.
“Because he’s
my baby,” answered mom, stepping down behind him. “And he’s five. And you two need more responsibility. And to be more responsible.”
“You look
nice, mom,” I hazarded. I was so used to
seeing her in scrubs and in a state of near exhaustion, it was an honest
surprise to see her dressed nicely and made up.
“Thank you,
dear. Your father is taking me our
tonight.” As mom descended, she
absent-mindedly affixed earrings while herding Soren ever downward. “Sweetheart,” she spoke to the back of his
head as he punched the air theatrically with each step, “pick up the pace or
I’ll karate your little butt into the car.”
With one
last, “Hiya!” he pelted down the remaining steps and out the door.
“What about
him?” Marlin asked from the couch.
“Parenting,
child. I don’t trust you three to have
the house still standing by the time we get back, so we are removing one of you
from the equation.” She made it to the
bottom step and called up to dad, “Honey!
Let’s go!” Returning her
attention to her twins, “His,” mom paused, searching for the appropriate word,
“energy needs to be channeled into something productive that does not require
my supervision. Soren is going to karate
lessons. Your father and I are going on
a date while he’s occupied.”
“But mom!” we
chorused together.
“That’s not
fair,” I said.
“We don’t we
get lessons?” Marlin asked. “I want to learn jiu-jitsu,” she added after
a moment’s pause.
“I want to
learn kendo.”
Marlin
sneered at me. “How are we even
related?” then asked mom, “Why don’t we get to do things like that?”
Dad, finally
hobbling out from his bedroom, leaned against the top floor railing and told us
flatly, “Children are expensive, and neither of you had the courtesy to eat the
other in the womb.” He began making his
way down the stairs, the stead clomp of his fake leg following every other
step. Upon reaching mom, dad gave her a
purposely mushy kiss that made her giggle and made us gag.
“Your father
does not mean that,” she told us as she shoved him playfully out the door.
With a wink,
dad said, “Yes, he does,” then disappeared from outside.
Mom, still
giggling, assured us, “He loves you both very much.”
“No, he
doesn’t!” came his voice from the driveway.[7]
Mom adopted
her serious face,™ “Listen, I want this,” she gestured vaguely at the entirety
of the living room, “disaster area taken care of while we are gone.”
“But mom!”
“Hush. That means, including but not limited to,
laundry, dishes, trash, and everything back to where it belongs. Otherwise, I will lock you in the basement
until you starve.”
Marlin spoke
up, “We don’t have a basement.”
Ignoring her,
mom continued, “We are going to Dothan and will be home in two or three
hours. I expect my living room to be
presentable.”
“Wait,”
Marlin spoke again, mirroring my confusing, “we don’t have a basement.”
Mom stepped
through the threshold, and over her shoulder as the door closed, she added, “I
have already discussed it with your father, if the class is good for Soren, and
if the house is clean, we will sign you up for classes too.” She held up her hand to forestall any further
demands, “Whatever classes are available are the classes you are getting.”
“Bye, mom,” I
said.
“We love you,
mom,” Marlin said.
“Mmhmm,” Mom
said, and closed the door.
We stood
together in sullen silence for a few moments, listening the to the car pull
away into the road and drive off. “I
can’t believe they’re blackmailing us to take down the Fort!” I was shocked! Scandalized! Outraged! Adjectives!
Marlin
returned her attention to Rashomon, “I can’t believe you would rather kendo
than something useful. You don’t know
how to swordfight.” As if to punctuate
her point, the bandit and the samurai crossed blades.
Moving around
the couch, separating sheets and clothing, I kept half of my own attention on
the movie. “Well, yeah, that’s kind of
the whole point,” I told her like it was the most obvious thing in the
world. “I don’t know how to
swordfight. I want to learn.”
Reluctantly,
Marlin stood and began working towards me in the effort to clean. “Why?” she shook her head. “Who even swordfights?”
Shifting the
load I was carry to one arm, I closed my mouth and pointed with my free hand at
the TV.
“That is a
fake fight. And they were both
lying. And Toshi only won because he was
lucky.” Imitating my voice, she added,
“That’s the whole point. They both
sucked. Besides, you aren’t fast, or
strong, or agile enough to use a katana.”
I was about to interrupt her with the same argument about how lessons
would improve that, and to ask why she was being deliberately mean and argumentative,
but she conceded the point before I could speak. “I know, I know. But even if you were, and even if you became
a world class swordsman, who would you even fight?”
Ugh, she was so blind to reason. “Who cares?
Some dude comes at me and I pull out a sword, fight over. If he pulls out a sword too, then fight on
lessons pay off.”
“So, you’re
just carrying a katana around everywhere you go?” She gave me a look. “This isn’t Highlander. All I’m saying is that there is always a use
for jiu-jitsu.” The wife of the dead
samurai began her tale, drawing Marlin’s full focus. “You know,” she said, watching the woman
produce her dagger during the trail, “I bet I could beat you with a knife.”
“Well, yeah. Knife beats fists, duh.”
“I mean,
knife versus sword. I bet I would win.”
“That’s it,”
I told her, and I dropped everything in my arms as dramatically as Soren would
have. “We are settling this right now”
Marlin
mimicked the action with an emphatic, “Fine!” and ran into the kitchen. She returned holding a meat cleaver. “Well, where’s your sword?” she asked, like
holding a cleaver was the most normal thing ever.
“Why do you
have a cleaver?” I asked, reasonably.
She gave a
few practice chops, “I said I could beat you with a knife.”
“That is a
cleaver.”
Marlin
frowned, “Butcher knife. Knife. It’s literally in the name.”
“You,” I
started, but she was right. “You’re
right. Fine. Let’s go to the shop. Grab the spare keys, I’ll grab some beer for
Sharon. And,” I pointed at the knife she
was holding way too casually, “hide that, please?”
Marlin’s eyes
narrowed in mock challenge. “No.”
We left as
the samurai’s wife was explaining how she woke to find the dagger lodgedin her
husband’s chest.
I pretended
not to notice.
Ten minutes
of hard paced walking were spent in silence.
The thick, humid, Alabama air, combined with an acute lack of exercise
and a summer spent on the couch left both of us breathing hard and sweaty
profusely. Neither one of us willing to
admit we were dying, we concentrated on trying to even out our breathing, to no
discernable effect.
It was also
extremely lucky the streets were barren tonight, as, to an outside observer, a
pair of disheveled young twins shambling their way across town while one of
them loosely held a shiny meat cleaver, and the other clinking two bottles of
cheap piss-beer,[8]
might have been unnerving.
Humming
streetlamps cast the cracked sidewalk in sulfurous yellow light, broken by
flitting shadows of the constantly shifting forms of congregating insects. Occasionally, a lamp would flicker and die
above us, only to relight after we passed further on. Distant music from the college campus slowly
grew louder the closer we came to the edge of town.
Dad opened
the shop, with a degree of success, specifically because of the location. Right at the border of the commercial and
residential districts, it cornered the suburban and college markets, along with
the added benefit of being located near to Fort Rucker.[9] Which, for us, meant it was basically right
around the corner, and we would often get permission to visit whenever we
pleased.
As the
storefront came into view, so did Sharon.
More or less a permanent fixture in the alley since long before our
father leased the building, Sharon was wrapped in usual multitudinous layers of
donated and pilfered clothing. She was
as completely indifferent to the summer heat as she was the deep chill of
winter.
We should
have been ashamed at the state of our own physical condition, but there was little
room for ego amidst the panting and sweating.
Harmless,
quiet, Sharon kept to herself, and never caused trouble. All she ever seemed to need for complete
contentment was a can of warm beer or a handful of loose change. Upon receipt of either, she would smile and
say, “Sharin’ is carin’,” then be on her merry way back into the alley.
We
approached, struggling to breathe causally, and Sharon stirred. I bent low to hand her the bottles, and
Marlin deposited some coins into dirty wool mittens. From beneath a balaclava and a muffed plaid
hat, a small swath of face surprisingly free of sweat a grime, lit up. Startingly bright eyes that twinkled in the
low light crinkled at the corners as she smiled. The money disappeared along with the beer
among hidden pockets, deft hands moving like a street magician practicing
sleight of hand giving away none of her tricks.
“Sharin’ is carin’,” she said in a voice chiseled from bedrock.
“Have a good
night, Sharon,” we told her in unison.
Sharon stood
slowly, still smiling, then shuffled off to the depths of the alley. “You know,” Marlin said when she was out of
earshot, unconsciously wiping her hands on torn jeans before pulling the shop
keys from her pocket, “I’ve always wondered how old she is.”
I shrugged, waiting
for her to open the door and answered, “I dunno, pretty old. At least forty.[10]”
“At least,”
Marlin agreed, turning to the lock and pushing.
A welcome blast of cold air welcomed us welcomingly. I walked in behind her, moving quickly to
disarm the security system while Marlin turned on the lights. The last thing dad needed tonight was to get
a phone call from the cops about a break-in.
The first few
rows of fluorescent bulbs energized sluggishly, flickering and popping into
bright life on their own terms. As the
front of Peg Leg Geek’s Comic Shop lit up, the back of the store was cast into
deeper shadow. There was a bit of
controlled madness to the layout. Every
surface carefully cluttered with the latest nerd craze in order to capitalize
on the newest trends. Here, the freshest
board games; there, the hottest shipment of pogs; collectible trading cards
trapped behind glasses cases and stored in transparent plastic sleeves to be
looked at but never, ever touched unless purchased.
Racks of
comics stretched off into the shadows.
Nearest the entrance, the new releases had their own separate
shelves. And still there was more. Novelty weapons, movie props, posters, and
models filled the spaces the comics left free.
There was also a, quite frankly, disturbing amount of action figures and
statues throughout the store. Yes,
statues. Dad had taken great lengths to
make sure we understood that they were not action figures and definitely not
dolls.
Secretly,
Marlin, mom, and I all believe that he only opened the shop as a reason to
continue collecting nerd paraphernalia like the unapologetic man-child he was.
All immediate
thoughts of an epic battle between brother and sister momentarily suspended
amid the mass of merchandise, Marlin wandered off to browse her favorites while
I went straight to the new releases. On
the rack sat Captain Punch, my guilty slice of cheesy pleasure. Dad kept them in the store just for me,
because no one else wanted anything to do with the good Captain.[11]
Thusly enthralled,
I lost myself in the absurd tale of a digital Richard chasing The Hacker
through the information superhighway, desperate to stop him before he could
destabilize the global economy and launch all the nukes. Admittedly, it was terrible, but it did make
me wonder whether or not the internet would someday be powerful enough to
accomplish anything like that.
So completely
oblivious was I to the world in lieu of the story before my eyes, that when
Marlin reappeared, tapping me lightly on the shoulder, I threw the comic and
let out a pathetic shriek of surprise.
“Um,” she stared at me, feeling embarrassed for both of us, “you gonna
live, oh bravest brother of mine?”
“You don’t
sneak up on a man while he’s reading. It
isn’t polite,” I muttered.
“It isn’t
polite to hear your brother scream like a little girl? Yes, I agree,” she teased. “Here,” Marlin tossed me a twenty-dollar
katana she found hiding with the novelty weapons. Its cheaply made hard-plastic scabbard was a
glossy candy apple red, the white faux-ivory peg wrapped in a matching red
braid. A wobbly aluminum collar made it
feel like the blade was going to snap off from the hilt.
Regardless of
the portended danger, I unsheathed the over polished, too heavy, too dull
blade, and left the scabbard on one of the glass display tops. Adopting an overhead guard that would have
made Kenji proud, I asked Marlin, “Are you sure this is safe?”
With the much
more functional butcher knife clenched tightly in front of her, she nodded
unsteadily. Pausing only to add, “We
should probably take it slow, though,” then moved in to attack.
Slow is
exactly the pace we started with. There
was no flurry of clashing blades, just a steadily increasing interval of clangs
and shrings as the two weapons made tentative contact. As our confidence grew with each new thrust,
parry, or slash, we laughed a hit a little harder.
It was but a
warmup, establishing a pattern of attack and counterattack we both felt
comfortable enough to repeat ad nauseam until our cautious conflict finally
became a cinematic battle. Banter in the
form of parroted one-liners began to insinuate itself into our fight, false
bravado fueling our gradual slide into carelessness.
We fought
like Akira Kurosawa himself was directing.
But, the sword
eventually grew heavy in my heads. Sweat
built up on Marlin’s palms. Both of us
were too proud to admit we were pushing ourselves beyond our unimpressive
limits. My grip became weaker, the quips
less frequent.
Marlin came
in fast, missing a beat of the rhythm we had synchronized with.
An audible
think rang out, vibrations traveling from the peg of the sword all the way up
my arm and back down again. The same
sound and feel of hitting a large rock with a wooden baseball bat.
Marlin
blanched ghost white. Her eyes went
wide. Only, she was not starting at me,
but the point on the hilt where her cleaver connected. Apart form the agape mouth working like a
silent fish, she stood stock still.
Marlin looked
terrified.
Confused, I
followed her eyeline down to a sight where my ability to process what I saw
failed me. Her knife was lodged in my
sword handle, neatly splitting the red braid, right at the spot where my pinky
wrapped around.
On the
ground, at my feet, was my pinky.
It would be a
fair estimate to say that, including today, Marlin and I had seen scores of
amputations featured in the hundreds of movies and TV episodes we have
watched. In nearly every one of those
instances involving a severed limb, appendage, or digit, there had always been
an accompanying fountain of blood.
Whether pulsing in time with a heartbeat, or the steady flow of a garden
hose, the occasion was always marked with a bright crimson jet of high-pressure
arterial madness that would spurt across a room and paint the walls.
It would also
be a fair statement to say that I was pleasantly disappointed when what
actually happened was completely, refreshingly, the exact opposite. Instead of the expected gore fountain, a few
fat drops of dark blood fell heavy to the floor, landing near my severed
digit. As we stared, the sluggish plops
joined a small pool growing slowly as the liquid drained from the first
two-thirds of my truant finger.
“Okay, okay,
so, okay,” Marlin sputtered on the verge of panic, “don’t panic.”
“You can’t
tell me what to do!” I screeched at her.
That set her
off. Her stricken grimace cracked into a
poorly restrained smile as a bout of giggling bored out from somewhere
deep. Laughter, spreading, infectious,
broke through me as she gave up her self-control and allowed herself to be
consumed entirely by the ridiculousness of the situation.
As it so
often is in the case of insurmountable trauma, unbidden thoughts welled up in
my brain, lending themselves to the current bout of hysterics. In between gasping breaths, I managed to
choke out, “Five second rule,” which caused Marlin to double over.
Rolling, she
added, “Now mom and dad can finally tell us apart!”
What felt
like minutes of breath-taking laughter passed, though in reality in could not
have been more than forty seconds, before we finally calmed down. With a deep, contented sigh, I set my sword
down and picked my finger up. It flopped
at the joint from one side to the other as I rolled it between my still
attached digits.
Half-expecting
it to twitch, I brought it up to my face for closer inspect. It reminded me of nothing more innocuous as a
baby tooth.
Just a part
of me, discarded.
Sobriety
washed over me at that though. I tossed
the finger to Marlin, or more accurately, at Marlin, killing off her laughing
fit as quickly as it started. “Mom and
dad are going to kill us,” I told her.
She held it
like she was lost in some nightmare, a strange detached dream, on the edge of
bizarre. I have never had a cause to use
the word before,14 but it felt so,
“Surreal”
Marlin finished my thought.
“Exactly,” I
confirmed.
Watching
Marlin turn it over and over in her hands, morbid curiosity tethering my sister
to the wayward body part. Not once did
it occur to me to wonder where the pain was.
Nor did I think to question why it had been Marlin, and not me, that
dropped her weapon first to clutch at her hand.
All at once
though, the shock of wore off, my body gave up, and I watched in slow motion as
an arc of blood bridged the four-foot gap between us. If it were not for her wide-eyed surprise15 in that moment, she would have looked
just like a serial killer.
“Oh, shit,”
she whispered.
:Blood loss
was beginning to make me light-headed, I giggled at her hushed swear. “Don’t cuss!”
I stumbled forward, unsteady on my feet.
“Sis, I’m feeling woozy.”
Ever the
pragmatist, Marlin feigned calm. “Come
on,” she said in a very level tone, completely at odds with her expression,
that reminded me reassuringly of mom, “what’d mom teach us? Elevate.”
As she said
it, I mouthed the word with her, and lifted the wound above my heart, just like
mom taught us. Using my free hand, I
helped Marlin tear a strip from my shirt to press against the… cut? Slice?
My stump? To press against my
stump. “Compress,” we said together, and
stemmed the bleeding a noticeable amount.
Marlin made
her way behind the cashier’s counter, rummaged through drawers full of office
supplies, and returned triumphant with a handful of rubber bands. “Tourniquet,” we finished. Carefully, she wrapped several of them under
the remaining joint below my stump. The
pressure immediately halted the blood flow, which I was grateful for. But, the tightening rubber bands biting deep
into already abused skin, and pressing hard into damaged bone, caused an
alarming amount of pain that pulsed up and down my arm in time with my
heartbeat.
Marlin, my
twin, my best friend, stared directly into my eyes as I winced. The pain slowly abated to something
approaching manageable. Her face contorted
slightly, “Are you okay?” she asked?
“Yeah,” I
answered truthfully.
“Good.”
She frowned, “We have to call 911.”
“Not from here,” I shook my head causing small
bursts of pretty lights to explode behind my eyeballs. “We’re already in a crazy amount of
trouble. Going to be so much worse if
they knew were here cutting pieces off of me instead of at home cleaning.”16
“But,” Marlin
picked up the finger from the countertop, resistance draining from her, “never
mind. I hate it when you’re right. We need to put this in milk.”
I repeated
her words in my head to make certain I heard her correctly. Milk?
Really? “Milk, no, ice. You put teeth in milk.”
“Ice. Yes, duh.
That’s what I meant, you know that.”
After
securing a bag of ice cubs from the fridge where dad kept a cache of sodas and
energy drinks for all the nerds when they needed that extra boost for raiding a
dungeon and or fighting a dragon, we walked out of a darkened and locked store
onto an empty street. “We should
probably take the back way,” Marlin suggested.
With a bloody cleaver in one hand, and a bag with an amputated finger in
the other, she was hard to disagree with.
Away from the
road, through the woods, and across the creek, we stumbled. Bugs, all of the bugs, every single insect
with wings and a taste for people, all that existed and will exist, were drawn
to the scent of my fresh blood and wet sweat.
In the heavy steam of the night, the going was slow, and my concern for
being eaten alive by the ravenous swarm overtook the worry of my recent loss.
Our luck,
such as it was, continued to hold however, as when we finally broke through the
tree line, the street was still mercifully devoid of any traffic. It was too easy to imagine the panicked
reaction of a passerby upon seeing two fear-pale twins, both wearing
blood-soaked clothing, one holding a knife and bag red with a mix of
condensation and blood, and the other barely clinging to consciousness.
Eventually,
one would rightly assume, suspicions might be raised.
[1]
VHS was the primary video format before DVDs.
DVDs were the primary video format before streaming and illegally
downloading movies. Feeling really old
now. -Marcus
[2]
Of which there were an abundance.
-Marlin
[3]
Dad took the family out to sushi a few days prior, so the metaphor was new and
fresh in my brain. -Marcus
[4]
Or from what I can remember, anyway. My
journal simply says, “Summer is awesome so far, but I’m always tired and can
never sleep.” So, some
embellishment. -Marcus
[5]
I feel it necessary to add that there was an angrily crossed out note about him
being tiny and cute in the thing.
-Marlin
[6]
Eh, tomato, tomato. -Marlin
[7]
The origin of our biting sarcasm is still a mystery. -Marlin
[8]
According to dad. We were not familiar
with alcohol at that point. -Marcus
[9]
Home of the U.S. Army’s flight school, and full of fresh-faced flight school
students just aching to spend money.
-Marcus
[10]
Like any pre-teen has a concept of age.
-Marlin
[11]
Richard Punch12 was a mild-mannered librarian until one day he was
punched by a radioactive boxer. Now,
he’s Captain Punch: Delivering justice one punch at a time. In this month’s issue, Captain Punch runs
afoul The Hacker! See the good Captain
prevent The Hacker from taking over the internet!
12 Two decades later and I just got
that. Cannot stop laughing.13 -Marcus
13 Really?
You never picked up on the literary gems that were middle school dick
jokes? E.g.: “It’s time to punch you
right in the –“ “Richard! Look
out!” -Marlin
14 But after
that night, more often than I could have ever imagined. -Marcus
15 Disgust,
more like. -Marlin
16 Ah, to be
young and scared of how your parents are going to react, again. -Marcus
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