She asked me if I remembered that, and when I said no, she said, Well, of course, you were just a baby.
“I don’t remember when it stopped exactly,” she said. “When you didn’t have to be in bed with me or your dad.” I felt her arms and legs flex with thought. “I guess it was when you were big enough to sleep by your brother.” She sighed. “That makes the most sense.”
She held me for a moment longer, then, as if satisfied with the answer she gave to her own question, she released me. She lay on her back and stared at the black ceiling, a sky without stars, with no stories to tell.
“You stink,” my mother said. “When’s the last time you had a bath?”
I lied and said it was yesterday.
“Well, you need one now. Grab your things. Close the door behind you.”
The bathroom was upstairs, next to my dad’s bedroom. Since my mother and I had been staying here, the bedroom door was always closed. This morning, it was open, and an eerie daylight shone through the window blinds. I tried not to look, pretended that looking was also forbidden. But it was weird. The bed was made. Zero clothes were thrown on the floor, and the fan chair had been moved to the opposite side.
So there was a clear path to the closet, if I wanted it. I didn’t want it. I put my clothes on the sink and started my bath. I waited for the tub to fill. I peed, flushed the toilet, and listened to the water move down the pipes, descending to the basement, rushing above where my mother lay in the dark. My dad was out there. My mother was downstairs. Everyone was somewhere else, and why couldn’t I know? I deserved to know.
I kept the water running and tiptoed to my dad’s closet. The box was still there. So was the tape. I waited until the bath was full before I snuck downstairs and put it in. I pressed rewind. I pressed play.
But there were no clues.
There was the woman. There was the gun. There was her face.
It’s OK, the Stranger said. They need to understand you deserve this.
My wailing must’ve woken my mother, though I didn’t realize it was me making those sounds until she appeared in the basement doorway.
“What’s wrong with you?” my mother said.
I wiped the last bit of tears and snot off my face. I pointed to the VCR. The tape, done playing, half ejected itself, as if the VCR had spat it out, out of disgust.
“What is this?” my mother said.
I opened my mouth and wailed some more. “He’s killed him,” I cried. “I know it.”
My mother dropped the tape. “What?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
The phone rang. In the story I accepted, the call was right on cue. It was an officer. It was my dad, calling to say he’d found another tape. With my brother. With Chris. You’d better come down here, he would say. To the station. It’s over. It’s all over.
* * *
On the way to the police station my mother would not say a word. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t imagine myself ever wanting to talk again. Before we left I had thrown up, quickly, violently. Heaving all I had, and when all I had was gone, my body retched some more. Even though there was nothing left. No words. Only feeling terrible. Only the awful taste.
I sat in the back of the van. I would stay here. I would wait silently as my mother went into the station. Cars and clouds would roll by. A siren would shriek, and a minute later my mother would reappear, changed again.
* * *
My mother shook my knee to stir me from my daydream. We’re here, she said, and stepped out of the van. Where we were wasn’t the station. We were parked in an unfamiliar lot, behind a big brick building I’d never seen. Or I had seen it once, I was later told, but when my eyes were new and I entered our prison town for the first time, in the arms of my mother.
The hospital smelled like the school nurse’s office, chemical and clean. My mother held my hand. A nurse gave her a number and my mother pulled me through a maze of halls. I peeked in a few of the rooms, saw serious-looking people standing over still feet. In one room I caught a man, not much older than my dad, pushing a pole to the bathroom. In another, an old woman slept in a chair, flowers in her hand, saggy balloons dying just above her head. Eventually we came to the door with the number. It was closed, and when my mother gently knocked, I heard my dad’s voice call for us to come in.
The room was mostly dark. The lights were turned off, and only a few bars of daylight slipped through the blinds, striping the yellow walls white. My dad rose from the chair and greeted my mother with a hug, burying his puffy face in her neck, her yellow hair. He pulled away and whispered something that I couldn’t hear or see behind my mother’s head. But my mother nodded and the two turned to the opposite wall, to a bed I thought was empty until I stepped deeper into the room. In the bed I saw two feet and when I followed those feet I saw my brother.
It took a moment to recognize my brother in the body in the bed. I had to look past so much. His starved body, thin as me. The long hair that swept over his shut eyes. He had bruises up and down his arms, dark purples stained on his neck and wrists. A tube snaked up his arm and disappeared in the hospital gown. His face looked sucked in, his cheekbones stuck out, and he was as white as a ghost. I didn’t believe them when they said he wasn’t dead.
My mother fell to her knees, rose with the help of the bed rails and my dad. He put his arm around us both and we watched my brother’s chest rise and fall. We watched his mouth hang open, the drool that pooled off his lip. His face flinched as he slept. I wanted to put my finger in his mouth, to feel his breath. I wanted to dip my finger in the cave of his lips and watch him dream.
* * *
The next night we took him home. My mother’s insurance ran out. My dad offered money but my mother wanted him out of here, she said. She wanted this to be over. A stern doctor cleared my brother, prescribing a lot of rest, food, and water. He looked at us with pity and sent us on our way.
All of this after my dad filed the police report. After my brother woke and answered my dad’s questions. When he did wake, to me, he was a different person. Gone were the faces he made, the looks I recognized. He had no attitude or emotion and answered each question yes or no, or with the smallest of sentences.
Where were you kept? House.
Were you held against your will? Yes.
Where exactly? House.
Where in the house? Basement.
Did he hit you? Yes.
Where? My arms. Legs and face.
Were you tied up? Yes.
You could not move?
No.
For how long? All the time.
My mother held my brother’s hand the entire interview, but this didn’t seem to comfort him. He didn’t look at her, or me. He looked at the window, even though the curtains were closed, and even if they weren’t, the room’s view was just another brick wall.
My dad continued.
This will be difficult, he said.
Did the man touch you, in an inappropri—? Yes.
— ate way? He did? Yes.
My mother stifled a cry.
OK, it’s OK, son, my dad said. Can you tell me how many times? A few.
Can you show me where? My brother pointed. Down his front, between his legs. He rolled over and pointed down his back.
My dad let his head drop, but only for a second. “It’s OK,” he said again. “It’s OK. It’s over now.” He took my brother’s hand and rubbed his thumb over the bump where the IV entered his skin. “I just need you to do one last thing. When you’re ready, I need you to come with me and identify the man. His body.”