The Boy Who Fell From The Sky

The Boy Who Fell From The Sky

[1]

It fell from the sky and landed in Grandmama’s garden, amongst the Hydrangeas and the Butterfly Weeds. The soil was fresh and dark from watering, and caved in with the impact, creating a shallow grave.

I jumped to my feet and kicked it, blasting a heap of soil into the air like a bomb falling on D-day.

“Irving! This child (under breath)—get away from there!”

Grandmama sprung to her feet, suddenly immune to her arthritic knees, and pulled me away. I struggled.

“It’s dead!” I screamed. “Let me alone, it’s dead.”

Grandmama smacked me across the face and for a second I saw a flash of light against my right eye. The pain sobered me, but it soon passed and in its wake came shame. Otis was sitting on the back porch looking at me, a palm against the right side of his face for sympathy. Whenever one of us got hit, we all felt it. When Papa beat Mercedes with his belt for bringing a boy home, leaving welts on her back, we all slept on our stomachs and leaned forward when we sat for dinner. When Mama threw a fork at Otis during Thanksgiving dinner for tossing a leg of chicken on the floor, we all got stitches on our cheek. That is the three of us children in a house dominated by Mama and Papa and Grandmama.

She dragged me from the garden and set me on the porch while she went back to retrieve “It”. And I didn’t really know what “It” was until she came back with its body in a cardboard box once used for carrying tomatoes.

“Look what you did,” she scolded, tipping the box toward me. Otis, only four years old at the time, scrambled to his feet. Inside the box lay the body of a crippled Robin with a dark back and ruddy-orange belly, its yellow beak slightly agape.

Grandmama pulled the box away, “Now why’d you have to go and do a thing like that. You don’t like God’s creation?”

“It’s just a stupid bird,” I scowled.

Grandmama looked at me sideways, “The only thing that’s stupid is your behavior.”

Otis stood and tugged at Grandmama’s dress. “We got to bury it, so it can rest in peaches, Grandmama.”

“What, and mess up my garden, again,” she said, shooting an annoyed look at me. I crossed my arms, fighting to hold back tears of anger.

Back then I didn’t know why I was so angry. But now I’ve laid it out as clear as day. As children we were born into chaos. The troubles of the adult world cast long and dark shadows over our innocence. I was hurting. I had so much anger inside of me, directed at everything and everyone.

“Come on, Otis,” said Grandmama. “We can bury it out front.”

“I don’t see why bother,” I said. “Only people get burials and funerals. Birds are just stupid and useless.”

Grandmama turned around, “Just you watch your mouth, boy. Cussing for your brother to hear. All of God’s creation has a purpose. There aint a single tiny thing, living or dead, that don’t have a reason for being.”

I hated Grandmama’s religious talk. My imagination was too weak to believe in anything that didn’t use a belt or an open hand to make a point.

Otis trailed off, holding Grandmama’s hand and peaking into the box with wide eyes.

-

I still feel bad about the time I tricked him out of his savings, exchanging all of his birthday money for shiny Euro coins. On his fourth birthday, Otis received fifty dollars, two twenties and a ten, all crisp and new. He slept with it in his pajama pockets and wet the bed that night. Mama set the money to dry on the windowsill. It lost its white crispness, muddied and limp from urine.

“Hey, I know a way you can get your money back,” I said.

Otis pulled his birthday money out of his pocket and fingered through it. “Mama says it’s still good, if I keep it out of my pockets.”

I scowled, “That’s a lie. It aint no good. Aint nobody want your pee-peed money.”

“Well I’m holding on to it. Gonna save it till Christmas come.”

I shook my head. “You can’t buy anything with that. When money gets wet it don’t have no more value. Why you think they keep it so dry.”

“But Mama said—.”

“She didn’t want to hurt your feelings is all. But I’ve been thinking. There’s a way you can get it all back.”

Otis was wide-eyed and taking it all in. I was a clever but cruel child. I exchanged his American paper money for shiny euro coins that Mama had left in an old purse from a trip overseas.

“This don’t look like money,” he said, almost on the verge of tears.

“Gosh, do I have to explain everything to you. That’s enough money to go crazy with,” I said, borrowing a line from Grandmama. “But don’t show it to Mama, cause she don’t want you to have that much money.”

“Ok,” he said, and it was settled.

I walked away proud of myself, salivating with the thought of what fifty dollars could buy. Otis soon realized I had tricked him. He followed Grandmama to the corner store and tried to purchase licorice with the European money and the clerk laughed at him. Yet, I never worried of retribution because Otis was forgiving. Of all the mean things I’d done to him it never once hardened his feelings towards me.

Grandmama often sat me down and talked about the responsibilities I had to take care of Otis, to protect him from the adult troubles that grazed our lives.

“If I go, who you got?” she asked.

“Otis and Mercedes and my parents.”

“What if your Papa leave and your Mama go chasing after him? Then who you got?”

“Otis and Mercedes.”

“And when your sister gets married off and start her own family, who you got?”

“Otis, Grandmama.”

“Alright, then. Treat him kind. Do right by him and you’ll never have to stand alone. You aint a bad child just…just a lil’…well, you aint a bad child, let’s leave it at that.”

I must say though, discipline rolled off my back. I knew better, but I rarely did it. There was no punishment harsh enough to quiet the demons, restlessly chipping away at my soul. I stole money from Mama’s purse, I cussed—profusely, I wailed into Otis so bad one time I was dizzy, possessed by a rage eating me alive—a boy on fire.

Otis cried for mercy. No one came to his rescue. The only one who could and would protect him was me, and here I was with his delicate head in my hands and a dent in the wall.

[2]

What I’ve also come to realize is we never had any consistency in our upbringing. We never had a bedtime, we ate when we wanted, watched television endlessly so much that with the t.v. off the house seemed haunted. Otis struggled to sleep at night. He’d wake up in a cold sweat, kneeling by his bed with the cover drawn up to his chin, shivering. I read him bedtime stories, often the same books over and over until Mercedes got us library cards. I took solace in books. Otis loved to hear me read.

“Read that line again,” he said.

“Why, you want me to reread that sentence?”

“Just do iiiiit.”

“Come on, now. Are you paying any attention to the story?” I reread the line, aggravated and annoyed, but I looked back and Otis was smiling. He loved the sound of my voice—the only comforting sound he knew.

If only the walls could hold back the things we shouldn't have heard. If only we could wave a white flag and surrender to the beatings we didn’t deserve. And at the same time that my bottom was sore so were my knuckles. Things grew worse.

--

They wrestled each other to the ground. When your parents fight, it’s like the battle of the titans. The ground rumbles, and you sit back and watch everything fall to pieces. Still, it doesn’t quite register. You see it happening, but there’s no analysis, everything is literal. You don’t see how it’s affected you until many years pass and your looking down at a bloody face and there are sirens going off in the distance.

Anyway, Otis tried to pull them apart. He tugged on Mama’s skirt, but she didn’t see him, and when she stumbled back she knocked Otis down the stairs. His little body tumbled like a rag doll down a full flight, landing in the foyer, twisted. He didn’t move and neither did we. I couldn’t move. I was in pain. I felt every step, I felt each of his bones break, and felt his hemorrhaging. I felt him lose consciousness.

Grandma said she’d be damned before she buried one of her grandchildren. We gathered around his hospital bed, the only time our family was together in the same room without yelling and fighting. We were all waving our white flags, for peace. No one was more sorry than me. I felt a responsibility to Otis.

They said he had a lot of bleeding in his brain, swelling too. It put him in a coma.

“If he wakes up, he may not remember your names,” said the doctors. Otis had two. It was that bad.

If Otis didn’t remember me, I’d remind him of all the wicked things I’d done to him. And I’d ask his forgiveness, and if he was still Otis he would forgive me in a second.

Grandmama prayed, and she said that all of God’s creatures, no matter how small, have a purpose.

“Amen,” we said, as a family.

Otis slept peacefully. Still, I read to him—to myself—every sentence, twice.