I struggle to put the pot—one of those large ones that could make spaghetti for a neighborhood—on top of the stove. Usually, my brother’s here to help me carry it but I haven’t seen him in days. I put the shorter pot filled with water on the backburner.
Sometimes, things are good. We have hot water and heat and everything else that keeps us comfortable. But other times, mama’s job cuts her hours, or my dad gets laid off and then they’re stuck choosing between what we need most.
I turn the burners to boil then yell to my mama, “Pot’s on the stove! I’m going outside.”
“Outside where? If you see your brother, tell him to bring his ass home.”
I walk out the front door.
No one’s ever home at Katrina’s, so I don’t bother texting her before I walk up to her porch. She opens the door so quickly after I knock, it’s like she was sitting against it.
“Tee Teeee! What’s good?” She throws her arms up in the air. I wish I could match her excitement.
Katrina grabs her key from the tack in the wall and shuts the door behind her. Locks it.
“Girl, nothing much,” I say back. I tuck my hands in my North Face jacket pockets—I got it when things were good.
“Feels like something,” Katrina says as we start walking from her apartment to the park right across the street. It’s where you go in this neighborhood when you need to talk, when you need to sneak and do something, or when you need to get away.
Bright leaves decorate our dull neighborhood. Things that don’t belong. I listen to them crunch under my combat boots.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
We sit on the swings. Surprisingly, only one mother is here with her child, guiding the boy down the slide over and over again.
“You got a lighter?” Katrina says and pulls a cigarette from her pocket.
I don’t know when she got into that nasty habit. Maybe she’s just been hiding it from me this whole time.
Katrina and I have been friends since my family moved here about eight months ago. She was the only nosy person who introduced herself as we moved in, then told me we could walk to the corner store sometime. Katrina’s the only person I talk to, really. Her and my brother.
“You know I don’t smoke,” I say and turn my nose up as if she’s blowing that stale smoke my way already.
“Thought all that struggling would drive you to it by now.”
My mom smokes. My dad smokes. My brother smokes. So far, the smoking skipped me.
“I hear your brother moving out,” she says as she swings slowly.
“What?” I stop swinging and stare at Katrina. The cigarette hangs out of her mouth like a dog’s tongue and the wind nudges it. She stares ahead at our brick apartment complex across the street, each apartment identical. Kids play kickball in the shared front yard and we hear their laughter. Something about their joy makes me want to join them. Forget about it all for a minute.
“His little girlfriend is running around telling people that y’all water is turned off, so he’s moving out and never coming back.”
Our parents—whether they mean to or not—teach us to stay put. Really, everyone around here complains but never leaves. I don’t really know if Malik’s girlfriend is just talking or not.
“It’s true,” Katrina says and takes the cigarette out her mouth. “I asked him when I saw him walking to the corner store, but he told me not to say nothing. I can’t have you out here surprised, though.”
Malik and I have always done everything together. We’re about 11 months apart, so anything he got into, I got into. Anything he joined—like karate after he got an under-the-table job at the gas station—I had to join. Anything he started, like that rap group he tried to put together when we were 14 and 15, I had a part in. We’re a pair. Always have been.
But most of all, he’s made my life easy for me. He’s made it bearable.
I hop off the swing. “I’ll see you later, K.”
Instead of going home, I decide to stop at Malik’s girlfriend’s house, down the street from our apartment complex. The whole way there, I practice what I’m going to say. I try the confrontational approach, then the sad approach—which always gets him because I’m still his little sister—then the “keep it real with me” approach. I get to the door and raise my hand to knock, then lower it and walk away instead, hoping no one saw my visit through the blinds.
The leaves crunch under my feet like bugs as I speed to our apartment instead.
What was I supposed to say if Malik and his girlfriend answered the door? He was the one holding me together. He gives me the strength to not give up on everything. He’s the go-getter of the family. All I ever see is my parents struggling, and that’s enough to tell me that dreams can’t pay the bills, but Malik convinces me that we don’t have to live like this.
I get inside and check the stove.
“Maaa, where are my pots?!”
“Girl, I thought you’d be back a lot sooner, so I poured them in the tub for you. See if it’s still warm.”
I stomp into the bathroom and slam the wooden door shut. Maybe that’s why Malik left us. Even the simple things we’re supposed to have, we don’t. Even the supposedly easy things are made hard for us.
The water in the tub is room temperature. I lower the toilet lid and sit on it, watch the water and curse the fact that I can’t warm it back up. I undress and get in anyways, ignoring my mama as she shouts and asks if I need another pot boiled.
I hear my parents arguing about what bill is more important to pay next. And this is what my brother would save me from. When they’d argue, we’d go somewhere — on a walk, or to one of his friend’s houses, just far away from here. Far enough to forget, even for a few hours, that we’re broke and always will be.
I grab my loofah and scrub my skin hard like I scrub the sink, the water covering half the length of my feet.
He’s moving out and never coming back, Katrina had said.
I scrub my legs harder with the loofah, the noise almost like leaves crunching. Maybe I deserve to be left here. Maybe Malik deserves better than us, than this. And maybe I don’t. I guess Malik wants me to figure it out for myself.
I don’t know how to start, don’t know how to live my life without the brother I’ve always had, but I can’t do anything but remember everything he’s done for me — and try to be my own rock.
But it feels like he’s leaving me, and only me, even though I know he’s running from the way we’re living.
My dad’s voice overpowers my mother’s, and then their room goes quiet.
The water grows colder as I scrub my skin. Goosebumps make my skin toffee. I dip the loofah in the water once more and watch the suds float to the top.
Contributor Notes
Arriel Vinson is a Tin House Winter Workshop alumna and Hoosier who writes about being young, black, and in search of freedom. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and received a B.A. in Journalism from Indiana University. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Catapult, Shondaland, BOOTH, Cosmonauts Avenue, Waxwing, Lunch Ticket, Electric Literature, and others. Her work has also been nominated for Best New Poets 2020, Best of the Net 2019, and a Pushcart Prize. She is a 2019 Kimbilio Fellow and a blog contributor for We Need Diverse Books.
