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The Silent Sunday

By Jamie Fortin

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A bottle of brandy half-gone sat on our wobbly kitchen table alongside two crystal glasses, smudged with cherry lipstick. My mother and her sister Minerva were busy canning thimble berry jam which they sold for five cents a jar. You could see their prickly plum fingers a mile away. A halo of cigarette smoke hung above their heads. I never knew my father. He was killed in a car crash that I wasn’t notified about until I was five. I always thought of him and my baby brother Lawrence as getting off easy, not having to live in the eye of the storm. Lawrence had colic and spent the seven months that he was put on this earth crying.

That Sunday, Lawrence had been crying all morning and my mother, in the state of drunkenness that she was in, wasn’t doing anything to ease his discomfort. Even I, all of eight years old, couldn’t stand another second of his shrieking. My aunt Minerva had told my mother about an old trick that she used whenever her daughter Loretta wouldn’t stop crying. She told my mother to get some liquor from the cellar. My mother swayed over to the door in her black leather shoes, straps strangling her white ankles and heels. They sound like sandpaper on our hardwood floors. My mother returned with a bottle of brown liquor, swishing side to side as she placed it on the table. She told me, “Bring in your brother’s bottle.” I handed it to her, the stillness of her gaze daunting. The effort to hold her eyelids open was more than she could bear. She poured the brown poison into the creamy milk, reminding me of caramel. My stomach twisted. The sunken-in faces of my inebriated aunt and mother wrinkled with laughter and excitement.

They walked to the bedroom with fragile wrists hanging at their sides. They didn’t see me lag behind, as if I were playing a game of hide and seek. I watched as Lawrence sucked on milk and liquor. Soon after, the crying came to a halt. Lawrence had rolled out of my mother’s arms and into his crib. My mother and aunt returned to their lonely glasses at our kitchen table. Half the day passed and Lawrence had not woken. His silence was unnoticed. I felt curious. I walked over to his room and stood with my ear suctioned to the door. I heard nothing but my heart pounding in my ears. I opened the door and saw a blue faced infant with gray skin. I felt sick to my stomach and ran into the kitchen to get mother. She couldn’t adjust her eyes to focus on my panic-stricken face. I grabbed her sweaty hand and led her to my discovery. My aunt followed.

That night my mother sent me to my Aunt Minerva’s house for a week. When I returned home, my mother looked as if she were an 80-year-old woman. She stood in front of me in the hallway, her black hair frazzled, wearing an oily blue dress that hung off of her fragile shoulders. She came up to me and kissed me on the forehead with her cracked lips that would forever be stained with the smell of alcohol. I asked her what happened to Lawrence. She told me, “Your baby brother has been sick for a long time and didn’t make it.” When I tried to speak, she cut me off, shutting her bedroom door.

Since that day, No questions are asked by me or anyone else who knows our family. My mother told me that she couldn’t afford a funeral service for Lawrence and buried him out in the woods behind our house. I can barely see her face as she tells me the news, my eyes flooded with tears. I feel like I have to run, but to where? My legs are heavy like bricks. I go out behind our house to the woods. My mind is racing until two thin branches, jump out at me. They look so lonely lying on the ground away from their tree, their home. I place the sticks together and form a cross. My tears begin to slow. This will be Lawrence’s tree. The air is so thick and I feel dizzy. I better get back to mother. She doesn’t leave her room much and is always looking out the window. My aunt doesn’t come over anymore except to drop off buckets of thimble berries. My fingers have taken on a prickly plum look. I find that most days are silent at our house, especially Sundays.

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© 2004 Me Three