The Way the Family Got Away

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My doll-family plays better at family than my people one does. My Poppa-doll got lost somewhere but Momma told me it was okay for me to make me another Poppa-doll out of string-clothes and buttons and him all kept together with popsicle sticks.

The doll of my little brother got left out under the sun one day once and the yellow-fever colored my little brother in sun-colored. We had to take my little brother to see big-people where they put stuff inside his mouth and touched on how bright was the color of his forehead. There was the poke-poke lady with all her more fingers. There was the fold-handed man that threw drops of water all around the room but that never made it rain outside.

One more way they didn’t make up to make him not as sun-hot as he was was ice cubes inside his diapers. One more way was saying baby and in and air and out from my mouth on him. One more way was coloring his skin back in skin-colored with my crayons. One more way was hanging his baby clothes up on tree-arms but that was only to be inside the shade.

The sun-color got too bright and too inside under my little brother’s skin until it burned his insides out inside his crib. My little brother lived with me and my doll-family after he burned up inside and big-people came over to see how he did it. Big-people carried food over but we didn’t even feed any of it to my little brother. The rest of us ate all of it even though we were all already alive. One man had tree-arms that carried a treeful of red apples and green apples and that kept anyone else from catching any yellow-fever from my little brother.

One more man pushed a button that made light flash that burned your eyes up but did not make it so hot as to burn us up inside. The light flashing made looking-pictures of my little brother on Momma’s lap and one more way to make babies go away to alive. That man blew on the looking-pictures of my little brother until he was out of breath and which but that just left my little brother all small and flat.

My little brother was even littler when he was dead. But more and more big-people came over to our house and one more man had more ways than me to keep my little brother alive. That man wore a burnt-colored knee-coat that was still warm. You could see how hot it was in his hot-colored face and the way he blew his cheeks out to get the hot part out of him. Momma told me that dead people was all that that man did but that that man wasn’t going to take my little brother away from us. We were going to take my little brother away with us. That man was just supposed to get him ready to go.

He undressed the clothes even though my little brother was already cold. But clothes can’t be alive anyway and that man didn’t keep going when he got down to my little brother’s skin. That man took up a bucket of rain water and squeeze-clouds that he carried down with him out of the sky. That man squeezed the squeeze-clouds of rain water down over my little brother so it would drown him in the swallow of water and smoke the fire out that burned his insides up. He dried my little brother down inside a towel like the one they wrapped him up in to bring him home in after he was born. That man unwrapped the towel from my little brother and rained handfuls of rain water up over his head and down over his neck and out the ends of his hair. We combed it out and it looked nice. That man smelled his nose down into the neck and shoulder and snuffled my little brother. That man touched my little brother’s eyelids down with his finger and thumb like Poppa would pull the window-cover down before he would put us down for sleep. But how was my little brother going to see us anymore when his eyes were closed?

That man stuffed cotton balls and worded-paper inside my little brother’s mouth so he could see how to talk. That man got out the needle and thread and asked me how my little brother smiled. He threaded the thread through the needle and the needle and thread into and out of his lips so it could not be told. He got a moon-knife out of his night-bag and cut cuts inside both the elbows and the knees both. He pushed tubes into my little brother but we didn’t feed him any food through them. The squeeze-pump sucked and pulled. It spit and pushed the blood. The tubes he looped into my little brother were outside-veins for the clear-blood that flooded the burned and dead-blood out from my little brother.

That man let me touch where my little brother should have started up again but my hand never breathed up or down on him. We hit and pushed my little brother on his rib bones but that didn’t start his heart beating up or down again either. That just made my little brother go all see-through and angel-colored so we stopped squeezing the squeeze-pump and pulled the tubes out and stopped the holes up.

We colored his skin back in skin-colored with paint brushes from that man’s night-bag. We painted his face and neck and hands back on him but it did not look real or alive enough even when it didn’t even have to be pretty. That man told me let’s dress him up nice so we put dress-up clothes on him but my little brother still didn’t get up and live.

Our House in Mineola (#ulink_03583499-58fb-5408-b973-363ef3a97215)

The men went from living room to bedroom and bedroom and bathroom to kitchen. The men went into and out of the rooms and into and out of our house. The men went back and forth between our house and their truck. They got the couch up between two of them and carried it out. One of them took the cushions. Another one of them carried a chair. Another one of them carried another chair. Their arms and the other parts of them were all large. They made the doorways small with themselves and the furniture they carried out of the rooms, away down the hallway, and out of our house—table, lamp, table and chairs, dresser and dresser, bed and bed and bed.

These and the even bigger things they carried out across the front yard—ice box, bathtub, bathroom sink, kitchen sink, the kitchen table and chairs. They carried out boxes full of other stuff and carried other stuff out that did not fit into boxes. They rolled the carpet up and rolled the carpet up and folded it over their shoulders and shouldered it up into the truck. They pulled the cupboards from the kitchen walls down. The floors they pulled up—all the tile and board.

They took the windows out of the walls and took the way we looked out of the windows away with them when they did that. They took the doors off the hinges and banged them shut inside the walls of their truck so that those closed doors left us outside but also opened the rest of America up for us.

The men pulled the stoop away from the front door and took that away with them too. All that stuff wasn’t ours anymore and their truck was packed. The men climbed up into the truck and into the truck and into the truck. They sat down in the chairs at the kitchen table and among themselves and all the insides of our house that they had carried out. The last one of them pulled down on the rope that rolled the truck’s rolling back door closed. He climbed up through the truck driver’s front door and drove the truck and all our stuff that was inside the truck away from our house in Mineola to somewhere else in America.

My mother and father and brother and sister along with the other and smaller things that we had left were all that we had left of us in that house of our family and stuff. My mother and father packed the suitcases, boxes, and crates up with the rest of the stuff that was still ours. My mother and father packed my brother up in his casket and packed his casket up in the trunk. My mother and father carried everything else out to the car and packed it up too. My mother and father packed my sister and me up with the rest of the stuff that we had left and we left too.

The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It (#ulink_b446d02d-80dc-5550-8b99-1bbdca940213)

They dug the baby-sized hole deep enough for any of the big-people to go down into it. One man pounded stab-holes with the bone-stick he pulled out of his shoulder and back and swung down out of his arm and into the ground and dirt-world. One more man did it with a big-spoon he dug out of the hole and bone of his leg and foot. They dug all the way down into the hole until we couldn’t see them anymore but for their hands and arms and dirt and spoons and bones and sticks. But they didn’t make the hole go all the way through. Neither one of them dug the baby-sized hole deep enough or far enough away or down enough under for my little brother.

But they could both go all the way down inside the hole and still be alive when they climbed back up and crawled back out of it. They were both too big to die and lay down inside the hole. But they pounded the nails down into the top side of the toy box so my little brother couldn’t get out of it and they tied him up inside it with ropes too. They swung my little brother up over the hole with the ropes and they knocked the toy box back and forth against the side-walls all the way down to the bottom where the hole stopped.

But they didn’t cover my little brother up with anything so he could stay warm and go away to sleep. They left the hole open so we could throw dirt on top of him but none of us were going to do it. They left the ropes with him for him to crawl with back out but we had to go and pull him back out of the ground and dirt-world with our hands and arms and backs and ropes. The toy box hit and knocked back and forth against the side-walls and the dirt and rocks all fell down under my little brother and started filling his baby-sized hole back up. We got the toy box out and knocked on its sides and listened for noises but my little brother was quiet inside. We unpounded the nails from the top side of the toy box and pulled it open and looked inside but my little brother was still inside there and he was still dead.

The pile of dirt and rocks by the side of the hole wasn’t high enough and far enough away or up for him to climb on up into the sky and cloud. But we pushed the dirt and rocks back down into the hole and filled it back up with our hands and bones and shoes and hot and string and down and sun and burn and hills and ways and years and names and big and in and dolls and blood and dead and we kept my little brother up above the ground and dirt-world and with us.

Mineola to Birthrock (#ulink_ae086f33-9751-5ee3-b15c-da680125ad37)

We drove away from our house and away down the road. We drove past some other houses that were all broken at the walls and didn’t have any families living in them anymore. They had broken windows and broken doors. They had broken cars in the front yards that didn’t have any tires on them so that those people that had lived there never left but stayed there and died.

We drove all the way out to the far part of Mineola where there were houses that had people and families that were still living in them. We stopped and got out of our car and walked up to this one house and looked in the windows but they were only old people that lived there and they didn’t have any babies left in their family anymore so we didn’t even knock. We needed to find a house with a family that was going to have a baby in it.

We knocked on doors and looked in windows until this other family that needed a baby came up to their door and answered us. Their faces were the only things we could see through their screen door—their mother and father, their brother and sister, and the way they looked like a family in there. Their family stood there behind their screen door and in their doorway and inside their house and with all their stuff. Their father pulled their brother and sister in close to him and his leg and hip and their mother stood next to him too.

Our family stood there in the same way but outside their house and on their porch and without anything with us but us. My father asked their family if they were going to have a baby in it and their father nodded that they were and their mother held the bottom of her stomach up with her hands. My father asked them to stay there and wait there and we went back to our car and opened the trunk up. My father got my brother’s cradle out and my mother got my brother and the other baby stuff out. My mother gave my sister and me the small blankets and the little pillows, the stuffed animals and the other baby toys, and we all carried all that baby stuff back up to that family and their house and stood there on their porch with it.

My mother cradled my brother in the blanket in her arms and touched her hand over the blanket and my brother even though he wasn’t crying or moving his arms and hands or even doing anything anymore. My mother kept my brother with her inside herself and in her arms. My mother wouldn’t let anybody else hold my brother even when their mother talked like a baby talks and held her arms out for him. Their mother said that she wanted to practice with him some but my mother said the baby might break and she wouldn’t let go of him. Their family’s baby wasn’t born yet and their mother cradling my brother in her arms might have killed the baby inside her stomach. Nobody else was supposed to touch my brother anymore or somebody else besides him might die in some other family or house.

The thing that killed my brother was that the cradle didn’t have anymore baby years left in it. My mother didn’t have anymore baby years left in her arms anymore either. My sister and me had already lived them all up and the other baby stuff didn’t have enough baby years left in any of it to keep my brother alive. My brother’s cradle was probably going to kill their family’s baby too but they could not have known that yet.

They got my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff and we got away from there. We walked away from them and back to our car so we could be a family again. My father opened the trunk up and my mother laid my brother down in his casket and closed its top and closed the trunk. The casket was the only other baby place that we had left for my brother after my mother wasn’t holding him in her arms anymore. The rest of our family got back inside our car and closed the doors. Their family walked down off their porch and into the driveway so they could watch us go. Their family was a family there and then and we were going to be a family somewhere else. We drove away from them and they waved at us from their driveway and we waved back through our car windows.

They got my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff and we got out of Mineola. The only baby thing we kept with us was my brother. We stayed a family that way. We drove away from Mineola and toward Birthrock—away from where my brother was alive once and died there and toward the miles and the everything else that was going to happen to us everywhere else we went.

We traded my brother’s life away to that other family when we traded my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff away to them. My brother and the baby he was going to be were going to grow up with some other family somewhere else. We got the life of my brother that we didn’t leave buried in Mineola. That was why we were going to see my brother in so many other babies and other families and other places. My brother was going to be alive in Campbell Station and in Far Town and in other places that we went away to on our way to Bompa’s house in Gaylord.

Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again (#ulink_3ee65efb-b618-5427-95c1-2c27f85109d1)

We drove our house-car over the road over and over until the tires got too hot and they colored the road in burnt-colored. But we weren’t going to burn up inside our house-car or us. We rolled the windows all the way down so the wind could blow through the insides of our house-car and us and push the sun off from our faces and arms so we didn’t burn up like my little brother did before he died.

We drove our house-car down into road-holes and rolled up out of them farther down the road. We hit little hills with our house-car and it lifted us up into the air until we weren’t touching the ground or road-world anymore. We were going to Heaven.

Our whole people-family was going to start living again as soon as we got to Bompa’s house in our house-car. Bompa wasn’t going to let anybody else die after we got there. Bompa was going to have bedrooms for everybody to sleep inside them so we could all get up and live inside his house. There was going to be a living room that was big enough for us to all live together with my whole people-family and my little brother alive inside it too.

But we weren’t living anywhere anymore. We kept leaving everywhere we went. We couldn’t stop and live anywhere until we got to Bompa’s house with our house-car and us and with everybody alive. We drove and rolled and bounced up and down inside our house-car the whole way there. Momma’s head would go up and down and Poppa’s would too. My bigger brother would hold on to his stomach and my insides would shake when they bounced up and fell down and they were empty inside them. You could hear the way my little brother would roll against the sides of the toy box and inside the trunk and you could feel it inside your own insides too.