Another Late Night Disturbance

Another Late Night Disturbance

Yelling and thuds from down the stairs woke me.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, my body rigid and my mind quick in considering the possibilities. Stranger? My brother? At a bit past midnight, a neighbor was unlikely. As I padded down the stairs, my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness.

I heard yelling again but couldn’t make out the words. I recognized the voice. It was my brother Nathan, Hebrew for “gift from God.”

My hand closed around the nearest heavy object, a glass paperweight decorated with daisies.

My fingers clenched, my stomach taut, I rushed outside toward the voices, toward the sound of slurs, the n word over and over.

“I am NOT your slave,” my oldest brother yelled, stumbling a little as he said it, “You work me like a n-----.” His voice slurred the words, spit dripping down his chin.

“Watch your mouth. Watch how you talk to your mother.” Dad said. My parents stood opposite him, their wrinkles deepening, concern splashed across their faces.

Nathan’s front tooth was missing, his mouth wide like a jack-o-lantern. Behind him, empty beer bottles were poorly hidden around the fence.

“You, you don’t do anything for me,” Nathan leaned forward into Dad’s face. Dad stood with his arms clasped behind his back, as if he were restraining himself.

“You’re weak. You can’t even take care of yourself. We’ve been taking care of you,” Dad said.

“Weak?”

“All of us have been helping you, Nate,” I said. “I drove over here to give you money because you needed it.”

“How long’s that been going on? Explain that.” Nathan said, his tone turning philosophical.

“For a long time. Ever since I got my driver’s license.” I mentally ticked off how many times my parents had swooped in to pay his bills, make sure he had food, and allowed him to move back in. Too many times to count. My stomach twisted like a wet towel being wrung out. This time, they’d allowed him, at almost forty, to move back in in exchange for him to help with odd jobs around the house and Dad’s bathroom project.

“You take… somebody of insignificance and you start taking that away. That’s who they are… and you take that little bit away from them…” With each pause, tears streamed down Nathan’s face.

He gestured wildly, then beat his chest, “That’s all they were! And you sprinkle it back to them. Tell them they gotta do this, gotta do that to get a little bit back. They get tired of that.”

“How old are you?” I changed my voice to cotton candy sweetness. I couldn’t believe he was doing this again. My mind flashed back to all the empty alcohol bottles, the puncture wounds in his arms, the gaping staph infections all over his body. I clenched my hand around the glass paperweight, contemplating its coolness in my hand.

“Too old to be here,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

“Exactly. We’re not trying to give you a little bit back, we’re trying to help you be sober, so you can be on your feet. That’s what we want.” I said, dropping the paperweight into my pocket and removing my death grip from it.

“I’m fucking sober.” Nathan gestured at the air around him.

“Watch your mouth, I asked you nicely,” Dad said.

“Cuz this doesn’t look sober,” I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Do you have any more alcohol that you plan to be consuming tonight?” Mom asked, her voice soft.

“I plan to do drugs tonight, Mom. I’m gonna die tonight,” Nathan dragged a dirty finger across his throat.

“Do I need to call the police because you’re making these suicidal threats?”

“No, I want to smoke a cigarette, Mom,” Nathan said. “Tonight I don’t want to commit suicide. I wanna smoke the only income I have, the only work that I do, the only thing I focused on, the only thing I do is work on that bathroom. I need to smoke when I get more than I can handle and then I calm down.”

“Tonight is a no,” Mom said.

“Tonight is a no, last week was a no, it’s always a no,” Nathan turned, stumbled back, and slumped into his chair next to the empty beer bottles. I watched as he dropped his head in his hands. We stood watching him for a while.

“Why don’t you come in and sit by me on the couch?” Mom cooed.

Nathan extended his shaking hand to her. He looked like a toddler with his lopsided, tearstained face. Mom led him into the living room and wrapped him in her arms. She cradled him silently on the couch. A modern La Pietà.

Ammanda Selethia Moore (they/elle) is a non-binary poet and writer who also teaches English at Norco College. They have had dozens of publications in venues such as The Galway Review, Literary Yard, and The Journal of Radical Wonder. They live with their partner and pups in sunny southern California. Follow their exploits @prof.ammanda on Instagram.