Leo

LEO

NOW

That first night in our house you hardly speak. You don’t say anything unless Dad says something first. You keep your head hung low. You don’t look at us.

You call Dad sir. He tells you not to, but you do it, anyway, ’cause you can’t stop. Every time you say it, Dad dies a little inside. I see it in his eyes.

You cower in the corner of rooms, looking scared as hell. You don’t know what to do with yourself, with your hands, with your eyes. Dad tells you to have a seat because he’s so worried about your feet, which were full of glass and thorns and flint when the cops got to you. Docs had to pick it all out with tweezers. You didn’t flinch, ’cause I’m guessing that’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.

When Dad tells you to have a seat, you drop to the floor. We’re in the kitchen when it happens, in a room with six chairs. Yet you pick the floor. Dad looks shook but goes on as if it’s no big deal because he doesn’t want you to feel all weirded out by calling you out for it. So instead he makes turkey sandwiches and we all eat on the stupid floor, except you don’t eat much because two sandwiches in one day is like five hundred more calories than you’re used to, and your stomach can’t handle it. You try to eat. You look hell-bent on eating, but you also look like you could puke.

I tell you, “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” because I can see in your eyes that you think you do.

When Dad goes to take your plate away, you pull back fast. You whimper a little, like you think he’s going to hit you. It gives Dad pause. Sure, we both know you got roughed up while you were gone. That goes without saying. But knowing it and seeing it are two different things. I feel bad for you, thinking all the time that someone’s going to sucker punch you. I’ve been beaten up by kids at school before. I know what it’s like. Except that at school there’s always some teacher there to pull kids off me, though that’s not necessarily a good thing ’cause I still get in trouble for fighting, and then I get crucified by kids for being a sissy. A one-two punch. But at least I don’t get killed.

I doubt you ever had anyone to stand up for you.

I can’t help myself. I stare at you. I don’t remember what you used to look like, but I’ve seen videos and the pictures. You look almost the same as you did before, except you’re bigger now, though hardly, and what were baby teeth are big and yellow and crooked. Your hair is bald in spots. I see Dad trying not to look at the bald spots, but they’re hard to miss. Kids aren’t supposed to be bald.

Later I ask Dad why he thinks you’re going bald. I ask if he thinks you have cancer. He gets mad at me for that. He says of course you don’t have cancer but he never says why he thinks you’re going bald. I take my question to the internet. You might have alopecia. But more likely, you’re compulsively pulling your own hair out or it’s falling out because of stress. When I read that, I feel like a jerk for thinking you have cancer. I tell myself not to stare at the bald spots anymore because I don’t want to give you a complex. I wonder if you even know the bald spots are there.

You talk like a redneck. Which is weird as fuck since you come from an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Midwest. But you haven’t been to school since kindergarten. And whoever had you was probably some redneck meth head, and everything you know, you learned from him.

Though mostly you don’t talk, you just say yes sir and no ma’am.

That night, the cops keep watch on our house. They sit parked in their police car, same as the news crews do, everyone vying for a piece of you.