When her brother returns, Mary looks forward to a new beginning and to having him in her life. But nothing is as it first seems.
He showed up on a Sunday. He’d been in town for a couple of weeks, and I had not known, though I’d thought of him often. He found me, and I, him, because he was admitted to the hospital with an infected leg. One of the nurses who worked there, put our names together and then put us in touch.
I was so happy to hear from him, I nearly cried. I couldn’t talk, because I was busy with Ina [mother] duties, and over the next few days I was unavailable due to a legal situation that I had to make right.
Once that was solved, I went straight to his hospital bed. We had lunch together, and caught each other up on what we had been doing in our lives. Both of us seemed to need to talk, and shoved our words in any spaces we saw available. I had to leave after a bit and we hugged tightly.
He said, “I’m so glad I found you, I’ve been looking for you, wondering how you are, and now I’m not an orphan anymore.”
I laughed and said, “That is exactly how I felt.”
I left and went on with the rest of the day. The next morning, he called me, bright and early, and we met up. He came back to my house, and over the next two hours he told me of his experience in prison. I knew what he had gone away for, but I had not known the details.
As he concluded his story, I was in tears. What I thought had happened in that small house was not exactly correct. Hearing my brother tell me his side of it made it seem as if he were sent to prison for a manslaughter charge that was not his to serve. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that he was here, with me. We were going to start new. Turtle was going to know her uncle, and all would be right in that part of the world.
The days passed on and I welcomed him, his wife and his twins into my heart and my home, feeding them and entertaining them.
But about the third day, things started falling apart. He’d been telling me all along he had a job with the Tribe; they just had to go through the right lines to get him working. I believed him — the Tribe is sort of backwards anyway, and if they want someone to work for them, they will do whatever is needed to get that person in a position.
He had been staying in a hotel on the Tribe’s dime, and he would be moving into a house at the end of the week. He wanted me to call the landlady and find out when he could move in. My brother had been telling me all week about this house he was moving into, how it was just a shell. He and his wife had to do all the work and yet there was still no plumbing.
Knowing how landlords can be in this town, I was not surprised. So I called his landlady up and wanted to know when the house would have plumbing and when he could actually move in. The landlady tore into me saying that he had dropped off the radar and had not been in touch, and that he had ended up doing more damage to the house than fixing it, and they were considering locking up the house and not letting him in.
I told her I guess I hadn’t heard the whole story and was sorry. I told her I’d talk to him and see what was going on and tell him to be in touch. I hung up the phone and five minutes later he called her and stood in my living room and lied through his teeth to her. I was furious. I hate liars. I hate schemers. And here was one of the biggest ones.
I flipped back through everything he had told me since arriving on my doorstep. He got off the phone and he was no closer to having a place to live than he was when he had called her. The Tribe was only putting him up in the hotel until Sunday, so come Monday, he had no place to go. We offered our floor for him to sleep on, come Monday, and I made him a couple of plan B’s —telling him I’d go with him to talk to the tribe and get him some assistance. He thanked me and then he and his family went back to their hotel.
I was furious. He probably never had the job for sure. He had lied to his landlady and more than likely got himself kicked out before he had even moved in, and he made me look like a complete idiot. He called me a few hours later to say that if he were not allowed to move in it was all my fault, and that he and his wife didn’t take any charity. I was a bit relieved; after all this, I wasn’t sure I wanted him in my house. He called a few hours later to tell me he needed some food for his kids. We took a pizza over to them. When I walked into the hotel room, the twins were both in tears.
I put the pizza on the bed. Mihigna sat down in a chair and my brother stared talking to him, his words coming fast, as if he could only talk fast enough, then he could outrun himself and the trouble that was quickly surrounding him.
I went to the other room and talked to the twin. They gobbled the pizza down and I asked them if they had eaten that day. They looked at each other and shook their heads no. I asked them what had happened. They said they didn’t know, that their parents had left them in the hotel room all day and came back when it was dark. All they knew was they had no place to stay come morning. They both wanted to go back to Arizona and be with their grandma and go back to school, but their mom told them they would not be going.
So then they wanted to go to their cousin’s house in Sioux Falls. The older twin broke down when she said, “At least there we’d have food and a house to stay in.”
My brother has been selfish and careless as long as I’ve known him, but now he was dragging his poor kids into it. When kids get the short end of the deal, it really pisses me off. I was getting all fired up, thinking of ways to get them out of this, but then I stopped. In the short time I’d known these girls, I’d come to care about them. They were smart, sweet and had good heads on their shoulders for being 13. But I could not jump in and save them. As much as I wanted to, this was not my battle to fight. I had to walk away. I hugged them, told them to call me if they needed anything and I would talk to them later.
He called me about 30 minutes later, put the twins on the phone and had them ask me for money. I told them yes, since they would benefit from going to Sioux Falls. We hung up and I haven’t seen or heard from them since. I figured I’d at least see them once more when they picked up their money, but no, they disappeared on a Monday and I can only hope the girls are safe and healthy. This is ironic considering that three days before my brother’s arrival, I was wishing for him to show up so I would feel less lonely, so I knew I was wanted and loved by someone. In the week it took for him to show up and then disappear, I now feel differently. I feel harder, less open; like I have overrated my need for “family.”
My birth family and my adopted family have done little else but lie boldfaced to me, and yet they don’t seem to understand why it upsets me so. I don’t want to get bogged down in the sadness of it. Yes, it is sad. But the joyousness of it all is that despite them, despite all the shit I’ve lived through, I have this amazing husband and this adorable, wonderful daughter who I think the world of, and who will never for one moment know the misery I have overcome.
In the sad moments, I look to those things.
History can repeat itself, but it doesn’t have to. I am a firm believer that your past DOES NOT dictate your future — it can surpass it by light years. Mine has, a million times over.
Photo Credits
“My Shadows” Cinzia A. Rizzo @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
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