Page 105 of The False Flat

He held me in his arms, apologizing over and over again, apologizing for taking so long to get downstairs, apologizing for my hair, apologizing for what those girls had done and for what everyone else hadn’t.

I couldn’t stop crying. I blubbered at him, telling him, between rasping sobs, that I wished I was White and that my hair was straight and that my lips weren’t as full, so I’d stop getting picked on, so I’d stop feeling like I was always waiting to be picked for one of the teams. Because which side did we belong on, he and I? We weren’t Black. We weren’t White. And neither side knew what to do with us.

He let me cry until it was all out. When I’d fallen silent and the yard glowed as the sun transformed from its afternoon sharpness to the subtle golden gleam of early evening, he pushed me up and told me it would be okay, that we had each other. We were the same. As long as I had him, I’d have someone who knew what it was like to be in the middle, to belong between two big groups.

We were the mixed kids, the ones who had light skin but coarse, curly hair that our parents didn’t know what to do with. He told me I had it harder because I was a girl, and girls were meaner than boys at my age. He held my hand as we walked inside and up to my bathroom, where I cried some more when I saw my hair.

My brother told me I was beautiful, that I’d be beautiful even if I shaved my head, because what I looked like on the outside didn’t matter. I didn’t believe him, of course, because it did matter. The hesitation on the White kids’ faces told me it mattered. The open disgust on the Black girls’ faces told me it mattered. But he’d been trying to calm me down, and it had partially worked. It got me to stop crying, at least.

He tried to fix my hair, to repair the matted, torn bits sticking out all over the place, but in the end, he’d called a friend of his, and his friend’s mother came to our house with a bag full of hair products, a gorgeous Black woman whose curls were defined, big, and unapologetic. Her kindness as she washed my hair, layered in products, and gently combed out my curls didn’t change what had happened to me in our front yard, but it changed how I saw people. Black, White, Hispanic, mixed: it wasn’t the color of your skin that made you who you were; it was how you lived and how you treated other people.

She told me the girls who’d bullied me were angry because I had Black in me but had light skin and could get away with things they couldn’t. She told me that they probably didn’t even understand why they’d done it. She told me it would get easier.

Later that night, after dinner, Brandon asked me if I was okay.

I nodded. I wasn’t, but I was tired of talking about it. “Thanks, B. I love you.”

He sprang one of my temporarily defined curls. “I love you too, little sis.”

A large tear fell onto the faded cover of Old Yeller in my lap. In the first years of my life, my brother was always there. The two of us had been a team. When our mom was out climbing the corporate ladder and our dad was busy building his medical practice, it was Brandon who had been there. Every. Single. Time.

And nothing else mattered because together, we could get through anything.

I sat for a long time, pulling at the feelings woven around my heart like loose threads. It was more than losing my brother and friend; it was losing someone who understood what it was like to be me.

I placed the book beside me, then riffled through the rest of the box. The lump in my throat was nearly unbearable when I palmed the scrappy little monkey wearing a red bow tie. My brother had kept it under his pillow for good luck.

The monkey got a special place in my lap as I moved from a gnawed, stubby pencil Brandon had used to do his last sheet of math homework, to the mint-condition baseball card he had kept on his bedroom shelf. It wasn’t until I saw the leather-bound notebook that my hand stopped moving.

Instead of picking up the journal—Brandon would never let anyone call it a “diary”—the one he’d started writing in after his diagnosis, I returned the contents to the box, everything but the monkey.

That was enough for tonight; I wasn’t as brave as Brandon had been. Brave even on his last day, when he’d folded the journal into my hand and told me to read it whenever I missed him.

I had never opened it.

I looked up at the ceiling. “I miss you, brother. It’s been twenty years, and I miss you like I lost you yesterday.”

I closed my eyes and slowly inhaled, holding the breath for as long as I could. Then I pushed upright, carried the box back to my bedroom, and, as I placed Brandon’s monkey next to the purple Beanie Baby on my bed, I told them both I’d read the journal within a week.

Before I did, I needed another session with Hannah.

CHAPTER 41

LIFE REALIZATION #18: I NEED A FRIEND WHO LIKES TO WALK IN OTHER PEOPLE’S SHOES

I’d tried to move my Wednesday appointment up, but Hannah wasn’t in the office. A family emergency. By Tuesday night, I couldn’t wait any longer. Deanna became my stand-in therapist. I hadn’t spoken to Grant because I wanted to do it right. I needed someone to tell me I’d analyzed this appropriately, because even though I was beginning to trust myself, I was new at it. And now, I had people in my life to talk things out with. I wasn’t entirely alone.

So, in her warm kitchen, late in the evening, when she was still recovering from the long ride two days before and needed sleep for the long workday ahead, Deanna listened.

The first time the doorbell rang, Deanna had to remind me that it was Halloween, but William was taking care of the trick-or-treaters as we hid in the kitchen.

My phone buzzed with a text. My mother. If you don’t call me, I’m coming to you, it said. Empty threat. I would not call her. The last time we’d talked, she’d told me how horrible I was for not seeing Chad.

I confessed everything to Deanna. My brother, my parents, Chad, my own denial of it all. When I told her about making an accidental appointment with Elaine, she spit her tea out onto the table. She smiled as I told her how therapeutic our final conversation had been and then silently let me babble on and on, refilling cups, nodding, and hugging me about a dozen times.

I waited for condemnation, judgment, but none came.

“Why aren’t you telling me to stay away from your brother?”