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There is not a moment when I feel the switch, when it bubbles through me and replaces one person with another. There is nothing to fight. Nothing to struggle against. I simply open my eyes to a place I don't recognize. I stare around, take in my surroundings, and then continue.
Our minds are unique in that they are like infants in their acceptance of what is shown. I don't wonder that I don't remember yesterday, because I have always had no yesterday. To me, that’s normal. That personality has never lived another way. I don't find it strange to be suddenly awake and at a restaurant and midway through a meal because that is what I know. How I know life to be. The regular world, as a species, doesn't question the fact that they close our eyes each night and eight hours passes in a millisecond. A person doesn’t question the fact that they may have said things in their sleep or they shrug over a conversation they had in the middle of the night with a spouse—a conversation they don’t remember occurring. And just as they don't question that, I never questioned the last two decades where things didn't always make sense. I blamed any gaps in memory or sudden changes in location on my medication's side effects and my understanding that this is how the world works.
But now, suddenly, I remember something. One glimpse into a day I have wondered about for twenty years.
I didn't know much about my world when I opened my eyes on December twelfth, other than a few simple facts. My name was Jenner. I was eleven. There was a girl down the street named Trish who had a pet mouse and wouldn’t let me play with it. She’d shown me the tiny, trembling figure a few weeks earlier and I had touched it. Pale white with red eyes, I had poked it too roughly and she had pushed me away. Pulled it close to her chest and screamed that I’d never touch it again.
I was Jenner. I was in a room with a strange woman who I didn’t know and I had no interest in her brand of authority. I wanted my mom. I wanted my blue house with the broken porch rail and the iced tea pitcher that collected condensation in the fridge. I didn't want to be in a basement with a woman whose mouth was tight and whose eyes were black, who smelled of vinegar and coffee and whose finger wouldn't stop jabbing the paper before me.
"Focus, Brant. Multiply the fractions. We don't have all day."
I'd never seen this pile of crap before. Numbers above and below lines. The crooked cross, which I knewmeantto multiply but I didn't knowhowto multiply. I pushed the paper away and looked at her. Said the only truth that didn't make me sound stupid. "I'm not Brant."
"You certainly are Brant. And you did three pages of these yesterday in the time it took me to use the restroom. So don't tell me you don't know how to do it."
I don't know how to do it. I said nothing, only stared in her face. "I want my mom." It wasn't so much as wanting my mother as wanting to get away from this woman.
She looked at me. "Your mother is at work, Brant. You know that. She'll be home at six. Until then, you're stuck with me."
She was a liar. This ugly woman opened her mouth and all that spewed was a lie. My mother didn't even have a job. She stayed home all day. Spent time with me. Let me watch TV and slipped me Oreo cookies with glasses of milk during commercial breaks. I pinned my lips together and stared at the paper. Hated this stranger.
"Do you want to work on your computer for a bit, and then return to this?"
"I want to watch TV." The clock above the shelves showed that it was almost four. Mom let me watch TV after three.
The stranger frowned. "You don't like TV anymore, Brant. It hurts your head, remember? Why don't you work on your computer?” She pulled at my arm and I snatched away, her grip slipping off. She grabbed me again and her nails dug into my skin in a way thathurt.
I didn't know what she expected me to do with the “computer” which was really just a pile of junk on the desk, a computer screen hooked to a bunch of plastic and metal. The only computer I'd ever used was my father's, which was simple, the first step being the large and easy-to-find power button. This thing didn’t even have a power button, and that made me feel stupid. I shook my head.
"Then we're back to fractions," she sighed. "Do these four pages now, no excuses, Brant."
I looked up, away from the worn page that had been pushed and pulled between us until it had a small rip in the right corner. "I'm not BRANT!" I screamed and the anger pushed out of my throat like it had legs and arms.
The woman’s head jerked back, and her eyes changed, like they didn’t know what to do. I liked it. I pushed away from the desk and stood, and I was almost as tall as her, a growth spurt already putting me a head taller than my classmates. It made me stronger than the others. I was definitely stronger than her.
"Shush, Brant!" she got a hand on my shoulder, digging in her nails and trying to push me down into the chair, but it was easy to stay up.
"I'M NOT BRANT!" I shoved both hands into her chest, and it’s the first time I’ve ever touched someone’s boobs. It was cool, even though they were old lady boobs. She fell back, her hands waving through the air on her way down.
I ran over and sat on her stomach, like how Rowdy Roddy Piper had done to Ric Flair on TV on the video my dad showed me. It worked, she pushed and yelled but went nowhere. Ric Flair had done a spring jump that had thrown Roddy off and across the ring, but she only moved like a worm under me.
"Brant!" she yelled, hitting my chest and using the voice that my mother did when she was really serious about something.
"I'M NOT BRANT!" I swung with a stiff fist, the way my dad showed me. Her head snapped back, and she finally stopped yelling as she tried to protect her face. She couldn’t. I kept swinging, like a windmill, and her hands grew weaker and weaker, like little bird wings fluttering and then dying. She was making little sounds but by the time my arms grew tired she was quiet.
My dad had always been really clear. You let someone push you to a certain point, but then you had to stand up for yourself. First with your words, then your fists if the words didn’t work. I had tried to use words. They hadn’t worked, so I tried fists.
I had liked using the fists. I looked at the woman beneath me and almost hoped she called me Brant again. Pushing off of her, I looked at my hands, ignoring her when she made a small sound. There was blood all over my knuckles. That was a first for me, but I felt like an MMA fighter. I started to wipe my hands clean on my pants, then stopped. Mom would be pissed if I got blood all over them.
I looked at the clock and cheered up at the realization that I had almost two hours to watch TV before my mom showed up.
I climbed over her body and headed up the stairs with a smile. Wait until Dad heard about this.
Chapter 74
Brant finishes telling the story, his voice tight with torment. There’s a moment I think he's going to cry, when he's describing how the skin on her face tore under his knuckles, but he makes it through, then inhales deeply and looks at me as if he’s afraid of what I might say.
We’re still in the car, my door open, the morning chill frosting my neck and I grip his hand in mine and bring it to my mouth, kissing his knuckles. "Brant, it wasn't you. You know that."
