Chap-tah five

The sun was too bright, and it was hot against his skin. His small feet hit the sidewalk on short legs. The grass was brown, and so was the city surrounding him. Crumbly, abandoned warehouses flanked the black asphalt road.
He held Mom’s hand and looked up at her. Dark brown hair framed her face, brown eyes and tan skin reflected a bit of the sunlight. She pushed a plastic stroller with a crying black haired baby in a dirty purple onesy.
“Shh,” she continued to tell his sister, leaning down and stroking her face. “Shh.”
She continued to cry.
“Mommy,” the boy said, “I’m hungry.”
She looked down at him with sad eyes, took her hand out of his and stroked his cheek with it. “I know, baby, I'm sorry."

* * *

They walked all the way to the grocery store, passing more huge houses, green lawns endless streets.
“Okay, so it’s really not hard to navigate,” Jenn said as they walked from their house to the park. “The Elementary school’s over there, there’s a big park across from it. The grocery store’s that way,” she explained, pointing in a direction. “And there’s, like, a million things next to it, so it’s basically a mini mall.”
Seth said nothing. He looked at the too-green grass and the too-white sidewalks.
There was a cold breeze. It looked like it might rain. And when if finally did, they were in the safety of the trees in the park. There were oak trees everywhere, and they stood beneath one when the rain really started coming down.
“We haven’t had rain in awhile,” Jenn said, looking up through the leaves of the large oak they stood under, it’s roots extending like spider’s legs.
She watched him as he took this unfamiliar place and touched the rough bark of the tree. “What was it like where you lived?” she asked curiously.
His eyes met hers. Words floated through his mind. Dirty, untamed, dangerous…
He stared across the green park. The home he knew wasn’t like this at all.
“It was…” he breathed in the clean scent of the rain, and exhaled, “…really, really different from all this,” he picked up a leaf and twirled it in between his hands. He watched her, and she was still listening.
“Not everybody has a home, not like you do here. There are motels with just…people hanging around. Children without their parents because they’re off buying drugs or somethin’. I used to see them every day. I knew a lot of them by name.”
He swallowed and looked down at a root, kicking it once. “You gotta watch your back. You don’t know who’s behind you. Who’s following you. Kids don’t just carry baseball bats with them anymore, you know?”
He glanced back up, and her eyes flickered.
She spoke. “Is…is that how you got…?” her finger traced the line of her jaw.
His eyes dropped from her face. His own fingers went to his chin and traced up his own jawbone and to his ear where the scar was.
“Yeah, I learned that last one the hard way,” he said quietly.
They were silent for awhile.
“What…” Jenn began hesitantly, “What was your family like?”
That hurt. He looked away, his eyes clouded with saddness. Someone jogged by on the sidewalk with a greyhound. Seth watched them. The grass blew softly in the wind, and drops pattered their way down the leaves of the tree and occasionally landed on the two. The sky was a deep blue-gray, like a soft blanket wrapped around the earth.
Seth stared off into the distance, watching rain hit the leaves of the trees. “We were close,” he finally, almost at a whisper, “We were really close.”
Jenn smiled a little.
A gentle breeze blew oak blossoms off the sidewalks. His hair blew out of his face a little, and Jenn saw all of it for the first time. “What was your sister like?" she asked quietly.
He ducked his head again, and his hair fell back into his face. He spoke quietly. “She was bright, beautiful. Her smile…” the corner of his mouth quirked up ever so slightly, and he drew the collar of his jacket closer to his neck, and exhaled, “…it just lit up the room, you know? Made the world spin a little faster.” he looked back at Jenn, his brown eyes warm with a memory. He looked back down at the ground. “I loved her. I loved her a lot,” he murmured quietly.
“She sounds like she was…” Jenn picked at the damp grass.
“Jenn! Seth!” someone called from a blue BMW. It was Sasha. What was she doing here? “What are you doing? Get in the car! You’ll catch a chill!”
Jenn stood up obediently. “C’mon,” she said to Seth, and they ran off under the dripping trees towards the car.
Seth pulled on the handle of the door for the back seats, and they both got in. “Hey, Mom,” Jenn said cheerfully.
Sasha looked into the back at them, all wet and cold from the rain. “What were you doing? It was raining.”
Jenn smiled a bit. “I was getting to know my new brother.”

* * *

Two children ran around on the yellow grass. Weeds littered the patched lawn wherever there was dirt. The house was a plain, dirty white, and windows with torn screens reflected the foul, trashed street the house itself was on. Their mother sat on the porch watching them as she smoked a cigarette. Despite the awful conditions they lived in, they were happy. And she was happy, too, now that their father had finally come back. The children both had black hair, like him, and on both their sweet, fair little faces were grins that shone bright and happy, like little suns. The girl was five, the boy was eight.
“Tahwg!” the girl giggled, touching the boy on the shoulder.
The boy shrieked with laughter and turned back on her, running the other direction. The girl screamed and ran from him. The boy bounded until he was finally in reach of his sister, playfully slapping her back. “Yerr it!”