Adler

by Jessica Gadziala

  Which was so stupid that I didn't even have a comeback for it.

  She hogged the bathroom for an hour every school day morning, twice that on weekends and nights out with friends. Even if all she was doing was going to a movie. She carefully styled her hair, applied the makeup that took over two drawers in the bathroom vanity, took ages to figure out what looked best on her.

  Which was ridiculous.

  Everything looked good on her.

  That was just Sammy for you.

  She had been born beautiful, had simply grown more so as she aged.

  Her hair fell in natural loose waves, a gleaming near-black color that could blind you when it reflected the sun.

  Her eyes were a lighter shade of brown - a honey color that I secretly envied, even though I mostly prided myself in not being vain that way.

  Her skin stayed effortlessly flawless while mine broke out incessantly, bumps of icky white or under-the-skin painful spots.

  And she curved.

  She curved like I did, but did so with gusto, with pride in her femininity, dressing in a way to accentuate the fact without looking like she was trying to do so.

  Sammy was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood.

  Hell, in the Bronx.

  Maybe even the whole city.

  "How is this okay? Your parents disowned our brother."

  "They're your parents too, Lou Lou," Sammy reminded me, reaching out to pat my leg as I sat cross-legged on my messy bed, one I was sure I hadn't made in at least a week. While Sammy made sure to close her cover and press out the wrinkles before she left every morning.

  "Not anymore, they're not."

  I was good at a lot of things.

  Sulking was at the top of the list.

  My mother and sister used to smile knowingly when I went off on a rant, sharing a look I didn't understand while making a comment about how I was due to 'start' soon.

  "Oh, come on. You know they didn't want this any more than we do."

  "Right, like you care about Monty."

  "I care about Monty. I just don't hero-worship him like you do. I mean, I know you two have always been close, but even you must see how bad it is if he's getting involved with gangs."

  "And who says he is? I've never seen him with people who look like gang members."

  "And what do gang members look like, Lou?" At my silence, she nodded. "Exactly. You never know. But Mommy and Daddy have always kept a close watch on local gang activity. So if they say it's a gang, it's a gang. You know that. And they would never lie to us. And don't you dare bring up the Santa Claus thing. That was like seven years ago; let it go."

  I had thrown a tantrum about them lying to us for four months when I first found out that Santa wasn't real, that my parents had been behind it the whole time, that everyone would simply lie to kids all the time.

  Even when my mother insisted it was simply to help bring happiness to kids, to let them see a bit of magic in life.

  There's plenty of time for reality when you grow up, Louell.

  "I don't believe it. About Monty. And nothing they say is going to change that."

  It didn't either.

  Not for the six months that followed, when Monty disappeared off the face of the earth. This constant in my life was suddenly gone, the loss a searing thing that couldn't be denied.

  We fell into a new normal, my resentment a palpable thing in the house even as Sammy packed up her side of the room, moving next door into Monty's room whose things had disappeared one day without explanation, not even when I demanded one.

  Maybe they gave it to him.

  Maybe they simply threw it all away.

  All I knew was it was like there wasn't a single trace of him left by the time Sammy started painting the walls a light rose pink.

  Only his pictures stayed in the frames in the hall.

  I would stop and look at them, feeling the loss like an ache that refused to go away.

  I had no idea where he was.

  If he was okay.

  If he had food, water, medicine if he felt unwell.

  The uncertainty, for me, was maybe the worst part of the whole situation.

  In my mind, his image had started to blur, so I stopped to drink his image in, make the picture of him inside my head sharpen again, reminding myself that he was strong, he would be okay.

  "Come on, Lou Lou, you know you want to get out of this room," Sammy told me, standing in my doorway, kicking a discarded sneaker with the tip of her heel-clad shoe."It smells like gym clothes and corn chips in here."

  Because I had gone for a run and eaten corn chips and salsa. It was my version of balance. Kept me from getting too pudgy around the middle.

  "I don't like going out with your friends, Sammy," I reminded her, always brutally honest with her.

  "I know. But this is just the two of us. Come on. You need to get out of the house. You've been sulking for a week straight."

  "Did Mom and Dad put you up to this?" I grumbled.

  "Not everyone is out to screw you over, Lou," she said, rolling her eyes. "I just want to spend some time with you."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're my sister," she told me, exasperated.

  Something about her words rang true to me, and a stab of guilt pierced my belly for being a crummy sister. Always surly, always too quick with a sarcastic comment. "What kind of movie?" I asked, fundamentally opposed to anything lovey-dovey.

  "Your pick," she offered.

  "Even if it is R-rated?" I asked, knowing that she had just turned seventeen, could buy us the tickets.

  "Even if it is R-rated," she agreed, giving me a smile.

  "Okay," I agreed, feeling a bit of excitement well up inside.

  I couldn't tell you how long it had been since I had spent time outside the house with my sister, despite being close in age. Her friends looked down on me; I looked down on them. And she felt in the middle when I was around. So I didn't hang out anywhere near them. I was always a bit of a loner anyway. At least since Monty was kicked out.

  We went to the movie, Sammy pretending to like it even though I caught her studying her lap in the more brutal scenes.

  Afterward, we got slices of pizza.

  I'd begged her to stop for milkshakes because, even at that age, I was a bottomless pit with a large appetite.

  But Sammy had insisted we get home.

  It had been late.

  It wasn't safe to walk around when a certain crowd started walking the street.

  I'd dragged my feet.

  I shouldn't have dragged my fucking feet.

  If we had gone home when she had wanted to, everything might have been different.

  But that wasn't how it happened.

  Wishful thinkings and bitter regrets changed nothing.

  The reality was, we walked home way later than we should have, the streets mostly abandoned because most people abided by the unspoken rule. There was the occasional homeless person or junkie to cross paths with, but as a whole, it felt very much like we were alone. Like we were the two clueless girls in some horror movie. Even I felt anxiety like a coiled snake in my belly, and I was never one prone to worry.

  It was like something within me knew to be scared, knew something was wrong, there was danger on the streets.

  But there was no way to get home without being on them, so I stifled the voice inside me, and kept going, moving close to Sammy's side whose eyes were darting around like a deer.

  Except neither of us could have actually seen it coming.

  Because they came from behind.

  Arms around torsos, hands over mouths.

  We were off our feet before we could even think to scream.

  My eyes tried to scan for faces, for someone to help. Or for things, weapons, something to defend my sister and myself with.

  But there was nothing.

  Just an empty warehouse.

  Just piles of dirt, and paper garbage in the corners.

  Nothing. There
was nothing.

  And there seemed to be five of them.

  Even if I could break free, take down the guy dragging me up the stairs, I was still outnumbered.

  It wasn't in my nature to give in, though.

  I kicked out, clawed, slammed my head back into my attacker.

  To no avail.

  The creaking of a door let me know we were done climbing, the nip of air that we were outside.

  The roof, most likely.

  The idea was confirmed a moment later when I was swung around to see a long, flat space, old air conditioning units cutting off a part of my view of where we were.

  I caught sight of Sammy, eyes huge with panic, body slack, forgetting how to fight, to resist, or simply seeing it was a fruitless endeavor as she watched me writhe, kick, drag my feet, slam fists backward into the man holding me.

  It got me nowhere.

  It would get her nowhere either.

  Her arm did lift, her hand reaching out.

  Toward me.

  Trying to grab my mine, to hold on.

  "Come on, bring that bitch over here," one of the guys said, waving toward the direction on the other side of the air conditioning units.

  And talking about Sammy.

  Panic gripped me, my heart hammering, my stomach plummeting.

  I screamed then against my attacker as she was pulled away, legs flailing at being pulled from me, pulled to an uncertain fate.

  The arm around my midsection became punishing as my fight was renewed, desperation giving me strength I wouldn't normally possess.

  And I wrangled myself free, turning on my heel to face him, hands already rising, striking out, fingers curling into the white bandana half-covering his face.

  My heart froze in my chest then, shock and confusion overtaking my entire system.

  "Monty?" my voice hissed out of me.

  "It's better this way," he told me.

  I didn't understand his meaning.

  But then his arm cocked back, shot forward, and I felt the blinding pain for the shortest of seconds before the world went black.

  I never knew - not even years later - how long I had been out.

  I just remembered waking up, the crippling pain in my temples and behind my eyes, the scrape of gravel against my cheek, cutting into the sensitive flesh, the ache in my shoulder from the awkward way I had been laying. With my arms behind my back, something biting into my wrists.

  I could feel the tickle of the end of the binding, something small, rounded, covered in a slippery plastic.

  Like a shoestring.

  My brother had knocked me unconscious, and bound me with a shoestring.

  My fingers curled upward, snagging the end, yanking until I felt the wraps loosen, my fingers tingling even as I pulled them to the front.

  I planted my forearms, pushing my weight up until my knees could take over, letting me finally get to my feet in what felt like slow motion.

  I found myself wedged between the air conditioners, several feet from where I had last been conscious. It was almost as though he had tried to hide me.

  But why?

  Why hide me and let them take...

  Oh, God.

  Sammy.

  I turned in the direction I remembered them moving off toward, my vision spinning as I did so, my stomach sloshing, making bile rise up my throat.

  But I fought it back, forcing my feet to carry me forward even if the headache was making my sight a hazy thing.

  I had to find Sammy.

  I had to.

  And while a part of me new that it couldn't be good, I don't think my young brain had been prepared.

  I wasn't sure any brain could ever be prepared.

  For the sight I saw that night.

  Of my sister.

  Thrown up on top of some raised cement structure, her dress yanked up, the buttons ripped open, her breasts spilling out.

  And one of the men between her legs.

  One of my brother's fellow gang members raping her while another held a hand over her mouth.

  The man moved suddenly away, slapping a hand on the shoulder of the man standing at his side.

  A man who used to be a boy I used to build blanket and pillow forts with.

  The man who used to be a boy who used to sit across from me at the dining room table every night.

  The man who used to be a boy that once helped me with my math homework when I was at risk of failing.

  The man who used to be a boy that I had looked up to my entire life.

  Surely not.

  There was wicked, and there was sick.

  But there was no denying it as he moved into the space his friend had occupied, his body moving the same way.

  I stood frozen in horror, a look my sister must have shared, times a million, a billion.

  Fucking horror.

  And she couldn't even scream.

  But I could.

  As soon as the thought formed, my mouth opened.

  The sound that came out of me was one I couldn't name, was sure the likes of which I had never heard in my life.

  Blood-curdling.

  Shrieking.

  Like a banshee luring men to their death.

  The sound made all their heads swivel in my direction.

  Monty's included.

  The second his gaze fell on my face, he yanked away from our sister; he moved to take a step toward me, everyone seeming to forget about Sammy as the inhuman scream kept erupting from this bottomless well of shock and disgust.

  "Shut that bastard up," the one who must have been the leader demanded, making two of them move toward me.

  I was focusing on that.

  Bastard.

  Not bitch.

  Bastard.

  They thought I was a boy.

  And why shouldn't they in my boys clothes with my hair tucked under a cap, my breasts bound, my makeup-free face half in shadow from the brim of my hat.

  And because their focus was on me, and because I was distracted by the fact that my brother had saved me while simultaneously brutalizing our sister, none of us saw Sammy raise herself off her cement platform. None of us saw her move the five feet to the edge.

  I only noticed her when she moved up the three-foot-high wall, standing atop it.

  And there was really only one reason for her to be up here.

  "Sammy!" I screamed even as her legs leapt.

  My heart leapt as well.

  And sank.

  So low I felt it leave my body.

  Just as my sister left my vision.

  There was a thump and screams from below, sounds I would hear in my nightmares for years after, sounds that would haunt me.

  Sounds that signified my sister's death.

  Her choice not to live with the aftermath of her brutalization.

  "Fuck. We got to get the fuck out of here!" the leader screamed to his men, all of them running past me, their shoulders brushing mine.

  Monty was last, his face a blank mask, one I didn't even want to dig under.

  "I will make you pay for this," I promised through the tears streaming down my face, but the words were steel. "Every last one of you," I promised.

  He said nothing, just rushed away to the sound of sirens.

  I sank to my knees right there, hands cradling my face, sobs I never knew I was capable of racking my body as my heart and soul and body tried to purge the pain.

  But there was no purging it.

  Not when the cops came and questioned me.

  Not when my parents picked me up at the station, sobbing themselves.

  Not a week later when Sammy was laid to rest, and my father had a heart attack behind the wheel on the way home, wrapping us around a tree. The doctors said he was dead before we made impact.

  They said my mother had ten stitches to her temple, a busted nose.

  They said I had a broken arm and whiplash to go with the concussion my brother had given me the night of the incident.

  The
doctors fucked up that day though.

  The day they released us.

  The day they sent us home like it was perfectly normal, like our lives hadn't been torn apart.

  "They gave my mom pain medicine," I told Adler, the ache in my chest making my hand cross my body, rubbing over my heart like it could ease it. I knew better, of course. Nothing eased it.

  "Fuck, duchess," he hissed, his hand squeezing my thigh.

  I couldn't claim to be shocked when I walked into her bedroom the following morning when she had slept through her alarm that screamed loud and insistent until you shut it off.

  I did so as I walked in on numb legs, something within me knowing, some part of me understanding that there was no way a family could survive this, that maybe none of us should.

  I would never know if the overdose was accidental or a result of her inability to live with the pain that had shook our lives.

  I guess it didn't really matter either way.

  All I knew as I moved toward her, looking so much like Sammy that it hurt, her nightgown a filmy white around her still body, making her look angelic, sleeping, beautiful, her little medallion around her neck, a saint that hadn't saved her in the end, was that her body was already cool to the touch.

  I remembered reaching for the phone on her nightstand, dialing the numbers, everything about me in a sort of daze.

  My mother killed herself.

  That was all I remembered saying, but I must have given an address because they showed up about half an hour later.

  There was pity.

  There was nothing but pity in all their faces.

  The cops.

  The coroner.

  The detectives at the station.

  The receptionists.

  The lady from Child Services.

  Just fucking pity.

  Maybe they felt I deserved it.

  But I didn't.

  And I didn't want it.

  I wanted their anger, their derision, their understanding that this was all my fault, that Sammy had gone through the horror she had gone through before killing herself, that my father's poor, kind heart couldn't handle the breaking, that my mother found solace in the end of her pain... that was all on me.

  For being selfish.

  For wanting a stupid fucking milkshake.

  I couldn't bring myself to have one ever again.

  "Where did ya end up, Lou?" Adler asked, wanting everything like he had given me.