Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume 5

by Robert Shearman

  Questions Izzy asked me—only once—for which I had no answer:

  “Why do you have a twin’s name?”

  “Why don’t you celebrate your birthday?”

  “How did you get that scar on your hand?”

  “Why did your parents only have one kid?”

  “Did you ever wish you had a brother? A sister?”

  “Did you have a best friend in Congo? Who did you play with every day?”

  When I was a child in Kinshasa, I had a brother, a twin. He was my best friend. He told the best stories, after Mama, and after she died, he spoke only to me. He thought she’d get better. I hoped she would too, but I saw Baba’s face every day, and my aunt’s face as she cared for Mama, and somehow I knew Kanku waited for a day no one else believed would come.

  I didn’t tell him what I was afraid of—Mama told me to watch out for him, take care of him, protect him. I thought, Maybe I’m wrong. I thought, If I say it, it might come true. And I didn’t say it, but I wasn’t wrong, and Kanku felt betrayed by everyone who had known, and he got quiet and angry and sad, and I couldn’t protect him from Baba.

  We were adjusting. A family of three without a woman, without a mother, without Mama. We were adjusting well, I thought.

  Then Kanku told me: Baba thinks I’m a witch and that I killed Mama.

  Are you a witch, Kanku?

  Do you really think I am, brother?

  I’ll believe you, whatever you say.

  No, I am not a witch! And I did not kill Mama!

  I know. You would never hurt Mama.

  Baba does not believe me.

  He will if you talk to him. If you only talk to me, people will think you’re a witch.

  I do not like talking to Baba. He gives me mean looks. They all do.

  Baba will change. It hasn’t been long since … He won’t always be mad.

  But you believe me, right, Mbuyi?

  Of course I do. You’ve never lied to me.

  I thought as a child thinks: Baba loves us both, and Mama says when people are mad they say things they don’t mean. Baba was angry. He cannot really believe you are a witch.

  Then Kanku told me: Baba says he is not taking me with you to America. I thought, Kanku is scared, but Baba would never leave either of us behind.

  If I had believed him about Baba, maybe I could’ve changed things. I would’ve prodded him to talk to Baba at dinner, or to play with the kids of the family who visited, or to seek hugs from the women who watched us after school so they’d see his pain.

  But I didn’t, and I didn’t, and by the time I believed him, it was done.

  I stopped being a child the moment Baba struck my brother— my best friend, my identical twin—in the face, in the street. Kanku fell down. He held Baba’s knees, screaming and whining like a dog, crawling like a wet-faced beggar in the dirt. In the car I looked the same way, held down by Baba’s friend’s flexing arms as I thrashed for the door. I drove my fist through the window trying to get out, to go protect him, to wrap my arms around Kanku and not let go, so Baba would have to take us both. Baba would not abandon me, I knew.

  We left Kanku crying in the street.

  Baba used one of Kanku’s shirts to bandage my hand while his friend drove. He gave the rest of my brother’s belongings to the friend who was driving, to give to his children. All the belongings I had helped Kanku fold and pack for America. He seemed sure he wasn’t going, but I tried to make him excited for the trip, to ride an airplane, to see yellow hair and learn to talk like cowboys. I couldn’t stop crying, even when Baba threatened to give me a reason to cry and held up the hand that struck Kanku in his face that looked like my face, that felt like my face in those moments. I didn’t want Baba to touch me. He had betrayed me, betrayed us both, betrayed Mama’s love for us both. I wouldn’t speak to him for weeks, even when he hit me or starved me for my silence. In America I had to speak to him—he was the only part of home I had left. But still. I hated Baba for years. I prayed to Mama to take care of Kanku the way I should have. I promised them both I would come back as soon as I could and bring him home.

  They arrive, Tonton Badia and Tantine Janet, and her face is like a frail peach, and his is like a sturdy wooden desk, and when they hold hands their skin clashes but their fingers lock perfectly. Tantine Janet is round, and Tonton Badia holds me in his lap while I touch and the baby kicks my hand and I jump back and we laugh.

  I watched Izzy grow up in the summers. Sometimes she visited alone while her parents traveled or had busy weeks full of meetings; or I visited her family alone while Baba traveled, collecting histories of other Congolese immigrants. I didn’t like going with him, but Baba took me anyway—until I asked a man in an interview whether he’d cast out his son as a witch.

  Baba never took me again.

  Izzy was a quiet girl, thoughtful but bright like a dandelion. She smiled much more than she laughed, but seemed to take joy in the world like a child, like Kanku, even when worries weighed her down. I was a big brother to her for years. She wasn’t Kanku, though I feared in loving her I was being unfaithful somehow, replacing Kanku with a cousin. I think she looked up to me. I think she liked my company as much as I liked hers. She was my favorite cousin—I think I even told her once—but as she grew up she grew small, like a mouse; tried to entertain me, keep me happy, as if afraid I’d lose interest in her company, her existence. On a walk with Baba and Tonton Badia, I confessed this with worry—but they approved: It’s good for girls to learn to keep men happy.

  Neither Izzy nor Tantine Janet were there when they said that. I thought of Izzy, who laughed at my silly faces for years, who made sassy jokes when adults weren’t around, who complained the boys in her class could do more pull-ups than her, who started wearing skirts even though she hated sitting with feet on the floor.

  I didn’t confide in Tonton and Baba about much after that.

  At home, I dug up an old pair of draw-string sweatpants. They were a little too big, but Izzy wore them when we played in my room that summer, sprawled out on the floor.

  *

  Topics Izzy never brought up again—not even to me:

  —Why I have a twin’s name

  —My birthday

  —The scar on my right hand

  —Why I have no other siblings

  —Siblings I’d wish for

  —My best friend in Congo; who I played with every day.

  *

  Baba looks at me with pity when I tell him I want to visit the old house. He doesn’t say, He won’t be there. He doesn’t say, I’m sorry. He doesn’t say, I was wrong, and I regret what I did to him, and all of us. He says, Go visit family first. Save sightseeing for the last day. Everyone is excited you are coming.

  Baba buys my ticket, arranges for me to stay with relatives, speaks at midnight and three a.m. to bridge the time zones with family so I can cross to meet them. I seethe inside, but think, Kanku will be there. I will find him and bring him home.

  *

  The day before I leave Congo, the host of family I’ve only just met finally lets me go to see my childhood home. Walking through streets I played in as a boy, I have flashes of recognition: The bus took this street into town from the house. This wall surrounded our house, and the crushed glass cemented on top kept out thieves and soldiers. The house I grew up in is through this new gate.

  Baba cast Kanku from our family here, on this torn up, pockmarked road.

  In a car on that corner, I cut my hand trying to escape Baba’s friend so I could protect Kanku—the way Mama couldn’t, the way I promised her I would.

  This is the last place I saw Kanku before the car turned and he couldn’t catch up.

  That is the house of a woman who helped raise us, who told me— without shame—my twin died in the street not long after.

  I can almost feel him here, on this heat-rippled road full of patterned stalls that weren’t here years ago. I tell him I’m sorry and whisper a prayer that he’s safe and happy, is
somewhere with Mama.

  My skin feels suddenly cold, but the lump in my throat and chest dissolves into a warmth I haven’t felt in fifteen years. I think, Kanku hears me. Somehow, he is here.

  I smile. I cry silently in the street, ignoring bystanders and the market’s kaleidoscopic closing bustle.

  Then my vision shudders. The Kanku feeling punches in.

  I think, Something is wrong.

  I think, Somehow, Kanku is alive. He wants my body. Is he a witch?

  I think, It should’ve been me.

  I think, I promised him we would go to America.

  I think, Maybe this way I can finally bring him home.

  I don’t fight as he pushes into my skin and my spirit leaks out beside the body I sacrificed. I tell my twin, in bruised Tshiluba, You’re safe now. Let me take care of you.

  But Kanku doesn’t answer, or even seem to notice I am there.

  *

  I stay with my body as Kanku takes his first trip in an airplane, watching his eyes light up in the body he never grew to inhabit because of Baba. I felt his pain, his rage, when I left my skin to him, but that anger is gone as he looks at the world from above the clouds. When a flight attendant speaks to him in English, I share his delight when he understands.

  I pass my spirit across my skin, just enough to check on my body and check on Kanku. I catch a memory as I slide through—my trip to the airport—and when I see Kanku’s familiar thinking expression— same as mine—I wonder if he saw my memory too. I don’t know how it works to give over one’s body. I worry about something I read last year: that our cells send out a death signal, a call taken up by all our cells to shut down. It’s how our bodies know to die, how we die, and all it takes is one. Our bodies are smart. I’m afraid mine will realize Kanku, though identical, is not me, and this transplant will fail, and my body will die on Kanku before he finally gets the life I promised.

  I slide around the edges of my body, checking for a death signal, pushing just far enough inside that it notices my presence.

  Kanku never does.

  I talk to him, try to calm him with my energy as Baba picks him up and I feel his anger build again.

  And then Baba pulls out a necklace an interviewee gave him years ago.

  And then Baba cuts Kanku’s hair and his shirt and skewers them to a doll; and leaves Kanku slumped in a kitchen chair like some back alley anesthesia victim, like he’s trash.

  And Baba half-carries Kanku up to my bedroom and I think, Maybe things will be okay.

  And he drops Kanku on the floor and snarls at him like a rabid, angry dog.

  And as he slams the door, I see Baba’s face as Kanku sees it—finally—full of pain and rage and righteousness, and I realize what this means.

  Baba will not suffer Kanku to live. He will not murder my brother—murder me—but he’ll cage him until he dies all over again.

  *

  For years I keep our body alive. No one knows I’m there—not Kanku, not Baba, and they are the only people who come inside the house.

  I go into Baba’s room, go into his office, read over his shoulder, hover through his shoes—but mostly I stay with Kanku. I try to show him I’m there, to give him comfort. I tell him stories just inside our fingernails, jostle my brain to show him my first trip to the zoo, the magic of my first automatic door, my sorrow when Izzy asked questions that reminded me of him. I don’t know if they work, if he hears me or feels me, but I see his eyes when the memories curl through him. It eases my heart that in this way I can still make him smile, give him life.

  *

  Two years in, I miss a death signal. After that I struggle to keep up, to limit the spread, to chase down the signals passing with synaptic speed without dislodging Kanku’s spirit. I don’t have to sleep, but the body is composed of billions of cells, and I am only one man, an impotent spirit who’s going to lose his brother again.

  This time, it’s entirely my fault.

  *

  Enter Izzy. She’s all grown up. Shed some of her quiet compliance. Still curious as ever, but wary of my bedroom now. She argues with Baba. She drags family back into his life with phone calls and showing up outside. She likes his interviews, helps him one summer, has come back for this one. I tell Kanku to stay away from her, but she sleeps in the office and he crowds her door at night. I worry for her in a way I don’t for Baba, but he leaves the necklace with her and it calms me that she’s protected, though I don’t dwell on from whom.

  It’s her second summer with Baba since Kanku came home. His body is falling apart. Flies land and hatch maggots in his skin, and I hope enough of his nerves are dead so he doesn’t feel crawling inside his cheeks, at his hips, in the meat of his thighs, in the fat of his buttocks. It is hard to see him like this, but it’s all my fault, so I watch, I stay with him.

  He doesn’t know, but I know. I pretend knowing is enough.

  *

  This night feels different. Kanku waits at the door that locks only from the inside, trapped by Baba somehow, by magic, though I never believed in it until I found Kanku again. At midnight, wrath propels him out once again. One o’clock is my hour when energy’s high, so when it all goes wrong I see Baba collapsed on the stairs, a heart attack maybe, and he needs a hospital, but Kanku seems bent on destruction, and I am not strong enough to intervene.

  I won’t help him kill Baba, but I think: If Baba dies, Kanku will be at peace, and we can all move on from this.

  But then Izzy comes out of her room to find Baba, and if I had a body my heart would have dropped to my stomach and punched out my breath with one beat.

  And Kanku does the unthinkable.

  I watch him shove inside poor Izzy’s body, leave ours in a heap on the landing. Izzy, kind Izzy, who kicked my hand when I was new to this country and she new to this world, not even born. Izzy, my favorite cousin, my adopted sister in spirit, is a spirit now, watching her body walk off.

  I can’t let it end like this.

  Izzy.

  She hears me.

  Mbuyi?

  And she barrels through me like a hurricane. Our memories collide in a disembodied hug fraught with emotions and eddied by pressures of thoughts pushing from one mind to the next: Thought you were dead and You need to get back in your body and What happened and Kanku didn’t mean what he did and What’s wrong with Uncle and Kanku wouldn’t really hurt anyone and What is he looking for and the half thought, Maybe he would, and from her, You do have a twin!

  The clock strikes quarter to one as I push the death signal thoughts into her consciousness. She needs to get back in her body. I need to make Kanku come out here with me. I push my idea between us. I tell myself I’m doing what’s right, that I’m not choosing sides. I tell myself I’m not robbing Kanku of his life, that I’m not like Baba.

  To Izzy I say, It’s time for us to push.

  Izzy’s body reels against us when we thrust under her skin. Kanku flinches her into the wall. His hands slap at us across the dim stairwell. Baba sits silent on the stairs. I know he’s dead.

  I feel an echo of warmth, a reminder of home as it used to be. I want to fade towards it, go to it, but I won’t fail Izzy and I won’t leave Kanku, never again.

  We push inside Izzy’s body. Our memories cloud together, knowledge crowding out thought in torrential bursts as our three lives flash-flood my mind.

  Kanku curls Izzy’s lip when he feels us. “I killed you!” he shrieks.

  I ignore how my heart breaks in three.

  I press under Izzy’s skin, into her brain. Kanku, give her body back. Come with me. He shoves me back out. When I rush back in I feel Izzy’s fierce rage bashing his, her will to take what is hers like a gale. You killed Uncle and you killed Mbuyi, she shoves at him, but you can’t have me. Did you kill your mother too, witch?

  Kanku’s stolen face twists with fury. He flings me—I barely hold on. “I did not kill Mama!” he bellows, Izzy’s voice in shreds. “Baba just wanted to blame a witch!”

&n
bsp; Izzy’s voice snaps right back: So you’re a witch then, Kanku?

  I bolster her, willing my brother to see what he’s done. Are you a witch, brother?

  The rage on Izzy’s face freezes. She suddenly looks very young. Fragile and solemn, her mouth speaks: “Do you really think I am, brother?”

  You’ve never lied to me, Kanku. I’ll believe you—

  And I’ll believe you, Izzy tells me.

  —and we’ll still be brothers, no matter what. Okay?

  Izzy’s face stills. Her eyes blink, slowly at first, then more quickly. Her expression folds into itself like a house of cards. “I am a witch, brother,” her voice says in Tshiluba. “But not then. I tell you the truth: I never killed Mama.” A tear slides down one cheek. “You know that, right, Mbuyi?”

  I know. You wouldn’t lie to me, Kanku. You never have.

  Izzy’s body sags. Kanku curls into himself—and out of her body— like a sea anemone retreating within its tubes. Relief tears through me as I watch him let her go.

  Izzy pushes past me then, deep into her body. As she slides to refill her spaces, she sends me gratitude, love, and sadness I return with fearsome pride in who she’s become. I check her for the death signal—she’s safe.

  Reassured, I sink like a wave after my brother.

  Kanku’s hovering over Baba. I float to him as Izzy thumbs her phone. I join our spirits at the edges, but my twin pulls away.

  He offers up his thoughts taking my body in Kinshasa. He passes me his determination, his refusal to feel pity, to feel shame.