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Ramparts

Seventeen Years Old, Tennessee

Sunday evening, I meet Isaiah at Over Easy, a diner downtown. It’s small and kitsch, with a checkered floor and album covers adorning the walls. The air smells of fry grease and grilled meat, and though I had lasagna with my parents after texting with the girls, my stomach rumbles as I slide into the booth across from him.

We order sodas and slices of blueberry and chess pie. When I tell him my Virginian friend, Macy, didn’t known what chess pie was until after she met Beck and me, the offspring of two proud Mississippian women, he laughs.

“Did your mom—?” I start before cutting myself short.

Somehow I doubt his mother is an apron-in-the-kitchen type.

He finishes for me. “Did my mom bake pies?”

I fiddle with the saltshaker. “Or anything?”

“No. Does your mom?”

I shrug, not wanting to boast about homemade pastries.

“She does,” Isaiah concludes. “Don’t feel bad about it, Lia. Marjorie bakes all the time. So does Naya. But growing up…my childhood was different from yours.”

“What do you think my childhood was like?”

He regards me as if I’ve asked a loaded question.

I bump his foot with mine. “I’m serious. If you had to make three assumptions about the way I grew up, what would they be?”

After a few seconds, he ticks them off on his fingers. “You’ve never worried about whether you’d get dinner. There’ve always been presents under your Christmas tree. And your parents gave—still give—you hugs.”

I regret asking.

Like, deeply.

Because if our childhoods were different, as he just said, then he did worry about whether he’d get dinner and he didn’t receive Christmas presents and his mom and dad didn’t hug him.

“You grew up the way every kid should,” he tells me after the waitress drops off our sodas. “Don’t question whether you’re worthy of your experiences.”

I nod, though I can’t help but question.

“You can talk about it,” I tell him. “Your past. Your parents. Any of it. All of it.”

“I do. With a mental health professional.”

I smile. “I mean you can talk to me .”

“Yeah, except I’m not about to heap my trauma onto your shoulders.”

My gaze falls to the tabletop, worn smooth by decades of patrons. This conversation has gone deep quick, and I give my words careful consideration before lifting my eyes to his. “My shoulders can bear a lot.”

He reaches for my hand, holding it in both of his. “I know. But there’s this too: If I tell you how I grew up, why I ended up in the system, the way you see me…it’ll be different.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Lia. You’ll end up feeling sorry for me.”

“I already feel sorry for you.” He flinches and I feel terrible, but I can’t not finish my thought. “I don’t need details to hate that your parents weren’t able to give you what you needed. I already wish with my whole heart that things had been different for you. Knowing the story isn’t going to change that.”

He takes thoughtful audit of my expression, then says, “Why’s it so easy to trust you?”

In you, he’ll find a confidant. In your heart, faith will regain its footing.

Emotion swells in my chest. A wave rolling toward shore, gaining speed, height, and intensity, curling then cresting, a spray of fine, salty mist sending rainbows into the air.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I say. “Instead I’ll ask you this: Why were you taken from your mom and dad?”

He sighs, a sound like surrender. “There were a lot of reasons. They were addicts. Our house was a dump. Food was a pawn. Hygiene was nonexistent. My attendance at school was shit. I never had what I needed: supplies, permission slips, lunch. I raised myself while my parents pumped poison into their veins.” He pauses to look at our joined hands. When his eyes find mine again, they’re empty. I worry he’s taken himself back to his parents’ home, to the psyche of the boy he used to be, suffering but surviving.

“They hated me,” he says. “I was an obstacle standing between them and their next fix. If they gave me something—breakfast, shoes, the time of day—and I didn’t show enough gratitude, there was hell to pay.”

“What does that mean?” I ask in a small voice.

He waves a hand before his face. “My nose isn’t jacked because I was a clumsy kid.”

Crooked as a woodland trail.

My heart swims into my throat, beating too hard and too fast. I ache thinking of little Isaiah, hungry for food, attention, affection. Hurt by hands meant to nurture.

“Teachers are mandated reporters,” he says. “They have to call when the abuse is as obvious as a kid coming to school with a dislocated shoulder. But DCS didn’t pull me right away. There’s a process, a push for family preservation, a bunch of bullshit bureaucracy. A social worker checked in every few weeks. My parents got clean and put on a convincing show. The case was closed in six months. Not long after, they were using again. And then when I was eight, my mom had another baby. A girl.”

Dread surges through me.

The waitress approaches with our pie. We release hands as she places the plates in the middle of the table, along with forks and napkins.

“Enjoy,” she says brightly.

My appetite has fled.

Isaiah doesn’t acknowledge the pie or the waitress. There’s a rigidity to his posture, and his expression is still terrifyingly dull.

This exhumation of his past has come at a cost.

“Her name was Emily,” he tells me. “She was colicky. That’s a word I learned later, from Marjorie. Means she cried all the time. My parents were usually too high to deal, so I tried to keep her calm—meet her needs or whatever—but she never settled. One night I slept, like, eight uninterrupted hours, which hadn’t happened since she was born. I woke up panicked, sure in my gut something was wrong. I found her in her crib, so quiet. So still. She looked like a little doll.”

I swallow, nauseated, my cheeks consumed by heat. “Your parents…?”

“Shook her until she quit crying. Then they got wasted and passed out. I still don’t know if they didn’t realize she was gone, or didn’t care.”

I leave my seat and slide in beside him. His hand finds my leg, and I thread my arm through his, resting my head on this shoulder as he breathes shallowly. He’s impossibly strong, but behind the ramparts his childhood raised, he’s all softness, a boy who wanted nothing more than to protect his baby sister.

“When’s the last time you saw them?”

“When I was ten, in court. I was a witness for the prosecution. They’ll spend decades in prison. What’s fucked is that for a long time, I felt guilty for turning them in.”

“That’s not fucked, Isaiah. It’s human.” I shift, so I can meet his eyes. “You were a good brother to Emily, and you’re a good brother to Naya. You have to know that.”

He smiles, but the sorrow in his eyes says he’s unconvinced.

“I’m serious,” I say vehemently. “What happened could have made you cold. Instead you’re this…this light .”

He lifts a hand to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Then he retrieves our forgotten desserts, and we share pie like two people who know nothing of heartache.