Page 11 of The Story of You

I stared at him, blankly. I was going to look after a newborn? I’d barely looked after Darius. I’d never held a baby.

That statement could have meant anything. “You’ll need to take care of him while I help your mother to bed”, or “you’ll need to take care of him while I get your mother set up with food and water”.

Deep intuition told me he didn’t plan on having anything to do with Oliver until Mother was better.

“Get moving,” he said when I didn’t head out quickly enough.

Darius’s eyes were wide as quarters, and at that moment we formed an alliance that would withstand the shitstorm that was about to befall us. He promised me without words that he would follow behind me.

We slipped on our sandals and raced out the door, slowing when we got closer to the car. The door was left open. Anyone could have walked by and snatched him up and even the thought of that as I write this makes me wild with panic as if someone could swoop into my memories and change history.

The beautiful, rainbow-patterned blanket that the neighbor had crocheted for him as a gift, hung down and out of the car door. I have an image my mind’s filled in over the years of Mama trying to grab for Oliver and Father tearing her away too weak to fight him, the trailing blanket left to show the struggle.

Oliver was crying.Screaming. My heart raced like never before. I had no idea what to do with a creature so tiny. Darius and I stared at the car door for what seemed like ages. “Do we just shut the door and leave it there?” Darius said. He was scared too.

It was time for me to man up and be the big brother. “Don’t be an idiot. Come on.”

I remember exactly what I was wearing. It was nineteen eighty-four. I had just been to a Duran Duran concert a few months before when we didn’t know Mama had cancer and everything was still normal. It was a white crop top, sleeveless with the five members in black ink, and ’84 Tour and “Duran Duran” in a large lavender font. I wore a pair of cut-off jean shorts, my mid-drift was on display. My hair was long and bone straight, hanging to my waist. I thought I was so cool.

I was.

Oliver had a set of fucking lungs on him from the get-go. If there was any concern about him being born weak because Mother had been ill while she carried him, it was promptly erased.

We peered into the car.

“He’s funny looking,” Darius said when he set eyes on him. “He looks just like you. You could be the father.”

I clapped his cheek on either side gently. “Smarten up.”

He backed away scowling. “Lay off, Silas.”

I climbed up onto the backseat of Father’s SUV. I was getting tall, but Oliver was in the middle of the backseat, and I had to climb in to reach him. The end of the blanket covered half his face, which made me wonder how Darius could see him well enough to say he looked like me. Darius says a lot of shit to get a rise out of people, but he has a keen eye for that sort of thing even when working with very little.

Either way, he was right. Oliver somehow looked just like me and we looked like our blue-eyed Mother. My heart clenched and I swear my arteries tangled, preventing blood from properly flowing for a good five seconds. He was tiny and helpless. His cries hurt my nerves and pierced me. He had just been abandoned by his parents and it was like he knew.

I fell for him hard. The need to protect him burst through me with extraordinary fierceness. My heart stuttered to paralysis and then restarted with more fortitude, sturdy enough to handle the love charging through me. How does a creature so vulnerable inspire such gravity?

“Ugh. He’s so loud, Sye,” Darius said, putting his hands over his ears. “Do something.”

The first thing I did was frown at Darius. He stuck his tongue out at me. Ignoring him, I turned back to Oliver.

“Okay. Okay, okay. I’m here now. I won’t let anything hurt you.” A promise I will keep until I take my last breath.

It took me a couple of minutes to figure out the stupid car seat and then I picked him up gently as an egg, wrapping him snugly in the crocheted blanket. He stopped crying. He fell asleep. He trusted me. Back then, I knew what trust felt like.

I wanted to shelter him from the whole world.

“Well, that turned out.” Darius watched me shut the car door carefully so I wouldn’t wake him. “What do we do now?”

I didn’t have a fucking clue. I was staring at his little face, my heart swelling. “Let’s start by going inside.”

* * *

Silas May 1984

The gravity of my situation didn’t sink in right away because Father was some help to us in the beginning. He gave me instructions as to how to make a bottle using formula—Mama was too sick to breastfeed him—and change diapers. “Look Silas, you’re going to have to stay home from school for a bit and help out,” he said to me that first night.

A pit formed in my stomach. “For how long, sir?” I had a perfect GPA, which I needed if I wanted to be accepted into medical school. I didn’t want to ruin it. He knew that.