Page 31 of The Story of You

I was busy with selfish thoughts. I didn’t mean to have them; they were just there. Even with Mama sick, her presence was an asylum. Arbitrary protection. From what? I didn’t know. But it was there, and it wrapped around us. With her gone, I felt naked and like the cold air could nip at my flesh again.

Thinking of myself at a time like this was deplorable, and yet I was sixteen and terrified. What was going to happen to us?

Then, I began missing her. That pain cut through me like shards of ice tipped with poison that paralyzed my insides. I couldn’t bear it. The selfish thoughts—while I still thought them horrible—were preferable.

“Baba?” Oliver said as though he could sense my pain.

“Yes, my eaglet?” Mama had helped me come up with the endearment. I had been taking Oliver and Darius to the library again—like Mama used to do with me and Darius—which allowed for ten book borrows a membership at a time. We had two memberships between the three of us. I always chose nine books for Oliver and one for myself. Darius loved animals. He became obsessed with parrots, but he studied many others and we’d read them to Mama.

The several books on eagles held the fascination of our private book club for several weeks.

“You’re the golden eagle,” Mama told Darius.

“Why?”

“Because it has the word gold in it,” she said, plainly.

“What’s Silas?” he asked.

“Silas is the harpy. They are the most authoritative and dominant. Also, the most powerful.”

Darius snickered. “Hear that, Sye? Mama thinks you’ve got a stick up your ass.”

Mama giggled.

“That wasn’t what she said … Mama?”

“It wasn’t what I said, but sometimes you do have a stick up your ass, my darling firstborn.”

I frowned at them both, but I couldn’t deny it. “What about Oliver?” I didn’t want him left out and I wanted to see how she saw him.

“He is an eaglet. A harpy’s eaglet.”

“Because he’s a baby,” Darius decided out loud.

Mama made eye contact with me for the briefest of moments, her eyes saidbecause he’s yours. It was a handing-off of sorts. He was already mine, but she was giving her approval, so I didn’t have to carry any guilt over it. She was also saying there was no one else she trusted him with more.

“Yes. Because he’s the baby,” she had said to Darius. “And he’s the cutest.”

“Hey! I’m the cutest,” Darius argued. We moved on to learning about how eagles captured their prey.

And from that moment he was my eaglet.

Oliver stared and then he offered snuggles, curling his head on my shoulder. I squeezed him a little tighter. My love for him grew to an impossible size, somehow more than I already loved him. I made him a thousand promises that day. I gave my final words to Mama in front of all her friends and family holding my sleeping eaglet.

* * *

Silas

Darius lost his shit. Father fell into a deep depression. I did my best to hold everything together. I needed to grieve too, but it wasn’t an option. If I wasn’t talking Darius off a ledge, I was shouldering Father’s apathy, afraid he’d spin down too deep, and we’d lose him too.

Maybe it would have been better if we had, but I didn’t think like that then. The past year had been shitty, but what’s a year? Once we got through Mama’s death, maybe we’d find a new normal.

So, I cried while Oliver slept in the playpen, and I folded laundry. I forced Darius to write in a journal, and sometimes I pulled him into bed with Oliver and me when I’d finally turn in. I made sure Father had all his favorites and set him up in front of the TV for a day of watching reruns. He was on a paid leave from the hospital—he wasn’t in any state to perform open-heart surgeries.

Oliver made sure I remembered my purpose, so I didn’t give up on any of us. Most especially, myself.

* * *