Her Charmed Life

Hi. A lot has been happening in my life this past month so I have PLENTY of fresh new content on my mind. The only problem is getting it out of my brain and onto this blog.

So I was born into a fairly big family. There’s my mom (Kathryn), my dad (Dick), me, my oldest-younger brother (Dustin), my sister (Lou), my youngest brother (Nick). Then I have some other siblings through new parental relationships and adoption. So basically there’s like 8 kids in total I think, but the core of my immediate family are all listed above. This post is about me and my brother Dustin. I googled his name just now for ideas on a fake name to call him on this blog. In short, his name means “sorrowful”. I hope my mother didn’t know that before she named him.

I love Dustin. He’s a year younger than me and growing up with him was a privilege that I took for granted. I looked up to him in the typical way shy children do towards the more outgoing ones. Dustin was younger but he was always the first. The first to make a friend, the first to ride a bike, the first to touch the frog, the fastest, the bravest. Throughout our young childhood, I trailed behind his shining light, always just a step or two behind him. We had a mostly typical early childhood from what I remember. We lived in a very small shotgun house in Memphis, Tennessee. It had three cramped bedrooms and one small bathroom.  Now that I think of it, maybe it was more of a two bedroom house that had a small office/large closet type room that acted as our third bedroom. My room was the office/closet and I was always jealous thatDustingot the bigger room. Dustin had one of those older TVs with the huge back that weighed like 80 pounds and he had a set of bunk beds. We played and fought and laughed and cried while we lived in that house. There were a lot of children around us and we soon got the bike gang together. You know what I’m talking about. I rode on my brother’s bike pegs most of the time. He went so fast, I felt like I was flying. There was a firefighter with a son close to our age around the corner from us. Once, he let us climb on his roof while he cleaned out the gutters as long as our mom said yes. We wanted to go so badly so we lied to the man and told him she said it was okay. Dustin and I got in so much trouble for that but we both agreed that it was worth it. In the house right next door to us lived three adults- the husband and wife both had white hair and wrinkled skin and their son was young and had dark hair. The son rode a motorcycle and I always thought he must have been so cool. His black helmet looked shiny. I don’t ever remember talking to any of these people but I do remember their little dog bit people through the chain link fence in the back yards. It hurt like hell when that dog bit you. I also remember that the husband would always rake the big fallen leaves in their front yard into one huge pile. Dustin and I always jumped into it and threw the leaves all over their yard, playing. I don’t remember the husband putting the leaves into a bag,I think he just did it for us to jump in. It only took a day for the pile to get raked back together, ready for us to destroy again. 

We lived in the Bartlett area, which was one of the better areas of Memphis but there was still a lot of crime. The income was pretty low where we lived. There was a little boy who was probably a year or two younger than I was, and I wasn’t allowed to play with him. They had really big and loud dogs that scared me so much as a child, that’s why I thought I couldn’t play with that boy. Turns out, I wasn’t allowed to pay with him because of the scary adults who lived there, not the dogs. He and I found a loophole in the rules I had. We raced each other on our sides of the sidewalk, him on his side, me on my side and the blacktop street between us. I rode a bike and he had a plastic big wheel so I won all the time. I let him beat me when I heard the people inside his house yelling.

Once, Dustin woke me up in the middle of the night. He was sobbing on the side of my bed because there were scary lights in his window. I, being a sleepy seven or so years old, just told him to be quiet and scooted over. He climbed into his side of my bed (the side next to the wall, it made him feel safer I think) and I held his hand until he stopped crying. As I was trying to fall back to sleep, I saw the lights outside my own window. I had blinds so it was difficult for me to get a good look at what was going on. Then I heard the yelling. Many voices sounded outside, men. I could hear the motorcycle man from next door screaming. I had never heard a person actually scream before. I woke up my brother and crawled further under the blankets. My mom ran into my room and scooped both of us up, one of us in each of her arms and sprinted out to the back yard. She passed Dustin and I over the fence to the fireman. I remember him telling me to close my eyes. He pushed my head into his chest and I can still feel the rumble of his voice when he spoke. My night dress was all twisted around me and made it hard for me to move my legs. He was holding me too tight and it hurt my ribs. My dress got caught on the fence and I shoved my head out from his chest to tell him not to get my dress ripped. I’d be in so much trouble if I got this one messed up, I didn’t have many clothes. Over his arm, I saw my brother running away very fast. He was going to the fireman’s house, the fireman’s son was sitting in the front window looking at me. I saw the reflection in the window and turned around in the man’s arms. My front yard was on fire. The flames were high and pushing to our front door. I didn’t see my dad. The fireman put me down and told me to run to his house and lock the front door. His son, my brother and I all fell asleep on the living room floor.

Apparently, my dad is a gambler. Or was? I don’t know. The people who lived across the street lit beer bottles on fire and threw them at our house from their roof. My dad owed them money. I also found out my dad beat the motorcycle man from next door so badly he went to the hospital. It sounds like my dad lost a poker game and didn’t like it. The man told his parents he was in a motorcycle accident. I never saw him again after that. The pile of leaves never was re-raked. Our grass grew back lush and green as ever though.  

My brother still lives with my dad. Kind of, it sounds like Dustin couch surfs a lot or stays with his girlfriend. He’s 23 years old and I think about him daily. He has been to rehab twice already. I hope he can get away one day. We have grown very far apart. I don’t really know who he is anymore. I used to call him all the time, once every day for an entire year. He never answered, so I stopped to save myself from the heartache. Recently he got back into contact with me. I hope he doesn’t disappear again, but I think I know what will happen. Dustin’s really struggling. I’ve offered all I can, I keep reaching out my hand. I don’t know if he will ever be ready to take it though. At least not anytime soon. You know that Taylor Swift song “loml”? Yeah, accurate. I think I’ll send him another text right now- just in case, you know.