Chapter 3

December 2006

"No, don't change it!" 

To avoid the coming tantrum, Machlon dropped the remote and sulked. Let his sister watch her dumb Harry Potter movies, although she wasn't going to see anything she didn't already know about seeing as she had put him to shame by reading the entire 900 page "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" at age 10 then gone back and devoured the preceding volumes in less than a month. Their mother had bought the book on sale with the expectation that he might enjoy it, but his sister beat him to it and Mommy couldn't have been prouder. He kept his jealousy in check at the moment and resigned himself to watching "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" as part of the annual 25 Days of Christmas only because he had been promised that he would see Mommy over the winter break, if they were good of course. 

"What happened to your arm?" He asked after a few minutes when he glanced over and caught sight of a fresh cut on the inside of her wrist.

Amaris, who had always had the appearance of being well fed with plump legs and a round belly albeit tall for her age, had lost a lot of weight since she got out of the hospital after her mishap the previous spring. You could see every blue vein under her skin and the slash stood out like a sore thumb against her olive complexion since she had no fold of fat to cover it. She tuck her right and non-dominant hand underneath her thigh to hide the cut and pretended he hadn't spoken at all.

"You're gonna make Mommy cry." Machlon told her. "She doesn't wanna see you hurt anymore!"

"She's not going to see me." Amaris shrugged using proper pronunciation just to show him up. "Big Brother will come up with something. Just like last time."

Against their mother's wishes, she had turned 12 in Florida during the summer instead of in Kentucky because Isaac said he was too busy to bring them back to Louisville. When Machlon's 14th birthday rolled around in November and Mommy called, there had been talk of going home for Thanksgiving which also happened to be the day her own birthday fell on that year but a deal had finally been struck to wait and return to Kentucky for a long visit over the winter break. He'd called her on her birthday and Isaac again promised that they would see each other next month, so understandably he was excited.

"No he won't!" Machlon said adamantly. 

She shrugged again as if to say 'suit yourself' without ever turning to give him the courtesy of acknowledgement. 

"Please, be good." He lowered his voice in case Isaac decided they were being too loud and came in here. "I really need to see Mommy and I can't unless you go too."

A third shrug.

"I know you miss her too, No-No." He said more to himself than her. His sister was a strange bird, everyone knew that, and even her own family had difficulty trying to figure her out. Nobody could be certain what was on her mind or where they stood with her.

"I'll be back." Isaac said in English as he breezed through the living room cellphone pressed to his ear, before reverting to Spanish, learned from the time spent with his Puerto Rican father and perfected by the Latinos he gravitated towards. He paused at the front door and fixed them with a menacing glare to warn them, then was gone. 

They watched the rest of the movie in silence and when their brother still had not returned, turned off the lights hoping nobody would come looking for him to score and settled down for the night.  "Gimme one too. Just half actually." 

Sleep did not come naturally to Amaris, who had spent many more nights in her mother's bed than her own back at home, and since she needed her rest, Isaac had her taking pills of unknown origins. She broke one in half with her teeth, swallowed, and held the rest out to Machlon. For a moment he recoiled, noting the glazed look in her eyes. 

"Suit yourself." She mumbled and swallowed the other half herself as she rose to her feet and stumbled on unsteady legs to the bathroom, having remembered at the last moment before she lay down to sleep to her tendency to wake up in a soaked bed. Mama's Baby wet her bed nightly until her 12th birthday and 2-3 times per week afterward. 

Within minutes she was asleep or rather unconscious while Machlon closed his eyes and thought happy thoughts about home.

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"You're gonna have a lot of ugly scars when you grow up."

Bright red blood bubbled as Amaris scraped the scabs from her the nearly healed slash with her chewed down and gnarled fingernails. Mommy kept her nails trimmed out of necessity , Isaac didn't and didn't realize she didn't know how to do it herself, so she gnawed them down to the quick, bruising and shredding the cuticles. "And you care why?" was her retort. 

"I don't." Machlon said drily. 

"Then shut up." 

He did, because he didn't want an argument or fight just when everything seemed to be falling into place. Let her think she was the boss and he'd do what she said for the rest of their days so long as they were going home. Everything would fine when he saw Mommy.  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the beaded blood was trickling down Amaris's arm and how she was just letting it, so got up from the couch to get her a papertowel or something before her clothes got stained.  She would be a lot better too, more normal, once they were home again. 

"Yeah, I don't think that's going to work either, Mama......I know you haven't seen them since May!" 

Machlon's heart sank as he entered the kitchen and overheard Isaac talking somewhere outside. He folded up a couple of papertowels into a thick rectangle and cracked the faucet to dampen it with a few drops of water. Deliberately he barely turned the tap to waste time and linger. Sure enough, within a few seconds he heard his mother bellowing and cussing at the top of her lungs.

"Listen to me, you damn Ricano b*****d. I don't know who the Hell you think you're running game on, but....."

Suppressing a smile, Machlon returned to the living room and laid the papertowels on Amaris's wrist. She grimaced but left them there. They sat in silence after that, staring at the TV though not really watching it as there is little to watch in the middle of the day. Today was the first day of Winter Break, for the two of them at least, because Isaac told the school not to expect them in class after December 13th.  

"Jesus F*****g Christ, she's bleeding everywhere!" 

Both kids jumped in surprise.

The wad of papertowels had streaks of red however were by no means saturated with blood. They exchanged a glance, a hint of smugness in Amaris's eyes. Isaac was making up things again. Exactly as she had predicted he would do when the time came for him to keep his word to their mother and return them home to Kentucky to see her. 

"Mama, I've got $10,000 in my pocket and plenty more in the bank. You can come see them any time and I'll pay for it. Just calm down!" Isaac's facial expression dared either of them to open their mouths to contradict his latest excuse. "It doesn't matter where I got the money from."

"Oh great, now she really won't be able to see us!" 

Machlon jerked his head up and looked at his little sister puzzledly. 

"We know too much, moron." She hissed as Isaac left them alone again to go argue and calm their mother back outside out of their earshot. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"

Truth be told, it had never crossed his mind until she mentioned it. Mommy always told them that everything happened for a reason and common sense should have told him that there was a reason why Isaac was spending more time lying about why it wasn't possible rather than simply doing the things he had said he would do. She also believed steadfastly in giving the benefit of the doubt on the other hand, so he couldn't be blamed for not instantly jumping to conclusions and forming conspiracy theories.

"Half of the county knows about that." Machlon reminded her.

"Yeah, but Mom in Louisville doesn't know and he's making sure we don't get to be alone with her to tell her." Amaris used a condescending tone to explain what she thought he should already have known. "You know how crazy he acts when he thinks you've called her and he wasn't here to hear what you were saying!"

That was true. It took four tries on Machlon's birthday, because he had not been allowed to answer the phone and speak with their mother until Isaac had a few free minutes to come stand over him while they talked. Same thing happened when he wanted to call her on her birthday. Isaac insisted on knowing every single word spoken. 

"Is that why you don't answer when she calls? Because you don't want Isaac breathing down your neck too?" He asked although he knew the answer already.

"It's thanks to her that we live here in the first place, so what've we got to discuss?"

Before he could answer and remind that this was temporary, a year at most, Isaac was looming over them again and pressing his cellphone to the side of Amaris's head. 

"Tell this woman that you're fine, you love her, and you'll see her in a few days!"

Anyone who knew the girl wouldn't have been fooled by her robotic reassurances and like all mothers when it comes to their children, theirs' was alarmed not soothed. Mother and daughter had not spoken for around five months at the time but aside from what Isaac told her to say, she had no desire to carry on a conversation. Machlon heard the worry in his mother's voice as she cajoled her youngest child to respond to her.

"See? They're fine!" Isaac was satisfied even though they all knew it was a farce.

"When we get home." Machlon declared. "I am never leaving again. This is some bullshit." 

He tried to sound like he believed what he was saying, but always clever Amaris, did not even bother to dignify his words with a response.

They would come back to Florida with Isaac at holiday's end.

He told them before they ever left that they did not have any other choice.