The Summer of Sisterhood

She's taken care of him for almost all his life but this time, there may be nothing Molly can do to save Tyler.

“Molly.”

Tyler looks up at me with his huge blue eyes, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, doing his very best to get accustomed to this awkward, pre-pubescent body. I thumb the change in my pocket, taking a seat on our front porch. He needs someone to talk to right now, and it looks like it's my lucky day.

“Sit down, Tyler,” I remind him, pulling him down beside me by his freckled wrist. He shifts again, brand-new Converse sneakers squeaking unpleasantly.

“Moll, they keep making fun of me at summer school.”

“Why? 'Cause of your hair?” He's ginger, and there's a small bald spot above his left ear from when he gets so nervous he starts picking at it. “They're not important, Tyler. They're idiots.”

He looks down, chewing his lip, and back up, a helpless expression on his face.

“Nobody talks to me, Molly.”

I shut up, since I know what that feels like, but I know that's not what he wants to hear, and take his hand, stroking it gently between mine. The soft sound of a tear escapes his too-slim chest, and he chokes it down with a cough. I make a mental note to tell Daddy to quit talking about being a man so much.

“I don't know what to do, Moll.” He starts to scratch his ribs, still tender from the car accident two weeks ago. “I'm so scared. He said he'd get after me if I told. I think he's gonna come get me.”

“If you told what, Tyler?”

He allows one more sob, sliding his hand down his stomach, where, now, as he lifts the cotton undershirt up, I can see black and blue roses blossoming up under his skin. I have to try hard not to flinch, and squeeze his hand tighter. Tyler, so sweet and gentle and nervous, the anxious little boy with a whole slew of bad habits, sits beside me with the weight of a hundred insults and threats sinking into the skin over his stomach.

“Let's get some ice cream,” I mutter, helping him up off the porch and pull his shirt back down again. He stands only reluctantly, and we start down the sidewalk. “The truck's gonna come by soon. Can you hear it coming yet?” He shakes his head, brushing the back of his hand across his cheek. I turn away, so he won't think I saw.

The ice cream truck draws near, the tinkling tune of “Ring Around the Rosie” flowing through the neighborhood, and not too much later, the truck itself rolls up the street, bright colors and characters painted across the sides. I wave to the driver, taking Tyler's wrist in my other hand and run across, looking both ways as we flag the truck down. The driver looks to me first, weary and worn.

“Hi. Can I get a vanilla cone with sprinkles, please?” He nods slowly, passing the cone over the metal counter, and I turn to Tyler. “Do you want your own or do you want to share?”

“I'll share,” he half-whispers, focusing in on the ground below him. I turn back to the driver, who, for some reason, is giving me the oddest of looks.

“One seventy-five.” I pass him his quarters and smile, but he continues to stare, taking the change and driving away, that vacant, confused look on his face echoing in his wake. Tyler snakes his hand around my cone, and starts to gnaw off bits of vanilla, the sprinkles and melted remains dribbling down his chin.

“Eat like a person, Tyler.” He slows down, sniffling a little bit, coughs, and hands the cone back to me, the ice cream mixed in with his tears and his spit. I brush my sleeve under his chin, his nose, his eyes. He coughs again, shaking his head.

“I can't do this.” He drops down to the sidewalk, burying his face in his knees. “They swore, they swore if I said anything, I'd be done. I don't want it, Moll, I just...I can't.” I sweep my hand down his back, rubbing gently. The sniffles roll out of his throat, muffled on his jeans.

“What do you need me to do, Tyler?”

“L-let's go to the park,” he squeaks, his knees knocking together as he gets his feet beneath him. I slide my arm around his shoulders, and although he begins to shrink away at first, he melts into it after a second, putting his arm around my waist in turn.

"Just talk to me, Ty." The freckles on his neck are scattered in a frenzy, like a school of fish in the midst of a shark attack. He takes a moment to remember what breathing is, and closes his eyes, nodding, while we begin to walk.

"You know the football team? The flag football team I play for in league?" I nod. Tyler's actually pretty good at flag football. For having asthma and being small, he's pretty fast and can spot the ball a mile away. He takes in a shaky breath. "Well, Danny Wood...Danny's dad likes to drink a lot. And sometimes he drinks before Danny has a game.

"Mr. Wood was dropping him off for the football game at the middle school a few days ago. And he said that he needed to have a word with his son in the locker room alone before the game started, so the coach said okay. I guess he couldn't smell the alcohol on Mr. Wood's breath, but I could." He draws in another shaky breath before continuing, "I forgot my water bottle in the locker room, so I went back to get it. And I heard...noises coming from behind one of the rows of lockers.

"The first one was low, and scary, like a dog growling. But then I heard something squeaky. And then I went around the corner and saw his dad...on top of him, hitting him and doing...other things. And Danny was crying. I've never seen Danny cry. He's always going around the team, calling everybody a 'p***y' when Coach isn't around. But he was crying, and I just stood there. His dad didn't see me. And I didn't do anything. So Danny looked at me, still crying and all, and he said to get out. So I did.

"And the next day at practice, he acted like nothing happened, all day. But after Coach let us out, he made me go in the locker room with him and he told me if I ever told anyone, he'd come after me. And then--" He shivers, tugging at his shirt and the lightbulb goes off in my head. "--then he hit me. And then he let me go." He wipes his nose again, letting out baby noises as he sits down on one of the swings. I rub his shoulder, and take the spot beside him, digging my feet into the Turf tanbark so I can pump back and forth.

"Nobody's going to hurt you, Tyler. Nobody's going to hurt you now or ever."

"How do you know?" He shivers like he can't be helped, but some part of him knows that I'm absolutely right.

"Because," I say softly, starting to smile a little bit. "I know everything, don't I?" He chuckles, looking down.

"Yeah, I guess. You're the smartest person I know, Moll."

"Thanks, Tyler." I look around, at the sky that rushes at me, and recedes, and rushes at me again. "Hey. Bet I can swing higher than you." He grins, showing off the last missing baby tooth, and starts to propel himself to my heights.

And right now, it's like we're back in time. When we didn't have to worry about anything but whether or not we were going to be on time for the ice cream truck, or Mama making sure I held Tyler's hand crossing the street on the way to school. We're back to the place where we can just live.

I look over to make sure he's still there, he's been so quiet. He sits serenely in his swing, his eyes shut so that the long red eyelashes press ever-so-gently against one another, and, for once, thank God, Tyler is calm. He's had this problem pretty much since he was born. We've all been praying for this for as long as I can remember, and just being able to sit with him in this moment, for me, is utter bliss.

Tyler was born in mid-February, when I was five years old. I got to skip school that day and eat microwaved-up McDonald's French fries for breakfast. When he finally came out of the nursery and back into my mother's room, everybody knew something was wrong. The nurses all had solemn, prepared looks on their faces. They'd probably rehearsed things like this, done them a thousand times for a thousand parents expecting happy, healthy babies.

"He's going to have asthma," they said, and I could hear even though they'd pulled my parents aside to tell them in private. The words muffled against their thin paper masks, but I could still hear. "The doctor said that there's a limited supply of dopamine in his brain, so he'll likely develop anxiety as well. He'll have to take medications, but you're to raise him as normally as possible. Make him feel like he belongs with you. He's your son."

"Tyler," said my father gruffly, before the nurse could turn away. "His name is Tyler Simon Bellamy. And yes, he is my son."

I don't think I'd ever seen Daddy so proud of Tyler since that day. I had always been Daddy's little girl (whether I tried to be or not) and Tyler...well, Tyler always got the talks about being tough, about never letting other people get under your skin, and when he couldn't manage either, he'd get called a sissy and he'd shut off.

I'm not saying my dad's a bad person. It's just that he and Tyler don't have very compatible personalities. Daddy likes you to be tough and smart and hardworking, and I could do all that, or at least fake it. But Tyler was more honest than me, and he was sensitive and a little lazy sometimes.

And Daddy's gotten closer with Tyler since the accident. He's been more quiet and mostly stays shut up in his room or at work. And in the afternoon sometimes, after he gets home from work, Tyler will get home from school and go up to talk to him, and he tells me afterwards that they really got to talk, good talk. I'm really happy for that. I try not to think of it like Tyler's stealing him away from me, because it's not fair for me to have Daddy to myself. Like he said, Tyler is his son.

When he opens his eyes, there's something wrong again, I can tell. I stop swinging, and follow him to the bench he plops his butt on.

"You okay?"

He shrugs, folding his hands protectively over the stomach that's had the tar beaten out of it.

"You know, we can call the police about this. Get them to do something about it." He's quiet again, so I take the opportunity to continue. "What Danny's dad does to him is really bad, Tyler, and I'm glad that you told me. But if we just keep letting that go on, we're just as bad as him, aren't we?" He shrugs again, but when he looks up, I can tell that he knows I'm right. "I know what Danny did to you was really bad, and if we tell the police about his father, he'll probably be mad at you again, but right now he doesn't have anyone to protect him. And if we aren't those people, then maybe nobody will. And then when Danny grows up, maybe he'll be just like his dad and do those things to his kids. His kids haven't done anything to you yet, have they?"

"They could."

"But have they?"

"...No." I rub his shoulder, and kiss his cheek for comfort.

"Danny needs someone right now. And if he wants, he can get mad at me. But right now, he hasn't got anyone to keep him safe. If I were him, and this kind of stuff was happening to me, I would want somebody to watch out for me." I sigh, toeing the spot where the concrete has cracked, and a weed has begun to grow in. "If this keeps going on, Danny could die, Tyler. And we'd have to live with knowing and not telling anyone for the rest of our lives."

"Sometimes I want Danny to die, though." I have to double-take--kind Tyler, gentle Tyler, Tyler who loves God and will never lie to anyone--has he just made a death wish on another little boy? "When he says stuff to me when nobody else is listening. It makes me really angry. But I'm not big enough to fight back. So there's nothing I can do about it."

"Tyler, don't you ever say you want someone to die again. Alright?" His steely gaze doesn't leave me for a good fifteen seconds, but he nods in compliance. "Nobody deserves to die. Even if Danny does mean things to you, he doesn't deserve to die."

"He called me a 'f****t' at practice."

"And are you?"

"No."

"Then why does it matter?" I pause, doing up a shoelace that's come loose on my sneaker. "Tyler, I understand that that is a really bad word, and nobody should be called it, but Danny being a jerk doesn't matter. He's using you to make himself feel better about the things that happen to him at home. If you ignore it, then maybe he'll find a better way to make himself feel better instead of having to treat you the way he does." I give his shoulder a squeeze, but it doesn't soothe the pain I feel in my own stomach. "This is gonna sound stupid, but I know how it feels to have nobody. And I want you to know that you don't have nobody. You have me, Ty, you've always got me." He sniffles again, but stops himself before the dam can break.

"Thanks, Moll."

"You're welcome, kid. How about we head home?"

"Okay."

I start before him, skipping an odd little pattern back toward our house, going the long way, the way past the cemetery where, when I was younger, one of the kids in our class dared another girl to go at night and play some weird, ritualistic hell game and the girl "transferred schools" the day after. We never saw her after that day in school, and the one who dared her spread the rumor that her maimed and mangled body had been locked in the crypt for all of eternity.

Now, he was a freak.

As we pass the cemetery, we get back into our familiar neighborhood, where just the thought of suburbia feels more like home that our physical house does. The dog park is empty today, and Mr. Collins is washing his car; just another normal summer day at home.

"What do you want for dinner tonight, Tyler?" I ask, stepping over the crack in front of me. He's silent. "Tyler? What do you want for dinner?"

When I turn around, I see him standing in the middle of the street, looking across the way to the dry plain Mr. Collins calls a yard. He looks back at me, his arms curling around himself. God, no. I half-run to him, pulling him to my chest in what I hope is a comforting hug. But my intentions fall to the dogs, and he pushes away from me, stumbling back, closer to the yellow divider lines.

“You can't just act like it's going to go back to normal, Molly, now that I've told you, he's gonna get me, he's gonna come after me!” He starts to hyperventilate, his eyes widening. I sit him down on the sidewalk, pressing my hands against his shoulders. His pupils dart across my face, and it's not until now that I notice his hands are shaking. “Molly--Molly, why didn't you save me?”

“What do you me--”

He stands up, his knees wobbling and cracking against each other as he backs away from me. I reach out toward him, but he stumbles backward, his shoelaces coming undone in the process. A red stain blooms under his shirt as he scratches his ribs some more, and finally I get my feet under me.

“Tyler, calm down, please buddy, calm down.” I rest my hand on his arm, until his arm isn't there anymore, slipping away. More tears trickle down his face, and he's making little boy noises, calling for help with meaningless sounds. “Tyler, it's okay, he can't hurt you here, not here when you're with me.” He shakes his head again, and starts to run, across the street, and I follow once more, the sound of the car hitting him ringing in my head as I remember that scene, two weeks ago--

The screech of the brakes, the dull thud of the front bumper against his body.

The crack of his ribs, the sound of his scream before it can completely leave his mouth.

The ambulance sirens, cars pulling over, my knees hitting the asphalt where he lies, the rusty smell of that dark red liquid leaking out of his chest, people stopping, staring, pointing.

And I keep running, my feet the only ones beating against the concrete, crushing the grass, until I fall down in the cemetery, my palms hitting the ground first, then my knees. I sit up, my heart sinking in my chest, when I realize exactly where I am.

Right in front of the freshly-laid tombstone, the earth lightly disturbed from last week's funeral, the one that reads out in big, bold letters: TYLER BELLAMY FEBRUARY 22, 2000-JULY 21, 2012, BELOVED SON AND BROTHER.

Author's Note

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