In that moment I wanted to let go of the laundry, drop the hopes, grab what I could and run. Bill’s change still jangled inside my backpack, which sat securely across my shoulders. I’d counted, separating quarters from nickels and dimes, placing the coins into comforting piles: several hundred dollars. He must’ve been saving up chits from delivering cheeseburgers for months. Maybe a year. Perhaps more. He must be good at his job. He must be both efficient and personable. A skilled actor, manipulative, good at getting what he wanted no matter who stood in his way.
His earnings could get me a night in a hotel room, a bus ticket. I’d strike out, piece together my movements one at a time, a jigsaw that could move me from Point A to Point C. I’d make up Point B as I went along. For once I wanted to fix what was wrong, fix my situation, fix myself. Standing in that hallway at seven-fifteen in the morning, my hands folded around falsely fresh laundry, I grasped at an emerging sense of focus, clarity, purpose, cleanliness.
Then my eye caught on the wall and got hooked there: the pictures. My dignified great-grandparents, dressed in black and forever retaining their Russian accents. My parents, in their early twenties, in wedding getups, a blend of formality and nerves. Adam and I, gap-toothed, bowl-cut, grinning. Jonathan.
The brother I couldn’t live without.
Jonathan’s and my bond began at the beginning of everything. From the moment I saw the red-haired screamer in his hospital cot, my heart fell into a new, yet-unintroduced place.
Was it sisterly?
Was it maternal?
Was it the meeting of two new best friends?
My belief in reincarnation began with the birth of my youngest brother. I knew this person from back in the day, from another lifetime. God had recycled souls and we were the result.
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