Don't Go Crazy Without Me. Deborah A. Lott
right, but just for a minute,” Paul said. “I’ve got to keep an eye on those clouds; they’re moving fast.”
I pointed the binoculars across the street at the copse of trees behind the Finches’ house that looked to me like a dog. He came into focus with his bushy head, small drooping tongue, four legs, and upright tail.
“Woof, woof, woof,” Ben teased.
I looked up.
“That’s just a bunch of trees,” he said. “There’s no dog.”
“There is too,” I said.
“Give me those binoculars,” Ben said, “so I can see the woof woof too.”
Ben moved toward me to take the binoculars. To protect them, Paul lunged. As their hands met the binoculars at once, someone pinched my fingers. I yelped. Louder than the pain required, loud enough to perform my protest.
“You’re a bully, Ben. Give them back,” Paul said.
“Why should I?” Ben taunted.
As Paul and Ben tussled over the binoculars and I struggled to hold onto them, I yelped again. Even louder. A cry of alarm to rouse my protector.
Ira came running, which is to say, he limped into the room as quickly as he could, leaving a trail of pre-breakfast Mallomar cookie crumbs in his wake. He had decided on the heavy underwear, and the buttons of his long johns popped open across his belly. He had long since lost the trim physique he’d had when my mother married him, and carried well over 200 pounds on his on his five-foot-five frame, most of it around his middle. “What’s going on?” he shouted, black eyes blazing. “Who hurt her?” My brothers glowered at each other.
“I didn’t do anything,” Paul said.
“Oh, please,” Ben said, “nobody hurt your precious baby.” He said it in a high-pitched voice, mocking me and my father.
“Give her back the binoculars,” my father said.
“She’s a spoiled brat,” Ben said, storming out the front door, the screen door slamming behind him. He felt independent because he could stick out his thumb and hitchhike.
“Don’t leave my house when I’m talking to you,” Ira shouted. “You think it’s okay to show no respect to your father? Going to see your pachuco friends?”
“C’mon,” Ben shouted from outside, “be serious.” He was bigger and stronger than my father and they both knew it.
Just then Paul noticed some signs of new activity in the Finches’ house across the street. “Quick! Give ‘em back, I’m missing it,” he said. He tried to twist the binoculars out of my hand.
“Owww,” I said. “You’re hurting me. Daddy!”
My father screamed, “Paul, goddamn you, I told you to let her have the binoculars. You’re always making trouble.”
“They’re my binoculars, Mommy bought them for me. Mom! The baby always gets whatever she wants. There’s no justice in this family.” He glared at Ira.
My mother had come into the room and was struggling to hold my father back by the arm.
My father raised his poor approximation of a fist in the direction of Paul’s face. “If your mother wasn’t always babying you, I’d make a real man out of you.” Paul put up his arm in defense, and my father lunged forward and struck it. Ira rubbed his hand. “You hurt my hand,” he said, eyes darkening further in rage.
“You hurt your own hand,” Paul said.
“Stop!” my mother said, grabbing her chest. Eva’s heart fluttered whenever we fought. “Just stop before you give me a heart attack.”
A somatic complaint usually could call a halt to any emotional display, but this time it was too late to contain my father. He slapped Paul on the head. Paul pushed him back. My heart pounded and the room spun and I knew this was all my fault. I had set my father off, and he was about to kill my brother, and my mother was about to collapse with a heart attack, and I’d given her one more reason to hate me. I started to cry, then shut my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and screamed my earth-shattering scream. The one that constituted a spectacle. The one that often made the neighbors call and complain.
Everyone froze in their tracks. My mother held her chest.
“All right,” my mother said. “Enough. Enough. If any of our neighbors were trying to have a nice Saturday, we’ve ruined it for them now. Is this how your mother taught you to observe Shabbos, Ira?”
“He hurt her,” my father said.
“She doesn’t look hurt to me,” my mother said.
Paul buried his head in my mother’s chest. “I didn’t do anything, Mommy,” he said. “He’s always picking on me.” Paul turned around to face me and twisted his head from side to side as if to burrow deeper into my mother’s body. He smiled up at me, triumphant in her favor. She allowed his head to remain, put her hand on his shoulder, but did not fully embrace him.
Paul was her child and I was my father’s. I cried harder.
She turned to me, “Do you enjoy getting your father all worked up against your brother this way? Do you like it when he gets agitated?”
“I just wanted to see the dog,” I sobbed.
“Now watch, she’s going to get totally hysterical and put on a show,” my mother said. When I cried, my mother described me in the third person. She shrugged Paul off her body.
“Ira, you know you get upset when you have low blood sugar. Come on, and I’ll make you some breakfast.” They started to leave the room. My father turned back.
“Are you bleeding?” he said.
My father’s question stopped my crying. Bleeding! Was I bleeding? Did I have an invisible puncture wound that was going to give me tetanus? Were the binoculars rusty? Were my brothers’ hands dirty? I couldn’t remember how hard my finger had been pinched but my father’s alarm made everything in my body hurt. Was this the way tetanus felt? My heart throbbed in my chest; my head ached from screaming and crying. I held up both arms and hands so my father could examine them. What I really wanted was for my mother to hold me against her body the way she’d held Paul.
“Give her the binoculars back,” he said to Paul, who handed them to me.
“Daddy, you can see the dog in the trees, right?” I said. I always took my father’s side, and he always took mine. I needed a show of loyalty, a confirmation that we shared the same reality, even if no one else in the family saw what we saw.
“Of course, baby,” he said. But he wasn’t looking; he was following my mother into the kitchen. Now all I had left was that dog. I pointed the binoculars at the tree, and couldn’t make out anything but leaves and branches. My tears flooded the eye piece. I turned the knob until the image went out of focus. I willed the dog back into existence. He had seemed so vibrant, his head distinctive, his rib cage moving in and out with the movement of the wind, his tail upright. But he was gone. I was getting old. The trees were becoming only the trees.
Present, Bedroom, 2:30 a.m.
Coming out of a dream, I feel my father’s hand press down on my wrist, implore me not to leave him. I shift in bed, come to fully, and the phantom hand becomes my husband’s, the bed our bed, the house our own. I recite the facts of the present that blur in the middle of the night. The house on Teasley Street where I grew up has been lost to foreclosure, and my brother Paul forced to move into a cheap apartment. He will never forgive me and Ben for not buying the house for him. Ben and his wife live in the San Fernando Valley. Their adult daughter, my niece, lives near them.
My