1 Blood and Water
My life has always been lived in shades of red. I'm not just talking about the obvious things like my hair that hangs down my back in a thick mess of tangled crimson, or my eyes that are forever red; not bloodshot but like shots of blood pooled together to form droplets of shifting amber. And I'm not even talking about the angry red scratches inscribed deep across my cheek that somehow still manage, after all these years, to feel fresh and raw when my face stretches to smile. But as far back as I can remember, red is shade that has painted my past.
My first memory is of red, of seeing the red puffy skin beneath my mother's eyes and the rawness under her nose as she looked at me, at my unwanted small life, a life that she was left to care for, a life that she wanted least of all. I learned early that red was the color of grief and despair.
The blanket that covered the bed that I shared with my brother was quilted with large patches of red dominating the worn pattern. That bed smelled like Jien and I, but mostly of Jien, or perhaps that's just wistfulness painting my memory. We use to lie there and Jien would tell me stories on the nights when I had trouble sleeping. I loved the low whisper-rough tones of his voice as he told me things, many things that were not really true about knights, and princesses, and far off places that I should not have believed, but I believed them anyway, because I believed so strongly in my brother. I usually kept quiet while he talked and it was fine that way, because we both knew that it was always best for me to be small and quiet and unnoticed.
We use to have to lay close together in that bed so that the blanket covered both of us during the night even as we moved and shifted with the dream cycle. I never minded because I loved the warmth of being pressed against my brother's body and the feel of his arm draped across my shoulders that anchored me to him.
When I was alone in the bed the blanket seemed much bigger. It was at these times when I used it to cover my entire body and lay quite still, when I could hear the anguished voice of my mother and the desperately hushed voice of Jien as he tried to reason with her who was always beyond reason whenever she looked at me. I would hide beneath the blanket, but my eyes were always open peering through the threadbare fabric at the shapes of my family stained red through the shield of my blanket. I understood that desperation was swathed in crimson.
I was lying on the floor, in the corner, and she was above me. Her body seemed so large and mine was still quite small. Her face was streaked with tears and split with pain while mine was open and calm and just waiting, waiting, waiting for her tears to finally stop. For my one chance, finally, to make my mother happy. It would come any second, the fall of that sharp blade in her hands, and I welcomed it. I welcomed the ending to her misery, to all of our misery, really. Just another moment and my mother would finally set right the wrong that my father had done, the sin that he should never have committed because it was so wrong, because nothing that was right in this world should have been able to bring that much grief to a mother.
And then I saw the color red in its richest deepest truest shade as the red red blood poured from her chest flowing around the tip of the scarlet- stained sword down down covering me like too-thick drops of crimson summer rain.
Though my life would continue to be tinted with shades of red, I knew then all red to be the color of my mother's blood.
I don't remember the sword being pulled from her or her body crumpling to the ground before me. But I remember hearing tears when I had been so sure only moments before that the tears in that house were finally going to end. I looked at Jien; I looked at salty tracks flowing so freely down his face as he looked not at the mother he had just murdered, but at me.
I remember being afraid for the first time that day, because it seemed as if this person with the tears running down his face was someone I didn't know. Because Jien, my brother, had never once cried while looking at me, and now that he was I was terrified and confused, and had no idea what to do now that I had made him cry, too.
The tear-streaked face then turned from me. He walked across the room to the door. It opened, hinges squeaking as they had always done, and walked out without ever looking back. It was dusk then, and I watched the shape of his body walking towards the setting sun. For years I believed, just a little, that he was heading towards the sun to live there in its warmth away from this cold world that allowed sons to pierce the hearts of their mothers.
I have never forgotten that sunset; the rich red hues that seemed to reach out and swallow my brother, and I knew then that red was the color of loneliness.
My life after that was lived as if I was forever wearing a pair of cheap rose-colored sunglasses. It was seeing things, places, and people; always with a red tint that made everything sharper, so sharp that nothing could possibly be real.
And it was so much better this way, this falseness that permeated everything around me, because a pretend life was so much safer than reality. A pretend life allowed you to live how you wanted, with any past that you wanted, or no past if that was easier. It was so much more pleasant than reality, because reality reached out with angry trembling hands to leave deep painful scratches across your face.
There was such a deep pool of red around him when I saw him laying in the rain that I was already certain he was dead even before I nudged him with my foot. But that pitiful wet choking cough corrected my assumption leading me to lean down over his crumpled form.
It felt like….
He looked at me and smiled.
And in his eyes there was nothing. It was as if everything that he was was pouring out from his shredded middle and mixing with the rich muddy earth at my feet. There was no joy, or pain, or passion, or grief.
There was no red.
And I saw the distinct green of his eye, so clearly, just as clearly as every tint and shade and variation of red that has ever passed before my own cursed scarlet eyes. And then it was gone.
I took him home with me and patched him up. I looked out for him and gave him a place to live for over a month with no questions asked. I talked to him as often as he was up to it, and I controlled my temper when he had the indecency to beat me at cards in my own home. I fought with some worldly monk over him.
I lost him.
I got him back under a new name, one that seemed to suit him so much better.
I offered him a place to live indefinitely. I left on a journey to save the world, not because I was asked or because it was the right thing to do, but because he was going. I fight by his side, at his back, and trust him to do the same for me. I try to make sure that he doesn't push himself too far.
I know his past, what he has done, what he has been through. And I also know that he doesn't cry when the tragedy of his life practically screams for it. He puts on this fake smile and goes through life like a hollow puppet with invisible strings.
He doesn't cry.
I want him to cry.
Until he does, he is living like I was with my figurative red glasses. And at one time I may have even understood, which I actually do, the need to be taken out of this world and all of its too harsh pain where mothers hate and brothers leave.
But…
I saw the green of his eye that night, and it was the most beautiful color that I had ever looked upon.
I want to see it again. I want to look at life and see other colors besides red, the color of my mother's blood. And he needs to live again, to allow himself to feel pain, because without pain there is no happiness or love.
I need to see if the water of his tears is enough to dilute the stain of red marking me in order to allow other colors of life to bleed through.
My life has always been lived in shades of red. I'm not just talking about the obvious things like my hair that hangs down my back in a thick mess of tangled crimson, or my eyes that are forever red; not bloodshot but like shots of blood pooled together to form droplets of shifting amber. And I'm not even talking about the angry red scratches inscribed deep across my cheek that somehow still manage, after all these years, to feel fresh and raw when my face stretches to smile. But as far back as I can remember, red is shade that has painted my past.
My first memory is of red, of seeing the red puffy skin beneath my mother's eyes and the rawness under her nose as she looked at me, at my unwanted small life, a life that she was left to care for, a life that she wanted least of all. I learned early that red was the color of grief and despair.
The blanket that covered the bed that I shared with my brother was quilted with large patches of red dominating the worn pattern. That bed smelled like Jien and I, but mostly of Jien, or perhaps that's just wistfulness painting my memory. We use to lie there and Jien would tell me stories on the nights when I had trouble sleeping. I loved the low whisper-rough tones of his voice as he told me things, many things that were not really true about knights, and princesses, and far off places that I should not have believed, but I believed them anyway, because I believed so strongly in my brother. I usually kept quiet while he talked and it was fine that way, because we both knew that it was always best for me to be small and quiet and unnoticed.
We use to have to lay close together in that bed so that the blanket covered both of us during the night even as we moved and shifted with the dream cycle. I never minded because I loved the warmth of being pressed against my brother's body and the feel of his arm draped across my shoulders that anchored me to him.
When I was alone in the bed the blanket seemed much bigger. It was at these times when I used it to cover my entire body and lay quite still, when I could hear the anguished voice of my mother and the desperately hushed voice of Jien as he tried to reason with her who was always beyond reason whenever she looked at me. I would hide beneath the blanket, but my eyes were always open peering through the threadbare fabric at the shapes of my family stained red through the shield of my blanket. I understood that desperation was swathed in crimson.
I was lying on the floor, in the corner, and she was above me. Her body seemed so large and mine was still quite small. Her face was streaked with tears and split with pain while mine was open and calm and just waiting, waiting, waiting for her tears to finally stop. For my one chance, finally, to make my mother happy. It would come any second, the fall of that sharp blade in her hands, and I welcomed it. I welcomed the ending to her misery, to all of our misery, really. Just another moment and my mother would finally set right the wrong that my father had done, the sin that he should never have committed because it was so wrong, because nothing that was right in this world should have been able to bring that much grief to a mother.
And then I saw the color red in its richest deepest truest shade as the red red blood poured from her chest flowing around the tip of the scarlet- stained sword down down covering me like too-thick drops of crimson summer rain.
Though my life would continue to be tinted with shades of red, I knew then all red to be the color of my mother's blood.
I don't remember the sword being pulled from her or her body crumpling to the ground before me. But I remember hearing tears when I had been so sure only moments before that the tears in that house were finally going to end. I looked at Jien; I looked at salty tracks flowing so freely down his face as he looked not at the mother he had just murdered, but at me.
I remember being afraid for the first time that day, because it seemed as if this person with the tears running down his face was someone I didn't know. Because Jien, my brother, had never once cried while looking at me, and now that he was I was terrified and confused, and had no idea what to do now that I had made him cry, too.
The tear-streaked face then turned from me. He walked across the room to the door. It opened, hinges squeaking as they had always done, and walked out without ever looking back. It was dusk then, and I watched the shape of his body walking towards the setting sun. For years I believed, just a little, that he was heading towards the sun to live there in its warmth away from this cold world that allowed sons to pierce the hearts of their mothers.
I have never forgotten that sunset; the rich red hues that seemed to reach out and swallow my brother, and I knew then that red was the color of loneliness.
My life after that was lived as if I was forever wearing a pair of cheap rose-colored sunglasses. It was seeing things, places, and people; always with a red tint that made everything sharper, so sharp that nothing could possibly be real.
And it was so much better this way, this falseness that permeated everything around me, because a pretend life was so much safer than reality. A pretend life allowed you to live how you wanted, with any past that you wanted, or no past if that was easier. It was so much more pleasant than reality, because reality reached out with angry trembling hands to leave deep painful scratches across your face.
There was such a deep pool of red around him when I saw him laying in the rain that I was already certain he was dead even before I nudged him with my foot. But that pitiful wet choking cough corrected my assumption leading me to lean down over his crumpled form.
It felt like….
He looked at me and smiled.
And in his eyes there was nothing. It was as if everything that he was was pouring out from his shredded middle and mixing with the rich muddy earth at my feet. There was no joy, or pain, or passion, or grief.
There was no red.
And I saw the distinct green of his eye, so clearly, just as clearly as every tint and shade and variation of red that has ever passed before my own cursed scarlet eyes. And then it was gone.
I took him home with me and patched him up. I looked out for him and gave him a place to live for over a month with no questions asked. I talked to him as often as he was up to it, and I controlled my temper when he had the indecency to beat me at cards in my own home. I fought with some worldly monk over him.
I lost him.
I got him back under a new name, one that seemed to suit him so much better.
I offered him a place to live indefinitely. I left on a journey to save the world, not because I was asked or because it was the right thing to do, but because he was going. I fight by his side, at his back, and trust him to do the same for me. I try to make sure that he doesn't push himself too far.
I know his past, what he has done, what he has been through. And I also know that he doesn't cry when the tragedy of his life practically screams for it. He puts on this fake smile and goes through life like a hollow puppet with invisible strings.
He doesn't cry.
I want him to cry.
Until he does, he is living like I was with my figurative red glasses. And at one time I may have even understood, which I actually do, the need to be taken out of this world and all of its too harsh pain where mothers hate and brothers leave.
But…
I saw the green of his eye that night, and it was the most beautiful color that I had ever looked upon.
I want to see it again. I want to look at life and see other colors besides red, the color of my mother's blood. And he needs to live again, to allow himself to feel pain, because without pain there is no happiness or love.
I need to see if the water of his tears is enough to dilute the stain of red marking me in order to allow other colors of life to bleed through.