"Big boys don't cry." My mother said to me in the days after my sister disappeared. "Big boys don't cry." She said as she dried the tears on my cheeks and left me sitting in the bedroom I had shared with Samantha, staring at the empty bed where she used to sleep.
My father never cried. How could he after what my mother had said? I don't know if he could have cried anyway with the amount of alcohol in him. That's how he coped, drinking. He would start the moment he came home from work or, on really bad days, he'd start the moment he got up, not even bothering to leave the house. It was whiskey usually, drunk straight from the bottle until it was empty, and then he'd throw it against the wall in disgust and leave the mess for my mother to clean up.
"Big boys don't cry." My mother said to me, but I didn't understand. When Samantha was born they told me that I had to be a big boy now because I had to help look after her. Why did I need to be a big boy when she wasn't there to look after anymore? All I wanted was for Mom or Dad to give me a hug and tell me it wasn't my fault and that they still loved me, but they never did. They barely spoke to me or touched me at all, not in kindness anyway. Dad would thump me if I made too much noise, and though I'd try to be quiet it was never enough. I don't think he was hitting me because I was loud, or even because he was drunk, I think he hit me because he couldn't do any more damage to himself and needed to inflict it on someone else.
My mother cried. It was ok for a girl to cry, even if she was a big one. Whenever I saw her there were dark circles under her eyes and they were red rimmed and bloodshot. I didn't see her often. She was never up when I left for school. I got myself ready, walked there alone. Sometimes she'd be up when I got back but she wouldn't look at me, she just sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. Mostly though she would stay in her bedroom for most of the day until Dad came home. She'd make him dinner, tidy up after him and go back upstairs, barely saying a word. She would stop him hurting me if she saw it, but most days she was trying so hard not to see me that she didn't even notice.
"Big boys don't cry." My mother said to me, and I believed her. So many men came to our house after Samantha disappeared, policemen, agents and old friends. They were people I didn't know, but they'd all come and sit with me and talk. They all said that it was ok to be sad, that I could cry if I needed to while I was explaining for the thousandth time what had happened. But Mom had said that I wasn't to cry and so I didn't. The men who questioned me thought I was lying at first, some of them even thought I'd had something to do with Samantha disappearing. I think it was because I didn't cry, but what choice did I have?
"Big boys don't cry." My mother said to me, and I believed her. I believed her until my father tried to tell me about the part he had played in the abduction of my sister and I saw him collapse in front of my eyes, tears on his cheeks. I believed her until I saw the woman I love lying in a hospital bed an inch away from death and realised how little my life was worth without her. I believed her until I stood by her lifeless form and my partner took me in her arms and whispered to me that it was ok to cry. That she wasn't going to leave me alone to deal with this, that I didn't have to be strong anymore, and for the first time in over 20 years I cried without guilt or shame. Not just for my mother, who I had finally reconciled some things with, but for my father too and for Samantha, who I was at last able to cry for.
"Big boys don't cry." My mother said to me, but I say to her that big boys do cry, and that it's ok for them to do so.