Dee's POV:
In New York City, what little green there is dies every winter. Out behind the orphanage was this little bitty patch of dirt that Penguin had planted flowers in. The kind that bloom on their own every year. Perennials? I think that's what they're called.
Anyway, at about the end of February I'd start staring at that patch of frozen dirt, looking for those first signs of the flowers coming back up. A little piece of green. It was my tradition. You had to look hard to see that first green, and it didn't always last. One more good frost and it was gone and you'd have to wait longer.
We'd had Flotsam and Jetsam for about two weeks when it happened.
We'd talked off and on over the years about taking in another child. I always thought that I'd be the last person to miss having a kid around the house after what Bikky went out of his way to put me through. But after he was gone, the silence was deafening.
There were reasons that we kept putting it off. We told ourselves we were too old to go through it again, that it wouldn't be fair to a child with the long hours we both worked. That the kid might resent the fact that his parents were both men. We even decided that Bikky might get jealous and feel like he was being replaced.
But in that hospital room, listening to Fernando, and seeing that blank look in Miguel's eyes, knowing that at the age of five this child had already given up on life, my resolve just crumbled away. I couldn't stop myself from loving them any more than I could stop myself from loving the brat.
We went all out on those boys when we took them home from the hospital. Got them as many toys and clothes as we could afford, and a bunk bed. Since Miguel wouldn't tell us what he liked Nando did it for him, so of course Miguel just happened to have the exact same taste as his brother. I kept watching him, waiting for him to say or do something to show he had a mind of his own, but nothing. Not a peep, not a look of happiness or displeasure or anything. The only thing he seemed to care about was being where he could see Fernando.
Twice a week we were to take them in for counseling. I don't put a whole lot of stock into head-shrinking, but Cal said we had to and I guessed it couldn't hurt. It kind of surprised me when the shrink seemed to think that Nando was just as messed up as Miguel in his own way. She said he was in denial about what had happened, refused to talk about it at all. Well duh. I wouldn't want to talk about it either. Of course Ryo thought she was wonderful so I didn't ever say what I really thought.
The first thing we had to do though was put higher locks on the front door so that Nando wouldn't slip out to go visit the neighbors. The kid was nuts about meeting new people. He'd go up to strangers at the store and ask if they knew Superman. Ryo and I didn't like this. I mean, it's New York. A lot of people here think they ARE Superman and we sure didn't want some crackpot jumping off a building with our kid. So we gave Nando the Strangers lecture, and did role-playing, and he told us he understood. So the next time we were out, the first thing he did was ask a little old lady her name. "But she WASN'T a stranger any more." He argued with us. "Her name is Muriel."
As long as Nando was with us, Miguel was with us, but if Nando took off, Miguel would be following along right behind and we'd have to chase them both down.
We could have saved on the bunk bed. Nando slept right next to Miguel on the bottom bunk, refusing to budge. He said he had to keep the monsters away from his brother. And damned if I didn't go back to my own room and start bawling after that. At the time though, I wasn't aware of the full significance of what he was saying. I wouldn't learn about the monster until later.
The shrink had given us a list of activities to try. The one thing I agreed with her on was that Nando and Miguel had to learn to be apart. In the fall, Miguel was supposed to be starting kindergarten and Nando wasn't going to be with him all day long now. Of course that hinged a lot on how much progress Miguel made from now till then, but it was our game plan to have him in a regular class. Nandoless.
So one Saturday, when both Ryo and I were off of work (we had a Spanish- speaking babysitter for the other times, a young woman Nando was already in love with) we decided to give it a try.
Ryo woke up Nando early with a sure-fire bribe, breakfast at McDonalds. He was reluctant to leave his brother, who was still asleep, but Ryo explained that they were going to bring Miguel back a surprise present, and if he was there when they bought it, then it wouldn't be a surprise. Nando still didn't look too convinced, but he agreed finally.
In the short time we'd had him, Nando had seeped into the apartment and it felt cold and empty without him. I don't want it to sound like I didn't love Miguel. I did. I was crazy about him. But I didn't KNOW Miguel, not like I did Nando. I wanted to, but I didn't. Not his favorite color or favorite food or favorite show. Nothing. He was a complete mystery to me. I checked in and he was still asleep. It was so frustrating sometimes. I wanted to let him know that he was safe now, that over my dead body would anyone ever hurt him. Even at our most tense moments, Bikky always knew that I loved him, that when it came down to it, I had his back. What would it take for me to convince Miguel of the same thing?
I went out into the living room and turned on the TV to Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, I still watch them. Not a crime. Of course they were better back in the 80's. This stuff was crap compared to the fine quality of Thundaar the Barbarian.
I looked around for the remote when a commercial came on, and jumped. Miguel was standing next to the couch, staring at me. I hadn't even heard him come in.
"Hey buddy. You want some breakfast?"
He didn't even blink.
"How about TV? Something you want to watch on television?"
Those black eyes never left mine. There weren't a lot of physical differences between the boys, but if you looked close, you'd notice a few here and there. Nando's eyes were a few shades short of black, but Miguel's were as dark as Ryo's. He was wearing blue pajamas, and I noticed they were already a little tighter on him than when we bought them. Both kids had been slightly underweight when they were rescued from their grandmother's apartment. Ryo assumed it was his cooking that was fattening them up. Cal said it was probably the cookies and candy I slipped them on the side.
"You'll rot out their teeth!" My partner complained.
"They only have baby teeth anyway. What better time to do it?"
I offered Miguel a cookie now, but for once he didn't accept.
"Okay, no breakfast. No TV." I clicked off the cartoons. "I'm stumped, kiddo."
He slowly turned his head toward the front door, and then looked back at me again.
"Nando went out with Ryo. He'll be back real soon."
And for the first time, I saw something in his face change. A flicker of emotion in his eyes as they got a little narrower. He gave the door a harder look, and then back at me. He repeated it several times.
"Come on, man. You're a big boy. Nando is your little brother, remember? You'll be okay a little while without him."
Without warning, he reached out and grabbed the end table, flipping it over onto the floor. Out of luck the lamp and light bulb both didn't break.
My heart was racing, not in anger, but in excitement. He was upset. Upset was good in this case, it was something. It was better than nothing.
"What good will that do?" I asked, picking up the table and righting the lamp. "It's not going to make Nando come home any sooner."
I was speaking mostly Spanish, with some English thrown in here and there. Both kids had been bilingual before their parents were killed. Fernando was quickly remembering his other language, and I figured Miguel being older must be as well. But I wanted to make sure they didn't forget their Spanish either. It was trickier than I had expected.
Miguel was watching me wide-eyed now, and he slowly began to rub a burn on his arm.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Miguel." I sat down on the floor with a sigh. "No matter what you do, no matter how mad you get or I get, I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. Neither is Ryo. You can ask Bikky when you meet him. He grew up here. We never hurt him, either. And he was a very, very bad boy."
I could have sworn I saw curiosity on Miguel's face now so I continued. "He took things that didn't belong to him. He used bad words. He called me bad words, right to my face. At school he got into fights and hit people sometimes."
Miguel took a step toward me and sat down on the floor facing me.
"Oh yeah, he was a real brat. Drove me up the wall. But we loved him anyway. And he turned out okay in the end. A lot better than I expected him to." I said honestly. "Do you want to see a picture of him?"
I got up and grabbed a photo album from the book shelf and sat back down. "Look. That's Ryo when he was a baby. Look how fat he was."
Miguel cocked his head, examining the photo. "And that's me when I was your age. I couldn't believe Penguin.that's the nun who took care of me, still had these pictures. Look, I've got a black eye. I was in a fight before that was taken, I guess."
I turned a few pages. "There's Bikky and Ryo right after he came to live here. He was ten." I wasn't sure I should have shown Miguel that one. Bikky was flipping off the camera behind Ryo's back. Ryo hated that picture, but every time he took it out of the album I replaced it. I had several spare copies.
"This is all of us a few years later. Me and Ryo and Bikky, and look at that. Do you know who that is? That's Cal, that nice lady that brings you and Nando presents."
He reached out for the album and I put it on his lap. He turned another few pages to Bikky at his graduation and paused. He touched the picture and kept his finger on it, turning back to the older pictures, and pointed at the brat when he was younger, looking at me for confirmation.
"Yeah, that's still him. He's all grown up now though. He's coming back to visit us next week, after he gets sprung from Quantico. He really wants to meet you."
Something appeared to be bothering him, and he was staring at the empty pages in the album thoughtfully, and then gave me a searching look.
"Miguel, I can't read your mind, buddy. What's wrong?"
He paused, and then pointed at himself, and then at the empty page.
"Are you asking why there's no pictures of you and Nando in there yet?"
Then, like the perennials, I got my shoot of green.
Miguel nodded.
"We took some, remember? We took a lot last week. We just don't have them developed yet. But we can do that today, if you want. You can help me pick out good ones for the album." I was trying so hard not to grab him and hug him as hard as I could. He wanted to be in the family album. He knew we were his family now. It was the kind of breakthrough the shrink had thought might be months down the road.
"Someday." I said softly. "Someday, when you're okay again, you know what we're going to do?"
He shook his head no.
"We're going to go to Disney World. I've always wanted to go there, but Bikky said he'd burn it down if we ever tried to take him. But Ryo and I were talking last night. We'll all go. You and me and Ryo and Nando. We'll ride all the rides and eat a ton of cotton candy, and meet Mickey Mouse, who I think is one cool rodent." I reached out and put my hand over his and he didn't protest. "I know it's hard now, but some day.someday those bad memories won't hurt as much. We're going to give you new ones, better ones. I promise."
His hand turned under mine and for just a second, I felt his small fingers squeeze my own. Then the front door opened and Ryo and Nando entered the apartment. Miguel jerked away from me and ran across the room, grabbing Nando's hand tightly.
"Hi Miguel! Look what we got you!" Nando was pulling a box of crayons out of a plastic bag. "They smell like fruit! But Ryo says they don't taste like fruit so you can't eat them. And Ryo bought me a CD and it has my song on it." He dragged Miguel back down toward their bedroom, never even pausing for breath.
Ryo and I looked at each other and burst out at the same time "We need to talk."
In New York City, what little green there is dies every winter. Out behind the orphanage was this little bitty patch of dirt that Penguin had planted flowers in. The kind that bloom on their own every year. Perennials? I think that's what they're called.
Anyway, at about the end of February I'd start staring at that patch of frozen dirt, looking for those first signs of the flowers coming back up. A little piece of green. It was my tradition. You had to look hard to see that first green, and it didn't always last. One more good frost and it was gone and you'd have to wait longer.
We'd had Flotsam and Jetsam for about two weeks when it happened.
We'd talked off and on over the years about taking in another child. I always thought that I'd be the last person to miss having a kid around the house after what Bikky went out of his way to put me through. But after he was gone, the silence was deafening.
There were reasons that we kept putting it off. We told ourselves we were too old to go through it again, that it wouldn't be fair to a child with the long hours we both worked. That the kid might resent the fact that his parents were both men. We even decided that Bikky might get jealous and feel like he was being replaced.
But in that hospital room, listening to Fernando, and seeing that blank look in Miguel's eyes, knowing that at the age of five this child had already given up on life, my resolve just crumbled away. I couldn't stop myself from loving them any more than I could stop myself from loving the brat.
We went all out on those boys when we took them home from the hospital. Got them as many toys and clothes as we could afford, and a bunk bed. Since Miguel wouldn't tell us what he liked Nando did it for him, so of course Miguel just happened to have the exact same taste as his brother. I kept watching him, waiting for him to say or do something to show he had a mind of his own, but nothing. Not a peep, not a look of happiness or displeasure or anything. The only thing he seemed to care about was being where he could see Fernando.
Twice a week we were to take them in for counseling. I don't put a whole lot of stock into head-shrinking, but Cal said we had to and I guessed it couldn't hurt. It kind of surprised me when the shrink seemed to think that Nando was just as messed up as Miguel in his own way. She said he was in denial about what had happened, refused to talk about it at all. Well duh. I wouldn't want to talk about it either. Of course Ryo thought she was wonderful so I didn't ever say what I really thought.
The first thing we had to do though was put higher locks on the front door so that Nando wouldn't slip out to go visit the neighbors. The kid was nuts about meeting new people. He'd go up to strangers at the store and ask if they knew Superman. Ryo and I didn't like this. I mean, it's New York. A lot of people here think they ARE Superman and we sure didn't want some crackpot jumping off a building with our kid. So we gave Nando the Strangers lecture, and did role-playing, and he told us he understood. So the next time we were out, the first thing he did was ask a little old lady her name. "But she WASN'T a stranger any more." He argued with us. "Her name is Muriel."
As long as Nando was with us, Miguel was with us, but if Nando took off, Miguel would be following along right behind and we'd have to chase them both down.
We could have saved on the bunk bed. Nando slept right next to Miguel on the bottom bunk, refusing to budge. He said he had to keep the monsters away from his brother. And damned if I didn't go back to my own room and start bawling after that. At the time though, I wasn't aware of the full significance of what he was saying. I wouldn't learn about the monster until later.
The shrink had given us a list of activities to try. The one thing I agreed with her on was that Nando and Miguel had to learn to be apart. In the fall, Miguel was supposed to be starting kindergarten and Nando wasn't going to be with him all day long now. Of course that hinged a lot on how much progress Miguel made from now till then, but it was our game plan to have him in a regular class. Nandoless.
So one Saturday, when both Ryo and I were off of work (we had a Spanish- speaking babysitter for the other times, a young woman Nando was already in love with) we decided to give it a try.
Ryo woke up Nando early with a sure-fire bribe, breakfast at McDonalds. He was reluctant to leave his brother, who was still asleep, but Ryo explained that they were going to bring Miguel back a surprise present, and if he was there when they bought it, then it wouldn't be a surprise. Nando still didn't look too convinced, but he agreed finally.
In the short time we'd had him, Nando had seeped into the apartment and it felt cold and empty without him. I don't want it to sound like I didn't love Miguel. I did. I was crazy about him. But I didn't KNOW Miguel, not like I did Nando. I wanted to, but I didn't. Not his favorite color or favorite food or favorite show. Nothing. He was a complete mystery to me. I checked in and he was still asleep. It was so frustrating sometimes. I wanted to let him know that he was safe now, that over my dead body would anyone ever hurt him. Even at our most tense moments, Bikky always knew that I loved him, that when it came down to it, I had his back. What would it take for me to convince Miguel of the same thing?
I went out into the living room and turned on the TV to Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, I still watch them. Not a crime. Of course they were better back in the 80's. This stuff was crap compared to the fine quality of Thundaar the Barbarian.
I looked around for the remote when a commercial came on, and jumped. Miguel was standing next to the couch, staring at me. I hadn't even heard him come in.
"Hey buddy. You want some breakfast?"
He didn't even blink.
"How about TV? Something you want to watch on television?"
Those black eyes never left mine. There weren't a lot of physical differences between the boys, but if you looked close, you'd notice a few here and there. Nando's eyes were a few shades short of black, but Miguel's were as dark as Ryo's. He was wearing blue pajamas, and I noticed they were already a little tighter on him than when we bought them. Both kids had been slightly underweight when they were rescued from their grandmother's apartment. Ryo assumed it was his cooking that was fattening them up. Cal said it was probably the cookies and candy I slipped them on the side.
"You'll rot out their teeth!" My partner complained.
"They only have baby teeth anyway. What better time to do it?"
I offered Miguel a cookie now, but for once he didn't accept.
"Okay, no breakfast. No TV." I clicked off the cartoons. "I'm stumped, kiddo."
He slowly turned his head toward the front door, and then looked back at me again.
"Nando went out with Ryo. He'll be back real soon."
And for the first time, I saw something in his face change. A flicker of emotion in his eyes as they got a little narrower. He gave the door a harder look, and then back at me. He repeated it several times.
"Come on, man. You're a big boy. Nando is your little brother, remember? You'll be okay a little while without him."
Without warning, he reached out and grabbed the end table, flipping it over onto the floor. Out of luck the lamp and light bulb both didn't break.
My heart was racing, not in anger, but in excitement. He was upset. Upset was good in this case, it was something. It was better than nothing.
"What good will that do?" I asked, picking up the table and righting the lamp. "It's not going to make Nando come home any sooner."
I was speaking mostly Spanish, with some English thrown in here and there. Both kids had been bilingual before their parents were killed. Fernando was quickly remembering his other language, and I figured Miguel being older must be as well. But I wanted to make sure they didn't forget their Spanish either. It was trickier than I had expected.
Miguel was watching me wide-eyed now, and he slowly began to rub a burn on his arm.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Miguel." I sat down on the floor with a sigh. "No matter what you do, no matter how mad you get or I get, I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. Neither is Ryo. You can ask Bikky when you meet him. He grew up here. We never hurt him, either. And he was a very, very bad boy."
I could have sworn I saw curiosity on Miguel's face now so I continued. "He took things that didn't belong to him. He used bad words. He called me bad words, right to my face. At school he got into fights and hit people sometimes."
Miguel took a step toward me and sat down on the floor facing me.
"Oh yeah, he was a real brat. Drove me up the wall. But we loved him anyway. And he turned out okay in the end. A lot better than I expected him to." I said honestly. "Do you want to see a picture of him?"
I got up and grabbed a photo album from the book shelf and sat back down. "Look. That's Ryo when he was a baby. Look how fat he was."
Miguel cocked his head, examining the photo. "And that's me when I was your age. I couldn't believe Penguin.that's the nun who took care of me, still had these pictures. Look, I've got a black eye. I was in a fight before that was taken, I guess."
I turned a few pages. "There's Bikky and Ryo right after he came to live here. He was ten." I wasn't sure I should have shown Miguel that one. Bikky was flipping off the camera behind Ryo's back. Ryo hated that picture, but every time he took it out of the album I replaced it. I had several spare copies.
"This is all of us a few years later. Me and Ryo and Bikky, and look at that. Do you know who that is? That's Cal, that nice lady that brings you and Nando presents."
He reached out for the album and I put it on his lap. He turned another few pages to Bikky at his graduation and paused. He touched the picture and kept his finger on it, turning back to the older pictures, and pointed at the brat when he was younger, looking at me for confirmation.
"Yeah, that's still him. He's all grown up now though. He's coming back to visit us next week, after he gets sprung from Quantico. He really wants to meet you."
Something appeared to be bothering him, and he was staring at the empty pages in the album thoughtfully, and then gave me a searching look.
"Miguel, I can't read your mind, buddy. What's wrong?"
He paused, and then pointed at himself, and then at the empty page.
"Are you asking why there's no pictures of you and Nando in there yet?"
Then, like the perennials, I got my shoot of green.
Miguel nodded.
"We took some, remember? We took a lot last week. We just don't have them developed yet. But we can do that today, if you want. You can help me pick out good ones for the album." I was trying so hard not to grab him and hug him as hard as I could. He wanted to be in the family album. He knew we were his family now. It was the kind of breakthrough the shrink had thought might be months down the road.
"Someday." I said softly. "Someday, when you're okay again, you know what we're going to do?"
He shook his head no.
"We're going to go to Disney World. I've always wanted to go there, but Bikky said he'd burn it down if we ever tried to take him. But Ryo and I were talking last night. We'll all go. You and me and Ryo and Nando. We'll ride all the rides and eat a ton of cotton candy, and meet Mickey Mouse, who I think is one cool rodent." I reached out and put my hand over his and he didn't protest. "I know it's hard now, but some day.someday those bad memories won't hurt as much. We're going to give you new ones, better ones. I promise."
His hand turned under mine and for just a second, I felt his small fingers squeeze my own. Then the front door opened and Ryo and Nando entered the apartment. Miguel jerked away from me and ran across the room, grabbing Nando's hand tightly.
"Hi Miguel! Look what we got you!" Nando was pulling a box of crayons out of a plastic bag. "They smell like fruit! But Ryo says they don't taste like fruit so you can't eat them. And Ryo bought me a CD and it has my song on it." He dragged Miguel back down toward their bedroom, never even pausing for breath.
Ryo and I looked at each other and burst out at the same time "We need to talk."