100 Years of Solitude
Scene 3
Soda's snoring from the couch was so predictable that any other time I might have found it amusing. It wasn't any other time though, it was that time. At almost 2 oh clock in the morning on a Friday night. Just hours after my brother was jumped and now he was missing. I envied the fact that Soda could sleep through my emotional duress. Probably, I know now, I was over exaggerating. But hindsight is 20/20, and then it didn't seem like an exaggeration at all.
I was scared beyond all reason. In a way, I knew this. My brother was probably fine. Probably lost track of time in that dense head of his. But these thoughts did nothing to ease my frustration. My fear. Dear God please…just bring him home.
Sometimes, I had realized in the past, God didn't answer prayers. Like when our parents died and I prayed reverently that it wasn't true. It was true. Even through all the praying. This time, however, was different. My brother did come stumbling in at two a.m. looking like a battered animal. He was worried, but so was I. No, I was angry. I shouldn't have been angry; God had answered my prayer after all.
Still, my gratefulness and relief washed over me in a wave of fury. I yelled- loudly. So loudly in fact that Soda woke up with a confused but slightly serene look on his face. Soda was hard to wake up. Soda was always serene. Pony was nervous. He was biting his fingernails. Pony always bit his fingernails when he was nervous. He had reason to be nervous too. I was unsympathetic. Like always.
The events that happened that night changed my life forever. I wish I could say they changed me and I never yelled or got angry at my brothers again. But that would be a lie. I don't make it a habit to lie. Nonetheless they changed my life and I wonder now what things would have been like if I wasn't so damn emotional. If I didn't love my brother so much.
That's what I tell myself when the guilt becomes unbearable. I hit him because I loved him too much. I wonder if this makes me a child abuser.