Brother

“Rafi, sit down, we need to talk to you.”

Rafi crept up to his parents, his eyes down, his hands crossed in front of him. He knew he was in trouble. “Yes?”

“Have a seat, son,” said Rafi’s father, patting the seat cushion of the open chair next to him.

Rafi sat, and waited. He dangled his feet and continued looking down.

“Soon, you’re going to have a little brother,” said the father.

Rafi’s head bolted up, his eyes wide. “A brother?”

“Yes. Remember before, when mommy had a baby in her stomach, and then she didn’t anymore, and we were very sad?”

Of course Rafi remembered. It was the first time he had ever seen his mother cry. It was over a year ago. Rafi was seven. For reasons he didn’t know then, he had been sent over to an aunt’s house for a couple of days. It was his least favorite aunt, a big lady with too much make-up who always kissed all of her relatives on the lips. Rafi did not like that. After Rafi was allowed to come back home, he realized that his mother would stay in bed all day long. As he passed by her room one day, he heard her sobbing. He chanced a glance into the room, and saw her curled up in her bed like a baby, her tears falling down onto her pillow. He ran away.

“Rafi, do you remember?” Rafi’s mother asked, bringing him back to the present.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, this time, we’re going to adopt a child,” explained Rafi’s father.

“But why?”

Rafi’s father reached across the table to grab his wife’s hand. He looked at her for a moment, then back at Rafi. “This will make Mommy and me happy again.”

Rafi had noticed that they had been smiling more lately, he even heard them laugh once and a while. It had made him happy too. “Okay,” he said with a firm nod, as if giving his permission. “I can have a brother.”

The first time Rafi’s mother had sent him to the beach to buy fish for dinner, he was six years old. He walked through the streets with his head high, his chest out. He was a real man now, with what the grown-ups called “responsibility.” Without him, there would be no dinner. Rafi strutted through the streets of Santo Domingo until he got bored of it. Then he ran, a kid again, the rest of the way. He streamed past the people selling coconuts on an abandoned street, past the bright blue and orange houses, past the old church and the university.

There was a lot of commotion and excitement as Rafi approached the fish market. It was a good thing he was only six, he was small enough to work his way through the crowds easily enough. He hadn’t thought there would be so many people. It was already noon. The fisherman always brought in their haul at dawn, after fishing all night long, and most people came out soon after that, to get the fish as fresh as possible.

Rafi went to his family’s usual fisherman, a man named Javier. He was the oldest person Rafi had ever seen in his life. Sometimes, when his mother took him to the market and would chat to Javier for so long, Rafi attempted to count the wrinkles on the man’s face. He always ran out of numbers before he could finish. Javier was also half-blind, which made Rafi wonder how he even fished at all. He supposed when you’ve been doing something your whole life, it became second nature.

“Hola, Rafael,” Javier greeted with a smile.

“My mother sent me,” Rafi said importantly. “I need one of your finest fish for our dinner tonight.”

“You’re lucky I always save my finest fish for your family, Rafi. I’ve had so many customers today; I easily could have sold them sooner.”

Rafi fished the money his mother had given him out of his pocket and handed it to Javier. As their hands met, Rafi wondered at the softness of Javier’s skin. How was the man held together with such soft skin?

Javier wrapped up the fish in newspaper so that just its head and tail were sticking out. He handed it to Rafi when he was finished. Rafi took it in his hand, said goodbye, and started walking back home.

The fish was heavier than Rafi had thought it would be. He decided to stop and take a break along the beach. He sat in the sand, the fish in his lap, looking out to the Caribbean Sea. The sea went on forever, inching its way to the horizon without ever reaching it.

Rafi glanced down at his fish. The fish looked back at him. For a moment, Rafi could have sworn he saw the fish move. He stared at it, unblinking, but it did not repeat the gesture. Rafi looked away, then looked back quickly, trying to trick it. Still no movement, yet he had been so sure. And now that eye stared at him, sad.

“But I promised Mom I would bring back a fish,” Rafi said to the fish, pleading. “I have responsibility.”

The fish didn’t seem to care. It just stared, its eye begging.

“What am I supposed to do?”

Rafi was almost sure he could see the fish’s eye point to the sea, and he knew what he had to do. He walked along the beach, his sandals flapping sand up onto his shorts. He reached the water and waded in as far as he could go. Then he dropped the fish in the water, and waded back to shore.

Rafi’s walk back to his house was significantly longer than his walk to the beach. He knew he would be in trouble, but he had to do what he had to do.

Rafi didn’t want to see the new baby when his parents brought him back from the orphanage, but they kept calling for him. “Come see the baby, Rafi.” “Rafi, come down stairs.” He had no choice. He trudged down the stairs and into the dining room, where his parents’ voices were coming from.

“Rafi!” his mother said excitedly. “Come and say hi to your new brother!” She was sitting in one of the chairs, cradling the baby in her arms. She hadn’t even looked up to see Rafi as she talked to him. Her eyes were always on the baby.

Rafi walked over and looked down. He didn’t see anything spectacular. “How old is he?”

“About ten months.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name is Alex. Alex your new brother.”

Rafi wasn’t dumb. He knew that Alex wasn’t his brother, not really. His mom was not Alex’s mom. This baby boy had come from someone else entirely. He didn’t look like Mom or Dad. He wasn’t really his brother, but Rafi knew better than to say so.

The sound of barking startled all of them. Their Rottweiler, Nike, had come up to the window, and was now trying to stick his nose through the bars.

“Nike! No!” yelled Rafi’s dad. “What is he barking for? He never barks at us like this.”

Rafi knew why Nike was barking. He was barking at the baby. He knew Alex didn’t belong there. The dog was trained to spot intruders. That was his sole purpose, at least to Rafi’s parents. From out in the yard, he would scare off any thieves from scaling the outer wall and trying to break in.

Rafi walked up to the window bars and stuck his hand through. He pet Nike’s head and the dog calmed down.

“Its okay, Boy, I understand,” Rafi whispered into Nike’s ear.

One day, when Rafi was six, he came home to find a turkey in his backyard. That was before they had Nike, of course. Rafi and the turkey immediately became friends. Every day after school, Rafi would go out into the backyard and play with the turkey. His parents would always try to get him to leave the turkey alone.

“Rafi, that’s not your turkey, leave it alone,” his mother said.

“Rafi, don’t get too attached to the turkey,” his father said.

Rafi didn’t know why they were being so fussy about it. They were the ones who bought the turkey. It was their pet.

Rafi’s only important Christmas tradition was that every year, he would go over to the neighbor’s house and show off his new toys to the kids who lived there, and they would show off theirs to him. It was always a competition, and Rafi usually won.

Rafi came back from the neighbor’s house that Christmas, and went out into the backyard to spend time with his turkey. But the turkey wasn’t there. Rafi was afraid that it might have learned to fly and gone away forever. Then he heard a sound around the side of the house. He turned the corner just in time to see the gruesome sight.

His turkey’s neck was draped across an old tree stump, his uncle holding it down to keep the neck still. He held a large machete, which was high in the air, ready to strike.

Rafi screamed in protest, but it was too late. The machete came down, the turkey’s head came off, and that was the end.

Rafi didn’t eat anything on Christmas that day, and he never ate turkey again.

“Rafi, why don’t you play with the baby?” Rafi’s mother asked as she came into the living room where Rafi was trying to catch a lizard that had come in through the window bars.

Rafi knew that his parents were afraid that he didn’t like the baby. He heard them talking about it when they thought he wasn’t listening. “I don’t want to play with the baby. He’s boring,” said Rafi. He spotted the lizard trying to make a break for the back door and lunged. He missed it by a centimeter. The lizard escaped back outside.

“You could just talk to him for a bit,” said Rafi’s mother. “He’s your brother, you know.”

Rafi realized the only way he would get his parents to stop worrying, and stop bugging him, was if he played along. He had to pretend to love the baby, and then they would leave him alone. He got up off the floor and walked over to the blankets the baby was sitting on, his toys spread all around him within reach.

“Hi, Alex,” Rafi said, taking a seat next to the baby. He crossed his legs to get comfortable.

Rafi’s mother smiled and left the room.

Rafi looked down at the baby, who stared blankly back at him.

“You’re not very smart, are you?” Rafi asked. The baby made no response that said it could understand a word Rafi was saying. Unless spit bubbles was some indication of understanding.

Rafi rested his forearms on his thighs, crossed his hands, and leaned forward. “I’m not supposed to ever tell you that you’re adopted,” he whispered to the baby. “I’m not supposed to let you know that you’re not my real brother. Mom and Dad said I couldn’t tell. But they have also told me many times not to lie. So I have to tell you the truth. You’re not really my brother, and those aren’t really your parents. There you have it.”

Alex pouted, his eyes welling up. For a moment, Rafi thought that maybe he really had understood him. But no, that was impossible.

“Sh, Baby,” Rafi said. He didn’t want to get in trouble. But it was no use. The baby started wailing and flailing its arms about.

Rafi’s mother came rushing into the room. “What did you do?” she asked Rafi.

“Nothing! He’s probably just hungry. Or maybe he pooped.”

Rafi’s mother swooped the baby up into her arms and whisked him away. Rafi was left alone.

The summer just after they had gotten the baby, Rafi had acquired two pet guineas. He kept them in a large black cage in the backyard. Nike grew accustomed to them eventually. However, the hawk that regularly came to visit (Rafi had found it by the side of the road as a baby, and had nursed it back to health) did not like them at all.

Rafi came home one day to find that one of his guineas was missing. He went in search of his mother to find out what had happened to it. He found his grandmother first. She was often around when he came home from school. She was playing cards with the cook and the driver out in the side yard.

“Abuela, do you know what happened to my guinea?” Rafi asked.

His grandmother waved a hand at him in dismissal. “I’m busy here. Go ask your mother.”

Rafi went into the nursery, where he could hear his mother singing to the baby. She did that a lot. She would just lean over his crib and sing to him. He didn’t know how Alex could stand it. His mother was so bad at it. Rafi would never want her to sing like that to him every time he went to bed.

“Mom, do you know where my guinea went?”

His mother looked up at him with the face of a mother who had to tell her child something she knew would make him sad. “I’m sorry, Honey, but it flew away.” She reached out her arms for a hug, but Rafi didn’t want one. She didn’t really get it; she didn’t understand why he was upset. Nobody did. Nobody cared about the animals, or him.

“Oh well,” he said, trying to be tough, sniffing away the tears. “I’m going to go play outside.”

The next day, Rafi came home from school and went to the backyard right away, as he always did, to play with his pets. He went to the guinea cage to find it empty. It seemed so much bigger now that there weren’t any birds in it. He walked over to the side yard. His grandmother was there playing cards again, this time with the maid. She had obviously just won a game, because her hands were in the air, waving around excitedly.

“Abuela?” Rafi asked.

“Yes, my son, what is it?” She turned to him, all attention now that she wasn’t in the middle of a game.

“Do you know where my other guinea went?”

“Oh, I ate it,” she said in such a matter-of-fact tone that Rafi knew she wasn’t joking. She showed no remorse. It wasn’t a confession, it was a fact.

“You ate my guinea?” Rafi asked, taking a few steps back from her.

“Well, the other one flew away,” said his grandmother. “The one left behind was sad and lonely.”

She didn’t really believe that, Rafi knew. He could tell by the smile she was trying to hide on her face. “Mom!” he yelled, storming back into the house, tears beginning to stream down his face. “Mom!”

His mother came rushing down the stairs. “Honey, what is it?” she said, coming up to him and kneeling down to his level.

“Grandma ate my guinea!”

His mother shook her head sadly. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I tried to stop her.” She reached out to him, but Rafi shoved her arms away.

Rafi’s arms shot down to his sides, his hands balled into tight fists. “No you didn’t! You don’t care about my guinea! All you care about is that stupid baby!” He turned and ran before she could hit him or yell at him. He went into the backyard seeking the company of Nike, the only one left who understood him.

Rafi’s sadness at the loss of his guineas was eased by the addition of some new pets, four new turtles. He would watch them swim in their tank all day long. He measured them daily, to see how they were growing. So far, they were only between 2 and 3 centimeters. No matter how greedily his grandmother looked at them, he told her she was forbidden from eating his turtles. Sometimes it seemed that she would eat anything.

Rafi even named his turtles. Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Everyone thought it was weird for him to name one turtle after himself, and he had to explain to them that they were named after the turtles from the cartoons. None of the adults knew what he was talking about.

Rafi would give his turtles baths in milk. They loved it. He was doing just that one day when his mother came down the stairs, the baby in her arms. She sat the baby down by Rafael. “Watch him for a few minutes, I have to run next door,” she said hurriedly, and left just as fast.

“These are my turtles, not yours,” Rafi informed the baby.

The baby was paying him no attention. He was entranced by the turtles. He was leaning forward, his hands grasping the bucket that held the milk, looking unbalanced in that way that babies do.

“My turtles,” Rafi repeated. “You’re so stupid.”

Still the baby didn’t listen. His eyes followed the turtles, swimming around in the white liquid. He began to laugh, his teeth showing like a broken white picket fence.

“You can’t have them, they’re mine,” said Rafi. Why wasn’t the baby crying? Alex just kept laughing and laughing, watching the turtles.

“Fine, you can watch,” said Rafi. “But they’re still mine.”

His mother left Rafi alone with the baby more often now that she had come home to find Alex laughing, rather than crying, like he usually did in Rafi’s presence. It was only for short intervals, a baby needed adult supervision, after all, but still, Rafi did not appreciate it.

Together Rafi and Alex watched a horseback riding competition on TV while their mother left to drive the maid home, since it was pouring outside. Not one of those tropical Dominican storms, which always scared the tourists but only lasted a few minutes, but a full-blown one.

“I’m going to be a horseback rider someday,” Rafi told the baby. “Maybe I’ll let you ride my horse, but you won’t be very good at it because you’re stupid. It takes intelligence to ride a horse right. I’m going to train it all by myself too.”

The baby had learned to ignore all of Rafi’s taunts. It made Rafi furious.

A roll of thunder tore through the house, and the baby screamed. The lights went out, the TV shut off, and an eerie silence filled the room. The baby started crying.

“Stop whining, I’ll light the candles,” said Rafi. He fumbled through the drawer of the coffee table to get the matches, and lit the candles they had resting on the table’s surface for just this purpose.

The baby wouldn’t stop crying.

“I’m going to put you outside in the rain if you don’t stop crying,” Rafi warned, blowing out the match. The candles offered a warm glow to the room, and the baby’s sobs trailed off.

A sound of a meow filled the room. Rafi looked around, and found a cat slinking through the bars of the back door, which was broken and wouldn’t close. The cat was soaked, looking more like a wet dishrag than a cute kitty.

Rafi got down on his knees and patted his thighs. “Come here, kitty, kitty,” he called. The cat slinked over cautiously, obviously afraid.

Rafi reached for the baby’s blanket and yanked it away from him. He expected the baby to cry, but surprisingly, he didn’t. When Rafi looked up at Alex, he was surprised to see that he was transfixed by the cat, not in the least concerned with the loss of his baby blanket.

The cat reached Rafi’s lap, and Rafi began to dry it off. The baby started laughing, that same high-pitched laugh that had come out of his mouth the day they played with the turtles. It was different than his usual laugh. There was a longer joy resting in this particular laugh. At least Rafi thought so. “This kitten can be yours,” said Rafi. “Since it’s a stray, just like you. It has no home, just like you. You two will get along just fine. Do you like the cat?”

Rafi didn’t need an answer. The glow in Alex’s eyes was not just from the reflection of the candlelight. “Good,” said Rafi. “Because all animals need a home and someone to love them. Especially ones that can’t take care of themselves out in the rain, like this cat.” Rafi thought a moment. Looking down at his hands, he quietly added. “Like you.”

Rafi hated visiting his cousins in Santiago. It was almost as bad as visiting the aunt who kissed on the lips. They lived on a farm, which Rafi thought was no fun, since he was so used to the city life. His aunt always overcooked the mofongo, and he didn’t get along with any of his cousins. On top of all of this, it was a four-hour drive. The only way Rafi found to entertain himself was to try to find the motorcycle with the most people riding on it. A lot of motorcycles passed them on the highway, since the drivers always drove on the shoulder, zooming by all the cars. His highest count was five.

When they arrived, they were rushed into the backyard that led out to their fields.

“You’re just in time,” said the youngest cousin, grabbing Rafi by the hand and dragging him along. His mother and father followed at a more leisurely pace, the baby in his mother’s hands.

“Just in time for what?” Rafi asked.

“We’re burning the fields today,” said the oldest cousin, a boy of twelve. “I like to watch the way the smoke goes into the sky.”

Rafi hated the field-burning days. “Mommy, why’d you make us come on this day?” he asked his mother quietly. He didn’t want to offend.

“I’m sorry, Baby, I didn’t know.”

They had the cat stuffed in a cage meant for a hamster. It was probably just a stray they had pulled off the streets for this exact moment. Rafi’s aunt yanked it out, holding onto the poor thing too tightly, squeezing the life out of it. His uncle poured on the gasoline. His oldest cousin lit the match. His aunt threw it into the field once the fire started. Rafi found himself wishing for a moment that she had caught fire herself. The rest of the family watched the cat jump through the fields, setting all the dry things on fire as it went, hopping about to its death. Rafi had never thought a cat could jump so high. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. It was like a terrible dancing flame, shooting about at impossible speeds. As the fields went up in flames, Rafi’s vision was blurred, and he was glad.

Alex started crying. His mother started fussing over him, wondering if he was hungry, or tired, or had to burp. It was none of those things. These cries weren’t like the rest, just like his laugh when he saw the turtle and kitten weren’t like his other laughs. Rafi knew why the baby was really crying. He walked to his mother, reached up, and took Alex’s little chubby hand in his own.