by Dana Jerman

A Sunday of the near past.

The last in a September, and life in Avondale is desperate with bad weather and other things. The rain is letting up. Making space for that humid and warm feeling before fall degrades into a sharp season of ugly wind blasting the city into a hellscape.

It is a low point for Abrilla “Abby” Remane, a young woman now well into her sixteenth year on Earth.

It hadn’t been a full week into the school year before Abby, swarmed and overcome with the brand of rage especially reserved for the adolescent and poor, decided it was a good time to get out the brass knuckles; A last gift from dear old dad KIA Afghanistan, and put them to work on somebody. Anybody. The first person to get in her space. To look at her wrong in the stairwell…

Today, on her last day before returning to school from a two-week suspension, Mother has taken this opportunity to shop Abrilla out as a babysitter on loan from the unlicensed personal day care unit their house has become.

A whole day with a pair of toddler sisters from over on Troy street. Exhausted.

She picks up an unsmoked half-smashed cigarette off the sidewalk and lights it. Some local asshole with tats crawling all over his neck snickers and moves past her as she does. His face leaves her with a pang, knowing her personal weapon is gone. Confiscated by the Vice Principal.

Suddenly she sees Trisha Havensworth’s face in her mind before she sunk two black eyes into it. Her stomach flops knowing she’ll see her tomorrow.

She was supposed to come straight home. Instead she goes to the refuge on the far side of the hood to the north where she thinks her brother might be. Sinking his new set of shurikens traded for a pair of airsoft rifles into softening slabs of drywall.

Samuelsen “Shabs” Remane. Tomorrow he turns 13.

Abby and Shabs have found a way into an abandoned and half-razed house off Elston thru an alleyway.

They visit often and feel bizarrely safe in its musty confines where there are no rules. The dilapidation reflects the attitudes of latchkey gradeschoolers one spring away from gang recruitment.

How they’ve been able to keep it a secret with all the sounds of thumping and glass breaking is a mystery neither one of these high-functioning orphans cares to solve.

After exchanging a “hey”, Abby inhaled the last of the smoke from the street butt and touched the place in the gutted drywall where she had first tested the knuckles. 

“If you ever get a tattoo on your face I will stop telling people I’m your sister.” she utters quietly.

Shabs kicked at a scurrying bug in the corner. “I wasn’t supposed to see,” he said “but I think mom opened one of my birthday cards and took the money out.”

“I keep asking for Karate lessons. But I don’t think she’s going to let me do it. Maybe mom thinks it’ll make me like dad. Anyway, I just really wanna take Karate, Abby.”

Abby turned and looked at her brother as his confession ended in a pleading tone. Shabs was good at this- opening up about anything without being asked. She logged the sliver of dull light in the four-pointed star single diamond earring he wore. Another gift from their father. Everything good came from him. Maybe everything bad, too.

Abby sniffed and sat down on the concrete, putting her arms out for Shabs who came over and sat down into her hug. 

“I like art class this year.” He started. Abby closed her eyes against the resonance of his voice she could feel from the back.

“Keep talking.” She said.

“We’re using paints and studying colors. Taking a picture and re-making it out of all one color. There was a picture I liked from a magazine that looked like Italy or something. A girl in a yellow dress is feeding chickens by a big gate with a yellow bicycle leaning on it. Like it was maybe the afternoon or something. Sunny. I learned about what honeysuckle is.“

Abrilla’s mind forms the scene. Golden with the smell of sweet flowers on the air and fresh baked bread and eggs. Distant soft warmth and light and everything buttery, gilt and good. She wants to be there. To be that girl, rich with time and beauty.

“Oh, and we learned about “utopia.”

That’s it. That word, it pulls up like a tub stopper in her, letting all the old dirty waters drain out. It upsets her deep in her gut where she buries her heart. The Elston house feels disgusting, suddenly, as if she’s been swallowed by a beast. Doomed to dwell in a place where “utopia” is the exact furthest thing from reality.

Shabs froze as his sister wailed.

“Do you miss dad?” Shabs tried.

Between sobs his sister barked:

“No! I miss things I’ll never have. And never see. Things I want back. And things I can’t give you.” She released him and pulled her knees up into herself.

After a minute Shabs reached out.

“Promise you won’t cry on my birthday.” he said into her hand.

—

The next day just before lunch Trisha Havensworth corners Abby at her locker. Her face is nearly healed.

They lock eyes as she hands back the weighted metal grip.

Abby is speechless but manages a thank you.

Trisha smiles and the inner corners of her eyes wince. “I wanna say two things. First, we should be friends. Second, I’m going into the Army to kick ass. You wanna come too?”