Tim'rous

Written by Priscilla Wong

The boy came broken, that's what healthcare professionals reported. He couldn't string two words together properly, lonely as a tumbleweed and beaten down by life besides. What kind of hand was that for parents to be dealt? They found their ace in the hole with their girl who could stand in for the son they'd hoped for. Like that Chinese girl in the old story who put on soldier's clothes.

She'd been running wild with her dreams, chasing them down like a coyote after a jackrabbit. Women's liberation gave her a chance, till that fellow came along. Had she known her brother - bullied and simple and left to himself - she'd have watched him closer, both in the flesh and in that electric picture show called the internet. Would've learned her beauty tricks sooner. How to iron her hair straight as a board and paint her face pretty as a picture, just to run with the internet queens. Whatever that means. Might've even protected him from them vultures circling her trade, mean as snakes and twice as quick to strike.

The colored ones had their sport with him in the school washroom, liked how their fists echoed off tiles like summer thunder. Once she fought a pack of island boys trying to protect his addled head.

Too young and foolish to know just damaged his mind turned out to be.

A child's heart turns hard sometimes, and she figured maybe weakness deserved what it got. Here she was youngest, him eldest - why should his crosses be her's to bear? Life's has its own peculiar justice. One day the tormentors rang their telephone, threatening him like proper bandits. Quick as a jackrabbit, she caught their ugly words on tape - black boys and island boys both. The law came down, and for one shining day, she was somebody.

Life kept rolling on like a river. Phones got popular and she never much cared for taking my portrait until later in life. Her brother though, friendless as a desert stone, he posted the sorriest pictures you ever did see, marking her as kin for all to witness.

That was my mistake, letting that lie like a rattler in the grass.

Those competitors of her's, they smelled blood in the water quick as sharks. Her brother's pictures were like finding gold in their pan, and they knew their time had come.