Brody

He was my best friend for the first eighteen years of my life. Born in the same hospital. The same day, same hour, same minute... from the same womb. He was my fraternal twin. I never knew my mother. Her last breath was simultaneous with our first. My name is Briana Michelle Mitchelle. Kind of a tongue twister, but I like it. His was Brody Lee Mitchelle. I always liked our names. Our father picked them out. Only good thing he did for us. My mother’s name was Briana, and her brother’s name was Brody. It’s ironic that my Dad would name my brother that. Brody died three days before his eighteenth birthday. So did my uncle.

Have you ever been so close to someone that it seemed as if you couldn’t breathe without them? That’s how close we were. They say twins have a special bond, them that say such things. I don’t know if that’s myth or proven, but it was true in our case. I knew. I knew the instant he died. I felt his dying breath. I heard his dying thoughts. I felt his pain, quick though it was. My friends said that I just doubled over and spit out blood, for no reason. We had been sitting around the kitchen table at Ariel’s house drinking, playing quarters in fact, Brody’s favorite drinking game. All of a sudden I was on the floor, crying and rolling around. I think I shouted his name. I must have. I had to have.

When we were five he was hit in the eye with a rock. I had been playing in the sand, minding my own business. My eye started to hurt and about that time he came running over to me shouting "Rianna, Rianna, I’m blind!" He called my that, Rianna. I don’t know why. It was temporary of course. The rock scratched his eye and he couldn’t open it for about a day, but it was good as new soon enough.

Most nicknames are started by people not being able to say a name. Steven turns Seeven. Kelly turns into Kewwy. The logical mispronunciation would have been Beanna. Then again, Brody never was logical. He never did fall in the category of "normal." He wore turtle-necks in the summer and muscle shirts in the winter and when someone would ask him why, his retort would no doubt be "cause I can."

That was his saying. Why did you put ketchup on your eggs? Cause I can. Why did you drive backwards on the interstate? Cause I can. Why did you snort so much cocaine? Cause I can. Why did you die? Cause he could?

He was the king of dare devils. Say he won’t, and he will. Just to prove it to you. He was always testing the limits. Pushing at the boundaries. Seeing just how far he could go. If he played chicken, he was never the one to swerve. He didn’t even budge. He’d clench his jaw and stare straight into the headlights of the car in front of him. There was no fear in his eyes. No flinching. Only excitement. And something else. Hope? That’s sick to say, but sometimes I really did think that he wanted to die. He wanted that other car to stay on its path and kill him on impact. Cause he didn’t have the nerve… he didn’t have the guts… to face the truth. So he hid. He hid his hurt, he hid his pain... he hid himself. The instant he would feel something, really feel something, good or bad, he’d crawl up inside himself. Like a turtle.

I wonder why I didn’t turn out that way. I suppose he didn’t let me. I could always turn to him. He was always there for me. I just wish he would have let me be there for him. I’ve been told my Dad was once whole. He was once a human with a living and breathing heart. We never saw it. It died with my mother on the day we were born I guess. When he wasn’t in the office he was hiding behind a bottle. That or deciding which one of us he wanted to take his pain out on. Not a day went by that I didn’t have a bruise, fresh or in the process of healing. Brody couldn’t always be around.

When he got to be old enough he’d always take the rap for me. Take my beatings for me. No matter how many times I screamed and yelled at him to stop it he wouldn’t let Dad touch me if he was around. He was my guardian angel. My living God. He never let me lose faith or hope. He said that if I lost that I’d lost everything. He ought to know, he lost everything. He didn’t have any hopes… any dreams. Anything that he wished for. Except for my happiness.

I think he got to the point where he thought he deserved the lashings. He used to take his cigarette when it was done and put it out on his body. His hand, arm, foot, whatever was exposed at the moment. He wasn’t quick about it either. He was almost stoic about it. He could have quoted a whole sonnet before that last amber sank into his skin and went out.

Brody was smart. He was so smart. He always made straight A’s, K-12^th grade. He could have been something. He could have gone places. Done things with his life. Gotten out of this God forsaken town with it’s God forsaken people. After we graduated from high school he just sat there and got high with his friends. "What’s the point?" He’d say. "I’m nothing, I don’t mean anything to anyone. You, now you are going places. You’ve got to."

But I won’t. I’m the boring one. Brody was always the life of the party. He was the one with all the charisma. People, girls and guys, flocked to him. He had all the jokes. He had all the right things to say. He was the good-vibe man. Everyone went to him with their problems cause he always knew what to say. If you needed to laugh, he had you rolling. If you needed to cry, no shoulders were bigger than his. If you needed to talk, his ears were always open. But he needed someone to talk to. He needed to be willing to talk. But he was the good-vibe man, and the good-vibe man doesn’t have any problems right? Wrong.

To look at him from a stranger’s point of view, he was a happy guy. Always up for a good time. Always smiling, laughing. But me, I saw through that. I saw the pain buried deep in his seemingly laughing eyes. I saw the flicker of emotion when one of our friend’s mothers would hug him. He tried to say he didn’t care. He tried to say it didn’t mean anything to him that this woman loved him like a son. But I knew. I knew what it meant to him, even if he didn’t voice it.

People get so caught up in illusions of grandeur that they refuse to look below the surface. They don’t want to. They want to go on believing that if you have money you’re happy. If your Dad is cool in front of them, well, he must be cool all the time. They overlook the fact that we don’t go within ten feet of him. They miss the fact that if we either have to pass by him or go around the table, we go the long way. They notice how neat and pristine our house is and don’t stop to think about why. They don’t question the fact that we have no curfew. No time to be home. Don’t have to call if we stay out days at a time. We don’t live there. It’s a pillow and a bed in a house that we can stay at if all else fails.

One time, when I first got my Camaro, Brody and I got all the money we could find in our Dad’s various stashing places and took two of our closest friends to Disney World. Just up and left, not a word. That’s the happiest I had ever seen my brother since he was five and too young to grasp the fact that our life was hell. All day we’d laugh and play. Sing and dance. Ride all the rides until we had to stop or puke. But then we’d get back to the hotel room and all would be quiet, the lights would be out and we’d be almost asleep. I could feel his sadness in the air all around me. He’d have time to think. Silence was the enemy.

Only two people have ever seen Brody cry. That’s me and his best friend Rick. One time Brody and Rick came home at four o’clock in the morning. I had been sick so I had stayed in. I was in a haze all day, didn’t know up from down. Dad came in my room when I was sleeping. I don’t know what all happened but I remember hearing a scream and sitting up in bed watching Brody and my Dad fighting. Rick walked over to me, picked me up, brought me in Brody’s room and locked me in there. Finally I woke up and realized that I was completely and totally naked. I quickly grabbed a pair of sweats and a shirt and got dressed, shaking, trying not to think about why I would be naked and why Dad had been in there. I could hear shouts and banging noises. I banged and banged and banged on Brody’s door for Rick to come and let me out. He didn’t.

Suddenly it was quiet. The door opened and there stood Brody. His lip was cracked open and I could see the beginnings of a black eye. His shirt was torn and there was blood flowing from deep wound in his shoulder. Rick was behind him, a deep purple welt below his eye as well. Brody took one look at my frightened face and trembling form and fell on the floor, crying. He buried his head in his hands, his sobs ripping through my soul. Rick, though shocked to see his happy-go-lucky friend sobbing, crouched down and drew him into his arms, rocking him like our mother would have had she been alive. We were both embarrassed once we had settled down and were a little calmer. Me for having been naked and him for losing it, but Rick took it all in stride. That was the beginning of the end.

We made it a ritual to celebrate our birthday just the two of us, so we had our parties before our birthday. Three days before our eighteenth birthday Rick took Brody out and Ariel took me out. Ariel is my best friend. She invited all of our girlfriends out to her house in the country and we had a girl’s night out. Pizza, presents… cookie dough ice-cream. Rick took Brody to a concert in a local pool hall. They had a few beers and Brody did every kind of drug Rick could get his hands on. Rick remained sober except for the few beers so that he could drive Brody around whereever he wanted to go.

Rick was driving down a one way street down town. Alcohol has a way of weakening the bladder so he parked the car and walked over to the bushes to relieve himself. He says he turned around just in time to see Brody lay down in the street as an eighteen wheeler came around the curve too fast. He says he yelled and started running, but by the time he had reached the street my brother was the size of a pancake. He stayed crouched beside him, willing him to wake up. Please be alive… please be alive. But he wasn’t. What the hell was he doing, lying down in the road like that anyway?!

I mentioned above that I felt his dying breath and I heard his dying thoughts. He was playing a joke. We had all heard about the teenage boy who had died by copying what he had seen on a movie. He had lain down on the road to see if the truck would go over him. He wanted to upstage the kid. He wanted to pull off what the kid hadn’t. The truck’s wheels were supposed to go on either side of him. What a rush that would have been. It didn’t happen that way.

My friends said I just sat in one spot after I threw myself out of my chair. They thought I had had some kind of reaction to the alcohol or food or something. They rushed me to the hospital and there I saw Rick.

After I got home I crawled into my bed and clutched the sheets tightly around me. I bunched the pillow up underneath me and tried to pretend it was him I was hugging. I don’t remember crying but I remember my pillow being soaked. I don’t remember breathing. I think I wasn’t, cause I lost time. Somehow a week went by. I hadn’t moved from that spot in a week. I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t answer the door. If someone came to my door, if my Dad let them in, I just mumbled for them to go away. At the end of that week Rick came.

"Brianna, come out please. I’m so worried about you. I loved him too, but you have to keep going. He would have wanted that for you."

I laughed. I didn’t think I would ever stop. And somehow they turned into sobs. Rick stood in front of me and the door lay on the floor. I guess he had kicked it down. He just laid beside me and held me until I had cried myself to sleep and finally I actually slept. When I woke up my brain worked and it was easier to breath.

Don’t get me wrong, there were days when I still couldn’t breath. I couldn’t walk through my house, I had to crawl out the window. There were too many memories in that house. Memories of us being five and playing with tinker toys. Memories of nights when Dad had been out of town and we had watched movies all night. Memories of study sessions. The whole town was haunted. The corner where we caught the bus. The Circle-K we stole cigarettes from. The ratty old apartments we used to go smoke weed behind.

I had to get out. If Rick had left me alone, I would have killed myself. I really would have. What was life without my one constant? Without Brody? Impossible. Thank God Rick understood that. He took all of his money, packed up all of his belongings, all of mine, put them in his van, and took me away.

There are days now when I still can’t breath. When the memories flood and I can’t speak. But Rick is always there to catch me if I start to fall.