Rag by Maryse Meijer

Author:Maryse Meijer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE RAINBOW BABY

IT’S THE first thing anyone sees walking into the house; my lopsided head, bent at a weird angle, wide-eyed and grinning on a rainbow-colored quilt. In the picture I’m five days old, wearing a onesie that says SENT FROM HEAVEN BY MY BIG BROTHER MICHAEL.

You look like a total dumbass, Michael says. Jesus fucking Christ.

It’s not my fault, I reply, and Michael makes me punch my own arm.

There aren’t any pictures of Michael in the hallway, but there are a few in the Dead Baby Album. Sometimes when Mom thinks I’m asleep she sits in the kitchen drinking hot chocolate and paging though the ultrasound images until she gets to the picture of Michael after he was born, so small and blue against her chest, his eyes sealed, dead.

Wah wah wah, Michael says. Just listen to that cunt snotting away in there. That kind of shit drove Dad crazy. That’s why he jumped ship.

That’s not why, I protest. He—

Shut it, Michael says. What the hell do you know?

Mom doesn’t know we’re watching her. She squeezes her eyes shut, tears catching in the lines beside her mouth as she presses the album to her belly. Everything happens for a reason, she always says, but when I see her doing this I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know what the reason is for anything.

Maybe I should go talk to her, I say.

No fucking way.

But she’s sad.

So? Turn on the video game or I’m going to lose my shit.

I go to my room and start the game. Nothing happens, Michael just dies over and over again because he’s not good enough at working the control and my hands slide all over the buttons. But he doesn’t care, he just likes the sound the game makes when his avatar gets crushed by a rock or falls off a cliff.

Do you think she’s still out there? I ask after a while. The house is silent and I imagine her falling asleep over the album, in the dark, all by herself.

What?

Is she still out there crying?

Probably, he says, and dies.

I can see Michael; not out in the world, but in my mind, and sometimes in the mirror. He has a normal-sized face but a tiny body, the size of a kitten. He can’t make it do very much, and that’s partly what makes him so mad all the time. God fucking damn it! he screams, trying to get me to reach for the box of Lucky Charms on the high shelf in the pantry. It’s not snack time and I don’t want to get the cereal down because Mom likes a routine and she gets this look on her face if we break it, a kind of crazy zombie look, her fingers dragging at the skin beneath her eyes as she yells I just cannot do this today! Michael thinks it’s funny, but it scares me and I try not to do anything that will make it happen more than it already does.

Get the fucking cereal, he tells me.

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