“I swear to God, within thirty feet of a bar she can just dematerialize and reappear underneath the tap.” I was explaining all that had transpired to Tyson, a friend of mine from school. He, his date, and another couple had been kind enough to let us have dinner with them. For the past five minutes, I had been ranting about my sister. “I don’t get it. Does booze give her magical powers, like goddamn Underdog and his Wonder Pill?”
“BC, just calm down, dude. You’re here, ain’t ya? Enjoy the meal.” Usually people enjoyed my hysterical rantings but I realized that I had been an ass and that the waitress was waiting to take my order. Without thinking, I ordered a salad. Breanne, thinking my choice meant I had no money, ordered the same. I immediately saw the problem. There was no way Breanne could use silverware.
“Breanne… uh… can you eat a salad? They have a grab basket here that looks like….” The corners of Breanne’s lips turned downward. While she was more than willing to answer questions from my sister, she was not willing to let me talk down to her.
“I’ll… be… fine.”
From where I was sitting, I could see that there was not going to be any kind of good outcome.
Besides myself, there was only one person at the table with the necessary skill-set to understand Breanne. Before her accident, and after, Ashton had been her best friend. While we waited for dinner the conversation touched on various unimportant subjects, from the ways in which our principal Jay Smith resembled a Leprechaun, to our plans for after graduation. The last topic, Breanne’s accident, had stolen from her any polite answer, even for those who could understand her speech. This put her in the worst possible mindset to be served a meal she was incapable of eating.
For some, a salad fork does not even register as a tool in their conscious mind. For Breanne, the salad fork might as well have been the NASA space shuttle. Everyone politely pretended to ignore her struggles. She spent a minute working her hands in raptor-like swats at the utensils laid on her dinner napkin. Finally, by chance, her hand fell on the fork. She clutched it weakly between her three or four loosely curled fingers. She picked it up a few inches, and immediately dropped it to the floor. Without any words whatsoever, I placed another fork in front of her, pausing only a moment to smile.
She offered no words of acknowledgment, choosing merely to renew her efforts. In her second attempt, she managed to bring a piece of lettuce to her lips. Once poised to be bitten, it promptly fell onto her dress and left it stained with vinegar dressing. I solemnly grabbed a fork from a nearby table and placed it in front of her.
Breanne decided she didn’t have much of an appetite after all. I felt my heart sink in my chest.
I leaned over to her and whispered into her ear that it was all right, as what little I had eaten of my own salad had been awful. “You know how you hate that I’m an atheist? Well maybe, I’ll get really bad indigestion and die. It’s a sign. I’ll spend tonight puking my guts out, and then you’ll know that heaven is real.”
For some reason, the thought of my death cheered her up and dinner went on happily, until Breanne casually leaned over to me, and asked me if I could find my sister. Having forgotten the whole reason I had brought her along I asked, “Why do you need her.”
Breanne clutched my arm urgently. She really had quite an amazing grip. Spending all day in physical therapy had bulked her up. “I need… to go… to the… bathroom.”
Overcome with sudden dread, I replied, “It can’t wait, can it?”
Breanne shook her head wildly… that being the only way she is capable of shaking her head.
“Hey guys, I… uh… have to go for just a second.” As no one understood the reason for my departure, no one raised much of a fuss.
I left the restaurant with the determination of Jack Bauer trying to stop the detonation of a bomb. A brown bomb that at any moment might explode outward and splatter innocent bystanders.
I walked quickly across the street to the tavern. I was stopped at the door by a large black man in a muscle t-shirt.
“Sorry kid, you ain’t old ’nuff fo’ this yet,” his deep voice boomed.
My ogre eyes leveled him flatly, unable to lie. “Sir, I’m on a date with a quadriplegic. If I can’t find my sister in there to take her to the bathroom she’s going to shit all over the place.”
The bouncer looked at me. With my chubby face, thick glasses, and obviously awkward demeanor, I hardly looked like a kid trying to score illegal booze. The toothpick he had been chewing slowly fell, as he muttered, “Mutha-fucka, you gots to be joking.”
My round face implored him. “Ain’t that some shit. Jus’ be quick. Day-amn son!” With that, he moved out of the way.
When I realized Rachel was nowhere in sight, and because it seemed somehow more appropriate than the only other option: I checked the men’s bathroom. She wasn’t there. Then, when I realized my sister doesn’t have a penis, no matter how much it seems like she does, I checked the women’s bathroom. I asked for descriptions from everyone. No one had seen her.
To say I tried would be to say that one day Hercules got off his couch and thought, “Oh hell, why not just see if I can do nine impossible things?”
I looked in the car.
I looked in the parking lot.
When that failed, I purposefully got involved in an accident involving nuclear waste and a bolt of lightning, so that I could be temporarily endowed with super-speed, and search the face of the Earth. When that failed, I built an inter-dimensional quantum vortex.
She was nowhere to be found.
Thirty minutes after I had left, I arrived back at the restaurant. Only Ashton and her date remained seated. Tyson and his girlfriend had left for the prom. I sat down next to Breanne, gulping for breath. “Breanne, I can’t find my sister.” As with most truly awful statements, I said it all at once.
Her eyes turned to me. “Look again.”
I bowed my head in defeat. “I looked everywhere. Wherever she is… she won’t get here in time.”
The next words to be spoken had to come from me. Breanne’s parents were extremely religious. My gender prevented me from doing what had to be done. “Ashton… could you… uh… could you take Breanne to the bathroom?” Had her ailments allowed it, Breanne would have put her face into her lap and winked out of existence.
Ashton, who to her credit didn’t reject the notion out of hand, asked: “What kind of….” In response, Breanne raised two embarrassed fingers. Ashton gulped. She took only a moment to collect herself before pushing her chair back from the table, and rising to her feet. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Thuh… anks,” intoned Breanne.
I sat at the table with Ashton’s boyfriend for all of fifteen minutes, trying to avoid the obvious topic of conversation.
“So, you think you’re getting laid tonight?”
“My girlfriend is wiping your date’s ass. Do you think she’s going to be in the mood?”
“Sorry about that man… you see, my sister was supposed to be here….”
“Yeah, fuck you.”
Instead, we awkwardly avoided looking at one another.
Eventually of course, Ashton and Breanne did return. I paid our dinner bill, and tried not to bring up anything that might embarrass Breanne. Ashton and her date took off for the prom. Breanne and I spent ten minutes in the cold, waiting for Rachel and fucktard John to show up.
As softly as I could, I placed my hand on Breanne’s shoulder. “Breanne, I’m so sorry.”
“Just… take me… to the… dance.”
When Rachel finally did show up, she offered no excuse as to where she had been. In typical Rachel fashion, she had no shame and offered no apologies. Instead, her knuckles firmly kneaded her crotch, as her free hand lit a cigarette in her mouth.
“You two ready to go?” she asked.
My will to throw her into the ocean and beat her head open with a rock was gone. I sighed. “Yes, Rachel. Yes, we are ready to go.”
“Yo Brandon, you needs me to hold that wheelchair whilez you put her up in the truck, dawg?”
“No John… we’ll be fine. Just get in the truck please.”
Sitting in the back of the truck, avoiding conversation with John, I wondered what else could go wrong. If life were a storybook, that thought would have been followed by a strike of lightning and the boom of thunder.
