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Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Fourth Estate
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk
This edition first published in 2001
Copyright © Michael Kimball 2000
The right of Michael Kimball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007292073
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007394913
Version: 2016-01-12
Dedication
For Bompa
Epigraph
The baby lived inside a world that was smaller and older where they still traveled by carriage and spoke a bawling language.
Bompa
The bawling language was small and died inside the baby and inside the bodies of everybody who could hear it.
Bompa
whah whaahh uuhhh dahhh dadadadada mabadaduwigo
My Little Brother
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
The Whole Way We Got There
Living Anymore in Mineola
My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother
Our House in Mineola
The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It
Mineola to Birthrock
Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again
Birthrock to Stringtown
Some More Ways Dolls Keep People Alive, the Way You Go Away from Doll to People and Bigger, and the Big-People We Were Going to Grow Up into and Live Them
Stringtown to Albion
My Doll-Me, My People-Me, and the Way My Doll-Family Got Away
Albion to Hot Springs
How to Cut Dolls and People Out of Paper, Crayon-Faces, the String that Holds People Together, Holding Hands Together, and One More Way Any Family Can Break
Hot Springs to North Little Rock
House-Cars, Car-People, the Safety-Bars that Saved Me and My Bigger Brother, Some More Ways We Got Some of Everything Back, and Why Everybody Needs to Stop and Rest or They Will Break
North Little Rock to Campbell Station
How You Get the Breath All the Way Down into Momma and the Baby Alive, How Poppa Laid the Babies Down to Sleep and Grow Up Inside Momma, and Why We Kept Waking Each Other Up
Campbell Station to Biggerton
How to Make a Doll-Baby Out of String, Baby Clothes, Shoe Parts, Buttons, Stones, Balloons, a Hat, Glue, Crayons, a Needle and Thread, and Two People Too
Biggerton to Glenallen
How to Make a Baby Up, How to Make Me Up into a Momma, and How Many People Any People-Family Needs to Have Living Inside It
Glenallen to Anna
Looking, Looking-Pictures, the People Inside Momma, the Shape of the Baby, and Looking Inside Momma’s Stomach and Hole
Anna to Henderson
One of the Holes that Goes Down into the Ground and Dirt-World and Away to My Little Brother, the Other Momma and Poppa that Climbed Us Up and Up Out of the Hole, and How Our Momma and Poppa Kept Us Inside Our Family
Henderson to Hendricksville
My Little Brother and His Breath Inside the Toy Box, How We Played with the Doll and People of My Little Brother, and How Alive You Have to Be to Go Away
Hendricksvllle to Bennetts Switch
How Nobody Should Ever Wear Sun-Dresses Up to Too Hot, How Everybody Tried to Burn Me Up Inside One, and How You Make a Sun-Dress Out of the Sun Anyway
Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown
The Doll-Family Inside the Toy Box and How Anything Bad You Say to Them Goes Away from You to Them So You Can Go Away to Somewhere Else Better Than Where Everybody Else Is Dead
Frederick Perrytown to Edwardsburg
How Momma Played Dead, the Shirt-Baby Poppa Carried, the Angels Inside the Clouded-House on Top of the Hot-Hill, and How Everybody Else Was Waiting for Us in Heaven
Edwardsburg to Sunfield
The House with Counting-Doors, the Man that Knew How Many People Were Alive, BoxRooms, More Holes, the Lady with the Rolling Trash Cans, and Why Everybody Has to Get Up and Live
Sunfield to Far Town
The People-Family that Had a Living-Baby Living with Them and the Way We Got Away with a New Baby of My Little Brother
Far Town to Morrison
How the New Baby of My Little Brother Started to Die Too and How We Gave Him Away to the Baby-Angel at the Hot-Hill
Morrison to Gaylord
How We Burned My Little Brother Up, How We Turned My Little Brother into See-Through Dirt, and How We Buried My Little Brother Inside a See-Through Jar and Farther Down into the Ground and Dirt-World
Bompa’s House in Gaylord
Why We Were Dead and Where Dead People and My Little Brother Go Away to Inside You
About the Author
About the Publisher
The Whole Way We Got There
My brother’s cradle and other baby stuff got us from Mineola to Birthrock. My mother’s necklaces and other dress-up stuff got us from Birthrock to Stringtown. This girl there got my sister’s doll people along with all the other things that went with her practice family. They told my sister she wasn’t going to need her dollhouse and the doll people living in it anymore since we weren’t living in our house anymore. So my sister’s dollhouse and everything in it got us from Stringtown to Albion. That was where this other man got my father’s pocketwatch and pocketknife along with some other things my father almost always kept with him whenever we went anywhere.
Those things from my father’s pockets got us from Albion and all the way out of Oklahoma to Hot Springs and our start through Arkansas. That was where this other boy got my baseball bat and baseball glove along with some other things they told me were too small for me. This other boy got all my clothes but for the handed-down-to-me suit of clothes they made me wear and that left me with a ways to go before it would fit me. My brother might have gotten the baseball stuff handed-down-to-him along with the clothes but he wasn’t ever going to grow up into any of it anyway.
So all my stuff got us from Hot Springs to North Little Rock and we stopped for that one night. That was where these other people got our pillows, blankets, sheets, and the other stuff that helped us sleep. We got from North Little Rock to Campbell Station and we kept going away. My mother’s purse along with everything she had left in it got us from Campbell Station to Biggerton. This other girl there got my sister’s locket and chain that had a picture of my sister in it from when she was a baby and sick. But my sister did not die from that and that other girl getting it and that locket and chain still got us out of Biggerton and Arkansas and into Glenallen in Missouri. That was where these other men got my father’s wallet along with all the stuff my father had left in his wallet. There were the family pictures of us and the cards that had the names of other people and other places on them. There wasn’t any money left but we didn’t need any money anymore anyway. My father’s wallet along with all the stuff left in it got us from Glenallen to Anna, Illinois and left us in the middle of America with all those miles behind us and all those miles to go farther away in front of us.
Anna was where this other boy got my guns, my holster belt, and all the bullets that went in my gun or went in the loops of my holster belt and around my waist. My guns and other play stuff got us from Anna to Giantsburg and Old Shawneetown, over the Ohio River, all the way out of Illinois, and up into the hump of Kentucky that has Henderson in it. That was where my mother traded her wedding dress and wedding ring away to this other lady that wanted to wear them and get married. That other lady also wanted the veil to the wedding dress but my mother didn’t have it or any of her other wedding things left but my father. But my mother’s wedding things still got those two other people married and us from Henderson to Hendricksville. This girl there got all my sister’s clothes but for the dress my sister put on to wear out of Hendricksville, up through Six Points, Big Sheridan, Russellville, and into Bennetts Switch.
It was there that we got down to where my mother’s clothes were almost the last stuff of hers that anybody else really wanted and that got us from Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown. This other brother and sister there got the record player and records that my sister and me played in the back seat. The record player and records made somebody up out of words and songs but trading them away also got us out of Frederick Perrytown, out of Indiana, and up into Edwardsburg at the beginning of Michigan.
All this stuff so far got us up to where this man got the silver frame with the picture of our whole family in it—the picture that had all the old people in it that were already dead and some others of us that weren’t dead yet. Our family was going to need everybody we had left in it to get there. That silver frame with the family picture and all those dead people and us got us the miles that got us out of Edwardsburg, up through Schoolcraft, over to Battle Creek, and into Sunfield. That was where this other father and his family got our suitcases and the other things where we had packed our stuff up. Those suitcases, boxes, and crates were almost empty anyway and that other father and his family let us keep the things we had left in them—the underwear and the shoes, the doll parts, our dirty clothes, and some other stuff of ours that nobody else ever wanted but us. My brother was the only empty thing that we kept with us.
But there was all that other stuff that wasn’t ours anymore. There was that other family on their way to somewhere else. There was all our other stuff with all those other people and other families all over America. But all this stuff so far also got us out of Sunfield, into and out of Lyons and Hubbardston, and up into Far Town. These other people there got everything we had left in the glove box—the maps and our other car papers, the flashlight, a pair of sunglasses, some batteries, a sewing kit, a first-aid kit, some gloves, and some other small things that fit in there. All that stuff from the glove box got us all the way out of Far Town and up into Morrison. That was where there were some men along the way that took our spare tire along with the hubcaps, the tire jack, the lug wrench, and some other tools that were in the trunk. Those men took our back seat for the back of their pickup truck and took our rearview mirror so they could see if anybody else was sitting down in it. The rest of our car got us up through Marceytown and Roscommon, on through Toms Mile, Bradford, and some other places that got their names from people that must have done stuff. Or maybe people got that far and then just stopped so that the town and everybody else kept growing up out of all those miles. We stopped in Gaylord and kept going—into its streets and up to the two-story house that was going to have Bompa coming out of it to take us inside it.
That was as far as all that stuff got us. There were all those towns that we stopped at and all those towns that we did not stop at until we got to Gaylord. We traded for the next town in Hot Springs and in Anna, in Henderson and in Frederick Perrytown, in places that never got big enough to get a name, and in all the other towns along the way that already had their names. We traded our stuff away for miles. We traded for the lives of other people, what might have happened to us for what did.
Living Anymore in Mineola
My brother’s fever wouldn’t leave him or us and our house. My mother took how hot my brother was from out of his mouth but his fever didn’t go down. She rubbed ice cubes on his forehead and lips that melted on her fingers and dried on her hands and his face and he cried. My brother reached his small hands up to his face and shook his head back and forth and pushed away from us. He wouldn’t look at us or our family.
We weren’t supposed to go into my brother’s room anymore or he wouldn’t get any better than he was then. His whole room was sick. His body swelled up and made his cradle rock back and forth and rattle. My mother and father and sister and me all stood in the doorway to his sickroom where we could still look at him. My sister told us that we had to stop the cradle from rocking back and forth or my brother might tip over and fall and break. My sister went into my brother’s sickroom and carried my brother out of there and through all the other rooms of the house that weren’t sick or dying or small but we still had to go to the hospital.
My brother was going to die. We drove him down a road that wasn’t big enough to be paved yet but that had men standing next to it hammering nails into houses so other families would come and live there. We drove past the school where my sister was supposed to go with me next year but where she never did. We drove past stores and gas stations and places to eat but none of them had anything in them that would keep my brother alive.
We drove my brother to the hospital that had the doctor and nurse that were supposed to save my brother for us. My mother told the doctor and nurse that we starved my brother but even so his fever didn’t go down. The nurse fixed the table paper up and the doctor laid my brother down on it and on top of the metal table. The doctor looked inside my brother’s ears and mouth and down his throat. He pulled my brother’s eyelids up with his thumb but they closed up again when he let go of them. My brother squeezed his eyes down tight into wrinkles and cried. He shook his head back and forth so the doctor couldn’t put anything else in his mouth and the doctor put his hands down into his pockets and he frowned.
My brother stopped breathing anymore but his body was still hot when we touched him. My sister pulled her hand back fast and told me it burned. The nurse breathed out into my brother’s mouth and pushed down on his chest with her two fingers. My brother coughed and spit and cried. My mother and father cried too. My brother reached his small hands and arms out to us and my mother picked him up and held him in our family.
We took my brother away from the hospital alive but we didn’t get very far away before my brother stopped breathing again and we took him back home. My mother carried my brother into our house but he wasn’t going to live there or with us anymore. But we had to keep living even though my brother wasn’t going to do it.
We stayed inside our family and house and got ready for everybody else that was going to come over to see my brother and the way he died. My father looked out the windows and looked down into his hands. My mother sat down in chairs and touched her hair and wiped her eyes. My sister played with a doll that was supposed to make my brother alive again but it never did.
The whole time we stayed inside there there were people that came over to our house and up to our windows and looked at us inside. They brought over food in bowls and food on plates. They knocked on the windows and knocked on the doors and they waited there. They called us by our names but we never did say anything back to them. We couldn’t let any of them come inside yet.
They left food on the windowsill and my mother would open the window far enough up to slide the food inside our house and us. They left more food outside the doors or on the porch and we would wait for them to leave before we brought the food inside to eat it. They would always look back at our house before they got into their cars and drove away from our house and our family and us. They were trying to see what we looked like and did and the way that we lived there after my brother died.
We lived inside our house and ourselves. We did not talk to each other even though my mother would talk to herself. We got my brother and everything else in our family and house ready for everybody else to come over and inside and see it. People drove over from Sweetwater and Chico and Riverland and they parked their cars all up and down the road in front of our house and in our front yard. They drove in from Killeen and Overton and came inside our house to see my brother and us. They drove up from Tyler and Sugar Land and Old Dime Box and everybody wanted to talk about my brother and the way that we laid him down in his casket.
This lady from Amarillo talked about the dead people that we shared in our family—my brother and her sister. This man from Hull Lake told me that we die in families so that somebody remembers us and can tell other people about it. This man from Brownland told my sister and me that neither one of us was the dead one so we shouldn’t cry anymore. This lady from Kossetown told us that we can’t get away from our family or dying but that my mother and father would get another brother for us.
But everybody also stopped talking to us and looking at my brother and they all left my brother and us and our family and house. My father told us that my brother gone was enough for the rest of us to gather ourselves and our stuff up and leave that place too. We couldn’t stay in our house or Mineola anymore. My brother was dead and we couldn’t live there either.
My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother
My doll-family plays better at family than my people one does. My Poppa-doll got lost somewhere but Momma told me it was okay for me to make me another Poppa-doll out of string-clothes and buttons and him all kept together with popsicle sticks.
The doll of my little brother got left out under the sun one day once and the yellow-fever colored my little brother in sun-colored. We had to take my little brother to see big-people where they put stuff inside his mouth and touched on how bright was the color of his forehead. There was the poke-poke lady with all her more fingers. There was the fold-handed man that threw drops of water all around the room but that never made it rain outside.
One more way they didn’t make up to make him not as sun-hot as he was was ice cubes inside his diapers. One more way was saying baby and in and air and out from my mouth on him. One more way was coloring his skin back in skin-colored with my crayons. One more way was hanging his baby clothes up on tree-arms but that was only to be inside the shade.
The sun-color got too bright and too inside under my little brother’s skin until it burned his insides out inside his crib. My little brother lived with me and my doll-family after he burned up inside and big-people came over to see how he did it. Big-people carried food over but we didn’t even feed any of it to my little brother. The rest of us ate all of it even though we were all already alive. One man had tree-arms that carried a treeful of red apples and green apples and that kept anyone else from catching any yellow-fever from my little brother.
One more man pushed a button that made light flash that burned your eyes up but did not make it so hot as to burn us up inside. The light flashing made looking-pictures of my little brother on Momma’s lap and one more way to make babies go away to alive. That man blew on the looking-pictures of my little brother until he was out of breath and which but that just left my little brother all small and flat.
My little brother was even littler when he was dead. But more and more big-people came over to our house and one more man had more ways than me to keep my little brother alive. That man wore a burnt-colored knee-coat that was still warm. You could see how hot it was in his hot-colored face and the way he blew his cheeks out to get the hot part out of him. Momma told me that dead people was all that that man did but that that man wasn’t going to take my little brother away from us. We were going to take my little brother away with us. That man was just supposed to get him ready to go.
He undressed the clothes even though my little brother was already cold. But clothes can’t be alive anyway and that man didn’t keep going when he got down to my little brother’s skin. That man took up a bucket of rain water and squeeze-clouds that he carried down with him out of the sky. That man squeezed the squeeze-clouds of rain water down over my little brother so it would drown him in the swallow of water and smoke the fire out that burned his insides up. He dried my little brother down inside a towel like the one they wrapped him up in to bring him home in after he was born. That man unwrapped the towel from my little brother and rained handfuls of rain water up over his head and down over his neck and out the ends of his hair. We combed it out and it looked nice. That man smelled his nose down into the neck and shoulder and snuffled my little brother. That man touched my little brother’s eyelids down with his finger and thumb like Poppa would pull the window-cover down before he would put us down for sleep. But how was my little brother going to see us anymore when his eyes were closed?
That man stuffed cotton balls and worded-paper inside my little brother’s mouth so he could see how to talk. That man got out the needle and thread and asked me how my little brother smiled. He threaded the thread through the needle and the needle and thread into and out of his lips so it could not be told. He got a moon-knife out of his night-bag and cut cuts inside both the elbows and the knees both. He pushed tubes into my little brother but we didn’t feed him any food through them. The squeeze-pump sucked and pulled. It spit and pushed the blood. The tubes he looped into my little brother were outside-veins for the clear-blood that flooded the burned and dead-blood out from my little brother.
That man let me touch where my little brother should have started up again but my hand never breathed up or down on him. We hit and pushed my little brother on his rib bones but that didn’t start his heart beating up or down again either. That just made my little brother go all see-through and angel-colored so we stopped squeezing the squeeze-pump and pulled the tubes out and stopped the holes up.