is your heart alive? yale

When my mom died, most things died with her.

Everyone always tells me that I was too young to remember her and that's only sort of true. I think I was just old enough that I ended up with this strange collection of halves. I get told I couldn't understand the grief of missing her because I barely knew her and that's true too but it's also not.

I know what life was like before and I know what it's like after. I remember the colour of her eyes because I have pictures and I don't remember the sound of her voice. I can wrap my arms around myself, I can press my fingers into my flesh and pretend that she's holding me because I still remember the way she smelled but I don't know what she used to call me anymore.

Nowles used to use that nickname against me when I was crying but she stopped when I was ten and so that's just gone. If I want to remember Nowles' voice then I have to try and catch reruns of her games on tv. Except that's not even my sister it's just the image of her that they cut out of the way she was.

If Sal was weird before Nowles died, he's only gone stranger since. I don't know how to keep him, I never learned how. Sometimes I get these nightmares where I'm in the house but Kade and Sal aren't there. I try to leave to go and look for them but I can't find the front door. For some reason, I can't use the windows either. It feels like a lot of time passes, can't skip past that, then I finally wake up.

You know, as the youngest, I'll probably outlive them both?

But I used to think my cockroach of a sister would outlive us all and that was wrong.

I wonder how many concussions you can even have before your lights go out for good.

My feet hurt, but I've been walking for a long time. It's sometime in the afternoon, probably past school being out. They probably ran a letter out to the house already to tell on me for skipping and it's going to sit in the hall until I eventually pick it up. The truth is, I could just never go back to school if I didn't want to.

Each footfall makes the pounding in my head louder, like the reverberation of my shoe hitting the sidewalk is spiking through my whole body. My skin feels too tight, like someone's stretched it over my muscles and it's hot but it's cold all at the same time. Tears in the corners of my eyes, lump at the back of my throat the size of a bullet, I can feel myself splitting into sections, my thoughts leaking out like ether.

I forget what I'm doing out here and to be honest, I'm not really sure where out here even is. When I started walking, I know I had a plan but it's hard to keep focused. The pounding keeps trying to throw me off, it's like trying to have a conversation on the factory floor, I'm shouting everything and hearing nothing back.

I want my mom.

The top of the ammunition factory is poking out over the rest of the buildings, that's how I usually orient myself in the district. Except today, every time I make a turn, it shows up again on my left. I think maybe I'm walking in circles and then I forget that I'm doing that and I turn again. Then it's there and I'm turning again and my skin is burning and I turn the other way and it's on the right now.

I want my mom to wrap her arms around me and put her chin on my head.

Oh yeah, I wanted to find Dave so I can get him back for the shiner. I know where he hangs out after school, so I can probably find him. When I look up, the top of the factory is directly ahead of me, and there's the sandwich shop so that means if I turn around and take two rights and a left, then walk ten minutes straight I'm home again.

Could just go home and wait for Sal except sometimes when he looks at me I feel like he’s not. I think right now I just need to be seen.

I need to find Dave.

Wonder if they’ve set his nose back straight, wonder if it’s still dumb and crooked after yesterday. I want to see the bruises under his eyes, I want him to be looking for me back so he can see the bruises on mine.

Someone’s gotta see the bruises.

I look up, the peak of the factory is gone. I don’t know where I am anymore. I think they should've called my name at the reaping.

None of the shopfronts here are familiar and my hands hurt. I flex my fingers, wince, the skin is all red and thin after yesterday. Mom would take my hands, squeeze them in her’s like she did that time I fell and skinned my palms.

”Yalebird, you have to be careful.”

Oh.

Take my left hand in my right and squeeze so hard that the skin feels like it’s splitting all over again. There are tears on my cheeks but I’m still smiling madly down at my crumpled fingers.

I remember now.

I wish I didn’t, it'd be better if I didn't.

I’m too old to be crying about it but I guess I am. Gotta wipe my nose with my sleeve, press my palms against my eyes to hold it all in but it hurts, I forgot about the shiner. Mom's voice echos in my head, yalebird, then Nowles sing-songs it back, yalebird. My heart is too loud, it slams itself against my ribs, bam, bam, bam, and I'm leaning over, knees hit sidewalk, lunch in the gutter.

I want to go home.

On the way back from Ken's, he's thinking of oh-so casually running into Niho again.

Oh this is your favourite bar? What a coincidence. Oh, yeah, I'm headed this way too- wow, that's your street? Funny! It's so crazy how these things happen. Sure, of course, I'll come up, I've got time.

Ken's sick of it. All this plotting.

She'd been cutting his hair while Sal sat and stared into the mirror and tried not to let it show that the heat was making the frame melt, and the panelling on the walls was flaking off, and Ken's talking about something else but Sal just keeps nodding, going uh huh yeah, totally, totally. The rooms smells like bleach. Ceiling's the colour of week-old brain matter. Ken has to hold his head still to stop the nodding. Babe, what the hell was in that tea.

"Shrooms." She says, and the clippers veer dangerously towards his ear.

Oh, yeah. Right.

First try, he nearly goes through the neighbour's front door.

What's that dynamic called when you grow up with your own kids. Three toddlers by twenty. He's got his height marked on the doorframe right beside Kade.

This is how he's teetering into the second half of a third decade. Awful person, terrible fucking father, still acting like he's a teenager.

There's no good explanation for why it takes him so long to notice.

There's no bad explanation either. He never really noticed any of the other times. Kade went through the same phase - Yale just stays in his room a lot, that's a kid thing, a teenager thing, if Nowles lived long enough to get there, she'd be doing it too. Plus Sal's kids probably hate him. He hated his dad, that's just how it goes, he'd probably hate himself if he was his own dad. Already does, a little. Nasty kind of cycle, he's never asked Mourn and Buck if it's the same for them. Yeah, Mourn got his kid back, but does Storm hate his old man still. He oughta. It's only fair.

It's getting to be around that time, after every few months of suspicious silence, when Mourn starts trying to get a hold of him again. Big brother never gets the hint. Get Buck to help with whatever's gone wrong now. Sal'll just make it worse. That's kinda his job. Need something messier? Okay, fine. Escalate a situation? Yeah, he's probably your guy. But it's rare for Mourn to take that course of action, instead of the smarter, more diplomatic, more Mourn-style course of action. The course of action that usually involves Sal being as far away as possible.

Doesn't mean he's never called Sal at a weird hour to get him to come ruin something. Usually on purpose. Doesn't mean it's never happened. Just not that often.

That's not what Mourn wants now, though. Sal can tell. He can tell because of the timing. Must be hard, carrying that guilt around, that obligation, head of the family trying so hard to keep all the broken bits of it together.

What's it going to be this time. Sal never really needed a mother, in the end, Mourn was nag enough for all of them.

So Sal will pull down the blinds, he'll leave the house, won't tell Buck what's going on in his life either because he never actually cares enough to keep it to himself.

If someone wants to judge his lifestyle, they better do it where he can't hear.

Here's the routine. Unlock the door, step on the mail, head straight to the fridge and chug whatever's in there. This time it's a nasty concoction of what tastes like pickle juice but has the consistency of a protein shake. Then it's check on Kade, check on Nowles, check on Yale. It's dark out, Rune's already asleep, so Sal has to jump over the part of the hall that creaks. Never mind that the sound of him landing is never quite graceful enough, and that it always wakes her up anyways, and as soon as he walks into the bedroom he'll get an unerringly accurate pillow to the face. You better not have woken up the baby. He's on soothing duty if he did.

Sal passes out on the couch, but it's still dark when he blinks back. In and out. Hard to tell if it's been two hours or two seconds. His neck aches, though. His knee's flaring up again. The water heater kicks itself awake and starts humming when Sal finally makes it to the sink and fumbles with the wrong tap.

Photo up on the fridge. Kade frowning at the camera from the end of some street, the tip of the factory rising in the skyline above him.

Hard to tell if he would even recognize Kade now. He's at that stage where he looks a little bit different every day. Hopefully he never gets into the business. First born of the forth born should've have to worry about that, but somehow. Somehow.

He's thought about making a dark room for Yale. Get one of those red-glass light bulbs to make the room tint, pull a clothesline across so he can sting up the photos and the negatives and put them in their little line of fluid baths.

Sal paces twice, thinking about the room again. The next grocery order could look a little strange. Hydroquinone, phenidone, sodium bicarbonate.

There's no good explanation for why it takes him so long to notice.

The water heater kicks off again. The house is very quiet. It's a school night. Morning. Maybe.

First thought is that Yale's been taken. And so then of course that becomes the only thought. That becomes the reality. The first stone through the Adroxis window. Take the biggest jump to the wildest conclusion. But is it really. Is it really that unreasonable. Squadron after squadron still streaming into the district, complaining to the mayor hasn't done anything. What's the next step. Who do you go to then.

It's not the first time he's had the thought. It's not the first time he's stumbled in and had to crack Yale's door open, had to see him lying there, had to stand there for a few seconds, and then he was able to go pass out as close to the bed as he could manage.

Terrible part of him just doesn't check sometimes. Because what if that's the time. His body hurts too much, his head hurts worse, Schrodinger's son. Yale won't be gone if Sal doesn't see that he's gone. There's a reason those pictures of Nowles are still up in the hall. There's a reason why Sal keeps the one of Rune beside the bed even though it's gotten him un-laid more than once, once they figure out he's married, was, doesn't matter. Coward.

And it goes like this. It’s easy for Sal to find him in the end. Because Yale is so much like his dad that it’s flipped from being easy to tell to being completely hard to tell. Neither of them would believe you. Sal doesn’t even think where would I go. It’s just this sort of miasma, he turns this corner, he goes down that street, he knows, somehow. He knows.

That’s his baby. Yale. Yale. Right there. That's his baby. He's with Rune in that alleyway, laughing before they round the bend. Yale’s curled around his backpack, surrounded. His baby.

It takes fifteen seconds for Sal to grab the kid standing over him. The others scatter and the one hanging from Sal's fist starts spluttering. Dave. David Bianchi. Alright. He's crying, lands back in the gutter once Sal drops him. It's okay, David. Shut up now, it's alright.

Deadly kind of quiet. Stillness.

Sal takes Yale home, tucks his baby into his parents' bed. It's like when the kids would get sick, and Sal would sit up in the middle of the night and let them crawl up past him even though Rune would mutter that they'd both be getting sick now too.

Maybe he's a coward again for leaving him there, but he can't just keep staring at his face, fingers hovering over the bruises. The dark makes it look worse. So Sal leaves. He practically knocks Ken's door down, sends her back to his place while he goes north, goes and finds the Bianchis in their duplex and shoots them. Both of them. Leaves them in slumped in the kitchen where they let him in and sat him down and asked if he wanted tea.

It could play out like a countdown.

Mourn is there an hour later because it turns out the Bianchis had worked for the factory, for the family, they were mid-level informants placed in rival territory to keep a discrete eye in play. Sal knew that. Should've known that. Doesn't he know that? Now he's finally actually lost his mind. The dam's finally broken, now he's started going after whoever. Feral, finally. Rabid. The opposing gang that the Bianchis were placed in are about to think Sal's starting a war, Adroxis is about to think he's turning on his own. Everyone’s about to think he’s lost his mind.

Maybe. Just a little. How is that anything new.

Ken left while Sal was still gone. But he’s back now, standing in the doorway watching his baby sleep. Slips the nightlight out from the hall and into his room so it’s not pitch black in there.

What if Yale's still afraid of the dark.

The knock at the door comes at an inordinate time, within the hour, like he said. Like he thought. It’s Mourn. Sal knows it is. Sal just took out two of his informants. Well fuck off. Leave them alone. How long has Sal been standing there in the hallway, practically vibrating. How long has Mourn been standing on the stoop with his gentle three-beat.

Doesn't matter. Only thing that matters is how long his baby's been lying there like that. Pull the blinds down, don't tell Buck what's going on because he'll just tell Mourn. Ignore them both, ignore anything outside that room. Readjust the nightlight.