Mess You Made

47

Cristian Adams.

I don't know how to define us. Me and Mali. I lost the definition somewhere when we were young. Sometime in the midst of it all. So the definition's been obscured for a long time, as long as I can remember. I can remember when it first became all blurred, though.

She was a quiet baby.

Malibu— not Maya.

She was a quiet child. A quiet toddler in our house. I know it because I can remember what she was like in the ways she can't. Children have an innate need to cry harder and louder to gather a person's attention. Marci does it. At night, when she's hungry, when she wants someone to hold her, she'll make it known to us without hesitation.

Mali was as young as four when she began to do the opposite. It wasn't the right age. It was abnormal for her age. I didn't know a lot but I knew that. She would cry quietly. She would cry alone— fucking strange, a four year old waking up from her nap but sitting in her crib alone and quiet, never crying loud enough for anyone to hear.

The amount of times me or papai would have to walk into the room to learn that she was actually awake, or she would have just remained there for hours with tears falling down her cheeks. I can't say for certain that a four year old is comprehensive of everything around her. That she understood at all. But four year olds adopt behaviours depending on their environment. They're smarter than you believe.

And I knew, young, that she didn't behave how babies should— I just never knew what to do about it, because as bad as it sounds, in that house, Maya was worse. Banner that hung over our house. Maya behaved in a way that was stranger and louder and scarier, it reigned over everything else. Everything else just became unnoticeable. Made Malibu become less noticeable to everyone, as if our house was resembled to a hospital's triage, the most pain always took precedent because it had to. No other way around it. You have to tend to the one at threat of bleeding out immediately.

Little things though, with Mali. Unnoticeable if she wasn't your sister, and your kid, and your best friend all in one— nobody else has ever noticed them. I remember.

She watched everyone too closely for what a child should do. She didn't smile enough according to the random shit I was googling. Her expression was always muted, or apprehensive, or just watching. She was about seven when it started and she began coming into my room at night, teary-eyed— would tug at my hand.

I feel like something bad's going to happen.

I'd tell her nothing was wrong. I'd be confused. It was always random, nothing would trigger it. It was the middle of the night?

She wouldn't settle. She'd just shake her head, adamant, try to explain it to me. Her little hands would flit about and her eyes filled with tears, searching for breath. I feel it— I feel like something bad's coming, I can feel it.

She'd be all over the fucking place. I never understood it, never knew what to do so I would just make her sleep in bed beside me and tell her I'd stay awake and watch out for whatever invisible thing she feared.

Mali used to cry with her whole body when she was seven— I can still remember it. She can't remember it. Heartbeat all over the place, sometimes she'd sweat as if it was real, as if there was some doom coming for her. She'd only fall back to sleep if she basically passed out from fearing something that wasn't even coming.

So Malibu thinks I became more of a parent, than a brother when Maya started getting bad in her teens or when papai was overcome with work as we got older. She thinks it was when she became more misbehaved and deemed a disobedient, troublesome girl as she grew older.