The Dictionary

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

    The smell of ginger felt the room as soon as we entered it. How dare they, a funeral home, have the freaking smell of Christmas as the choice of candle for the chapel. Classic.

    I’m sure, whoever decided this someone meant well, and yeah, Christmas was three days ago, but it seemed cruel to me and my dead brother would have thought it was cruel, too.

    “Why did he come home...” My mother trembled, her already tired shoulders drew inward as she slid on the pew closet to the casket. It was closed, for the best possible reason. It was bad enough that my mother and I had to identify his cold, burnt body a few days ago. It was sheer torture, pain at its highest capacity...I loved my brother but we weren’t doing that again. He would have understood.

    “He came home because it was Christmas Eve,” I growled, answering my mother. I knew that her question had hardly been a question at all, but I couldn’t help but answer. There was so many questions. I couldn’t handle another unanswered word.

    “Today, we gather to remember the life of...”

    I tuned the chaplain out right then and there. He didn’t know my brother, and even though he face was solemn and spoke with such pronounced sincerity, I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t give care about what he had to say.

    Instead I turned my focus to the odd assortment of people who found it in their schedule to attend my brother’s funeral. There were not many, perhaps no more than twenty or thirty, but I was still surprised that they came and I found myself not being worried or bothered with the empty seats because, I knew my brother wouldn’t have worried about it.

    Most of the people had been his high school friends. I knew for a fact that he hadn’t spoken to any of them since he graduated two years ago, but in our small town, people don’t typically leave, and when someone dies, everybody finds out.

    That’s why it shocked me that his high school friends were the ones to show. Even though the whole town knew about my brother’s death, he had been a burden to my mother and had even stolen from her. People didn’t like that, and everywhere my mother went, it was like she wore a letter on her chest that said,

    “Hello world, I have a twenty year old son that’s addicted meth and most of his life he leaves on the street. He takes money from me without asking, and you know that homeless guy that walks around town in an Iron Maiden shirt and is in and out of the county jail? Well, that’s my boy! H also has a baby somewhere near Dallas, but I don’t even know the name of the mother nor the child and I probably never will. because they moved away to get away from him. They have a restraining order on them as well. Oh, and by the way, my children have never met their father and I work at Waffle House. Please volunteer advice on what I should do with my jacked up life! I’m super desperate for your input.”

    Everyone had an opinion about my brother, even though most people had never really interacted with him. As a result, people didn’t like him, and they were even more disappointed with my mother.

    “Why don’t you just change the locks on your house?”

    “Why don’t you just put your money in the bank so he can’t steal it?”

    “Why don’t you just send him rehab?”

    “Why don’t you get that daughter of yours to talk to them? They’re close, right?”

    This was everyday--from the Waffle House, to the grocery store and everywhere in between. My mother was never  mean to these people, but she would simply shrug her shoulders making sure they knew she didn’t want their advice. This angered them even more.

    I don’t know why my mother didn’t do anything about my brother. There were so many theories around town to “she’s just in denial” to “I bet she does meth with him” that I couldn’t keep up with them. I never asked her myself so I never knew. I figured that maybe I would help her deal with when I graduated from high school, but now it didn’t even matter anymore.

    “Let us pray,” The chaplain said and bowed his head. Everyone bowed their heads but me. Instead, I took it as an opportunity to look behind me. At some point, Cory Dawson slipped in. She had been one of my best friends in middle school and we remained close friends for the first part of high school. However, the first night my brother got arrested for buying some illegal drug I was there, and her father, the country sheriff was the officer to take him to jail.

    Just like that, I became a “bad influence.” We didn’t stop being friends right away, but over time, our weekend excursions ceased, and then we stopped texting each other, sitting at lunch together, and eventually, we weren’t friends anymore. It wasn’t long, after my brother’s second or third arrest, my other “friends” followed her. I wasn’t Evie, the girl with the cute older brother anymore. I was Evie, the little sister of a local convict.

    I hadn’t realized I was still looking at Cory when I caught her glance up, and we made eye contact. She was dressed neatly as always, wearing a tightly fit black dress and her jet black hair was neatly pinned into a bun. She really looked like her mother, a beautiful Persian woman right now. She looked more grown up like that, and it was no shock now that she had started dating some guy who was a freshman in college. I had to admit, I had always been a little envious of her, and her perfect life, but now, I was flat out jealous of her. I knew it was a childish emotion, but it was true.

    “In Christ’s name we pray, amen.”

    The chaplain clasped his hands together softly, and just like that, the funeral was over. He came over to my mother and I to offer his condolences and then shuffled out of the room.

    The pallbearers arrived to take the casket and we were escorted to the limousine to head to the cemetery.

    My mother’s sister, Hannah, and her husband Nathan trailed behind us, yet keeping a careful distance.

My mother and her little sister never had a good relationship. Hannah had moved to Atlanta and married a lawyer and rarely ever spoke to my mother. When my grandmother died, even though she left my mother the family house, she had left Hannah, her favorite daughter, the fifteen acres of land next to it. Hannah and Nathan were currently building a new home on the lot, and had it not been for the fire, we would have been living our shabby old family home right next to a six hundred thousand dollar estate.

    My aunt Hannah knew it was a tacky, and I suppose as a way of making up for it, she offered to pay for my brother’s funeral.

    It was a nice gesture, but I still didn’t like her.

    From that moment forward, I allowed myself to check out mentally. From the limousine ride all the way to the cemetery and back to our neighbor’s house where we were staying temporarily, I didn’t allow myself to process these moments. My brother wouldn’t have wanted me to, so I wasn’t going to.

    The entire time I never talked to Hannah nor her husband, and since it was only family at the burial, I never had to talk to Cory, or any of his high school friends.

    I was thankful for that. Dealing with the death of my brother was hard enough, but dealing with his high school friends and all of their sad sorries and awkward condolence speeches was an entirely new set of issues that I wasn’t ready for emotionally.

    “Would you like some dinner, darling?” Entirely unannounced, Hannah appeared into the guest room where I was preparing to go to bed.

    “No,” I shot back at her, making an effort to not make eye contact with her. I wasn’t going to give her that. She could care less about my mother and I, and who knows what she said behind our backs about my brother. I didn’t want her money, and I most definitely didn’t want her sympathy.

    “Um...okay, well...Nathan and I are headed back to the hotel. Let us know if you need anything, okay?”
    I didn’t respond. Instead, I stared at the carpet, and didn’t blink or flinch until she finally backed out of the room.

    I took a deep breath as I heard her go down the stairs. It was likely the first time I had done that since Christmas Eve.