Page 47 of Pretty Black

“It’s my stepfather’s fault,” I whispered, and I’d never admitted that to anyone before. “They wouldn’t let him come with me. I offered money and private education, and he wouldn’t have any of it. He wouldn’t let ‘his son’ follow in my footsteps and be a loser. He wouldn’t let me corrupt him. I didn’t know what else to do. I hired lawyers and told my brother to go to CPS. He wouldn’t. He didn’t want to risk upsetting my stepfather.”

“That must have been hard to live with.”

“Very.” I pressed my face into my knees, wanting to disappear. “I should have quit. He called me all the time, and I couldn’t fucking do anything from the other side of the country or the world. I went to see him as much as I could. All my time off. But Alexander doesn’t like to leave money on the table, so those days got harder and harder to find. I can’t really hop on a plane home from Australia for two days. The flight takes two days. We talked on the phone a lot, but it was hard too. His dad didn’t like it.” I shook with the anger and sadness, willing the grief to go back to the place I buried it in my soul. The place the darkness had taken root. I didn’t want it out or so freely roaming. I didn’t want it to swallow me whole.

“Do you think quitting would have helped?”

“Yes…no. I don’t know.” I exhaled. “Maybe not. I didn’t live there, and my stepfather would have probably still made his life hell even if I could be in town.”

“How old was he when he died?”

“Sixteen.”

“He had two more years left at home?”

“One. He only had one more year to get through.” How was it fair for me to ask him to survive one more year when I don’t think I would have.

“But you left home at seventeen?”

“Yes, and I had to threaten them with emancipation. Alexander helped with the legal stuff.” I chewed my lip. “They didn’t want me to go.”

“Did you consider that option for your brother?”

I nodded. “Yes, I offered to fight them legally, but he told me he didn’t want to rock the boat. That he was scared of how his dad would react if we tried, and he had to live there during it all. I couldn’t just kidnap a minor and take him across state lines, and I couldn’t be in the city that long. We’d have to let it play out in the courts. I should have pushed harder or quit or called DCFS again or something.” Anything. I hated going over and over in my fucking brain about everything I should have done or tried.

“Did he ask you not to call DCFS?”

“Yes. He lied to them when I called the year before. His dad threatened him, and he said he didn’t want to end up in foster care like Alister.”

“Alister, the one in your band?”

I nodded, not wanting to say anything more about his trauma. Growing up in foster care was public knowledge, but in case she couldn’t be trusted, I wouldn’t tell her his story, only mine.

“So your brother knew the troubles of the system and decided to stick with the devil he knew?”

I nodded again. “I guess so.”

“You were still a child, Iris. Yes, you were nineteen, a legal adult, but forced to work like you were and deal with such stressful matters as being your brother’s only outlet. It sounds like there was a lot of abuse at home.”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to get into that either.

“You cannot look back and use the judgment in hindsight or options you didn’t know you had. I’m sure both of you were terrified of setting him off. That is very common for children of abusers. You become the mitigator of their mood and are hypersensitive to it. You did your best at the time with the information you had and what he asked you not to do, yes?”

“Yes,” I said through a half sob. “But it wasn’t enough, and now he’s gone. I should have done more.”

“Did you know he was suicidal?”

The question stopped me. “No. Not like that. I knew he was depressed, but if I had thought he was—” I shook my head. “No.”

She nodded. “You were working with what he told you and asked you not to do. You respected him and trusted him. You didn’t let him down. Your parents let him down. The system let him down. You did your best, and we have to accept in life that even our best sometimes isn’t enough.”

I knew I should accept it. I knew I had to, but the guilt felt like a hundred-pound backpack under my skin. I couldn’t get it off. “I don’t know how.”

“I don’t want to be another person saying this. I’m sure you’ve heard it, but I think you need to talk about it. You have to let it out, Iris. You’re making it worse by keeping it all inside. The thing about grief and loss is when they are kept in the dark and bottled up, they fester. Without outside perspective, they grow and become the worst versions our emotions can make them. If we talk about them, they can be reasoned through and processed and lead toward more acceptance. Even if you don’t take for granted all of the things I’ve said to you, your brain is going to chew on some of those concepts and ideas I presented, and I would be surprised if your guilt isn’t at least a little eased by some of it. It won’t work overnight, but with time and therapy, I think that backpack will get easier to carry. You don’t have to figure out how to take it off, but we can try to lighten the load. That’s why group counseling works and grief meetings. These things help. The dark doesn’t help.”

I nodded, trying to get on board with it all, but the idea of talking about it still sounded terrible. “I don’t think something like that would ever work for me because of who I am.”

“Is it still the idea of the public getting it?”

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