Please. I want my innocence back. Whatever it costs.

I did not lose it in my room when the call arrived—squeezed between desk and bed as I was, not sure if I should lie down, sit, fall on my knees. It was gone besides the breaker box in the backyard, just a few minutes later—the time that it took for my brain to connect the dots.

Two, in particular. Your death I had just learned about, bro, and a message you had sent a month earlier—casual, funny, sarcastic, grotesque. You had mentioned vague heart symptoms (the same I had for years) and your firm intention to ignore them for the time being. I had answered, ‘you know what you are doing. I am sure you’ll be fine’. I was. Why?

The dots connected rapidly—like uncapped ends of wire brushing against each other. Boom. A sparkle and everything goes dark. Quiet as well: appliances, TV, radio shut up. The house sinks into silence after the juice is cut. Eerie calmness—the lull before a storm.

Which storm? Nothing happens when the power is gone. You just push a button, perhaps pull a burned cord from the wall. Is it why I was next to the breaker box? Had a failure occurred? Well, not an electrical one. I was shutting the lights of my workshop, that’s all, from the main switch—unwilling to walk a few yards to the shed. No more than twenty steps but they seemed too many. My legs had gone soft.

I was shutting the lights, knowing the workday was over though it was early afternoon. But I had entered a no-time zone, a vacation. Literally, an empty spot, a ‘gone missing’ area that regarded not only you, the deceased, but reality itself.

So, uncaring of whatever I had left behind—dirty brushes, open jars of paint—I just called it quits. I’ll be back tomorrow. ‘Closed for family loss’—do you still recall those signs on store windows, when stores belonged to folks? You don’t and I didn’t either. Recall. Nothing. Didn’t formulate thoughts. I closed workshop because I didn’t know better. I was paralyzed. My hands limp, I stood by the back door, not daring to get into the house, approach the damn phone.

And I connected the dots, or they did it on their own. Quickly, I said, and yet slowly—with the stuttering calm typical of an emergency, when all seems to be unraveling from an old movie reel, hesitantly progressing a photogram at a time. Hesitant—that’s how things appear in such instances—yet relentless, unstoppable, their placidity not a field of possibilities, not a chance for us to step in, try to change the course of events. Wait! Stop! No, dear. Events have already happened. Slowness as they materialize to our senses is just a device—cruel, at that—magnifying their bearing while highlighting our incapacity. Literally showing the lazy pace of our consciousness, how we can’t fit meaning into our brains if not crumb by crumb, spelling one letter at a time.

Therefore, the dots met slowly while my heart sunk into my feet, hit the ground and kept going, down to the very center of the earth where it disappeared. I haven’t fished it out yet.

False. My heart didn’t sink. Such a banal figure. Sentimental and vain. What fell was my innocence. Did I have any left at such mature age? A few minutes before I wouldn’t have known. Yes, I had one and it ruined down my body.
False. It slid imperceptibly, like a razor-blade rip you don’t even feel—thin, invisible until it vomits gallons of red. No. The plunge was clean, bloodless. A tear dropping? I didn’t cry. Another spill? Some shameful secretion as when, one month pregnant, I expelled my child’s tween embryo. Dirty spoonful of mucus. That’s all.

Perhaps my innocence fell like one of those valuables—wallet, phone, wedding ring—you suddenly can’t find. Oh my, it must have dropped when… Exactly. At some point you had a bizarre feeling. Something happened. You looked around—nothing on the grass, on the sidewalk. Let’s go. You don’t realize until later.

Please, I want my innocence back. Not the entire thing, the full spectrum. Only that modest portion I owned before the breaker box, before my dumb stillness—back turned to a wooden fence, eyes vacuously staring at a similar wall of brown boards. Trapped between two barriers. Paralyzed. Stabbed by an evidence of tragic fault. I had said you would be fine. You died a month later. I had killed you, then.

•

In the morning I had fixed the fence.

For the first time in days it had stopped raining. So I decided to take care of a postponed chore. See, the neighboring lot was empty. Renters had been evicted from an old, crumbling house. No one had been around until a couple of addicts came to occupy the grounds. They slept under a tent installed by my fence, which was falling apart… my fence, next to my backdoor—this last flimsy at best, open most of the time. I knew not taking action was inviting trouble my way.

I should at least pretend. Nail a couple of boards, fake some kind of privacy. Here’s the issue—my fence was a gaping mouth, toothless, most of the wood so rotten it could not be repaired, it wouldn’t hold up. Well, I could pierce some holes where nails wouldn’t work, slip long screws across, secure them with bolts. In order to perform the operation I would need to trespass momentarily, and the idea made me nervous. I did not want to meet… be surprised… I’d prefer to remain invisible.

In the morning the rain had stopped. All was dripping, soaked. Also green, alive, vibrant. Such crispness. A clean taste to the air. A sense of beginning. I realized the neighboring lot was clear. The couple might have found another abode during stormy weather. Therefore, I jumped across with my toolbox and I got the thing done. Around lunchtime, a cousin sent a text message. Did you do it? I did, I texted back in glory. I am relieved because I was worried, he replied. How nice.

I understood later on that he already knew. When he inquired about my restored safety, he knew you—my brother—had passed. With hindsight, his message sounded hushed—quiet, as if he were afraid of awaking someone.

Or his message echoed, instead. Resonated as if shouted across a deep valley, mountaintop to mountaintop. There was a halo around his text—a gap, a ravine. As if his words of care, again, were the lull just before the storm. Rather a residual, leftover, the last page of a book we have returned and the library is closed. Line from a stolen Bible, before the flight to Egypt occurred. Before Babel or the deluge, Gomorra or Babylon. Language lost—the forgotten tongue of innocence gone.

Shattered, like those jugs standing for virginity in folk songs, fairy tales. I had carried it to the well, wanting to fetch water. I had balanced it on top of my coiled braids, careful to keep my spine straight and flexible. I had waded on rocks, climbed up and down stairs, even jumped over a ditch, managing to hold my precious vessel in place. Because, see, you only have one of those earthen jars. You don’t get a replacement. I had done well so far. Then what happened? Did somebody call? Did I turn? A split second—the thing was in pieces.

•

Innocence was mine a week earlier, on my birthday. It had reached me like a caress, like a breeze. My son had gone with me to a second-hand store. He knew spending time in my company would be the best gift he could give me. It was. Moving, touching—both the simplicity of it and a tad of leisure implied, a tad of excitement. Weekday, working time. Take an hour off, Mother, let’s browse aisles of bargain books, bargain clothes. Find a frame for that pic you wanted to hang in the bathroom. Choose something.

Life is small. Always been, and I like its smallness. Something poignant about its unadornment, its rigor. Is there something you like, Mom? Need nothing. Yes, but what would you like? To linger—my son—with you in this suspension, this bubble. To cocoon within this wish of yours to give me pleasure, to treat me to a reward sized to my petite scale.

He found a book or two, showed me a manual of knitting patterns from an era revolved—was I enticed? That isn’t what he asked. He knew my frugality. Did I need it? I didn’t. I had a faint pang of sadness. Time, I wanted to say, had run over. No room for exploration, for learning was left. Time, I wished to say, had almost expired. I was turning…
Wait. I tried on warm sweaters, as my birthday comes in mid winter and this year the season was damp, rainy. I tried on a few, comparing quality and prices. None of them was worth purchasing, I thought. I should pass. But I had a good time. Loved this bargain shop I didn’t know existed. I was happy, entertained.

On our way out we stopped by the jewel case, loaded with a profusion of rings. They were marked in cents—not a piece made a dollar worth. Two of them pleased me a lot… One—silver and pearl—came apart a week later. I repaired it with a bit of wire.

A week later my brother was dead and I, close by the breaker box, joined the dots. Those symptoms he dismissed. My inadvertence. My innocence lost. What has innocence to do with cheap rings? Everything.

A week earlier—that careless joy, fresh insouciance, like a parcel from childhood, like crumbs from a packet of butter cookies. Perhaps stale, but I’m hungry. The illusion I could savor sweetness and be worth a present, a prize. Sunlight. Colors of rainbow. A truce.

Life has been small and tough—tough, always. A truce here, this birthday of mine. Joy, so fragile. An illusion, mirage, chimera sent about by cruel gods—those now pelleting me with horrible pain, crushing me under the weight of guilt, doubt, regret and remorse. Like Prometheus chained to a rock, birds pecking his liver, yellow bile leaking down—a river of sorrow, of tears.

•

For my birthday, my brother sent me a note. A day later, and he apologized. A day later, but with hindsight still on time—a few days before the stop sign, dear brother. He wrote that he was happy to be my sibling… he had never said such a thing. Apparently, it was time for recaps. He felt old, he confessed, watching himself in the mirror I was. Yet how wonderful, he mused, is just to be alive. I agreed.

He went on—his letter so sweet and so warm I realized it was a love missive, perhaps meant to sweep away misunderstandings, falls back, any drifting that might have occurred between us. Recently we had patched things, gotten closer. Now the mending had been completed. For my birthday he embroidered our tie with a formal signature, with a beautiful monogram. He said things conclusive, remembered our childhood, celebrated the beauty we shared, the gifts he thanked me for.

I was grateful beyond measure. I felt life paid me back with such pretty letter of more wrongs than it ever landed on me, more than I ever counted. Because I loved brother so much… I so hungered for the closeness he was handing to me. For such treaty of alliance and loyalty, declaration of peace.

Then the letter turned a bit strange. Something in its tone was so final, it felt like a testament. At the end I was perplexed and troubled, but I couldn’t label my unease. Yes, his sentences read like a will but no, he didn’t take his life. Not that I knew, that I thought. But besides the breaker box and the backdoor, pieces matched that I’d rather keep separate, lost in different folds of my brain.

For a week we had been corresponding daily. I had found pretexts for conversation, wishing for our exchange to continue. We lived oceans apart. For a whole week his words popped on my laptop—endless dialogues, long stories, humorous and full of delight like when we were kids.

Then he didn’t reply to my last email. Mute for one or two days. I suspected he might have grown bored, distracted. I tried not to worry. He’d come back. Perhaps he was traveling, maybe away for the weekend. Where was I when I suddenly counted the unresponsive hours, asked myself what was going on? In the laundry room, fishing clothes out of the machine, hanging them to dry. Winter has been inclement this year. So he had said in a recent message—that he piled stuff on for the night, hood, scarf and warm sweaters. This year winter bites—here, and there where he lives. Lived.

•

Innocence, you have been stored in a box, pushed behind an armchair upholstered with velvet—bloody shade of burgundy or crimson, those hues Father relished. First, the velvet had ribs giving it some texture, a consistency nice to the touch. Slowly, it was worn in crucial spots—armrests, seat, and back where Dad’s head reposes. It has been consumed—threadbare, thin, greasy—a membrane about to rip open.

Books—a ton of them—line the wall. This must be Dad’s studio. Our town, the past, Mom, Dad, home—that is where our roots collude, brother. I recall you getting a trashing during middle school years. You had performed serious misdeeds, some act of rebellion causing awful disciplinary measures. You had been suspended for days.

Dad received the news as custom imposed, echoing whatever punishment you had already endured with a beating of his own. A severe one, and yet nothing weird—he just followed the script. But you cracked under the blows, for some reason. You fainted and Father panicked. A matter of minutes, of seconds. When you came through you murmured my name. You asked for me, not sure why. Right then I realized that you trusted me. I was moved and proud. I understood we had struck a pact of belonging, one of those sealed in blood.

I still recall the scene. Why do I picture you behind Dad’s armchair—out of sight, crouched on tiles also tinted of lurid crimson and rust? The rug, too small, has slipped sideways, baring the chilled floor. You hide behind the armchair as if to seek shelter, by the bookshelf weighed with history and wisdom, art, religion and zillions of words. Such a ponderous load. Father has left the room. You say nothing. You look blurred, in a daze. I keep silent. Time goes by like loose change—coins thrown inside a fountain, tossed over your shoulder while you look away, promise you will return but you won’t.