All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [8]
That picture came to embody that conflicted sense between my mother and me. During high school, she would pull out the picture and make sure my girlfriends could see how cute I was as a baby. But her pride in that photo never seemed to translate into real life. Children, even eighteen-year-olds, can experience shame, and that’s what I felt each time my mother trotted out that picture. I hated it.
Another memory hangs heavy from the December of my sixth year, just a few days before Christmas. My father came home from job hunting to a question he’d heard a hundred times: “Find anything, Emmett?” He gave the all-too-standard answer: “No, Amy. How are the boys?” On this day, my mother pointed to my brother, Rob, and said, “He is born of the Devil, evil, utterly wicked. Emmett, I want you to take him down to the jail right now. Tell the police about him and leave him there.”
Now, my brother was seven at the time, hardly old enough to be evil. Still, my father guided Rob’s arms into his little navy peacoat and then walked him out the front door and down, I assumed, to the police station. I was scared to death. I scrambled to the windowsill, sat on the ledge, pressed my nose against the frosted glass, and hoped that my father and Rob would turn around and come back inside. I must have sat there for half an hour, waiting, straining to see through my tears and the falling snow. It may have been only fifteen minutes, but terror for a child is measured in breaths, not minutes. Soon, my panic skyrocketed when my father walked back up the street, alone. I was sure in that moment that the next time I disobeyed, I’d be sent to jail for good, just like Rob. But then I saw my brother, trailing a short distance behind my father, kicking at the snow. I imagine my father walked Rob all the way down to the jail, maybe even took him inside to spook him, reprimanded him, then turned and said, “Now let’s get home.”
I climbed down from the windowsill and assumed the stance common to Rob, my father, and most of the boys I knew—I stood tall because “boys don’t cry.” But that memory haunted me for over forty dry-eyed years. I still don’t know that I’ve shed tears worthy of the fear I felt that day. Sure I was afraid for myself, but I also didn’t know what I would do without Rob.
What is my heart to you
That you must break it over and over …
Practice on something else.1
Louise Glück, “Matins”
Mom, Dad, me, and Rob
Rob was only a year older than me and in theory could have been an ally in the struggles with our parents. I suppose he also could have sided with them against me. My brother chose neither though; he chose himself. He looked out for one person and one person only—Rob. I don’t believe it was selfishness as much as self-preservation. We were still brothers though, both endangered and both trying to find a way to survive what one poet called “the chronic angers of that house.”
If I were limited to one word to describe my brother it would be tough. But I wouldn’t spell it t-o-u-g-h, because that spelling makes me think of d-o-u-g-h, which is soft, and Robert was anything but soft. I like to say that he was t-u-f-f. I can still hear him huff at people or things. It wasn’t that he was exasperated; it was more a display of strength and boundaries, like how a bear might paw and snort at the ground. He was very self-possessed, a leader of the kid-gang in the neighborhood who loved to fight and didn’t appear to need a drop of affection from my mother. Tuff. As younger brothers often do, I loved him and loathed him equally.
Rob and I used to play a game called Clock with the neighborhood kids. Today it would be considered silly, if not outright stupid. But it was a different time then. Here’s how the game worked: A group of kids, maybe five or six, would sit on a bench or stoop, and