Second That Emotion

Second That Emotion

by Latikia

Chapter 5

I don’t remember how or when we got home. Izzy told me a security guard helped put me in the car. She told him that I’d had a bad reaction to some medication I was taking for malaria.

“Malaria? Izzy, we don’t live in Egypt or Panama.”

“Hey, it shut him up, and that’s all I cared about. Be grateful I didn’t say it was syphilis.”

“What’s that?” Izzy laughed really hard and for a pretty long time.

“You never heard of syphilis?” she asked me, once she’d stopped laughing.

I said I hadn’t.

“Has Mom or Dad given you the ‘birds and bees’ talk?”

I shook my head, ‘no’.

“I don’t believe this…”

“Izzy, maybe they figured that since I don’t go outside much it wasn’t important for me to know.”

She looked at me like I had just stepped off of a flying saucer and told her I wanted to be taken to her leader.

“You could be right about that. Look, Ike, I know you’re smart and I know you read a lot. You don’t know anything about sex? Nothing at all?”

I slowly grinned at her.

“Well, I know more today than I did yesterday.”

Izzy blushed brightly. I swear I could see the glow on her cheeks.

“Yeah, I guess you do at that. But nothing besides that?”

“Just what I picked up from Ivan. Mostly names for the penis, vagina and breasts.”

“Christ! Most kids learn at least a little just talking with their friends.” she groused.

“Hey, Izzy…remember who we’re talking about here?”

So Izzy spent the next hour telling me about the ‘birds and bees’, and then she told me about sex. Of the two, sex was more interesting. The bit about where babies came from was all well and good, and to be honest I couldn’t have given a damn about gametes and/or zygotes. Those I had read about. But tits, clits and pussies? She had my undivided attention like no teacher I’d ever had before in my life.

“Have you ever had sex, Izzy.” I asked. She quickly turned away and started gathering up our coffee cups and saucers.

“That’s not the kind of question a gentleman asks a lady.” she replied.

“How come?”

“It just isn’t polite, that’s how come.”

Once more in my newly burgeoning relationship with my sister I recognized, without using the link, that what she was saying didn’t quite jibe with the way she was acting. Many of you must have experienced the same kinds of reactions and struggled with working out what that difference between the two was. I didn’t have to struggle.

I got up and followed my sister into the kitchen and watched her wash off the cups and saucers and put them in the dishwasher. When she turned around she started some to see me leaning against the doorway watching her.

“I know you’re hiding something from me, Izzy. I may only be a kid, but I’m not stupid.”

She hung her head down and refused to look at me.

“I’m not linked to you Izzy. I won’t do that anymore without your permission. I don’t want you to think I’m spying on you. So if you don’t want to tell me, I guess that’s that.”

I turned and went upstairs to my room. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. The alarm clock showed that it was only two in the afternoon, but I was as tired as if it had been midnight. I’d nearly dozed off when I heard the door open. It shut quietly moments later and was followed by someone sitting on the bed beside me. I opened my eyes and looked over at my sister.

“Sex, or making love, should be something special and private between people who care about each other. It shouldn’t be something you brag about or spread around to make yourself look more important or make someone else look bad.” she began. “To answer your question, yes I’ve had sex before; one time, when I was a little younger than you. I thought I was in love. The next week he told all his pals and before I knew it word was all over school. I was ashamed and humiliated. I beat the shit out of him for doing what he did. And then I started taking out my anger at boys on all boys. That’s a big part of why I was mean to you for so long.”

“Why didn’t you want to tell me you’d had sex before?” I asked.

“Fear.” She sighed miserably. “Afraid that you’d think less of me; that you wouldn’t love me anymore. That’s why I never told Mom about it. And I was afraid that you’d be hurt.”

I sat up and slid next to Izzy, putting my arm around her shoulders.

“Not telling Mom, I understand that. Being afraid that I’d think less of you or not love you…I guess I can understand that too, considering how little time we’ve actually been on good terms. But why would you think I’d be hurt?”

“Because of what happened this morning.” She looked up at me and brushed her fingers along my jaw. “You don’t understand what I mean, do you?”

I shook my head.

Izzy smiled. “You’ve gotten so big. Between that and what you did to me this morning it’s getting hard for me to think of you as just a kid.”

“Thanks…I think.”

“Ike, sometimes when people have sex, or make love, or even just do what we did, well sometimes one of them start to feel possessive of the other. They start to think they have a personal claim on that person. Understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so. You thought I’d be jealous that you had sex with someone other than me.”

“Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.”

I pulled her closer and kissed the top of her head.

“I still love you, big sister. Don’t be afraid to talk to me, huh? I’ll listen. And I’ll always love you.”

Notice how I never said I wasn’t jealous? Slowly but surely, I was learning.

Izzy hugged me hard. I heard noises downstairs. Time to face the family.

Dinner that evening was an adventure in long silences and brief outbursts.

Isabeau and I were the last ones to take our places around the kitchen table where the family customarily ate dinner together. The dining room table was saved for entertaining and special events, like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mom seemed to come to life when she saw me follow Izzy into the kitchen and take my usual seat next to her. Dad sat at one end, on Izzy’s left, Mom on the other end, to my right, and Ivan sat opposite the two of us.

“Are you feeling better, Ike?” Mom always worried about me, even before the hunting trip. I think it was because I was the baby. Later I found out that she carried a lot of guilt over the loss of Isabeau’s twin, the one that died. My birth was a vindication for her of sorts.

“Much better, thanks to Izzy. She’s been a big help.” Mom’s eyes grew a bit and her eyebrows lifted with surprise.

She shifted from looking at me over to my Dad, who was studiously ignoring everything but his plate. Her good mood was quickly being leeched out.

Then Ivan had to open his mouth and make things worse.

“So you’re done hiding in your room like a little puss? Jeez, see a little blood and you start crying like a baby.”

“Ivan!” Mom snarled, getting ready to lay into her oldest.

“He’s eighteen, Marian. He’s entitled to his own opinion.” Dad inserted his two cents worth.

“It’s okay Mom,” I said “every asshole’s going to vent once in a while. Can’t be helped.”

I locked eyes with my brother and I linked. Resentment, dislike, mistrust, and jealously?

I saw from the corner of my eye my mother struggle to keep a straight face. You have no idea how much seeing that pleased me.

“Watch your mouth Ike!” Dad snapped angrily.

Why would my eighteen year old brother be jealous of me? I thought fast. What did I have that he didn’t? He was smart, maybe smarter than me. He was five years older than me and would be going of to college to play football next year. He had friends, girlfriends, his own car, cool clothes.

He was shorter then me. Could that be it?

Shit! I suddenly remembered that in all the years Ivan and my Dad and Granddad had been going out hunting, Dad and Ivan had never gotten a deer. And I went out once, got a big buck with my very first shot and then went all pacifist about it.

I bet it was a combination of that along with Ivan having never particularly liked me. I was too young to be his buddy and too old to be his toy.

“I can’t help it if I’m taller than you Ivan. And it’s not my fault you never bagged a deer.” I said levelly, keeping my eyes locked on his.

I felt his heart jump. Unease and uncertainty washed thru him. Bingo! And was that just a tiny bit of fear hiding there at the back?

I broke the link and turned to my Dad. He and I were the same height at that time, so I didn’t have to look down to meet his eyes. Click, we were linked.

My father was a jumble of powerful emotions running themselves in circles. Most of them I couldn’t recognize, even after my excursion to the mall that morning. But I recognized apprehension and fear.

“Get out of my head Ike.” Dad snarled at me.

I smiled back. “I’m not in your head. I’m in your heart.”

His snarling expression faded and the apprehension I’d felt inside made itself known across his face.

“Ike, please…stop.” Mom put one of her tiny hands on top of mine. It was so warm and the sensation of her skin on mine was very calming. I snapped the link.

“Okay, mom.” I put my other hand on top of hers and gave it a little squeeze. It was then I realized how small and fragile my mother was…on the outside. On the inside she was a giant, with a drive, determination and heart bigger than anyone I’ve ever met.

Mom died of cervical cancer when I was nineteen.

After dinner was finished I helped Izzy and Mom clean up and do the dishes. I told Mom that I’d be going back to school the next day.

“Are you sure you feel up to it? If you need more time, you should take it.”

“No, I’d just get bored. I’m okay now.”

She smiled up at me and gave me a hug.

“You’ve gotten so big. What happened to my baby?”

“He’s in here somewhere.” Mom laughed and slapped me on the butt and chased me out of the kitchen so she could finish up.

I went down to the basement and took my bedclothes out of the dryer and hauled them up to my room. I finished making my bed, then turned on the radio and spent an hour reading my school books.

When I was done reading I stripped down and put on my sweats and running shoes and headed downstairs.

The past year I’d started running at night, augmenting the weight lifting I usually did during the daylight hours. I would usually make a couple circuits of the neighborhood, which I guesstimated to be about three miles. I’d developed decent stamina and had recently found a nice loping stride that helped me eat the distance with very little effort. Kind of like that mythic warrior Granddad had talked about.

I got downstairs and could hear my parents arguing in the living room. I guess they hadn’t heard me come down, or maybe they were so involved with each other they didn’t care.

“You need to stop coddling the boy Marian. He’ll never grow up if you keep pampering him.”

“You need to stop trying to force him into your idea of manliness! Ike is never going to be like you or Ivan and the sooner you accept that the happier we’ll all be.”

I thought for a moment about what Izzy had said earlier at the Mall, about how if I could link with both my parents in a situatition like this I might be able to help them. The terror I’d felt at drowning in human emotions was still with me, but then I thought ‘There’s only the two of them…two couldn’t be anywhere near as bad, could it?’

So I stepped quietly inside the living room. Mom was sitting on the couch and Dad was in his customary recliner facing the fireplace. Both of them were facing away from me, but I could see them just fine.

I linked. First with Dad; he was feeling rejected, stubborn, self righteous, unloved, angry and guilty. Guilt with a hint of uncertainty and fear.

Then I made a parallel link to my mother; she was angry, protective, scared, jealous, sad and afraid.

I felt a little unsteady at first, keeping their competing emotions separate and apart from each other. But after a minute or two I started to get the hang of it.

“Marian, I know he’s the youngest, and that he’s had a tough time because of his lack of pigmentation, but he has to join the world someday and the longer you and he put it off the harder it’s going to be on him. He can’t keep hiding forever.”

“David, when are you going to understand that Ike is different? I’m not just talking about his skin, and you know it. Your father can see he’s different, I can see it; even Isabeau can see it now. So why the hell can’t you? Is it so much easier for you to think that by taunting and tormenting him that the difference will simply go away? How very Nietzsche of you. All you’re doing is alienating your son…and most of the rest of your family.”

My shoes may have creaked or scuffed the floor, or maybe I leaned against the doorjamb too hard, but it was at that point the two of them realized that I was in the room with them.

I felt their emotions shifting and reforming. It was really quite interesting, like watching a multi-colored lava lamp and a plasma ball spliced together.

Mom got a little embarrassed and indignant on top of everything else, and not a little shocked.

Dad on the other hand got even more angry and guilty.

Instead of acting guilty I just stood there and watched the two of them watching me.

“Have you been standing there long?” Mom asked.

“A few minutes.”

“You were not invited to be a part of this conversation.” Dad said.

I shrugged. His feelings of guilt and unease were growing.

“As loud as the two of you were getting I didn’t think it was a private discussion. If it was, you should have shut the door.”

As a young thirteen year old I should have been more cautious, more concerned about what my Dad might do to me. I’ve never been very close to my Dad. Most of my early memories of the two of us are of me being afraid. But now that I was the same height and had the added leverage of knowing what he was feeling anytime I wanted…I’d started feeling more confidence in my self. My adventures with Izzy that morning had helped a lot in that respect as well.

So I stood there and stared back at my parents, waiting for one of them to tell me to get lost. Please let it be Dad.

“Get out of here Ike. This is a conversation between your mother and me and does not concern you.”

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

“Welllllll…since you were talking about me and what I should or shouldn’t be doing I thought you might want to know how I feel.”

Dad’s guilt and unease gave way to a wall of fear and anger. Mom’s hurt and sadness stayed the same, but the protectiveness relaxed somewhat and was joined by a touch of pride. I puffed up a bit at that and smiled at my mother.

“Thank you…I’m proud of you too.”

Mom’s eyes got huge. Her surprise was kind of tangy. I’d never noticed that some of the emotions had a flavor or taste. Maybe I was just getting better at using my talent.

“You can actually feel that?” she asked.

“That,” I turned to face my Dad, “and lots more.”

I walked in and slung a hip over the back of the couch. “I linked with both of you when I heard you fighting. Thought maybe I could help you understand what the other was feeling. But I’m not sure anything I tell you will do any good.”

Mom nodded her understanding. “Sometimes knowing doesn’t help.” she said.

“Yeah, I’m beginning to see that.” I leaned down and kissed my mother’s cheek.

I stood up and snapped the links. Then I turned to face my Dad.

“Don’t worry too much about me. I’m a lot tougher than you might think.”

I left them sitting there and headed out for my run, thinking in the back of my mind; The Shadow knows!