Rescuing

The big sister sat on the shore of the town pond, watching Jorge teach her youngest brother how to swim. Jorge lived two doors down, and everyone loved him despite not understanding him, either because he was speaking Spanish or because the little English he knew was too hard to catch through his accent. But none of that really mattered. You just watched his face and cleared your mind, and let his voice tumble about your head, and you knew what he was saying.

She envied her brother, and wished she didn’t already know how to swim. She imagined Jorge buoying her up, talking to her as if reading a poem, his elongated ésto, ésto, telling her when she got it right. Perhaps one day she’d marry one of his sons, JC or Luis.

“Bien, bien,” Jorge called, his arms held high: her brother was floating on his own. Jorge turned to her and gave a thumbs up, just as he’d done three years ago at this same sandy beach at the July 4^th party when she’d kept her brother from drowning.

Everyone had made a big deal out of it: a seven-year-old saving someone. But what she did wasn’t difficult or even that surprising. She just walked into the lake and fished her brother out of the water. She wouldn’t have thought much of it except that Jorge had jumped up and was running towards her by the time she was setting her brother on the sand, coughing and sputtering, the way their mom’s car sounded every night she came back from work.

Jorge had thumped her brother on the back a few times, then lifted him into a hug. He told him something in Spanish, then delivered him to their mom, Roz, who, looking him over like inspecting a piece of fruit, declared he was fine and sent him off with a hard pat on the butt. Jorge walked back to the big sister, squatting to look her straight on. For a guy who was always cheerful and smiling, he looked rundown. He said something softly, as if meant only for her to hear, his face a little grave. He shook his head, gave her a thumbs up, then touched her cheek. For the first time, she wasn’t sure what Jorge had said. Yes, he’d told her she’d done a good job, but there was something more.

She’d watched him walk back to his family, and she wanted to tell him this was her job. Like giving the youngest one his bath at night. Or helping the middle one fold his clothes and put them away. Or making sure they were on time for the morning bus because missing it and waking Roz wasn’t an option. She wanted him to know that this was how it was, just as it was her job to make sure her brother didn’t die on her watch. And that it was her watch most of the time.

That July 4th, she felt a door closing as another opened, and that she was stepping through this new doorway into another way of being, where she was no longer seven, but eons older. That was the day she began calling their mother by her first name for no reason other than it seemed more fitting when carrying the weight of the world. Maybe that’s what Jorge had been saying after all.

Things changed then. Or perhaps she started to notice the changes that had already taken place. Or perhaps there weren’t changes at all, but rather the way things had always been. She saw how her two brothers never cried like the other neighborhood kids. How they never complained, and rarely asked for anything. How they were quiet kids, as was she, not because they had little to say but because there wasn’t much use in talking. If at night they encircled Roz as she lay on the couch recovering from her day, if they cast debating glances at each other whether to risk covering her with a blanket, they knew in the end it wouldn’t matter, just as they knew without knowing that the only thing which mattered was the certainty of the other two, that each night they’d fall asleep to each other’s breathing song.

Now her brother floundered in the water as if panicked, his arms flailing, and he lurched to his feet, unsteady. Jorge caught an arm, and her brother coughed, wiping the water from his face. A shout from the shore, and Jorge’s kid, Luis, ran at the water. Jorge held up a palm for her brother to high-five: the lesson was over. Luis came at them, a frenzy of bent elbows and knees. Her brother stepped aside as the boy pitched into the water, Jorge gathering him up. Her brother watched them, then waded towards the shore, studying the water as he went. She rose and walked to the water’s edge to meet him, a towel held open.