“You stink and are a villain and you lied to me and acted dishonorably,” I said, and without looking I grabbed something off the table beside my bed and threw it at him. The something ended up being my alarm clock. He must have not been watching, or maybe the room was so dark that he couldn’t see it, because the alarm clock hit him in his face and bounced off the bed and onto the floor.
His hand went up to his face and he turned away.
“Screw the shit-off,” I said.
“Fuck,” he said, holding his face. He kept his hands there so that he looked like he was wearing a mask made of his fingers. Then he took his hand away and the fingers had blood on them, and his nose had blood on it too.
I did not mean to make him bleed and tried to tell him that.
He was gone and slammed the door before I could get all the words out.
I turned on my “Sounds of the Ocean” music that lets you think you’re at sea. The music has dolphins and whales and birds and the waves crashing, so it’s easy to imagine being on a boat with Vikings, rowing somewhere under the sun. If I imagine hard enough I can almost smell the ocean.
I didn’t mean to throw the alarm clock at Gert’s face. I just meant to throw it somewhere.
After a while I opened my door, very quietly, and stuck my head out to see what was going on. Gert’s door wasn’t closed all the way. I went into the hallway and stood outside his room.
The bedside lamp was on, and Gert was hunched over on the edge of his bed. Sweat made his head look like he’d dipped it in a bowl of water. His tattoos were now a very weird green color in the light and made his arms and chest look dirty. I couldn’t see my favorite tattoo of his, an eagle, a very powerful bird, that he has on his chest. Even though he was getting fat, he still had muscles on his shoulders and arms, big muscles with veins that reminded me of worms just under his tanned skin.
I thought maybe he was thinking about how he was going to get mad at me, for throwing the clock and hurting his face. Then I heard him. He was crying. Not just normal crying. He was crying very seriously. His body started shaking. The green tattoos crinkled as the muscles under them got big and then small.
He looked up and I saw that his nose had a bandage taped onto it with Scotch tape. The air was thick and felt like it was about to rain.
“Góðan dag?” I said quietly, opening the door a little bit more.
Gert made a throaty sound and said, “Close the door.”
I opened my mouth and started to say words that I didn’t know wanted to come out, sorry and things like that. He stood up and said, “CLOSE THE DOOR,” in a really loud voice that Gert only uses when he’s very serious, so I closed the door and ran to my room and put my pillow over my head.
* * *
The morning after our fight, I woke up and remembered that I had been a shit-heel. One of the rules that Gert and I had was that he would never hurt me, and I would never hurt him, in combat. We could say villainous words, but fighting with our hands or other weapons was not allowed. I had broken a very important rule by hitting him with the alarm clock.
The Word of Today I picked was very powerful, since I looked it up especially and did not use the special calendar that tells you what the Word of Today is supposed to be.
It was supposed to be collateral, which was okay but not the right word. I wanted to find a special word to say sorry, and so the Word of Today was contrition, which means feeling bad about something you did and feeling “contrite.”
“I am contrite for hitting you in the face,” I said to myself. “I feel contrition for hitting you in the face. People who hit members of their tribe who they love should have contrition.”
I went into the kitchen and Gert was making breakfast. He had a Band-Aid on his face.
“Morning,” he said. There were eggs in the frying pan.
“Good morning,” I said. “I have contrition for hitting you in the face with the alarm clock.”
“You have what?”
“Contrition. That’s a special Word of Today. It means—”
“I know what it means.” He cracked another egg onto the pan and scooped up the first egg onto a plate.
“I’m sorry I hit you with the alarm clock,” I said.
“I know you are,” he said. “And I’m sorry for what happened, that I messed up your dinner.”
“You didn’t mess up our dinner,” I corrected. “Pearl and I had a very good talk.”
He brought over the plate of eggs and put it in front of me, with some toast on it.
I asked him a question I had been thinking about asking him all last night. “Why are you friends with Toucan? He is a shit-heel villain.”
Gert wiped his hands on a paper towel and sat down across from me. “Yeah. He kind of is. And I wouldn’t say we’re friends.”
“He’s not part of our tribe.”
“No. Definitely not.”
“So? Why did you have to go see him?”
He put down the knife and fork. “Look. He helped us with some money, when we moved from Uncle Richard’s. That’s the truth. Okay?”
“I don’t like him,” I said, cutting open the eggs and watching the yolk spill out. “He’s a thug.”
“People say that about me.” He dipped his toast into the yolk on his plate. “How are the eggs?”
“Good,” I said. “Yellow. And you’re not a thug. You are a hero.”
“Well.” He sighed. “Okay. Toucan got us out of a bad spot.”
He said that I might not have noticed, but things were not good with Uncle Richard. Gert said that Uncle Richard acted nice sometimes and was angry for no reason other times. And that he was creepy.
Gert said, “Remember the time he walked in while you were in the shower?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He said it was an accident.”
“I call bullshit on that.” Gert took a sip of his water. “Remember how I started doing your laundry?”
“I thought you were being nice.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t want him touching your underwear.”
I thought about being on the couch with Uncle Richard, the night of the big fight with Gert, and how he was touching me.
“Is that why you didn’t like talking about sex at Marxy’s house?”
“I didn’t like talking about sex because you’re my sister and it’s gross, that’s why. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I needed to get us out of there, and borrowing money from Toucan was the only way we could do it fast.”
He got up and said he would do the dishes.
“I accept your contrition,” he said, giving me a dab.
I got ready and thought about him owing money to Toucan, which I did not like. I took out the jar under my bed where I have been saving money and counted it out.
I had thirty seven dollars and fifty cents.
Before going down to catch the bus, I asked Gert how much money he owned Toucan.
“It’s owed, not owned. And why?”
I gave him the money I had been saving. It was a lot of bills and a few coins. He looked at the money in his hand. “I already told you to keep it,” he said.
No, I told him. “I will help you pay off our debt to Toucan. I would like to put it in our bank account. This time you are not going to say no.”