My Brother was a Real Dog
My father has five brothers. They grew up scrappily poor and, yet, still privileged in a very small New England town. They are tight, like, they are their own tribe tight. Except for the schism with the youngest brother. But this story’s not about that.
My mother has five sisters. They survived a brutal childhood and this has left them unable to maintain any true familial connections between them. Various pairs of them are close for a period of time, but eventually it is too hard to have anything but superficial contact. They are scattered about the country: Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia, Colorado, New York, Oregon.
I married an identical twin, who also has an older brother and sister. When they are together, my husband and his twin are in a joyous bubble of their own making. I dub it Twinfest whenever they’re together.
We have two boys. When I found myself pregnant the second time, I thought, “What do you do with another one? I already have a child. I adore him. How could I possibly love someone else that much?” And then I gave birth to my second son and found that my heart expanded to have more room than I thought it was ever possible to have. They are three and a half years apart. I hope they will be close as they get older. I watch them push and pull from each other over the years. I suppose that’s normal, but I don’t truly know.
I am an only child.
When you are an only child, people assume things about you. They assume you are spoiled. They assume you get whatever you want, that you don’t know how to share. When your parents divorce so early in your life that you never really know anything else, they assume these things doubly because they think you have two households that dote on and indulge you. You must get sooo much attention, they think. But that’s actually not really all that true and when you do get a lot of attention, it’s not necessarily the kind you want.
I wanted a sister. I had no interest in a brother because, eww, boys. But a sister who would play dress up with me, jump rope with me, be someone reasonable to talk to when the grown-up conversation around me once again became insufferably boring, now that would be something. I had books and imaginary friends, but a real live sister would be infinitely better.
Before I knew Mom was gay, I begged her to have another baby.
“Amy, you don’t want a sister,” she’d insist as she stood in the kitchen ironing. I restated that I would actually really like a sister.
“You’d hate it,” she said. “If you had a sister, you’d complain to me all the time, Mommy, Sally won’t leave my toys alone! Mommy, Sally is messing up my stuff! Sally’s bothering me!”
I stamped off to my room and sat on the bed, fuming at her stubbornness and horrified that she planned on naming my sister Sally which was a name that only old ladies had.
I never got a sister. The Christmas Eve I was in third grade, Mom’s girlfriend, who I was required to assure people was just a friend even though Mom had told me they were in love, opened the front door and a scruffy black dog with a Santa hat trotted in. My mother happily announced he was mine. I was confused – I had wanted a cat and had never expressed any interest in a dog, but Mom was looking like this was a great Christmas surprise. Then she said “He's a Cockapoo! Half Cocker Spaniel, half Poodle! We got him at the shelter!” I was horrified by the vulgarity of the word. My mother thought it was hilarious.
I had to walk him, because even though I hadn’t asked for a dog, he was supposedly my dog, so it was my job to feed and walk him. When we were out, strangers would stare at him and ask, "What kind of dog IS that?” EVERYONE. I mumbled, Cockapoo, several times until I realized that people that actually seemed to know something about dogs didn’t think he was. Perhaps someone suggested it at the shelter and Mom ran with it, thinking it was a hilarious name for a breed of dog. But, really, the dog looked like a freak – wolfish face, medium-small body, a messed up scraggly coat and ears like a fox with tendrils of fur hanging off them. Eventually I got smart and told people, “He’s a Mutt.”
*
Mom referred to the dog as her son. She would call out, “Come here, my son, my son!” and he would bound up to her, straggly tail wagging and fox ears high. When I went away to my grandparents’ house for the summer, she wrote me letters from the dog’s point of view, signed, “Your Brother.”
We moved in with the just a friend girlfriend and her elderly Pekingese to a housing development across town. I changed schools. I knew no one. There were other kids in the housing development that I tried to hang out with. But I was a chicken and they were tough and scared me. Mom was busy with the just a friend girlfriend, a relationship which had quickly become intense and rather volatile. Mom caught sight of the neighbor kids crawling out of a window and messing around on the top of the carports, and she forbade me to play with them anymore. A few days later when they knocked on my door after school asking me to come out to play, I told them the truth.
“My mom said I can’t play with you anymore.”
Tina, the alpha of the group, looked at me wide-eyed and stunned and then spit out, “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m going to beat you up then!”
I was already afraid of Tina when we were friends, but now I was frozen with panic. I’d prefer to never leave the apartment again without an adult bodyguard, but the rule was that I had to walk the dog and the girlfriend’s geriatric Peke when I got home from school before Mom and her girlfriend came home from work. I walked them on the flood-wall near the river. I tried to keep out of sight and closer to the water because Tina and her friends could easily see me otherwise. For stress relief, I took the Peke for a “ride.” When I thought no one could see me, I spun her around and around on the leash attached to her harness. I raised the leash and lowered it as I spun, and the Peke went glassy eyed with all four paws sticking straight out. She looked like she was on a carnival ride, up and down, up and down. I told myself she liked it. When I walked my “brother” I felt both more and less safe. He barked at anyone who came near, which just made me feel like it was more likely that someone would throw rocks at him or try and kick him. But at least I wasn’t alone.
Mom and just a friend girlfriend split up after a year and while they eventually got back together, we never lived together again. We moved back to our old apartment, which meant we had a yard again, but I still had to take “my brother” out for longer walks.
One spring afternoon when I was almost thirteen, I was walking him in the neighborhood. Down the block and across the street I saw a young woman walking a small, white dog. When the dogs saw each other, they both began barking and straining at their leashes toward each other and suddenly he yanked the leash out of my hand and went after the small, yappy dog. The woman and I were both screaming at our dogs and then she panicked. She reached down to pick up her dog and get it away from the fight. My dog bit her hand. She needed stitches. I don’t remember now if we were close enough to home that Mom and just a friend girlfriend came to help or if the neighbors whose houses we were in front recognized me and the dog and got to my mom’s house to let her know. Just a friend girlfriend talked to the young woman and reported back to my mother grimly, “She’s a secretary. She’s not going to be able to type for a while.”
Not long after, I went to New Hampshire to spend Easter break with my dad’s family. After dinner, my grandmother told me I had a phone call.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said over the line, “I was afraid she would sue us, that secretary. I was afraid they’d take him away and hurt him. I had to do it. I had to put him down.”
We didn’t talk long. Mom’s voice was sounding funny and it was a long distance call. My uncles were quiet as I walked through the kitchen up the stairs to my room, sat on the bed and cried. My grandmother came in to check on me. I told her I was okay. My dad came in a little while later and sat next to me, at a loss for how to comfort me. He put his arm around my shoulder. We sat there. I stopped crying, and told him I was fine.
When I returned home after Easter, Mom was unusually sharp-tempered and critical. We fought about everything. She finally broke down crying while doing the dishes, “I thought you’d hate me. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.” And I probably should have hated her, but her grief was so huge that I disregarded my own feelings in order to comfort her. I hugged her and told her I forgave her. He was the closest thing I had to an actual brother: I hadn’t chosen him, hadn’t necessarily wanted him, but I loved him. He was the only living creature that knew just what kind of crazy went on in that house that I was forbidden to speak about to anyone including my own family.
There are things that are easier about being an only child. A sibling is no guarantee of a relationship that is supportive and loving. But as I reach the age where I have very realistic concerns about my parents’ aging and the fact that they are close to an age where people die and it’s not really unexpected, I wish I had one. Just somebody who I could look in the eye and without saying a word, know we both understand the complicated tangle of roots that make up this thing we call family.
Amy Eaton has been published in the Coachella Review. She performs within Chicago’s live lit scene, including Write Club Chicago, MissSpoken, The Stoop, and Fillet of Solo. She is currently at work on a memoir.