A Different Bottle

I’m sitting here and let me tell ya’: I’m floored.

Back against the cushion, my furry brother laying next to me, I’m not so much staring across the room as I am transfixed. You know, transfixed. The weird word my mom uses with pops when she’s angry about the guys swinging with wooden bats. Don’t know how I understand the word, but mom sure loves it. Dad, not so much.

And what am I so transfixed, or as my mom likes to say, in a trance, about? I’ll tell ya. My sister, holding up a giant can of something and out comes not milk and not water, but straight gold.

Gold, I tell ya.

Even shinier than my crayons. Sunnier than in the morning when pops has to leave for work. It shines a lot like the glass after my parents finish wiping down the house. Maybe the gold is magic. When my sister finishes drinking it, she always has the biggest smile on her face. Her mouth grows wide, teeth peeking out from every inch of her grin.

I’m sitting there and I’m floored. My furry brother? Not so much.

I look at him. He looks at me, with his big, brown eyes. We each reach behind us and give our diapers a scratch. His is a lot hairier than mine. We gotta be thinking the same thing. Those big brown eyes again grow wide. Tongue hanging out, we stare at each other. I can feel myself tipping over and onto the soft carpet, but one thing is for certain.

Gold. We gotta get a taste.

My arms wave. I’m sitting down on the ground, fake smile planted across my face, but mom doesn’t care. She’s just happy I’m moving and having fun. Life ain’t all about moving and having fun, ma. The sun’s still shining and I’m waiting for my turn to get fed. I don’t dare cry. The way my sister downs the golden juice makes me think the good stuff is a treat. I behave; no biting, yelling, screaming, pulling, or even relieving myself in my diaper.

Mom throws me a ball. I throw it back. Again, she chucks the blue and white orb at me and again I toss it right back. We’d been doing this routine for days now. It’s old, but I still let them think they can teach this old dog new tricks.

All of a sudden, she turns her head. Gone is the smile. In a flash, her face goes flat. Drats. I had a bad feeling she was faking it as well. Something calls her attention. No phone goes off and my sister is just sitting at the table, crayons in hand. My mouth drops to one side. I stick a finger in it. Teasing, picking at the small white things forming in my mouth, my eye lids begin to grow heavy.

“Someone must be hungry!”

That does the trick. I light up. My sister catches every moment. She’s still drawing, running her red and yellow crayons against some kind of white backdrop. Usually, I whine until mom or pops wise up and plop me right down next to her. Not today. These little hands are extended to the sky for another reason.

Fingers wag. They curl, in and out, even though I dare not make a fist. But right from the outset, I know the bottle is wrong. She lowers it into my hand as I sit on the floor. A grey lid tops a clear bottle. There’s no gold on the other side. Only good ole’ milk. Eyes wince. I lift the lid up, take the nipple of the bottle right to the face, and give it a good pull.

Nothing special. Just plain old milk!

I start to pull it out, eyes darting from my sister to my mom. No longer does she have that doe-y-eyed expression like she did when I first started drinking all on my own. Now, she steps back and does her thing. A few chugs and I set the bottle down. A burp startles even me.

My sister opens her mouth. Waving her crayons in the air, her mouth ain’t gabbing like normal. I crawl away. I need another plan. Just waving my arms ain’t going to be enough. Mom and pops are simple creatures. Either I or my sister does something adorable and they laugh. Rinse and repeat. I thought the gold was a treat. Maybe the good stuff is from dad.

Pop’s usually home around dinner. It’s that time of the year, a few mornings past his birthday, when the sun isn’t quite as high in the sky by the time he walks through the door. Mom greets him. The pair laugh and then kiss my sister on the forehead. She’s been drawing all day. Our furry brother stands tall. He lets me pull myself up. Good gosh; red scribbles crawl around the entire table.

“Did you let her do this?” Pops raises his voice. He turns to me and all of a sudden he’s a figure of calm. That’s what I need. A nice hug from pops. He sure isn’t going to whip out the good stuff if he’s all mad.

“Don’t worry. There’s a giant sheet of white paper over the table.”

Pops leans over my little body and suddenly I’m whisked through the air. The smell of crispy meat fills the house. Pops apologizes to mom and before you know it we’re all sitting down with my sister’s creation in my lap. Still, she hasn’t said so much as a peep since she started drinking the gold.

My sister makes her own plate. I’m seated in a high-chair with my back to the kitchen, but I can still hear the fridge door open and shut. I start to smile. I can’t help it. Being a kid is tough. You gotta know when to relax.

Glass clicks against each other. A few drawers are pulled out. Now, we’re cooking. Mom and pops wouldn’t just toss out the good stuff in the middle of the day. No, they’d want to teach us a lesson. Make us earn our treats. You don’t learn nothing if you only have to wait for lunch.

“Oh! Someone’s excited!” Mom appears out of the corner of my eye. I quickly whip around. Before I can wave my hands, she disappears. Pops walks in, ruffles my hair, and places a small plate in front of me. A crispy, brown circle of burger covers my plate, a plate a quarter the size of my sister’s.

“Is he drinking on his own?”

You bet ya bottom dollar I am, pops!

“Yeah, and we’ll be in soon, so might as well give him the bottle now.”

Plop. It doesn’t land with a thud. White milk sloshes at the base of my bottle. It looks like the exact same drink as before. What the heck! Only thing I can hear is my expectations dropping onto the floor. I bite my lip. Not crying was supposed to have helped me earlier. Maybe a little bit of the waterworks will get me exactly what I want.

A small forkful of food threatens my sister’s mouth. Next to her is a small cup with the sweet looking golden juice that stirs itself. We lock eyes. Black hair falls in front of one eye. Sis tips the cup, revealing the ichor. Only a single word is mouthed: later.

We’re sitting in the hallway just outside of the kitchen. Mom and pops, pops especially, used to hover over us. He didn’t like the idea of letting a kid and a baby have the run of the house. Smart guy. Things are different now, but still, I’m not exactly stepping all over their shadow.

“Now, first off, thank you very much for not crying earlier.”

The sound of running water is ever present at this time of the night. Someone’s always getting washed. I think its mom’s turn. Sis’s pajamas are blue. Little brown dogs bark and jump in still frames. Still frames. Har. I don’t know where I even learned that phrase. Maybe from my holdouts I’m forced to call parents.

I hold the car, trying to psyche myself up to race its wheels across the wood floor. But I can’t. I just don’t want to. My heart isn’t into it. I carry a soul dragged down by betrayal and lit with anger.

My sister, well, she’s a little different. She tries to explain why she gets the sweet nectar and I don’t.

Car in hand, she places the red race car on the track. Knocking the front of her car into the back of mine, I take the hint. We guide the cars along on a race. My sister pushes the wheels back and forth, crossing the finish line multiple times.

“Look, it’s called apple juice. Mommy and daddy give it out as a treat. Remember when I folded those clothes the other day?”

My jaw goes slack. I knew it. Head tilting to one side, I nod. I remember the day. Mommy and pops were busy on the phone. Sis, ever the helper, started picking up her clothes from the hamper and folding them into neat little piles.

She’s holding my shoulders, as if I’m going to stomp away. Ridiculous. I don’t even know how to stomp.

“Do you understand?” She stops pushing the race car up and down the tracks.

Hands raised over my head, my face begins to feel hot. I can feel the tears welling up just under my eyes. I look at my sister, my face growing too tight to do anything but frown. She frowns, too, but while raising a finger to her lips.

“Don’t cry! Don’t cry!” She brings me in for a hug. It blocks the flood but does little to mend my broken heart.

“Look.” Her eyes meet mine. They keep moving along with my head. I’m too ashamed, too overcome with sadness and rejection, to allow her to even see me. My head lifts up for a moment, but it can’t remain in place. Burying my head in my hands, I allow myself a little cry.

“No! Please don’t cry!” Soft hands caress my head. There’s more than a hint of worry in my sister’s voice. She doesn’t want to catch the blame for making her little brother tear up. Grabbing my chin, we stare at each other. Her head nods. I nod, too. She pats me on the head.

It’s the next day. Twice when I was dangling off my mother’s hip, I tried spying a look at the inside of the fridge. There were a few bottles of milk, long and grey, with not a single descript marking to be found between them. But still, this so called apple juice wasn’t in sight. I glanced at my parents. Maybe they could read minds after all.

Throughout the morning, after grandpap came by to pick pops up and long after we put our pancakes away, my sister kept looking at me. When we were playing with toys, sitting down while mom’s fingers poked at the electronic thing, and even when we were in opposite rooms.

The heck’s her problem, I thought. I ain’t no snitch.

Lunch came. It was more than showtime. It was the third act. The big moment. The last time we see our characters all together before the curtain falls and their world will be forever changed.

Mom says something. I can’t hear her. These blocks in my hands won’t stack themselves. Sitting on the ground, our furry brother sleeps on the couch. Mom walks away, but my sister keeps waving her hand. I crawl over to her place in the table: past a small fort we made, through the small gap made by my own high chair, and over a thin blanket. I nearly spill while crawling over.

My sister gasps. Sprawled out on the floor, my face kisses the wood. Hard. But I do not cry.

“Honey, do you want more burgers today? They should still be good.”

“Sounds great!” Sis is usually a lot more talkative today. Nervously, her head swings back and forth, between keeping an eye out for my mom and toward me, making sure I’m still in place.

Beeps and pitches drown out my mom’s footsteps. I sit on the wall behind my sister. Plates shuffle in the other room, but it’s the closing of the fridge door that gets me excited. My head perks up. Maybe this grand idea is going to work after all. I turn my head away, worried my mom can see me if I can see her. Ya know, classic spy stuff.

The footsteps return. Light as a feather, but I can still hear them. One of the chairs scrape against the floor while mom stretches across the table. She gives my sis a, “Here ya go, sweetie,” but she doesn’t even look into the living room. I see her ankles turnaround in a flash as she disappears into the kitchen.

Juice in hand, my sister looks down at me. Suddenly, though, a hot, steam of air clouds my ear. Our furry brother is right next to me. Nose jammed into my ear, he’s smiling. I don’t tell him to get off, but instead, I get an idea.

Sis struggles to push back against the chair. I grab some of his fur and bend my knees. Wobbling, I shake as my legs straighten. Wobbling, strained eyes look at me, begging me to let go of the fur. My sister has the cup in her hands. Small streaks of gold tumble off the top. Finally, I’m on both legs and I can stop pulling on our furry brother’s hair. I lean against him. He knows the drill.

“Oh, no.” Finally, she’s pushed the chair back far enough yet her eyes grow wide at the gap down to the floor. It’s too high. Cup in hand, she leaps down anyway.

“What’s oh no?” Mom calls out. She sounds more amused than curious.

Oh, I get a taste of the juice.

While my sister lands, she struggles to hold onto the cup. Spinning, she turns into me. My eyes close just in time. I can feel the sticky, golden elixir all over my face. It smells sweet. I try to lick some of it off, but the cold, fresh cup of juice stings against my skin. So much juice is on the ground that it even gets under my feet. One step and the ground rushes up to meet my behind.

Our furry brother starts to lick the juice off my face. So much for trying something new.