Family Gibson, Summer 1891

They point me to the black boy sitting dead on the porch swing with a post up his shirt and they tell me to sit down beside him. “He is your brother,” they say. “You will surely miss him.”

I stare them in their eyes, craning my neck, which makes my too-small suit cling to me all over, and the blazing blinding sun is a half-circle under the raised rim of my hat, and as I ball my fists I feel my cuffs creep slowly up my arms. He stinks. He is a nigger. I will not sit beside that body. I tell them, fairly shouting, “HE IS NOT MY BROTHER.”

I will not sit beside that body.

The camera man arranges lights outside the frame of his picture. He lights a lamp and hangs it up above the swing. He lights and hangs another. I don’t know why he bothers. The body will be a shadow in the print — it will be a silhouette. No matter how he lights the body it will look the same.

Mama kneels to meet my eyes. She fusses with my too-small coat. She says, “Don’t you speak that way of him. You were raised together from the crib. We bought him the day you were born, we bought him so that you might have a friend. He played your games with you, and he joined you in your studies. He was with you every day, in everything, and he slept in the same room, in his own bed beside your bed.” She smooths my cotton collared shirt and pulls a loose thread from beside the topmost button. “Do not tell me that you have no brother.”

Remember how he would reach for me sometimes, reach for embrace. How I spurned him. How he copied what I did sometimes, or remembered what I said, and said it later for my parents, so that they would think he was like me, when we were not alike at all. He said he made the kite I made. He said it was his.

I clench my jaw and bite my cheeks. Tell her, “He is not my brother.”

We turn together to look at the body. His mouth hangs slightly open, and within a wealth of pearls. His eyes are fully closed. His hands are folded on his lap, turned up in supplication. His head rolls to the side and falls to rest on his shoulder — it does so every time my father corrects it. The photographer is smoking. He is waiting for me to be good. But I will not be good. I will not sit beside that body.

“Mama,” I say, and I put my hand on her shoulder, “Don’t make me.”

“What about the stick game,” she asks me. “He loved that.”

The stick game is a game where you pick a stick and then you act out famous battles throughout history. First your stick is a club, and then it is a spear, and then it is a sword, and then it is a rifle. It’s my game. I made it up.

“What about the can game.”

The can game is where you put the other person’s favorite thing in a can and then you hide the can and they have to try to find it. I made it up too.

“What about hot lava.”

Hot lava is where a volcano erupts and then you have to only step on things above the ground and not touch the ground.

“Mama, please don’t make me.” But I can feel the life draining out of my shoes and into the dirt. I can feel the fight go out of me. She looks at me with her mothering eyes. They remind me I am a child, I am her son. I look again to the body. My father stands before it, his back turned to us, running his hand through his beard. It makes a scraping sound. He slumps. He regards the body. I will not sit beside that body, I will not let my father watch me in that way. I will run when they aren’t looking. I will hide out in the woods until the photographer’s fees mount up and they can’t afford to wait for my return.

My mother scoops me up underneath my legs and carries me to the bench. I squirm in her arms but do not kick or struggle. My father would beat me. She sets me down beside the black boy, so close we nearly touch. It makes me ill to be so close. He stinks. I wonder, wonder where are the flies. Father corrects his head’s angle. I scoot away as it rolls to the side.

The black boy they call my brother is wearing a new, blue suit. It is a fine thing, and finer than mine. It fits him right. I am afraid when they are done they will bury him in something else and keep the suit for me. It would fit me right too, would fit me righter than mine. He wears a thick blue ribbon for a tie. Mama polished his shoes before she put them on his feet — they shine. The blotches in his skin will scarcely show up in the picture. The really bad ones, the bright, Mama covered over with the polish.

His hair’s slicked back with pomade. So is mine, beneath my hat, which my father now is taking. Lights are hanging everywhere, the circle sun among them. His body does not sweat. Cannot sweat. I wonder, wonder, should I touch it, would the boy be warm? Or would he chill? Would my skin stick to his?

My father sits on the far end of the porch swing — he sits beside the body. We all sway for his weight. He is like a fat walrus. He takes his hat off too and hands it to Mama, who takes it away. In the doorway of the house behind the photographer (who stoops behind the camera, beneath the sheet, lining up the shot) and across our yard, stand our servants, shading their eyes with their hands, standing in silence. They must wonder, wonder, “What has happened to our son?” But they do not cannot ask, as we bought him fair and square. (You cannot buy a brother.)

Mama smooths my father’s hair and sorts his wild beard. She straightens up the black boy’s head. It sticks this time. And then she touches me. I can smell him on her hands, the sun-baked pomade and the rest, I wrinkle up my nose, I tell her one last time: “Mama, he is not my brother.”

She takes the paints from underneath the bench. House paints, two small cans, white and black. She dabs her finger in the paint and rubs it over his left eyelid, dabs her finger again and rubs it more, until there is a white oval underneath his eyebrow, as if she has wiped away the skin and found the eye. She does the same to the other eye. Now she dabs her pinky in the black paint. She applies it, thickly, over the white. Two black circles. Now he seems to have eyes. They are wide and shocked. He has seen a terror’s terror.

She spits on her fingers to wet them. She wipes them clean in the grass.

She sits beside me on the porch swing. She pushes me with her body, pushes me with her body until my leg touches the black boy’s leg. It is neither warm nor cold. I can smell him. I feel my guts rise up inside me like a hound’s hackles. She takes my hand in her hand. My father takes his, takes the hand of the boy they call my brother. She puts my hand in his hand, in the black boy’s, in the dead thing’s, in the body’s. His new eyes are so wide. The paint runs slightly down his closest cheek. Mama wipes it clean.

The camera man scatters powder in the pan. We make our picture faces. I blink now, a thousand times, while I can. Mama puts her arm around my shoulders. She pinches the back of my arm and holds me that way, to make me be still. My father puts his arm around the body. I am holding hands with the body. I squeeze, he does not squeeze back, but if he did I swear I would not, wouldn’t ever scream.

My eyes water, and I see how they will mount the picture on the wall above the fireplace.

I see the print will be washed out around the edges as if the corners were not finished. The black boy will sit at the center, dark as dark, eyes alert, grasping my hand. And we’ll be three white specters, all haunting all around my brother, paler as the image fades, paler at the edges; half my father’s face will disappear, and nearly half my mother’s, while my brother sits straight, alive.

The camera man lights the powder. Everything is white. I mustn’t close my eyes. Mustn’t blink.

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Mike Meginnis has stories published or forthcoming in The Lifted Brow, The Sycamore Review, PANK, Mud Luscious, and others. He is currently pursuing his MFA at New Mexico State University, where he serves as managing editor of Puerto del Sol.