Just before sunrise, the sky above the lavender farm roared into purple, and the dawn came tinted.
Picture me a purple-eyed child insomniac, skinny in my purple nightgown, standing on one purple foot upon the purple floor of Howie’s bedroom.
Auntie Em said I shouldn’t go to him every time he hollered in his sleep, but I couldn’t help it.
She said I was better at forgetting than Howie was but she was wrong. What I was better at was not remembering – she didn’t understand the difference – she didn’t know about the sunrise single-footed mornings when I worked on the balance between the two.
I tried to help Howie but the past was like quicksand for him, the more he tried to ignore it, the deeper into it he sank.
During our inaugural summer at the farm we experienced so many changes I can’t tell you. At first Auntie Em left us to huddle together on the couch, then she prodded us to the porch, after a week or so she started sitting in the rocking chair, just nice and quiet, then she started explaining a few things, saying look over there and it came with a little story, this was where she and our mother grew up, but she never mentioned her after the first time, our mother I mean, I think she might have seen what it did in Howie’s eyes, and the way it turned his volume up at night.
During that summer Howie developed the most unusual eyes, they were void of fleck and detail, like grey paint around black painted pupils, and I don’t know if it was because he stared into the lavender fields all day – I know there was a certain absorption on my part because my sweat was lavender scented, also my spit –but in the fall, Howie’s eyes went purple for good.
Auntie Em said I should stop going into his room at night, but another thing she didn’t understand, was that my brother Howie was my quicksand.
