Blue Pieces of Sky

Your brother Stevie crawls out of bed tushy first, all Rubens pudge and pink, a mini-Michelin Man body. Stevie prefers to stay unfettered by clothes both in- and outside your family’s vine-covered Tudor cottage in the 1950s at the end of Rosebud Lane. On either side of the house, the Segals and Wards merely tsk tsk and draw drapes as the boy’s father is a doctor and may be needed. He’s a necessary neighbor, they whisper among themselves, unlike the wife. They watch your mother through the basement window. She has on only a skimpy painter’s apron as she splashes abstractions on canvas, the floor, and herself. This morning, Stevie butt-bumps down the stairs for his oatmeal, toast and banana, the skin of which he peels into a floppy spider to give to his babysitter. Mother grabs some shorts and a tee shirt for Stevie and a piano shawl to cover herself and bundles her son into the Plymouth. That afternoon, clothes back off, Stevie doesn’t mention that Mrs. Foote picked up his spider with a rag and threw it into the trash. Stevie doesn’t yet know the different words for sneering and looks that are askance. When he does, he will cry many rivers, but today he sits on the limestone steps that lead to the street and sings the song he just learned to the trilobites and crinoid stems trapped in the stone’s grip. You, his big sister, give him a look he can’t yet interpret, so he sings again to the fossils. When he gets up, time is imprinted on his bottom.

*

Your brother shuffles into the kitchen at noon, one hand scratching his balding head, the other his crotch. Stevie’s still in his pajamas. Chemo’s maligned his taste buds, and peanut butter’s all he wants these days. You slap a slice of soft white bread onto the scuffed Grand Canyon plate you found at the thrift shop, slather creamy peanut butter on top, try not to tear the bread. You leave the crust on, no jelly. Peaks and valleys form. Every day a new orogeny. Stevie, a paleontologist, taught you that word. You sit down with him at this week’s jigsaw puzzle—yet another weathered barn—scattered across the kitchen table. In slow-motion, Stevie busies himself trying to match two blue pieces of sky. You watch him working the corners and the glands in your throat swell. He’s so thin. You push the sandwich closer to him. He takes his index finger, zigzags a slow line across it. You startle as oil from the peanut butter begins to seep into the rivulet he’s created. You lean over, dip a fingertip in. It tastes brackish. Stevie’s staring deep into sticky peaks and salty currents, stays there. 

Five months later, you wonder: When Stevie birthed that lagoon, did he jump in naked as the catfish and mollies and mudskippers who dwelled there? Did the tickle of fish and the swish of water return to him old memories of singing Itsy-Bitsy Spider? Did he float on his back downstream, dream of freeing moss animals from rock? 

Mikki Aronoff writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. Her work has been long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction. Mikki has stories in Best Microfiction 2024 and in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in New Mexico.