My doll-family plays better
at family than my people one does. My Poppa-doll got
lost somewhere but Momma told me it was okay for me
to make me another Poppa-doll out of string-clothes
and buttons and him all kept together with popsicle
sticks.
The little doll he got left
out under the sun one day once and the yellow-fever
colored my little brother in sun-colored. We had to
take my little brother to see big-people where they
put stuff inside his mouth and touched on how bright
was the color of his forehead. There was the poke-poke
lady with all her more fingers. There was the fold-handed
man that threw drops of water all around the room
but that never made it rain outside.
One more way they didn't
make up to make him not as sun-hot as he was was ice
cubes inside his diapers. One more way was saying
baby and in and air and out from my mouth on him.
One more way was coloring his skin back in skin-colored
with my crayons. One more way was hanging his baby
clothes up on tree-arms but that was only to be inside
the shade.
The sun-color got too bright
and too inside under my little brother's skin until
it burned his insides out inside his crib. My little
brother lived with me and my doll-family after he
burned up inside and big-people came over to see how
he did it. Big-people carried food over but we didn't
even feed any of it to my little brother. The rest
of us ate all of it even though we were all already
alive. One man had tree-arms that carried a treeful
of red apples and green apples and that kept anyone
else from catching any yellow-fever from my little
brother.
One more man pushed a button
that made flashes of light that burned your eyes but
did not make it so hot as to burn us up inside. The
light-flashes made looking-pictures of my little brother
on Momma's lap and one more way to make babies
go away to alive. That man blew on the looking-pictures
of my little brother until he was out of breath and
which but that just left my little brother all small
and flat.
My little brother was even
littler when he was dead. But more and more big-people
came over to our house and one more man had more ways
than me to keep my little brother alive. That man
wore a burnt-colored knee-coat that was still warm.
You could see how hot it was in his hot-colored face
and the way he blew his cheeks out to get the hot
part out of him. Momma told me that dead people was
all that that man did but that that man wasn't going
to take my little brother away from us. We were going
to take my little brother away with us. That man was
just supposed to get him ready to go.
He undressed the clothes
even though my little brother was already cold. But
clothes can't be alive anyway and that man didn't
keep going when he got down to my little brother's
skin. That man took up a bucket of rain water and
squeeze-clouds that he carried down with him out of
the sky. That man squeezed the squeeze-clouds of rain
water down over my little brother so it would drown
him with the swallow of water and smoke the fire out.
He dried my little brother down inside a towel like
the one they wrapped him up in to bring him home in
after he was born. That man unwrapped the towel from
my little brother and rained handfuls of rain water
up over his head and down over his neck and out the
ends of his hair. We combed it out and it looked nice.
That man smelled his nose down into the neck and shoulder
and snuffled my little brother. That man touched my
little brother's eyelids down with his finger and
thumb like Poppa would pull the window-cover down
before he would put us down for sleep. But how was
my little brother going to see us anymore when his
eyes were closed?
That man stuffed cotton
balls and worded-paper inside my little brother's
mouth so he could see how to talk. That man got out
the needle and thread and asked me how my little brother
smiled. He threaded the thread through the needle
and the needle and thread into and out of his lips
so it could not be told. He got a moon-knife out of
his night-bag and cut cuts inside both the elbows
and the knees both. He pushed tubes into my little
brother but we didn't feed him any food through them.
The squeeze-pump sucked and pulled. It spit and pushed
the blood. The tubes he looped into my little brother
were outside-veins for the clear-blood that flooded
the burned and dead-blood out from my little brother.
That man let me touch where
my little brother should have started up again but
my hand never breathed up or down on him. We hit and
pushed my little brother on his rib bones but that
didn't start his heart beating up or down again either.
That just made my little brother go all see-through
and angel-colored so we stopped squeezing the squeeze-pump
and pulled the tubes out and stopped the holes up.
We colored his skin back
in skin-colored with paint brushes from that man's
night-bag. We painted his face and neck and hands
back on him but it did not look real or alive enough
even when it didn't even have to be pretty. That man
told me let's dress him up nice so we put dress-up
clothes on him but my little brother still didn't
get up and live.
