Keily Blair
Expectations on Sunbury Avenue
We ride our bikes down Dead Man’s Hill, wind whipping around us as we build speed. Our hearts beat behind our bones with the desperate flutter of hummingbird wings. We like to pretend we have the guts to ride faster and faster, but we always slow as we approach the tiny triangular patch of shrubs and grass at the end of the street.
Whoever waits the longest to brake is the bravest. We usually give in long before reaching the “Little Triangle,” right when the wind is roaring in our ears. After making the sharp turn, we glide over the asphalt, trailing one behind the other, laughing and grinning with the rush of adrenaline. The street’s sign looms over us, proudly declaring our quiet patch of suburbia “Sunbury Avenue.”
***
My neighbor, Adam, brings out his ramp—a small piece of black plastic his dad bought for him to attempt jumps with his bike. My knees are unmarred as I line up to have a try on our shaded street. It’s such a slight ramp and the airtime is brief but oddly satisfying before my balance shifts and I slam into the asphalt, bike falling on top of me. The pain is hot, intense, but my playmates—Adam and my younger sister, Barbara—are watching, so I burst into manic laughter. Embarrassed, I manage to stand and limp into my family’s driveway, blood streaming down my leg from a large scrape, later a pale scar I carry into adulthood. I refuse to cry, knowing my companions, both younger than me by two years, are watching. As the oldest, I am tough. I watch over them, not the other way around.
***
We watch the teenage boy, Daniel, who lives across the street with his grandmother, perform tricks on his skateboard. Because he is older, he will never play with us. Instead, he shows off and we whisper in awe. He is handsome though seems to never smile. Dark hair, dark eyes. He’s rather pale despite the time he spends riding his skateboard, protected by the shade of Sunbury Avenue. His grandmother waves at us from her seat on her porch, smiling.
***
I am seven when my mom gathers my sister and me into her room, her voice a soft whisper as she tries to explain what has happened. The boy across the street murdered his grandmother. I try to conjure the image of her, or some shred of sadness for the event, not knowing my mind will struggle with such things for years. My thoughts will always be grayscale and distant; my strong empathy will always be hard to tap into without self-taught coping mechanisms. Instead of crying, I ask how he did it. My mom opens her mouth, truth and fiction warring in her expression. Finally, she opts for the truth.
“He beat her with a fire poker,” she says.
The knowledge doesn’t spark the feelings I crave to have. There will be whispers for a while among the adults, acknowledgments of Daniel’s “troubled” behavior. I will remember the boy on his skateboard and struggle to connect him to the bloodthirsty killer in the news for the next two decades.
But at this moment, I feign fear and sadness, trying to become what is expected of me.
***
We know the neighbors on our street by their houses. In our way, we know the woman with the noisy Shetland sheepdogs at the top of the hill. She often waves as her dogs streak across the yard until the knowledge of the invisible fence halts their progress, yapping.
To my family’s left live the Martins, an elderly couple who always give out homemade popcorn balls on Halloween.
To the right live Adam’s family, another four-person suburban family with two giant mastiffs and a trampoline where we lost countless hours behind a private fence.
Across the street and to the right lived Randy. We ride our bikes by his house, cracking jokes about his silly, drunken antics.
***
I watch Randy sing along to some pop hit, eyes closed in rapture. He sits on our porch, invading my home with his existence. Even at eight, I know something is wrong with him. There’s something undesirable in the way he slurs and stumbles about, the way my mom defends his behavior.
I hate him.
It’s a child’s understanding of hatred—glaring at the man as he walks by and whispering jokes at his expense with Adam and Barbara. My mom’s unlikely friendship with him is shadowed by the suspicion something is going on, something secret and slimy.
It will be nearly twenty years before I learn he gave her pills, fueling addiction, stealing her from me.
***
We ride into the driveway with the painted mailbox – the one with the dolphins, sun, moon, and stars, a day mingling into night. The garden is the most beautiful on the street, carefully tended. Patches of snapdragons, bleeding-hearts, irises, sunflowers, pansies, and more, rotating throughout the year and dependent on the season. Giant rosemary bushes, tiny sprigs of thyme, and patches of sage fill the spaces between. While Barbara and Adam ride in the driveway, I tuck a piece of sage between my teeth, run my fingers over the soft fuzz of a lamb’s ear.
The porch is a deep blue marred by golden footprints, the product of one of my mom’s many crafting ventures featuring my sister and me. My mom is a gifted artist and gardener. There’s not a garden, porch, or mailbox like ours in the entire neighborhood, and pride wells in my chest.
Adam heads home, leaving my sister and me to walk the steps leading to our front door. The sun, maybe not at its highest, is still high at two in the afternoon. Dad’s not home yet, and he won’t be until it’s nearly bedtime. The coke he drinks out of Styrofoam cups will likely be supplemented with what my sister and I refer to as “the yucky stuff,” and if it’s not, he’ll be sure to bring some home in a brown paper bag. We’ve taken to sniffing his cups before trying to steal sips of sweet soda, wary of the sharp odor.
The house is silent.
I open the door to my parents’ bedroom, where my mother has slept all day, sedated by pills I won’t know she takes until years later. I stare at her breathing form for a moment before shutting the door.
Part of me is anxious we’ll have visitors. She scolded me last time I answered the door for a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses when Barbara and I were home alone. Am I allowed to answer the door now, while she is sleeping?
“I’m hungry,” Barbara says.
There’s a smile on my face when I retrieve a pack of hot dogs from the fridge, using the microwave like a big kid. The juice is trickier because the bottles are so heavy when full that my hands shake when I hold them over the cups. Cherry for her, apple for me. The liquid sloshes, but I manage to keep a firm grip. I squeeze a single line of ketchup over my sister’s hot dog.
I am eight years old when I take hold of my sister’s lunch and sit her down at the breakfast nook in our kitchen. We turn on the TV and wait for Mom to wake up.
Keily Blair (they/them) is an autistic and queer writer. They hold a BA in English: Creative Writing from UT Chattanooga, where their nonfiction won the Creative Nonfiction Award. Their fiction has appeared in publications such as The Dread Machine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Etherea, and The Vanishing Point. They are currently at work on their debut novel. You can find more details about their work at www.keilyblair.com or follow them on Twitter @keily_blair. They live in Tennessee with their husband, dog, cat, and guinea pigs.
