I Died Afraid My Broken Arm Burdened Them novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Who They Are

"Told him what?" the woman on the stairs said again.

She was the neighbor from the second floor, the one whose sink I had fixed in March.

My father put his hand up.

"This is a family matter. Everyone please go back to your apartments."

"The kid's lying in a bag," said a man leaning over the railing. "I'd say it's our matter too."

The landlord pushed to the front.

He had spent a year yelling at me on the stairs about the smell of my room, and tonight he had the look of a man who wanted his name kept out of it.

"Mr. Lowe, I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm not having police in my building over some..."

"Over what?" Dale said.

"Over a tenant who can't keep his place clean." The landlord pointed at the stretcher. "My boys never made a mess like that. Neither one of them has ever gone without."

"Your boys are thirty and live in your basement," said the second-floor woman.

"That's my business."

"It's why you hate him. He paid on time and never asked you for anything."

The landlord reddened. He turned on my father, because it was easier.

"You people are his parents? Then tell me why a nineteen-year-old kid was living on rice and sleeping on a bare mattress while his father got to stand here in that coat."

That was when my mother lifted her head from the floor.

Frosting streaked her coat. Her mascara had run to her chin.

"We are not poor," she said.

"Paula," my father warned.

"We are not poor! None of it was real!" Her voice cracked and rose. "It was a test. We were testing him. The sickness, the money, the whole thing. We wanted him to grow strong."

Nobody on the stairs said a word.

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