"Who did this to you?" he demanded, although he believed that he knew. He approached her slowly and solemnly. He pulled the strap of his book bag beyond his clavicle and allowed it to slide down his arm. He propped the bag against the side of the first step. It wasted a minute. He wanted to avoid this situation and a protective, invisible wall was around him. He felt as if he were watching a movie of quasi- real beings in an unusually personal situation that was just somewhat believable. He felt that both he and his sister were unreal just like the unreal situation he was facing. He was reluctant to broach the subject and he found his voice faltering when he repeated the question for a second time. The softness of an uncertain voice awakened her from the withdrawal in a capsule of non-being. She responded for she knew uncertainty and to hear it in another being coaxed her to come out of her own protective shell to acknowledge his suffering as well as her own.
"Help me," she said.
"How?" he asked.
"I don't know — I don't — just be with me now…that's all," she whispered. She gave to him what she had: a bit of a morose smile. But, water to cement, his expressions were hardening from it. She could see this and again crawled up into herself. She was languid and bent despite her stiffness but her feet were tilted to the floor and suctioned into the frontal base of the step like an upside down insect. One of her hands had such a firm tightness as if enmeshed in the railing and the other one dangled without movement.
There was a child within him who was uncertain, who would placate and comfort those in distress from the knowledge of distress himself; and thus for a splendid moment he wavered non-judgmentally. And yet it was his father's tone he wanted to emulate. Shawn was now the representative of family with its senior members away at work. He could listen, comfort this stiff battered being who like him was a puppet being pulled from all directions, fragmenting, searching for truth in void, and at a loss with radically different thoughts, feelings, and probable outcomes. And yet there was the tone he started from, a tone he could not diverge from now that his face was stern, the gift was despised, and she, this older sister was absconding into herself once again. He had to stay on one track if he wanted to be a man at all. He reinforced his earlier words, the words of manhood.
"Whoever did this to you — I'll kill him. You tell me now!" He blared his visceral rage. Alien manhood was disgorging out of him like a geyser as it did in all males when forced to forfeit being human for being men. The compounds being disgorged were obdurate, callous, and hard.
"Please don't tell mama or daddy!" she mumbled weakly.
"They'll see! Look at you!"
"I know." She pierced him with being lost. He was lost too but resented having it being mirrored onto him. It wasn't the model for being a man that he could pass onto his sons should he have sons, and he felt that he should have sons no matter what his sexual feelings were.
"What's happened to you?" he asked mildly. "For one year you've been a stranger. I can guess. I'm always left guessing."