Andy
1972
Our little house on Kaukamana street hosted a small yard out front that was enclosed by a chain link fence. In it was a lime tree that was hard to climb because of the thorns that lived on its branches, and fruit that was practically inedible because of the gifts which the birds left on the lime. I remember taking a picture with my niece Donna and her brother Harry my nephew in that same yard one afternoon. In the picture also was Andy my foster brother who we were taking care of for the time, he was mentally challenged but very boisterous and affectionate.
Every morning a small bus would come to get him and he would be ferried off to his special school where he would leave happy and ready to face the world. In the afternoon, he would return quiet and reserved or sometimes he would be unmanageable and throw himself to the ground. It would take a while to calm him down but once my mother did, Andy would fall asleep until it was time for dinner. Other times his after-school fits got to be so bad that we had to have him wear his football helmet because he would start to pound his head on the wall or the floor. Even at that young age, I began to wonder what exactly was going on at that school?
One evening as everyone had already settled down to watch the Ed Sullivan show after dinner, my mother was in the back room putting Andy to bed. I had permission to stay up and watch a new band called, ‘Iron Butterfly’ who was going to be on to sing their new song. Once that was done, I had to go to bed. I had no idea what ‘Inagada da Vida’ was but I jumped up and pretended my little bookshelf was my keyboards so that I could fake play along with the band and sing. My father scolded me to not work up a sweat because I’d already taken a shower, so I had to keep the pretend playing down to a minimum.
I was lucky being the oldest of the kids because I inherited my brother Blue’s room once he moved out and went to live with his girlfriend and her family. Once everyone had gone to sleep and the house was quiet, I could hear Andy moaning from the back room. That was a surprise because my father was a light sleeper and anyone that interrupted his slumber would have holy hell to pay if he had to get up out of his bed but there was not a sound from his room. Even Donna and Harry did not rouse themselves from their bed, neither did my mother for that matter. Was I hearing things?
I finally threw my blanket aside and walked down the hallway where I could peek into Andy’s room and see him laying under his blanket. Into the soft beam of Andy’s Mighty Mouse nightlight stepped a Hawaiian boy who was about the same height and built as I was. He got into the bed right next to Andy and pulled the covers up to his chin. His eyes rolled over white and his back arched suddenly and it lifted him off the bed, he disappeared right then but the outline of his body was still underneath the blanket. Andy thrashed around in his bed and moaned louder than before but the invisible boy under the covers never moved once. His bedroom light came on suddenly and my mother rushed past me in order to calm Andy down because he had now gone from rolling around in his bed and moaning to falling into a full seizure. We had to call the ambulance which came to assist because at the point we had never experienced something like this with Andy and my mother didn’t know how to handle it.
The whole time my parents wouldn't listen to me when I told them that there was the ghost of a boy in Andy’s bed. When my father finally did listen to what I had to say, he smacked me in the back of my head and told me to shut up. Andy was gone for several days and it was very horrifying for me at home, there was a ghost in my foster brother’s room and I was worried that he was going to start walking around the house or even try to come into my room.
….……..
I remember it was the night before Andy came back and I was sitting in my room trying on my brand new Siu Lum Pai Kung fu outfit. I was never a member of that school but that’s what I always called it, it was actually a pair of gold-colored silk pajamas and night slippers. I was posing in front of the mirror, throwing kicks, chops, and punches when in the mirror’s reflection I saw the ghost of the boy standing outside my bedroom door. I screamed bloody murder until my mother ran into the room, naturally, my father followed after. Rather than ask what the matter was, all they said was, “Why are you screaming like a girl?”
I told them about the ghost of the boy that appeared on the night of Andy’s seizure and I told him that that very same boy was just standing outside my bedroom door. Rather than make light of me any further, my parents looked at each other and made a phone call. An hour later, the Feiticiera was at our house. She demanded the shirt that I was wearing recently which happened to be my silk gold pajama top, she held it to her face and took in a deep breath.
Her eyes opened and they were glassy as if she’d been crying, “Meu deus” she said while holding my pajama to her chest. “Esse menino tinha um irmão,” her voice was filled with lamentation, “ele morreu no nascimento, não é justo que seu fantasma queira viver.”
The Feiticiera said that Andy had a brother who died at birth but that his dead brother’s ghost wanted to live and that he felt it was unfair that someone who was born into the condition that Andy was in, was allowed to survive and he was not. The Feiticiera said that Andy’s brother would appear at his school to harass him and rile his anger and that one day he decided to come home with Andy on the bus. The large Portuguese woman went to the back room where Andy slept but she would not let us follow her, instead, we were to wait in the living room until she returned. All we could hear was fevered prayers given in low mumble, then the house shook quietly at a low decibel. After that, there was the overwhelming smell of rubbing alcohol and the sound of a baby crying, but what really shook us to the core was the blood-curdling scream of a little boy. Everything went silent and for as large as the Feiticieara was, she appeared in the living room without us ever having heard her walk down the hallway.
“Filho da puta,” she exhaled as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. “It’s worse than I thought, your foster son, his brother... his brother was a Siamese twin. He didn’t survive because the doctors had to cut him loose, he was draining the life out of that boy who sleeps in the back room.”
The Feiticieira never met Andy but she asked my parents if my foster brother was mentally handicapped, they confirmed that he was but at the same time, they were in awe that the Portuguese woman knew this without ever having set eyes on Andy.
“That’s why he was born that way because of his brother, he took as much as he could from Andy, but it was not meant to be.”
The Feiticiera took her payment from my parents and she went on her way. When Andy returned the next day, the house had a whole new feeling to it, like something had actually lightened the load that weighed heavy on our home.
….………
Today
The picture we posed for in our old front yard at the end of Kaukamana Street was taken on the day that Andy’s mother came to get him and bring him home. She finally got herself together and was going to give him the life he rightly deserved. It was the last time I would hug him and tell him that I loved him. It’s forty-five years later and I never knew what became of Andy, I hope that he’s alive somewhere and doing well for himself. If not, I pray that he was re-born under better circumstances.
Photo Credit-Harry Hose'. Left to right, Donna, Harry, Me and Andy.
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