Other Fictions
The Story of My Childhood
An Essay for my Brother, Christopher
This is a link to the Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest Results page in which my story,
Through the Broken Window, was named as an honorable mention.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/annual/stories/98/hm.hollister.html
In case the link doesn't work, I've posted the whole thing below.
:Story Index:
The Shade House
Tea House Moon
The Shade House
Tea House Moon
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Through the Broken Window
by Celeste Hollister
My brother Jake came in around three in the morning. I saw his skinny shape in the rectangle
of my open door. His long yellow hair and baggy clothes made him, in the grim gray light, more a
scarecrow than a high school senior. He'd come in through the back door. Good thing, too,
because Daddy was asleep on the couch in the front room.
Jake spoke my name in a raspy whisper that was almost drowned by the gunning grumble of
truck's engine as Jake's friends left the drive. I didn't respond because I feared our talking
would wake Daddy.
Daddy worked twelve hour days and slept with the TV on all night when he was home. Mom was
working the late night shift as a cashier and fry cook at the Waffle House on IH-10 and Main
Street. She hated the job, but she wanted to make some extra money to go back to college in
September. We hardly saw her.
"Tammy," Jake said, a little louder.
I answered him before he could speak again.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
"Sure."
When he sat on the edge of my bed I smelled cigarette smoke and something else that
reminded me of musty leaves and rotting yellow squash. I couldn't place that scent, but it
reminded me of bad things, dead and dying, in the tall pine woods around our house.
"I got forty-five bucks," Jake said.
"Okay."
"I want us to go to the mall on Saturday, get us some late Christmas presents."
I smiled. "Okay."
Jake placed a cool hand on my forehead, ruffled my hair, then rose to go to his room. We had
school the next day. When he was at the door, I remembered that I had something to tell him.
"Jake," I said. He turned. "Someone broke the front window out today. Threw a rock in."
I could see Jake shaking his head, even in the dark. Daddy'd had some trouble at work. Jake
and I both knew about it. He'd taken a black man home to Beaumont from the steel factory one
night because the man's car had gone dead. Daddy worked hard, was a good man, but we lived
in Vidor, Texas, and it wasn't seen as an act of kindness to give a black man a ride home. It was
seen as blasphemy.
Now our front window was broken out. It was cold and damp outside, and we didn't have the
money to fix it, not after Christmas. Daddy taped up black garbage sacks over the broken pane
and cleaned up the glittering shards of glass that shone like rhinestones on the linoleum.
"Who done it?" Jake asked.
I shrugged even though he couldn't see me. Didn't matter anyway.
Jake rapped twice softly on the door jamb. "Saturday," he told me, then left my room.
Saturday morning, Mom let Jake borrow her Toyota and we drove over the Neches River into
Beaumont. In the parking lot, the street lights still had on their Christmas wreaths and red
ribbons.
Inside was a brand new world, big and bright, with windows in the roof that gleamed with the
raindrops that had been falling that day. Hundreds of people bustled around, towing children
and huge, multi-colored bags that rustled like leaves. I walked several feet behind Jake, who
seemed altogether unimpressed by the spectacle that spun around us like a world in a snow
globe.
Jake had always been that way. Quiet. Except with me. He'd smoked cigarettes since he was
thirteen, a fact he'd kept from our parents. We moved to Vidor from Bridge City as children, me
still riding his handed-down tricycle. Our house sat alone at the end of a no-outlet street,
surrounded by a few acres of boggy pine woods.
The kids in our neighborhood were boys, Jake's age and older, who were into hunting and cars,
and later drinking and girls. Jake always looked after me. Once he got into a fight with one of
those neighbor boys for calling me names. Jake broke the boy's nose and got into trouble over
it.
As children, we played in the woods, picked blackberries in the summer, and avoided other
children. Back then, Jake told me everything. He told me about his dreams of becoming a pilot
and flying far away from Vidor, never looking back. Jake would write bright-eyed fictions about
dragons and castles, which he kept in unlabeled spirals in a space behind the headboard of his
bed. He told me about a secret crush he had on Sandra Babcock in his fourth grade class and
made me swear not to tell Mom. He confided in me his freshman year when he tried marijuana
at a party with some friends. I never told anyone.
In the last year, Jake and I stopped talking the way we used to. I guess he was interested in
other things and was too busy for his little sister. He had other friends now, and other things
to do.
Walking behind him, I wondered what it was he did every day, from the time school got out
until the time came that those big truck engines growled down our road at 3 a.m. I noticed
something about his walk I'd never seen before. His steps were solid, plodding steps, like our
Dad's with that same ambling gait that knew no hurry would do his life any good. His bony
shoulders slumped beneath his flannel jacket, and his hands were crammed deep into his
pockets. He walked slowly ahead of me, not looking at anything. His eyes barely left the floor.
In the stores, people lined up in droves at the registers, bringing stuff back. Every cashier wore
the same exasperated, reddened face as they argued with customers abut return policies. All
day long, Jake and I shopped, oblivious to the coming and going of the busier shoppers.
Jake bought a pair of boots and a little brass pipe. I ventured from store to store, continually
changing the checklist I kept in my mind. A tiny porcelain angel with prismatic wings, a Tracy
Byrd CD, a new pair of blue jeans, a bright blue night gown with black lace at the neck. I
examined each item with care, forgetting my life outside the mall. It all paled next to the soft
colors of those high, clean walls, those sparkling white Christmas lights reflected and refracted
a thousand times in a thousand panes of glass.
That evening, Jake and I ate together at the food court. Three girls with dyed black hair, silver
jewelry and ripped jeans came by to talk to Jake. They watched me as they spoke to my
brother, their eyes dull and yellowy, with spiky eyelashes that reminded me of crow's wings.
They smelled like Halloween and Clove cigarettes.
These girls knew Jake, but they weren't from our school. They kept whispering in his ear, so I
couldn't hear them but knew they were telling secrets. They gave Jake their telephone
numbers on a paper napkin before they left. Funny, I never saw him as popular with girls.
I'd decided to buy a night gown and on the way back, we found a toy store. Its shelves were
piled to extreme with every stuffed animal, board game, race car and action figure I'd ever seen
on TV. China dolls peered with innocent painted eyes from a shining glass case behind the
register. Jake and I looked at each other, and I knew from his smile that he wanted to go in. I
was glad, because I did too.
We fidgeted with every gadget that could be fidgeted with. Jake raced a remote control
Corvette down an aisle and crashed it into a pyramid of brightly boxed action figures. I stared
in wonder at rows and rows of tiny-waisted dolls with shimmering long, blond hair like Jake's.
At last we came to the back of the store, which was lined with miniature instruments -- guitars,
pianos, banjos and saxophones. Jake took down a guitar and strummed it. To our surprise, it
began a tune on its own, playing a wild, electronic solo with such imitated fervor that we
laughed ourselves breathless. We picked up other instruments, and just like that, we were a
band. I tried to mimic Jake as he imitated the rock stars on TV.
Then, the loudspeaker came on, announcing that the stores of the mall would be closing in
fifteen minutes. Jake stopped and stared at me, his eyes downcast. He suddenly looked much
older -- way too thin and pale to be 18. His blue eyes were shot through with red ribbons and
looked like clear pieces of broken glass.
I struck the strings of my banjo by accident and it responded with its fake melody. Only this
time my knees felt weak when it had been so funny a minute before.
Jake didn't want to go home, and I didn't either. I couldn't face the clammy feel of the pale
blue walls of my bedroom. I didn't want to see Daddy stretched out on a sofa too small for him,
trying to sleep before a buzzing, indifferent TV. And I couldn't stand the thought of that broken
window poorly mended with trash bags and duct tape.
Standing in the toy store, I stared at a case of glass behind which richly-dressed dolls stood in
crystalline ignorance. I remembered seeing my father then, bending his already tired back to
pick up the pieces of the shattered pane from our front room floor.
As Jake stared into his reflection, I no longer saw him as I had before: a young boy, my brother,
too skinny to be attractive, too quiet to be popular, too poor to be anything else. Now I saw
someone I'd never seen: a man already tired of life, burned by the boredom of a small town and
breaking up inside. All around us, the toys stared blankly into the aisles. The dolls in the case,
their blind glass eyes never shutting, reminded me of when, as children, we played in the same
mosquito-infested pine swamp that imprisoned us. We looked on life with the blindness of toys;
our own little world swam around us and we never saw beyond it.
Overhead, the loud speaker blared its final announcement, shattering the moment. Jake
blinked and shook his head. I watched him, hoping that I'd see in him the young boy who had
pretended to be Jimi Hendrix on a 12-inch plastic guitar.
That night, the familiar sound of trucks in the driveway meant that Jake had sneaked out to
enjoy what was left of his Saturday night. Knowing he was gone, I tip-toed into the living room.
Daddy slept motionless on the couch, his tired, lined face glowing gray in the television's light.
As I walked to the window, the trash bags sighed outward, then relaxed with a soft, plastic
rustling. I placed my hands against the bags, tempted to rip them and run through the pine
woods, away to anywhere.
Jake was out there, embracing the town, but I would sit at home. I couldn't see through the
window, and I thought, maybe, it was better that way.
by Celeste Hollister
My brother Jake came in around three in the morning. I saw his skinny shape in the rectangle
of my open door. His long yellow hair and baggy clothes made him, in the grim gray light, more a
scarecrow than a high school senior. He'd come in through the back door. Good thing, too,
because Daddy was asleep on the couch in the front room.
Jake spoke my name in a raspy whisper that was almost drowned by the gunning grumble of
truck's engine as Jake's friends left the drive. I didn't respond because I feared our talking
would wake Daddy.
Daddy worked twelve hour days and slept with the TV on all night when he was home. Mom was
working the late night shift as a cashier and fry cook at the Waffle House on IH-10 and Main
Street. She hated the job, but she wanted to make some extra money to go back to college in
September. We hardly saw her.
"Tammy," Jake said, a little louder.
I answered him before he could speak again.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
"Sure."
When he sat on the edge of my bed I smelled cigarette smoke and something else that
reminded me of musty leaves and rotting yellow squash. I couldn't place that scent, but it
reminded me of bad things, dead and dying, in the tall pine woods around our house.
"I got forty-five bucks," Jake said.
"Okay."
"I want us to go to the mall on Saturday, get us some late Christmas presents."
I smiled. "Okay."
Jake placed a cool hand on my forehead, ruffled my hair, then rose to go to his room. We had
school the next day. When he was at the door, I remembered that I had something to tell him.
"Jake," I said. He turned. "Someone broke the front window out today. Threw a rock in."
I could see Jake shaking his head, even in the dark. Daddy'd had some trouble at work. Jake
and I both knew about it. He'd taken a black man home to Beaumont from the steel factory one
night because the man's car had gone dead. Daddy worked hard, was a good man, but we lived
in Vidor, Texas, and it wasn't seen as an act of kindness to give a black man a ride home. It was
seen as blasphemy.
Now our front window was broken out. It was cold and damp outside, and we didn't have the
money to fix it, not after Christmas. Daddy taped up black garbage sacks over the broken pane
and cleaned up the glittering shards of glass that shone like rhinestones on the linoleum.
"Who done it?" Jake asked.
I shrugged even though he couldn't see me. Didn't matter anyway.
Jake rapped twice softly on the door jamb. "Saturday," he told me, then left my room.
Saturday morning, Mom let Jake borrow her Toyota and we drove over the Neches River into
Beaumont. In the parking lot, the street lights still had on their Christmas wreaths and red
ribbons.
Inside was a brand new world, big and bright, with windows in the roof that gleamed with the
raindrops that had been falling that day. Hundreds of people bustled around, towing children
and huge, multi-colored bags that rustled like leaves. I walked several feet behind Jake, who
seemed altogether unimpressed by the spectacle that spun around us like a world in a snow
globe.
Jake had always been that way. Quiet. Except with me. He'd smoked cigarettes since he was
thirteen, a fact he'd kept from our parents. We moved to Vidor from Bridge City as children, me
still riding his handed-down tricycle. Our house sat alone at the end of a no-outlet street,
surrounded by a few acres of boggy pine woods.
The kids in our neighborhood were boys, Jake's age and older, who were into hunting and cars,
and later drinking and girls. Jake always looked after me. Once he got into a fight with one of
those neighbor boys for calling me names. Jake broke the boy's nose and got into trouble over
it.
As children, we played in the woods, picked blackberries in the summer, and avoided other
children. Back then, Jake told me everything. He told me about his dreams of becoming a pilot
and flying far away from Vidor, never looking back. Jake would write bright-eyed fictions about
dragons and castles, which he kept in unlabeled spirals in a space behind the headboard of his
bed. He told me about a secret crush he had on Sandra Babcock in his fourth grade class and
made me swear not to tell Mom. He confided in me his freshman year when he tried marijuana
at a party with some friends. I never told anyone.
In the last year, Jake and I stopped talking the way we used to. I guess he was interested in
other things and was too busy for his little sister. He had other friends now, and other things
to do.
Walking behind him, I wondered what it was he did every day, from the time school got out
until the time came that those big truck engines growled down our road at 3 a.m. I noticed
something about his walk I'd never seen before. His steps were solid, plodding steps, like our
Dad's with that same ambling gait that knew no hurry would do his life any good. His bony
shoulders slumped beneath his flannel jacket, and his hands were crammed deep into his
pockets. He walked slowly ahead of me, not looking at anything. His eyes barely left the floor.
In the stores, people lined up in droves at the registers, bringing stuff back. Every cashier wore
the same exasperated, reddened face as they argued with customers abut return policies. All
day long, Jake and I shopped, oblivious to the coming and going of the busier shoppers.
Jake bought a pair of boots and a little brass pipe. I ventured from store to store, continually
changing the checklist I kept in my mind. A tiny porcelain angel with prismatic wings, a Tracy
Byrd CD, a new pair of blue jeans, a bright blue night gown with black lace at the neck. I
examined each item with care, forgetting my life outside the mall. It all paled next to the soft
colors of those high, clean walls, those sparkling white Christmas lights reflected and refracted
a thousand times in a thousand panes of glass.
That evening, Jake and I ate together at the food court. Three girls with dyed black hair, silver
jewelry and ripped jeans came by to talk to Jake. They watched me as they spoke to my
brother, their eyes dull and yellowy, with spiky eyelashes that reminded me of crow's wings.
They smelled like Halloween and Clove cigarettes.
These girls knew Jake, but they weren't from our school. They kept whispering in his ear, so I
couldn't hear them but knew they were telling secrets. They gave Jake their telephone
numbers on a paper napkin before they left. Funny, I never saw him as popular with girls.
I'd decided to buy a night gown and on the way back, we found a toy store. Its shelves were
piled to extreme with every stuffed animal, board game, race car and action figure I'd ever seen
on TV. China dolls peered with innocent painted eyes from a shining glass case behind the
register. Jake and I looked at each other, and I knew from his smile that he wanted to go in. I
was glad, because I did too.
We fidgeted with every gadget that could be fidgeted with. Jake raced a remote control
Corvette down an aisle and crashed it into a pyramid of brightly boxed action figures. I stared
in wonder at rows and rows of tiny-waisted dolls with shimmering long, blond hair like Jake's.
At last we came to the back of the store, which was lined with miniature instruments -- guitars,
pianos, banjos and saxophones. Jake took down a guitar and strummed it. To our surprise, it
began a tune on its own, playing a wild, electronic solo with such imitated fervor that we
laughed ourselves breathless. We picked up other instruments, and just like that, we were a
band. I tried to mimic Jake as he imitated the rock stars on TV.
Then, the loudspeaker came on, announcing that the stores of the mall would be closing in
fifteen minutes. Jake stopped and stared at me, his eyes downcast. He suddenly looked much
older -- way too thin and pale to be 18. His blue eyes were shot through with red ribbons and
looked like clear pieces of broken glass.
I struck the strings of my banjo by accident and it responded with its fake melody. Only this
time my knees felt weak when it had been so funny a minute before.
Jake didn't want to go home, and I didn't either. I couldn't face the clammy feel of the pale
blue walls of my bedroom. I didn't want to see Daddy stretched out on a sofa too small for him,
trying to sleep before a buzzing, indifferent TV. And I couldn't stand the thought of that broken
window poorly mended with trash bags and duct tape.
Standing in the toy store, I stared at a case of glass behind which richly-dressed dolls stood in
crystalline ignorance. I remembered seeing my father then, bending his already tired back to
pick up the pieces of the shattered pane from our front room floor.
As Jake stared into his reflection, I no longer saw him as I had before: a young boy, my brother,
too skinny to be attractive, too quiet to be popular, too poor to be anything else. Now I saw
someone I'd never seen: a man already tired of life, burned by the boredom of a small town and
breaking up inside. All around us, the toys stared blankly into the aisles. The dolls in the case,
their blind glass eyes never shutting, reminded me of when, as children, we played in the same
mosquito-infested pine swamp that imprisoned us. We looked on life with the blindness of toys;
our own little world swam around us and we never saw beyond it.
Overhead, the loud speaker blared its final announcement, shattering the moment. Jake
blinked and shook his head. I watched him, hoping that I'd see in him the young boy who had
pretended to be Jimi Hendrix on a 12-inch plastic guitar.
That night, the familiar sound of trucks in the driveway meant that Jake had sneaked out to
enjoy what was left of his Saturday night. Knowing he was gone, I tip-toed into the living room.
Daddy slept motionless on the couch, his tired, lined face glowing gray in the television's light.
As I walked to the window, the trash bags sighed outward, then relaxed with a soft, plastic
rustling. I placed my hands against the bags, tempted to rip them and run through the pine
woods, away to anywhere.
Jake was out there, embracing the town, but I would sit at home. I couldn't see through the
window, and I thought, maybe, it was better that way.
All of these stories are my own.
© Celeste Hollister, 1996-2006
© Celeste Hollister, 1996-2006