ISABEL ALEXANDER

My brother is a metronome. In the car he puts his hands on either side of him and dents the beige fabric as he gets lost in the music he doesn’t know he’s hearing. On my good days I let his beat fill the space between us. On my bad days, I push him, and he looks my way. Saying his name never works.

Autism is hard for me to pronounce, but my parents whisper it a lot. It sounds like bees. Sometimes the voices from our basement are so loud that I can’t do my homework up above. I’m not allowed to help the therapists because that would be too many voices. But during afternoon snack, they like it when I talk.

I wonder if the therapists pay Mom for the food she cooks them. We need money for the doctors, even though I don’t like them. They tell us that my brother may never speak, but that’s silly because he already learned to speak once. The words are inside.

I like Sally best. We go to her house because she has a special room with a swing that looks like a hammock, so big that my brother disappears when he’s in it. She rocks him back and forth and he giggles the way he does when I tickle him.

Mom cuts fruit into little pieces and brings them down on a tray. When he does something right he gets one in his mouth and learns like a puppy. I eat the leftovers.

He slices his chin on the playground at camp and I hold him until Mom picks him up. There’s blood everywhere. That afternoon I ride the bus home alone and feel relieved because for the first time I don’t have to make sure he gets on.

We’re late to his track meet because Mom wants to park in the shade and there is no shade. He wears duct-taped sneakers, the same color as the medal he gets. Dad sees a younger version of himself and cries. And cries again years later when my brother becomes state champion.

The binders don’t fit in our basement anymore, so we move some upstairs. I look at the charts and try to find surprises, even though the pages all look the same. Sometimes I see my name in the notes section. I didn’t know he talked about me down there.

One night Mom doesn’t have energy to come to my concert, and when I come home she’s crying. I tell her not to. Our school system is the bad guy and my parents are the superheroes. But sometimes it’s hard to remember who the bad guys are because they keep changing.

He breaks the couch with his bouncing, so the blue ball is for listening now. When the music gets faster he claps without making sound.

We go exploring. The rocks are the dining room and the tree stump is the kitchen, but when I visit again they are only a step apart and the tree stump crumbles when I step on it.

When I move away, he carries my boxes so that his muscles grow. Mom doesn’t say goodbye because if she did her feelings would come out.

Mom thinks it’s best to cut the second pill into quarters, but the knife is dull so he gets one and a half instead of one and a quarter. Dad thinks it doesn't matter but Mom thinks it does and they argue until it falls on the floor.

On the beach Dad walks with his head down so he can pick up stones. They turn grey in the car but on the bathroom ledge they come back to life in plastic pools. Dad looks at them on quiet mornings.

A new student tours my brother’s school. She has blonde hair and one-phrase texts. He falls in love with her because she replies.

When he hugs Mom, her head fits into his armpit and she can’t breathe. Sometimes she laughs and sometimes she keeps the painful face.

I tell him to look vulnerable, but he’s afraid. We fight and he doesn’t smile and it looks perfect until he starts talking and then everything’s blurry. I used to think it was easier to point the lens at someone else. Then again, maybe it still is.

METRONOME

In spring 2018, I was admitted to "Where The Wild Things Are" (VES 149r), an upper-level photography course that encourages self reflection and understanding through art. For my semester-long project, I photographed autism.

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