My mother is a well-loved woman, and although she passed four years ago, my family and I still make an effort to stay connected with her friends. When we were extended an invitation to the wedding of her friend’s daughter, it was only natural for my us to go.

With less than a month from my twenty-first birthday, my brother and his girlfriend insisted that I visit the bar at the reception to prepare me. “So that you know what you’ll want when it’s time”, they argued. The bartender knew my brother, and the companionship added weight to the pouring hand. After a fleet of drinks, my brother, his girlfriend, and I ended up in the center of the dance floor. It felt lovely to dance with my brother hand-in-hand, to slow dance with his girlfriend and spin her into my brother’s embrace at the end of the song.

Dinner was served table-by-table, and I retreated to feast with my dad when the combination of alcohol and movement got to be a bit much. My brother, however, continued to chat up his friend at the bar. I watched him and his girlfriend distance themselves from the crowd with drinks in hand.

And as the sun set below the trees, the chill of the October air was no longer one I could ignore. Like a moth to a flame, I found my way to the bonfire just outside the tent, letting the flames dance around my hands and face. My brother had miraculously appeared and was seated on the opposite side of the fire. From the way he was roughhousing with me post-dance and pre-dinner, I knew his alcohol intake was increasing steadily. His girlfriend asked me about any plans I had for my birthday – though before I could thoughtfully reply, she was met with a request for water by my brother, to which she promptly scuttled off to fetch. So with my attention redirected to my brother, I told him that, with a twinge of humor in my voice, I’d like to go to a gay bar for my twenty-first. I watched his eyes crinkle shut in amusement, slurring out “faggot” in a laugh.
What? What did he say? What did you say?
My blood ran cold; the dancing embers in front of me felt so far away that even the heat couldn’t reach my body. Before I could respond, my brother was already vanishing into the darkness, gone in the blink of an eye in some random direction. Never before have we had a stable relationship, but the connection I felt to him on the dance floor was real, until he muttered that word and the mirage rippled and faded away when I was just in reach of it and I was left alone in the stinging bitter cold. The pale light of the moon illuminated me and my vulnerability.

When his girlfriend returned with the water, she must have been met with a look of absence plastered on my face, because she asked me what was wrong and where my brother had gone. I told her what he’d said to me, nodding in the direction he’d wandered off in and expecting her to follow, but she looked wounded. She told me that was an awful thing to say, that he’s too drunk and we should leave.
My dad agreed when he encountered my blackout drunk brother. We had driven my truck to the wedding, but my dad agreed to drive back. I sat in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield with the window cracked open, the cold air grounding me. My stomach was swimming, and even the roaring of the wind could not drown out the nauseated groans of my brother on the bench seat behind me.

What called him away that night? Is there any possibility that perhaps he registered what he said? Maybe instead of expressing remorse, he couldn’t bear to face me?
Truthfully, these options are much more appealing. (The zipping-up of his fly upon his return indicated the real reason he left: nature called.)

Alone, in my dark room, my noise-cancelling headphones did nothing to cover up the unmistakable sound of my brother expelling his disgust, spilling all over the front of his formalwear and dribbling from his chin. The kind of stain that can be done away with a fee at the dry cleaners. The interaction that night left a stain on myself, in my mind, and spread like spilt wine down my brainstem to my heart, curdling like milk and pumping through my arteries, clogging my blood flow. Bile rises in my throat when I think of it, but relief can’t be achieved even if I stick my fingers down my throat; it’s the kind of sickness you just have to wait out.

Waking up with the memories of the night before made me want to pull the covers over my head and sleep until I forgot, but that kind of cut simply doesn’t heal with ignorance. My brother issued an apology to my family, though addressed mostly towards my dad, who has been sober for decades and always warned my brother of our genetic alcohol intolerance. He admitted that he was embarrassed about his state that night, promising that it wouldn’t happen again.

How do you resolve a conflict when the perpetrator seemingly has no recollection?

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen tells many stories of this kind of haunting experience, and times like these are painful reminders that you never truly know what people think of you until they slip up and do something to reveal how they truly see you.