The Roof

When I was seven years old, I discovered for the first time that the window of my childhood home opened to the roof. If I jimmied the window just the right way, it allowed me to slip out and crawl carefully from the safety of my bedroom to the unknown land of the roof. I had decided to run away. The window seemed the most melodramatic way to do it. But instead of making my way to the ground, I got preoccupied by the power I felt while suspended at the outdoor level of my bedroom. It was June.

When my childhood dog died, I was twelve. We had basically grown up together, in a way that my older brother had never really been around to do with me. When I learned of the tragedy that had occurred while I was at school, wasting away in a classroom and learning about the life cycle of earthworms, I crawled out my window to my place on the roof. In my hurry to get to the safe space above the ground, I had thought only to grab a small stick. It seemed like something he would’ve liked to have, and I didn’t have his collar anyway. We had lost it when we took him swimming at the river the week before.

I took my first drink at thirteen. My older brother always left small liquor bottles in his bedroom, and he was rarely home, so one night my curiosity got the best of me, and I stole one. The label said it was supposed to taste like cherries. I spit out the first sip, coughed after I forced down the second. I threw the half empty bottle off the roof, hoping for a satisfying crash as it hit the pavement. Unfortunately, it was only a plastic bottle, and so the crash was more of a clatter. My dad ran the minivan over the bottle and spilled the rest of its clear-colored contents all over the asphalt. I don’t think my brother would’ve noticed if the bottle had hit him on the head after I threw it.

I had my first real crush when I was in high school. I think I was fifteen. She didn’t notice me, but then again, I barely noticed me. I remember taking sharpies and writing a blend of her name and mine all over everything. I even wrote it on one of the shingles on the roof next to my bedroom window. A few days later, humiliated, I attempted to scratch it out. All I did was chip the shingle and ruin my fingernails.

When I was seventeen, a rusty green van rolled to a stop on the street next to my driveway. My older brother fell out of it a few moments later, slamming the door behind him. The van drove away. My mother ran to him from the house. My father walked quickly to the mailbox, discovering that it was still empty. My brother smiled wickedly. None of them saw me on the roof.

I moved out of my childhood home when I was twenty. While I packed the boxes, my mother frantically putting together frozen meals and boxes of granola bars, my brother walked by. He didn’t say anything, just went into his room and closed the door.

A few hours later, I was just lifting my first leg over the windowsill when my brother appeared again in the doorway. It wasn’t the first time someone had caught me climbing out the window, but it was awkward as though it had been. Without any words, he followed me onto the roof. We sat in silence for a while, until finally, he spoke.

“Mom’s made tons of food for you. You better eat it all.”

I nodded.

“Don’t forget to pack condoms. And always carry jumper cables. If not for you, then for someone else.”

I didn’t look at him. “I think jumper cables are standard issue in most cars. People don’t even know they’re there, because most of the time they don’t even need them.”

He sighed. “Someday I hope you look back on your life and realize that you didn’t need to be so hard.”

I swallowed. “I’m not moving that far.”

“I know.”

We sat in silence for a few more moments, and then my brother started to get up. In an instant he was on the ground beneath the kitchen window. My realization of what had happened came slowly, then all at once. Not knowing what else to do, I stayed on the roof. My mother appeared in the front yard, ran back inside, appeared once again. She paced, biting her fingernails. A few moments later, an ambulance stopped on the sidewalk next to our driveway, and collected my brother’s fragmented body. I sat on the roof as my mother walked quickly with the paramedics. I decided not to leave without the boxes of granola bars.

After a few hours, my mother reappeared in the front yard. She stopped short and shifted her eyes directly onto mine. “Your brother broke his hip. He has a minor concussion. Are you still leaving tonight?”

I shook my head. She sighed. “Come on inside, I’ll order some Chinese food.”

As we waited for the delivery, my mother slowly began packing the frozen food back into the freezer.

I left the following morning. It was a thirty-minute drive to my new apartment, and as I opened the door for the first time, I took a deep breath. I took a small box into my bedroom, and then sat on the bare floor, my back pressed against the doorframe. When I finally took a moment to recognize my surroundings, I glimpsed the fire escape outside my bedroom window.

Immediately, I began to jimmy the window open, and found that I could easily slip through onto the hard metal stairs. The breeze from outside felt crisp on my skin. I pulled the old stick out of my pocket intending just to hold it for a moment. It slipped through my fingers, landing softly in between a hole in the metal stairs of the fire escape. I laughed, deciding to leave it there. I went back inside to unpack the rest of my things.