Merit
Granite Harbor, Maine
Fall 1994
Age Ten
Ryan chokes his red flannel hash down, but in his last bite, I swear on my life, his eyeballs turn green. Eli has eaten his, too, but not without gagging.
“Merit Young, you’d better finish your supper, or there’s no dessert,” my mother calls from the sink, her back to us, like she has eyes in the back of her head.
Mothers have superpowers.
Mind readers.
X-ray vision.
Arms that can stretch into the back seat of a minivan and flick your cheek.
Bionic hearing for the late-night cookie jar runs.
Built-in lie detector.
I’d rather die than eat red flannel hash—corned beef and cabbage mushed with beets. I’d rather swim with sharks in the deep Atlantic or shovel snow every day in winter than eat red flannel hash. I’d rather have the flu even.
“Mom, I don’t feel well.” I’m not lying. Just thinking about taking a bite of this makes my stomach hurt.
“Mom, can I be excused, please?” Eli asks.
She doesn’t have to turn to look at Eli’s bowl to know he’s finished because, with her X-ray vision, she already knows he’s done. “Yes. Rinse your bowl.”
Eli gets up and walks to the sink.
I roll my eyes and look at Ryan, still across the table, his face the color of a Venus flytrap. He attempts a smile.
The phone rings, and when Mom goes to answer it in the living room, Ryan whispers, “Trade me bowls.”
“What?” I whisper back, quickly glancing into the living room, checking on the authority.
“Trade me bowls, Mer.”
“You want mine?” I start to push it across the table while taking Ryan’s empty one.
“No, I don’t want yours. But chocolate cake is your favorite.”
My tummy starts to twist and turn, and I wonder what this feeling is. Ryan slides my bowl to him and shovels seven big bites into his mouth. He gags. Twice.
I look back into the living room, but Mom doesn’t know any better.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
Ryan wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and nods. But he’s not. His shade of green is even darker than it was after the first bowl.
“Thank you.”
Eli comes back to the table after rinsing his bowl, and Mom enters the kitchen again, stopping behind me. She stares at my bowl, and I give her a smug look—a look that says, So, there. I ate it.
“See, Mer? It wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mom bends and kisses me on the cheek.
I don’t dare answer her for two reasons. First, if I agree it wasn’t that bad, she’ll expect me to eat it again, and two, I’m a terrible liar.
“I’ve gotta go home. Thanks for dinner, Mrs. Young.”
Ryan stands and attempts to take his bowl to the sink, but I stop him.
“I’ve got your bowl tonight.”
“You can’t stay for chocolate cake, Ryan?” my mother asks.
“Nah. Early morning fishing trip with my dad.”
He’s lying. I can tell he’s lying because his eye is twitching. I’m not sure that everyone notices this, but I do.
Like the time he said his mom just went on vacation for a second time—eye twitch. Eli and I found the note in the garbage. Not that we were looking through the garbage, but we were helping Ryan take it out, and the note somehow floated to the ground with a puff of air. We never asked Ryan about it. We knew it’d hurt too much, so we pretended to believe the lie he’d told us.
Or the time he said he was sick and couldn’t go to school—eye twitch. We saw the bruises his dad had left behind, periodically making an appearance out from underneath his shirt.
Eli and I walk Ryan out.
“Going fishing with your dad tomorrow?” Eli asks, surprised.
“No, I don’t feel good. Just didn’t have the heart to tell your mom. Didn’t want her to think it was her red flannel hash.”
“Why not? It’s disgusting,” I say.
Ryan shrugs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
“Want us to ride with you home?” Eli asks.
“Nah.” Ryan gets on his bike. “See you tomorrow.”
“Hey, Ryan?” I call out. “Thanks.”
Ryan smiles, nods, turns, pedals down our lane, and disappears into the quickly fading sun.
Eli and I turn and walk back inside.
“He ate your hash for you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where the heck was I?”
“Doing your dishes.”
“Ryan’s got a crush on you.”
“Shut up. Does not. He’s like my brother. Ew.”
But I remember the way my tummy felt when he said I liked chocolate cake. It didn’t feel like all the times my mom or Pop had said something nice. It didn’t feel like the times Eli had shared his toys with me. It felt nothing like that.
“Why else would he eat your hash? That stuff is disgusting.”
We hear Pop’s work truck pull up behind us.
“Pop!” we both yell.
He rolls down the window, and we hop up on the side step of his truck. Bessie, Dad’s K9, whines in the back.
“Hey, Besser-Boo!” I put my hand in her kennel behind the driver’s side, and she gives me kisses.
“What’s for dinner?” Pop asks.
Eli and I both laugh. Pop hates it, too.
“Steak and potatoes!” I call out, laughing.
“Red flannel hash.” Eli’s voice droops.
“Oh.” Pop puffs up his cheeks and pretends to throw up.
Eli and I laugh harder.
“We ate already. Mom wasn’t sure what time you’d be home,” Eli says.
“Hold on!” Pop calls as he slowly accelerates, creeping toward the house as Eli and I hang on to the side of the truck.
That night, as I lie in bed, I think about Ryan. What he went home to. Eli and I’ve never told anyone what we’ve seen on Ryan’s body or how his dad treats him. It eats me up inside.
I grab my walkie-talkie and press the Talk button. “Eli. You awake?”
“No. Go to sleep, Mer.” His voice is full of static.
“I want to tell Mom about Ryan and his dad.” My stomach turns into nerves.
Eli sighs into the device. “Shit, Mer, I told you, Ryan made us swear. We can’t. Told us, if we ever said anything, his dad said he would kill him.”
I know. I know what he said.
Releasing the Talk button on the walkie-talkie, I set it down at my side.
I remember that day clearly, the day another bruise showed up on his abdomen. The one Eli and I saw when we finished our final roll down the hill. The one where his shirt came up, and I gasped. Ryan tried to cover it up. Tried to make excuses.
“Ryan, why do you protect your dad? He’s a jerk.” I pulled myself up to my feet and followed Ryan’s lead.
Eli said, “Ryan, we’ve gotta tell someone.”
“I ran into my bed.” He pushed our words, our concern, away.
“You’re lying, Ryan.” Eli stepped up, faced him, eye-to-eye. Eli was mad.
Ryan stared back. His fists in balls at his sides. “I ran into my bed.” His jaw was clenched.
What about your arm two weeks ago? And your thigh just last week, I wanted to say, but I was too scared to say it. I wanted to believe that he was telling us the truth. I wanted to believe that his dad didn’t hit him. Hurt him. It was simpler that way. Soft. Not messy. Easier on my heart.
“Come on. We’ve gotta get home. It’s getting dark,” I told the boys and took the lead.
“Stop,” Ryan said.
We did and turned back to face him.
“If you guys tell anyone, he’ll kill me.” He tried to cover up the fear in his voice, but I heard it.
It settled in my veins, and then I grew angry, but Eli didn’t.
That night, in bed, after Ryan went home, I prayed for him. I prayed that God would take care of Ryan.
How could you let this happen? I asked him.
But he didn’t answer.
The next day, Ryan didn’t show up for school at Granite Harbor Elementary.
Or the next day or the next day.
Eli and I decided to go to his house after school. Ryan’s house was just up from Main Street in Granite Harbor. A fishing boat sat, perched in the yard at an angle, set up on stilts, while patches of tall yellow weeds grew up the sides of the boat, attempting to make their attack. The once-white house with green shutters was now a sanctuary for dirt, and old, cheap paint had been begun to curl and twist up the old house. There should be a sign in the yard that said, Keep Out. No Trespassing. Unsafe. But we pushed back the white picket gate and made our way around the old ice chests, fishing poles, and tackle boxes that lay in the walk path.
“Mom would have a fit,” I whispered to my brother, who was almost to the front door.
Pop had told us this place was off-limits to us. And I thought, if Pop could get custody of Ryan, he’d have been at our house a long time ago.
We knocked on the door, but Ryan never answered.
I sneak downstairs to see if Mom and Pop are still awake, but I don’t want to talk with them. I just want another piece of cake. I hear them whispering at the kitchen table instead, so I stop in the hallway just before the kitchen and peek in.
“Ruthie walked by last week on her way downtown and said Dubbs was screaming at Ryan. Screaming nonsense. So, Ruthie marched up to the door, but no one answered. The screaming stopped. Didn’t stop her from calling the state police,” Pop says.
Mom takes a sip of her tea. “And they couldn’t do anything?”
Pop shrugs. “Ryan said it didn’t happen.”
“You know good and well it happened if Ruthie Murdock heard it.” Her lips were in a firm line.
Pop nods.
The stupid floor creaks as I take another step closer. My parents look to the doorway to the kitchen.
“Mer, what are you doing up so late?” My dad, still in his uniform, beckons me to him.
I crawl up into his lap. So badly, I want to tell Mom and Pop what I know. What I’ve seen.
My dad pulls my hair back and kisses my forehead as I put my head to his chest.
“Were you guys talking about Ryan?” I ask.
Mom looks at Pop and takes my hand. “Yeah. We’re worried about him.”
I don’t say anything, but if my stomach could talk, I’d scream out my anger and my hatred for Dubbs Taylor and what he does to his son when no one’s looking.
Ryan does a really good job of covering up the bruises, so no one sees them. Except for Eli and me. We lie to protect his safety. Our safety.
A web grows in my throat, and my heart stops the truth from coming out. I don’t want Ryan to die, and I know every ounce of what Ryan said about his dad killing him would happen.
“Do you know anything about what’s happening at his home, Mer?” Pop asks in his slow, calm game warden voice. The leader of our family. “Has Ryan said anything to you and Eli?”
I can’t tell.
I won’t lose his trust.
I can’t lose Ryan.
So, I tell the best lie I know. Not out of spite for Dubbs, not out of hurt for Ryan, but out of fear. “No.” I look down the hallway, too scared to look my parents in the eye, and I see Eli standing in the darkness. A tear streaming down his nine-year-old cheek, he eases back into the darkness.
Sometimes, there are secrets we keep so deep that our minds forget, not wanting to remember what the quiet chaos feels like against our hearts. But I’ll keep this secret. I will hang on to it if it’s going to keep Ryan safe.
Safe from his own secrets.