THE OPPOSITE OF HALLELUJAH hannah hindley My brother keeps his shoes on a stacked wooden shelving system, one pair per compartment. Everything in his home is labeled in careful, imperfect handwriting. He eats with his fist closed tightly around his fork. He broke up with a girlfriend once when she tossed a recyclable into a garbage can. If someone sets clean clothing of his on the floor, he gets irritable. His routine is tidy, predictable. His possessions are sparse and cared for. And when I find the burned barrel of a ball-point pen in his room, smell the acrid mix of scorched plastic and chemical powder, I wonder if he can see it, if it hurts—the untidiness of his own life unraveling amid his carefully ordered world.
lain’s smile under a tall cowboy hat shot through with an arrow. There are punky printouts that dad over-edited when he made a birthday album for him—grainy black-and-whites of my brother sliding his skateboard over rails, down ramps. He worried about the way our parents dressed him. He didn’t want to be made fun of. But he courageously dressed in drag one Halloween in middle school; he jumped—after hours of careful study— from a tall cliff into the mountain lake we visited in the summer. Sometimes he was brave. I’d cry when he interrupted an important movie with a vulgar interjection. He did poorly in school. He would defend me against anyone who spoke ill. Is it clear? I do not know my brother. I cannot tell you what he carried—carries— inside, can only show you glimpses. Maybe somewhere in that composite album is a truth. He was, and is, loud, gentle, insecure, meticulous, easily embarrassed. He was exuberant as a child, my mom says, he filled the room. If Finn was happy,
He really was the cutest kid. There are pictures of us together—me in the wheelbarrow, my blond curls blowing back toward him. He wears a serious expression: wide blue eyes almost glittering, alive even on the glossy page. The concerned big brother. In one picture, he smiles a crooked vil-
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