My Brother's Pants

Fresh, crisp cloth. Green, yellow, brown vertical stripes. My brother’s pants were a work of art.

My mother’s gift to each of us children each September was an outfit crafted by her very hands, imbued with her love, patience, and tasteful sense of fashion . It was her way of making sacred our first day of school, sending us off cloaked in her protective magic.

Standing with my brother, Matthew, by my side at the end of our country lane, I remember the cool air on my bare arms and legs. It was summer turned into autumn with promises of heat and wasps in the midday sun. I can feel my mothers’ eyes and warm presence watching her two of three children leave for school, the first day of school.

Distant rumbling announces the yellowy-orange school bus with its low spiralling dust funnel travelling along behind on Stephen Township concession #5. The doors of the bus open with a squeak and a jiggle and my eyes meet the beady piercing cold blue of Roxy Weber’s. Her auburn hair is piled high. Her lips are an astonishing fire-engine red. Her whole being seems to tremble with a fragility I had never before witnessed in an adult. She was our driver.

My brother, clad in his green, yellow, brown striped pants of wow, steps up the big steps with me following in my lilac dress with an Irish wool cape with strands of spring green, pink and lavender woven through. Clutching the handle of my shiny blue plastic lunch bucket, I am struck by an intense mélange of scent: a combination of new vinyl seat coverings off-gassing and potent peanut butter fumes leaking from the many school children’s lunch buckets.

My brother and I enter a hole of silence. Everyone is looking. Everyone is staring. I feel like I want to use this powerful energy to vanish myself and land magically in the warm, sunny, safe kitchen of easy mornings and child’s play close to my Mother.

The silence is broken by whisperings, then the single malevolent voice of a stranger seated near the rear of the bus, calls out, “NICE PANTS, GIRLY-BOY.” Quickly, I realize this venomous attack is aimed at my brother and his pants of wow lovingly made by my Mother. My heart sinks and I reach into the wounded heart of my brother sitting next to me. Not a word I dare utter, respecting his ability to handle this attack.

The bus ride through Crediton and up past the fertile marshlands to Stephen Central Public School seems eternal. The voices of children playing and the rhythmic groaning of the swings welcomes us into the schoolyard.

I watch my brother step off the bus and without hesitation, draw his yellow lunch bucket back and swing it through to strike the nasty boy on his ribs and back. Carrot sticks, a bologna sandwich and an apple are strewn about the pavement; a thermos, rolls to a tinkling stillness onto the gravel shoulder.

The authorities scramble from the corners of the schoolyard to ‘handle the situation’ and haul my brother away for discipline.

I am speechless, yet unafraid. Inside, I am, in a surprising way, deeply proud of my brother for taking the law into his own hands. My brother had taken his place and stood up for himself, unafraid of the consequences. My brother had not chosen to bury these hurtful words deep inside, to be looked at perhaps later in his life.

Green, yellow, brown vertical stripes. Fresh crisp cloth. My brother’s pants were never worn again.

written by Sarah McClure

October 13, 2010