S. and I were as close as a brother and sister, born six years apart, could be. I think it helped that I was born on his sixth birthday. (He died on our birthday — his 40th — but that’s a story for another day.) He was my protector, even after he broke his neck and couldn’t move.

The last image I have of S. when he was still walking: I was going to the movies with a group of girls. S. was laying on our mom’s bed, reading the newspaper. It was July 28, 1979. Our mother was out — it was a Friday night, after all — and I told him I’d see him tomorrow.

S. was wearing his favorite faded Levi’s (I confiscated them later), a t-shirt, and his super cool hippie moccasins. He had the biggest hair of any guy I’d ever seen: we are blessed with thick hair and he had his permed, so it was a big mop of curls.

The next time I saw him, his head was shorn of all those beautiful locks.

I woke the next morning to the voices of neighbors in my kitchen. Immediately I knew something was wrong. Stepped into the hall: Mrs.O, JM, MD, sitting at the kitchen table talking quietly.

What’s wrong? Where’s my mom? WHAT IS GOING ON?

They looked like deer in the headlights and wouldn’t say a word. My mom came out of her room.

Honey. It’s S. He had an accident.

What. Like, drugs? Is he ok? Is he going to be ok? Is he dead? PLEASE TELL ME HE ISN’T DEAD. PLEASE MOMMY. TELL ME HE ISN’T DEAD.

No, honey. He’s not dead. He’s in the hospital. He broke his neck. Diving.

Oh. Oh ok. Well then he’s going to be fine. I mean, he’ll be fine. He broke his ankle and teeth in that car accident a few years ago and I know he’ll be fine.

I have to call K, my mom said. He needs to come come home.

I sat on her bed as she rang K, who was living with a friend down in Florida. Mind racing, hands shaking, not understanding. I wasn’t prepared then.

K? It’s mom. Listen, you need to come home. S. had an accident last night. Well, he broke his neck. No, no, he’s not dead.

He’s. Well, he’s paralyzed from the neck down.

A knife came out of the sky and sliced me open, cleaved me clean down the middle. My heart spilled onto the floor. My brain froze and time stopped.

I’M GOING TO THE BARN.

Hopped on my bike, rode five miles to DDFarm, weeping, gulping air. Up to the front pasture, bike to the ground, ran to the middle of the field,threw my arms around Witchcraft, crying into her neck. My riding teacher came running. My mother had called her.

I stayed at the barn until it was nearly dark, when my mother came to pick me and my bicycle up. In the car, she gave me a valium and told me to take it. It would be scary, she said to my 14-year-old self, but you can’t cry in front of S.

Is he going to die? I asked. Is he ever going to walk again?

I don’t know, honey. I don’t know. The doctors are doing everything they can.

By the time we got to the ICU, I felt a little drowsy. Still, I wasn’t prepared to see my big brother like that.

A metal halo circled his shaved head, affixed by large screws into his temples and the back of his skull. He had a large cut on his neck, closed by stitches: The doctors had repaired his broken cervical bones (3,4,5) by going through the front of his neck. His spinal cord had been nearly, but not completely, severed by the compression of the bones when he hit his head on the bottom of the pond. They used bone from his hip to replace the shattered cervical bones.

We are sorry, but he will never walk again, the doctors told our mom.

My big brother looked scared. I didn’t cry, though. I didn’t cry.

That would come later.

There is before, and there is after.

Before S.’s neck was crushed, we were a fairly routinely dysfunctional family. K. had moved out and I was thrilled: he was a cruel piece of shit to me and to everyone. He’d leave bruises on my face, from slapping me so hard. My mother drank too much; it’s what most bartenders do, I suppose, and frequently stayed out several nights a week. She could be a bitch, but after S.’s accident, she became someone we didn’t know, reaching a depth of cruelty that haunts me to this day. But S. and I always got along really well, even though I was so much younger. He was protective of me; he was proud of my grades and my smarts. Unlike me, S. didn’t like school. He graduated from high school and thought he was done. He was someone who worked with his hands and, when he had the opportunity, he made beautiful things: furniture and paintings and sculpture.

He broke his neck just two years after graduating from high school. Out with a bunch of friends, beer flowing, ganga blazing: he stood at the edge of a small dock and dove in, like he’d done probably a thousand other times in his life. We were raised on the water. Swimming and diving were natural.

He pushed off and his 6-foot-1, 200-pound frame slammed into the bottom of a too-shallow area of the pond.

S. told me later that he knew instantly he had broken his neck and was paralyzed. He held his breath, he said, because he wanted to live; held it as long as he could, until he couldn’t. Then, he told me, he started taking deep gulps of pond water. What surprised him was how peaceful drowning was. I always thought it would be a terrible way to go. Not according to S.

He was rescued after one of the girls in group noticed he hadn’t emerged. How those drunk, stoned, scared teenagers ever found him under a dark sky in the middle of the night, I’ll never know. But they did, and they pulled him up and out of the water onto the shore, almost to the road.

Four months after the accident, S. was moved from the hospital to a rehab hospital in New York City, where he remained for seven months. My mom and I drove to New York every weekend, sometimes staying in Queens with Aunt Dot, sometimes just doing a one-day round trip. It was the most sober I’d see my mother; the rest of the week she’d stay out and get loaded after work.

When S. came home from the hospital our bond, and our mother’s alcoholism, only deepened. She was not a pleasant drunk; when she wasn’t angry, she was melancholy and brooding, listening to her old folk records over and over and over. And while a melancholy mood might sound better, it wasn’t. That’s when she would get suicidal. More than once our my mother tried to kill herself, and more than once she made me feel like it was my fault that she wished herself dead. On those nights, I would lay awake waiting for her to finally pass out so that I could get some sleep. I was afraid that if I fell asleep before she did, I would wake up to find her dead. Mostly though, she was ANGRYANGRYANGRYANGRY, her hate spewing like red lava from a volcano: You make me sick. I wish I had an abortion. S. and I were soldiers in a war being waged against us by our mother. Compatriots in hell, we lived in survival mode. And yet despite his broken body, S. was my protector.

But boy, did he get pissed at me a few years later.

Funny story: I really was a good kid; I never got in trouble with the police, unlike S. and K., and, as I later found out, our mother, who was arrested on a public beach for smoking weed and spent a night in jail.

Ok, so I wasn’t exactly the academic lion I could have been, and yes, I missed dozens and dozens of days of school, and sure I got suspended a couple of times for being a smart-ass and general deviant, but I was an overall decent kid. And yes, I will acknowledge that without summer school after my junior year, I would have been a Class of 84 graduate, instead of the 1983 graduate I managed to be. Still, I did it. I did what I had to do to graduate with my friends, on time.

The night was marked with dinner at a restaurant: my very best friend (to this day!), K., and her family, and my family. I wasn’t embarrassed of my mother’s drinking then, because K’s father was also a drunk. It was pretty much a quid pro quo of drunk parents.

We all toasted our future: K. would be going to uni in the fall, I would be heading to community college because of my unimpressive GPA and attendance record. I figured I would major in psychology or sociology and work in the human services field, although I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do except it involved GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF THERE.

I just hadn’t planned on getting the fuck out of there quite so soon.

Ten days after my family cheered for me as I accepted my hard-won diploma, and toasted me at the dinner table, things, uhm, changed. I came home after spending the night with the shitbag who was my boyfriend at the time and walked into my room at the same time that S. told me I was now kicked out of the house.

Literally: He said: Ma says pack your shit and get out. Now.

What? I laughed. Me? I didn’t do anything.

I thought he was kidding. Except my bed was stripped bare, my horse-show ribbons were gone off the wall, and my clothes were in plastic bags.

Motherfuck. I really was kicked out. Me. The one who never caused any fucking trouble. Suddenly homeless: I was 18 years old and 10 days out of high school.

Well, I didn’t have a pot to piss in, but I did have a car. Therefore, I wasn’t technically “homeless.” I lived in her for a couple of weeks until the shitbag boyfriend’s mother insisted I stay with them.

I did it out of desperation, because it is really hard to live in a Volkswagen, even a Super Beetle. And even though I worked at the beach and could shower, it wasn’t the same as having a clean and private bathroom.

And then I got another job, which actually paid pretty well for a teenager ($3.35 an hour, minimum wage, 1983), but I needed to come to work in ‘professional’ attire. I am not making that up. This is notable because the job was with the state, one of those summertime employ-the-poor-kids programs — CETA, the precursor to today’s JobCorps. Like, Hey, Poor Kid! Come work in an office but make sure you wear your Filene’s wardrobe. Yeah, wasn’t happening.

Anyhoo, I worked in the job bank of the unemployment office (haha, right?!) doing paperwork and filing, until I worked my way up to Intakes, which involved interviewing actual adults. You could tell they hated me. I mean, some snot-nosed teenager in sandals and flowing cotton skirts, smelling of cigarettes and patchouli, asking them about their work history and would they like to consider applying for this _________________insert shit job here_____________? I would have wanted to cut off my head and shit down my neck, too.

But everyone in the office was really nice, especially this older lady, M., who had a famous older cousin who was a bona fide movie star.

M. looked at me like her granddaughter, so when I showed up with a busted lip that first time after Tommy punched me in the mouth, she didn’t really believe my “I walked into a door” story. (Yeah, TOMMY, because fuck him: unlike everyone else, whom I identify only by their first initials, I’ll give you the muffucka’s name if you want). Credit to M.: she tried to coax the truth, but I wasn’t raised to be a snitch and plus: I was a really strong woman, right? I mean, I was making it on my own! I was a Mary Tyler Moore for the 80s, and I could take care of myself.

And besides, wasn’t it normal for people who love you to hit you and tell you how worthless you were, to show you how much they loved you?

The bruises on my legs were easy to hide, most of the time, but that stupid motherfucker then went and threw a goddamned glass in my face, breaking my lip and giving me a black eye. No one is that clumsy, but I told M. that I had to stay with him because I had no other place to go. I was 18, an adult in the eyes of the law, and I wasn’t staying in any goddamned shelter. Plus, if I made it out of my mother’s house alive, without going into foster care, I sure as hell could stay with that asshole for a while until I figured out what to do.

Oh: Did I mention that Tommy was a paraplegic? Yep. The nasty little fucker used a chair. I met him through S., when they’d both been in the hospital at the same time for an illness. Unlike S., Tommy had full use of his upper body. I soon came to know what quadriplegics like S. meant when they said paraplegics were so much more bitter about life.

All S. wanted was one finger to move, just so he could pick his own nose or scratch the inside of his ear. Instead, he relied on other people for everything from making dinner to turning him over in bed, to doing his personal care. And yes, over the years I applied hundreds of external catheters to my brother’s penis, did his bowel care, gave him showers, and cleaned him up when the condom broke and he pissed his pants, or shit himself after taking too many colace pills. Yeah, you get over the sheer horror of that pretty quickly once you realize it needs to be done. Plus, if it didn’t bother S. to have his little sister hold his dick, I guess it shouldn’t bother his little sister. Or so I told myself.

Tommy could do all that stuff for himself. He had a manual wheelchair (unlike my brother’s $30,000 electric model), he drove a car with hand controls. He didn’t need me to do his personal care, he just needed me to be his personal punching bag. He could do everything he wanted — except walk. And while I’d like to say he was only bitter and brooding because he was a paraplegic? No. He was just your run of the mill asshole, through and through. I had no doubt he was an unpopular dickhead in school, and few people probably felt bad when he broke his back in a car accident a year out of high school.

S. didn’t like Tommy — and S. liked everybody. I think he suspected early on that the little mouthbreather was beating the shit out of me. Yeah, it sounds weird, but Tommy used to just haul off and punch the shit out of my legs, particularly my quads, leaving huge bruises down to my knees. He’d do it when I was sitting next to him, driving, vulnerable and unexpecting.

I was chunky (read: not a size 2), so I didn’t wear shorts and no one saw the deep purple bruises. Until I wore this favorite skirt of mine one summer day.

S. and his new girlfriend (a psychopath who, before she became his ex-wife, punched him in the face, kept him awake for days at a time, and basically tortured him; another story for another day) were staying at a grand little house on the water, courtesy of the girlfriend’s wildly wealthy, and slightly dotty, employer, a widow whose husband had made popular a style of woman and clothing back in the late 1800s, which garnered him much fame and wealth.

So, I wore that skirt, it was three-tiered, light purple, and my legs looked pretty cute in it. Except there was a hole, right over my right quad. I mean, I knew the hole was there, but I didn’t have money for clothes and besides, the skirt was purple and so were my bruises.

Welp, S. was laying in bed and I sat down next to him and he saw. He saw the deep purple bruises on my upper thigh.

And my brother, my older, sweet, kind-hearted brother? Was. Not. Amused.

HEATHER.

WHAT THE FUCK IS ON YOUR LEG? HE’S HITTING YOU, ISN’T HE?

I could not lie. I am many things, but not a liar. So I sat silently.

OH WHAT THE FUCK? I WILL HAVE HIM FUCKING KILLED. YOU KNOW THAT, RIGHT? I WILL HAVE HIM KILLED.

Shit. This was no idle threat. S. knew a lot of, uhm, interesting people.

Sidebar: after S. died, we were gathered my mom’s house for a proper Finnegan’s Wake. One of S’s best friends came up to me and started chatting. I looked at him and asked: So, what exactly do you do for a living? I meet people, he responded. I meet people. Oh. Ok, excuse me. I think I need a refill on my corned beef and cabbage and Guinness. Lovely chatting with you! Good luck!

So, I had to tell S. the truth: that Tommy was not only beating me, he was throwing shit at me, verbally abusing me, and treating me like garbage in front of his friends and other people. But he really really loved me!!

S. made a couple of phone calls and the next thing I knew? I had a live-in job with J., a 29-year-old quadriplegic whose live-in had up and left. He needed someone to get him in bed at night, cook dinner, maybe do the shopping once in a while, or do his personal care. It was all stuff I’d been doing for years, for S. Except now I was getting paid for it. And bonus: I was able to tell the mouthbreather to fuck off.

It’s said that the most dangerous time for an abused person is when they decide to leave their abuser. Instinctually I knew this: the last night my mother ever spent under the same roof as my father? He chased her through our New York neighborhood with a chair, trying to kill her. She got away by smashing the glass in the locked front door; the 175 stitches she needed to close that wound resulted in a scar she carried to her death. So when I was safely ensconced in J’s apartment, I began planning to leave TommyTheShitbag. I wasn’t sure how or when to do it until he came to the apartment to see me. He talked with J. about being in a chair. And he made fun of me. Said I was fat and lucky to have him. I don’t think he was halfway to his car when J. said: Look: I know we’re just getting to know each other, but I have to tell you, your boyfriend is a real asshole.

DINGDINGDING! Finally. It sunk in. I was BETTER than that. I DESERVED better than that. MY LIFE HAD MEANING. I had the RIGHT to be free from abuse: physical emotional verbal. I deserved NONE of it.

But the fact remained TommyTheShitbag still scared me. And was a psycho. So I waited til I knew he’d be in a good mood. His mother bought him a new car — a 1983 red Camaro, total guido muscle car, precisely the kind of car I HATE — and the day the hand controls were installed he came to pick me up. I went outside and lied my ass off: Oh, Tommy! This car is so awesome! It’s almost as beautiful as you! He glided it out of the parking lot and then floored it, flying at 90 down a long stretch of road. Oh I love it! Turned around and brought me back to the parking lot because I told him I had to take J to the doctor. When he put it in park I reached over and snatched the keys from the ignition.

What the FUCK, BEAVER? Give me my keys.

I lied through my teeth, unconvinced that he still didn’t have the power to kill me.

Ok look. I just have to tell you I can’t see you anymore. We have to be friends. I just don’t want a boyfriend. I have school and work and I’m too busy, but let’s definitely be friends ok?

I opened the door and hopped out. I knew without hesitation that if he could have, he would have done the same thing. Except he would have come around to my side and beat the shit out of me. But he couldn’t. He was in that moment completely impotent. And I had control. I had CONTROL. So I threw his keys at him: Take care!

It was my first brave step. Not my last: Just the first.

Fast forward 16 years after I leapt out of that car, to late 1999. My mother had been dead only a week, S., for just seven months, when I learned I was pregnant. I had spread S.’s ashes from the rocks a few hundred feet from a lighthouse, and then buried my mother’s in a quiet, old cemetery a few miles from the home she made with a man who loved her until her literal last breath. Our fences had all been mended, for many years.

Still, you can see why I was sort of nervous about the whole mothering thing. I mean, stupid is as stupid does, right?

Well, no. Not in this case. I mean, most of the time in most instances, and none of the time in others.

I was swimming in grief at the loss of S. and my mother. I was also terrified: I did not know that I had what it takes to be a parent. I knew, more instinctively, what I did not want for my child, than what I did. What I would not say, what I would not allow to happen, what I would not allow the world to do, what I would not repeat.

Eight months after the bagpiper played Amazing Grace in the cemetery, I had a little girl, and I named her after my mother. I can say unequivocally that E. knows her value. We do not always agree; we are not always nice to each other. She is 15 and full of opinions and would argue the color of the sky with me, just to argue. And that is perfectly fine. Because she feels safe enough to disagree; she knows I may get angry, but I love her, unconditionally. She will never be homeless; she will never feel discarded. And she would no sooner stay with a partner who hit her, than she would be someone who hit a partner.

Because I have taught my little queen in training from the time she arrived on this planet: You are fantastic. You are amazing. You are to be respected and treasured and loved and honored. And if you should stumble on someone who doesn’t feel that?

Dust, Baby. You leave them in their impotence to wither in the dust. And still you rise.