Though surely it would be known by the Marcy parole board that my brother had threatened me at the time of his arrest. That he’d “assaulted” me. Had to be in his computer file. Cross-referenced in the Niagara County Children’s Protective Services reports, in Ms. Dolores Herne’s social worker’s reports. Nothing could dislodge or delete those files. Dating back to 1991, they could not be modified or expunged. Certainly it was known that I’d been removed from my parents’ house, to protect me from my brother. At the time a murder suspect.

When Lionel is released I will be twenty-six years old. That is much older than twelve, and yet I feel that my life stopped at the age of twelve. I was as young, and as old, as I would ever be.

Lionel will be just thirty. Jerr’s age when he was killed.

Will thirty seem young, to Lionel? I have no idea what he looks like now for I can imagine my brother only as he’d been at sixteen.

I am not so sure that the prison will notify me when Lionel is finally released, as the parole board might have notified me. The prison doesn’t have my most recent address for I’d moved numerous times since. The telephone number I’d provided them no longer exists.

Don’t want to know. Better not to know.

Take your chances . . .

Ms. Herne has no way of reaching me, if indeed Ms. Herne even remembers me. In fact, I am sure that Ms. Herne does not remember me. I am sure that my folder in her files has been marked CLOSED. I am far from a vulnerable child now.

Possibly, Ms. Herne is retired by now. Turnip Face. I blamed her, for what exactly I don’t know. Turning my brothers against me. Never letting me see my family again . . .

Out of contact with so many persons who might have helped me. If my life as a rat ever ends I will look back upon these years in the way you would look back upon a fever-dream in which the dreamer is in a continuous state of pursuit, desperation.

Serving my term. No parole!

Sorrowful Virgin

MAYBE HE WILL SEE ME, SOON. ACKNOWLEDGE ME.

That is all that I want: to be seen by him.

WANTING TO PLEASE THE MAN WHO WAS NOT READILY PLEASED. Wanting not to disappoint the man who was frequently disappointed.

For more than once when I was cleaning his apartment I’d overheard Orlando Metti on the telephone speaking harshly to someone at the other end who’d been presumably silenced, abashed by the man’s speech precise and cruel as rapid face-slaps with the palm of a hand.

Someone female, I had to assume. Ex-wife, or another woman. Fluttering moth-wings, broken.

But to me, Metti was courteous. What pride I took in this!