Cousin Curtis - Deleted Scene

 

The third thing that happened was that my cousin Curtis and Aunt Bea moved back in with us. The last time they’d lived with us, I was nine and Curtis eleven. He had shared my bedroom, sleeping on a folding cot an arm’s length from my bed and setting up his aquarium on top of my wooden bureau. Late at night, when I’d switched off the radio and our breathing was quiet, we listened to his fire-bellied newts shuffling and scratching around the bark chips as they hunted for crickets in their tank. When Curtis moved out, I missed the muddy smell of the tank, our whispered talks in the dark, and the way he sometimes chased me around the house pretending to be a werewolf. He would snarl and howl, and I’d rush to my bedroom, shivering with excitement, tears squeezing from my eyes as I grabbed the silver stub of crayon that I kept as a wolf-killing bullet.

 

But now Curtis was almost fifteen and the newts were gone. There was dark hair on his legs, and the muscles in his tanned calves quivered when he sat on the floor in shorts. When he walked, he strutted, which made Aunt Bea tease him, imitating his long-legged stride, stretching out her neck and bobbing her head like a chicken. Curtis just smiled when she did it, turning his attention to the mirrored sunglasses he wore nestled in his thick hair. He fogged the lenses with his breath and rubbed them gently on his t-shirt. He’d bought them for fifteen dollars in the Quassy Amusement gift shop, after riding the Mad Mouse rollercoaster six times on a class trip.

 

“Curtis, give me your sunglasses. I just want to have a look,” Aunt Bea begged, shooting me a naughty look.

 

Curtis knew better. He shook his head at her, and when necessary, ran from her grabbing hands and locked himself in the bathroom. Aunt Bea chased Curtis and banged on the door, giggling. “You gotta give them to me. I promised them to a guy down the block. I already took his money and everything.” Aunt Bea liked acting young and rowdy, even though she was older than Mom by four years. She told jokes about tampons, and when she unraveled her long black braid at night I thought that she looked like a wavy-haired sorceress.

 

Curtis’s cot had been set up in the living room, and he folded it up in the morning before school, piling the pillow and blanket on top. Mom had decided we were too old to share a room and I tried to hide my disappointment.  On the weekends, Curtis slept late, and I would peer at him from the kitchen. The sheets tangled around his legs and sometimes his eyelids fluttered in his sleep, like he knew I was watching. There were hairs sprouting from his toes, and when I tiptoed past, I could feel heat coming off his body. He slept in shorts and a t-shirt, but sometimes he wandered around the house shirtless and when he did I couldn’t help glancing at his nipples which were a shade darker than my own. On Sunday nights, the four of us watched 21 Jump Street together. Sitting next to Curtis, I would twirl the hairs on his arms into little peaky twists until Mom noticed.

 

“Rebecca, cut that out!” Mom would reach out, slapping my hand away.

 

“What?” I protested.  Sometimes I hadn’t even noticed what I was doing. It was like my hands had a mind of their own – the same as when they copied out those chain letters. Every time I looked down and saw my fingers twisted up with the wiry hairs of his arm, I would have a brief moment of comfort – his skin was so warm! – then sinking embarrassment. I folded them in my lap and stole glances at my cousin who never swatted me away as he stared at the TV. There was something wrong with me. But Curtis sat firmly beside me, unflinching, his jaw set.

©Lauren Frankel 2014