Loving Hart (5 page)

If Damien or Dante ever realized that I had even one sexual thought about their sister,
they'd
be furious with
me.
If they knew that I jacked off at least twice every day thinking about her, they’d kill me.
  Hell, Delilah would probably kill me. 
Sure, she had a crush on me when she was younger, but I don’t think she feels that way anymore.  If she knew how I felt about her now, she’d be appalled. 

My
earliest
memory is of hol
ding Spencer's hand while he sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to me and Dominique.  I've got little snippets of memories before that, mostly of Dominique and
me
looking at each other,
and some of Dante and Damien holding onto to each of us in the backyard shed. 
But m
y first specific memory that includes an auditory component is of Spencer singing
that song
while I stared at his shaggy blonde head
.
 
It's
not surprising that my twin sister
and I are
beyond close, or that Dante and Damien are my idols
.  W
hat is surprising is
that of everyone in my life, I've always been the
close
st to Spencer.

One afternoon w
hen I was
about five
,
my father threw a shovel at me,
leaving a gash in
my leg.
I
'd
needed to go to the hospital, but they
couldn't
get me off the lawn
because I was screaming
and holding onto a fencepost
.
All I could see was the blood, and I thought I was going to die.  I screamed for Spencer over and over, terrified I'd die and never see him again.  I remember
Damien yelling at Dante to find
Spencer so that I'd calm down, and
later
sitting in the eme
rgency room getting my ten
stitches while Spencer held my hand.
  Once I had his
hand in mine, I
didn't
shed another
tear
.  I just stared into his blue eyes and knew that
,
no matter what happened
,
I would
be fine
.
  I feel safe with my brothers
,
I adore my s
ister, but with Spencer, I'm
complete.

As far back as I can remember
,
whenever I've been upset
or
in need of comfort, Spencer was the person that had to be on hand in order to keep me calm.  I
love
my brothers
and my sister
more tha
n I
can possibly
explain,
but
I've always
needed to have Spencer with me
in order
for everything to feel right
.

Our
relationship is
my anchor, my shelter in the storm
.  I've always told him that I love him more than anything
,
and that I always will, and
he's
always said the same
to me
and told
me he
loves me best.  I believe in fate because Spencer is in my life. 
He's
saved me more times than he knows, just by being there. 

It was hard to grow up with two
people who hated children, so
Spencer and my brothers were my rocks
.  I
don’t
remember my mother
very
well
, just real vague
images
of a pre
tty woman who
didn't
like
me. Dante and Damien tell
me it's
a blessing that I
don't
remember her clearly, and I believe them.  The way the two of them react when
she's
mentioned breaks my heart.  She
hurt them, and I hate her for that
.
 

My father I remember
,
all too
clearly
.  He hated us all,
and
he got off on telling all of us that we were stupid and ugly. 
I learned early to avoid him at all costs
,
and to ignore as much of what he said as possible.

It was strange
not
to have parents that cared
;
to know that we
didn’t
love them
,
and that they
didn't
love us.  All of the love that I got when we were living with
our
parents came from my sister, my brothers and Spencer. 
Without them, I'd be all kinds of fucked up.
Spencer was always the person guaranteed to calm me down, to pull me out of a funk, to ma
ke me laugh, to get me to study, to make me look on the bright side.
It breaks my heart that he's always able to look on the bright side for me, but not always able to do so for himself.

Dominique adores Spencer, but to her,
he's
another brother.  I
don't
feel like that toward him at all
,
and I never have
.
  Dominique has slipped a million times and introduced Spencer as her brother, but I’ve never even done it once.  He isn’t my brother, he’s my destiny.
  I know that we go together, that we were born to complete each other. 

Our lives changed forever for the better when our dad died.
 
Just like how I felt, or
didn't
feel, towards
our
mother, I
didn't
feel any loss when our father overdosed
. 
If anything, I was relieved
.  He was not a good man, and he scared me.
 

Living with Aunt Sandra and abiding by her rules is like Christmas morning every day. 
Having an adult care
for us
is really amazing, and we all soak it up like sponges.
We
don’t
eat junk anymore
,
we have safe
bedrooms
to sleep
in
, and there are no sex parties or tables full of drugs in
our
house. 

One of the reasons I love Mama San so much is that,
in addition
to taking on four
kids that she ha
d never met, she took Spencer on too
because we asked her to
. She treats him just the same as she treats us, and she loves him just as much.  My biggest fear when she came into
our
lives was that she would take us away from Spencer.  I'd already started planning to run away, but luckily it
didn't
come to that.
  Sandra is the best thing that ever happened to us, and we all love her to death.  I feel
bad
for her sometimes when I think about how hard her life has been.

M
y mother
left home when she was sixteen and Mama San was ten, and they w
ere never close.  Mama San tries to politely say
that they
didn't
get along, that
ou
r
mother
was just
not affectionate.  Dominique and I think
that she was miserable and rude even when she was young.  Their mother died
of lung cancer
the year after our mother left home
, and when Mama San was seventeen
, her father had a heart attack, leaving Mama San all alone.
  My mother never bothered to keep in touch
,
and
she refused to accept any contact that her family tried to initiate.

When Sandra got us, she got a family too. 
She'd
been alone for years, putting herself through school and then starting a career. 
She took a tremendous leap of faith leaving her job and moving across the country to be with us, and I love her for it.
 
She's
changed
our
lives.

***

There were
signs
very
early on
that I had
big
feelin
gs for Spencer. 
When I'd play that MASH game with my friends as a little girl, I'd only ever be happy with the outcome if I got Spencer as a husband.  When I played wedding
with my toys
, Spencer was always
the
groom. 

The year I graduated
sixth grade, my teacher asked
all of the kids
questions
for the yearbook.  The question she asked me was an easy one. 
W
hat
did I want
to be when I grew up
?
  M
y answer was, "Mrs. Spencer Cross." 
She told my aunt, and
Mama San
asked me to come up w
ith something else to say
that “wouldn’t make Dante and Damien freak out.”  She’d said it laughing, but I got her point.
From that,
I figured out that my brothers
wouldn't
be happy if they knew that I wanted to marry Spencer when I grew up, so I kept it a secret
from them, even though Dominique knew
,
and of course Mama San
couldn't miss
it.

“Delilah, you’re just a little girl,” she’d say, “too young to be thinking about who you’re going to marry.  Someday you’ll laugh when you think about when you had a crush on Spence.”

I’d just shake my head at her and laugh.  “Nope, someday I’ll be married to Spencer and you’ll realize I was right the whole time. Just wait and see.”

Every dream I've ever had about my future has involved Spencer.  I
dream about
us
being
married, liv
ing in a house with a dog
and a bunch of
children
.  I know
he's
going to be the father
of my kids, no doubt about it, and I know
they're
going to be awesome.
I
wonder if
they’ll be blonde haired and blue eyed just li
ke him and I,
or
if they will
have dark hair like my brothers.  I hope they look like Spencer though, because he’s beautiful.
We'll have the kind of house that all the kids in the neighborhood li
k
e to hang out in, and our kids will always be safe and happy with us as parents.
  I already know that Spencer will be the pushover and I'll have to be the tougher parent
,
because he can't discipline the people he loves.  Damien and Dante always say that if it was up to Spencer, Dominique and I would get away with anything we wanted.  "Especially you Delilah," Damien says.  "He can't even pretend to get mad at you.  It's so lame!"

When
Dominique and I had moved up to high school for ninth grade
,
and Spencer and Damien were starting their senior year
, I got my first reason to be jealous
. 
That was the first time I really saw girls hanging on them both.
  I thought the girls throwing th
emselves at my brother were sluts
, but I
loathed
the girls who threw themselves at Spencer.
I pouted and told him and Damien off,
called their conquests sluts
,
and
told them that they had no taste
at all
. I could tell that Damien knew I was just pissed about Spencer, but Spencer was genuinely shocked that I was so
angry
and
he
couldn’t figure out why.  To him, I was off limits.
I hated that Spencer saw me as a gangly little girl, still in pigtails and with no boobs.
I prayed every night that I’d grow up to be pretty enough that Spencer would look at me.

Mama San caught me praying one night to be pretty.  "Delilah,
you're
beautiful already.  If
you
get any prettier, sunshine's going to come out of your eyeballs. 
You're
wishing for something you already have."