Hanging By A Thread

Bex O’Brian

The balcony the kid hung from.

Word Count 654

There are mysteries in my life. Why did my parents ever get married? Was my mother born with syphilis? Why did my husband have an affair with a woman who can’t even cook? Why can I cook? My mother couldn’t cook. Why am I such a good dancer? I can tear up any floor. Yet I can’t hit a tennis ball, a baseball, or a golf ball. I fall down more times than I care to count—usually going upstairs, which is ridiculous. No matter how long I stare at my dog, I can’t imagine what’s going on in his brain. How can you think without words? These are all real and abiding mysteries. They baffle me, they confuse me, but they do not haunt me. Only one mystery haunts me.

In Montreal in the 60s, kids seemed to roam around in ever-shifting groups. I never saw my older sister, Tina, alone. She was always flanked by squads of friends, an equal number of boys and girls. There they were, sitting on steps, smoking. Dancing or listening to records. Crowding into booths of the local coffee shop. And because my mother was working and my father was long gone, our place became the spot to hang out. If an impromptu party should erupt, kids, like moths to light, from different neighbourhoods would find their way to Victoria Avenue.

We had the top-floor flat, reached by a very steep set of outside stairs and an equally steep set of inside stairs. Because we were on the top floor, we were graced with two balconies: one in the back, a long wooden balcony that the other flats also had, and our special front balcony that jutted out. Sometimes when I was very young, on hot nights, my father, mother, and I would sleep out there —always a thrill. And yet it felt a little bit like being attached to the side of a mountain in a barely secured tent. As I grew older, I started to really dislike being out there, not trusting how it was moored to the building, or the rusted filigree railings.

It must’ve been summer or early spring because the balcony door was sealed shut during the winter and autumn to prevent gales whistling through the flat. My sister had a group of friends over. Soon kids from all over started showing up. The boys seemed to be particularly rambunctious. Everything was heavy with sex and showing off. As a nine-year-old, I was fascinated.

At one point, they all tumbled out onto the front balcony. A boy—not one of my sister’s close friends, someone I’d never seen before, a wiry, tall, pimply youth—climbed over the railing and stood on the tiny edge. Everyone laughed—and then left? Why was everyone gone? And why did he then decide to go over the railing?

The next thing I remember is him hanging from that tiny ledge by his fingertips, which were white with effort as he swung a good thirty feet above the steep steps. There was no appreciable way for him to grab back onto the railing. The fear I felt was absolute—bowel-shifting, heart-hammering, dry-mouthed fear. It did not occur to me to go help him or to call for any of his friends. I turned around and walked back into the flat, leaving him.

What happened next? I have no memory at all. If he fell, he most likely would’ve been killed, and you would think that would leave a memory. If he didn’t fall and managed by some superhuman effort to grab onto the balcony railings and haul himself up, you would think my relief at seeing him alive and safe would be memorable.

But there’s nothing.

The thought of not remembering fills me with anxiety and doubt. How could something so terrifying, profound and vital be lost, and what else in my life has been blotted out?  I am haunted by the blankness.

Bex lives in France with her husband and their dog. She is the author of the novels (Under Bex Brian) Promiscuous Unbound and Radius. At present she’s working on a new novel entitled, Finnick