Creative non-fiction by Eryn Hiscock - Room Magazine
Creative non-fiction by Eryn Hiscock - Room Magazine
Creative non-fiction by Eryn Hiscock - Room Magazine
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A Confession Three Decades After the Fact<br />
ERYN HISCOCK<br />
It w a s a d ay at t h e d e a d e n d o f Fe b r u a ry that showed all variations of the<br />
colour grey: ashen branches stripped of leaves, cement-coloured clouds,<br />
steely frost, the opaque pane of ice under my feet, a window into the river<br />
translucent enough to suggest its gunmetal current. My brother crossed<br />
first to get to the other side of the river. He was at least one decade older<br />
and a hundred pounds heavier and made it across fine, so I started after<br />
him, almost slipping a few times because it had been warmer these past<br />
few days and the ice was slick. The scarf around my chin and mouth<br />
smelled like musty wool and rebreathed air.<br />
I was nearly to the other side when I must have stepped on a thawing<br />
spot, like the slat that triggers the hitch at the carnival’s dunk tank, and the<br />
next thing I knew I was planted shoulders to feet in frigid, rushing water.<br />
My brother stood on the river’s bank on a rag-coloured heap of sodden<br />
snow. “Grab those roots,” he called to me, pointing to the nerve-work of<br />
trees where mud had sloughed off and they jutted and glistened with an<br />
icy skin. It was like trying to catch a fish with bare hands but the wool of<br />
my mitten finally froze to a branch.<br />
“Good,” he said. “Now, can you hoist yourself?” My brother pushed his<br />
palms downward, miming someone pushing themselves up. I splashed and<br />
struggled briefly before settling back.<br />
“I can’t,” I said and moved my arms like a snow angel, as if treading, my<br />
jacket already bloating like a surfacing drowning victim’s.<br />
“I’m coming,” my brother said and bellied down, inching toward me.<br />
He lifted me carefully from the water and then squirmed again on his belly<br />
back toward the shore and over the ice, towing me <strong>by</strong> the scruff of my<br />
coat.<br />
At the shore, he released me and I crawled up on the river’s bank. He<br />
took off my sopping coat and wrapped his own dry, warm one around<br />
me. His coat was huge on my slight, seven-year-old frame; its sleeves<br />
dangled beyond my wrists. I’d never be allowed to wear it normally, I was<br />
never allowed to touch any of his stuff; it was all off-limits to my fumbling,<br />
primary grade hands. As we hurried home, he looked at me worriedly and<br />
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didn’t even tell me to pick up his coat’s sleeves, which were dragging in<br />
the snow.<br />
At h o m e , h e m a d e c o c o a as I changed into warm, dry clothes. My brother<br />
made pancakes, a special treat, and even got out the ladder to retrieve<br />
my mother’s serving plate, reserved only for guests. He let me stack the<br />
pancakes high on it and pour syrup over all of them like they did on TV<br />
commercials. Normally, this would be a waste of perfectly good pancakes<br />
because it made them all soggy, but that afternoon, my brother let me do<br />
whatever I wanted.<br />
We sat in the living room, steam rising from chipped ceramic mugs of<br />
hot chocolate dissolving like vaporous clouds between us, and I thought<br />
of telling him that as I stood in the cold, gushing water, my boots were<br />
planted on the river’s bed the whole time and I could have walked to shore,<br />
but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.<br />
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