Window Shudders by Emily Rucker

The TV is on. My brother is on the floor, the neck of his T-shirt is in his mouth; he takes it out when he talks, then lifts it back again. Even the washing machine can't clean the grayellow fronts of my brother's T-shirts, and he can't stop nursing them.
My sister is on the couch, her feet sticking out of the too-small-for-her blanket that she’s kept with her since infancy; it has red and yellow dinosaurs quilted on a forest of trees. I’m there, too, and it’s dark outside. My parents are out; they're on a date. It's important for married people to date, they say. I'm lucky: they love each other. People know.
We have a dog named Barnabas. He is big, a Labrador, and white. He has been trained to stay in the kitchen, but sometimes I let him come in on the carpet; no one knows that I let him come in on the carpet—it's our secret, and he's a very secretive dog. He lies with his jowls laid out, limp, on the linoleum. He barely moves, just watches others move. When he does move, you can hear the tags on his collar—they jingle.
The TV is on. On nights like this, when home alone, we stick together—do things together. Sometimes we watch television, or a movie, or play a board game. My brother decides what he wants to do, and my sister and I join him. We pretend that it’s what we want to do. He acts as 'babysitter,' but doesn't act like one. My brother is thirteen. I feel safe around him, though his body is small; I feel like my safety is not my own responsibility, like he can handle it.

The TV is on; we're watching. The wooden wall clock chimes nine times. The show ends, another begins. We keep watching. I pull a blanket off the back of the couch and up around my waist. We hear the dog’s collar; Barnabas stands in the kitchen doorway. My brother looks at him, then back at the television. Barnabas begins to growl—steady and low. It gets louder.
“Be good, Barney,” my brother says—but there are voices.
Shadows move across the draperies; they move towards the front door. We freeze. My brother lifts his hand. Wait, his hand says. Don't move! My sister and I obey.
The doorbell rings—once, then twice. We look at each other, at the door, at the dog. Barnabas is barking. My sister looks at me, and I put a finger to my lips. My brother walks towards the door, keeps his body low; we follow.
We can hear the shadows talking, annoyed. The doorbell rings again, then again. “What the hell,” a woman says. My brother moves a footstool beside the door, gets on, and looks through the peephole. His fingers say that there are two of them, but his shoulders don't know who they are. He steps down; I step up.
I can see them. Beneath the porch light, there is a bleach-blond in a tight dress, her hands on her hips. Another face, huge and unshaven, bends around the peephole—seemingly bodiless; he is close to me. I've never seen them before; I get down.
“Anybody home?” the man says.
“I hear a television.” she says.
The TV is on.
They begin to knock on the door.
“Hellloooo,” the man says.
The woman laughs.
“Well, this is fucking rude.”
My sister leans against the wall, watches me. My brother leans beside her. I look at the door. We hear the metal door, the dog, the television. They will go away, I tell myself; they always go away.
Poom! Poom! Poom!
We jump—it wasn't the door; there are shadows at the window, pounding at the window; the window shudders. My sister drops to the ground, on all fours—all instinct—and crawls towards the kitchen. My brother goes for a phone. I run down the hall, and get my brother's bat from where he keeps it: propped in a dark corner of his room; the long metal gleams with hallway light. I hold it beside me, run to find my brother.
The man and woman are talking, sometimes tapping. My sister is crawling towards me, a steak knife wrapped in her tiny fist; she is six.
“Drop that thing,” my brother whispers. “Cut it out.”
He has the phone in his hand; I have his bat. My sister is crying, clutching; she reaches and lays the knife up on the couch. I eye it.
The shadows move across the drapes, back towards the driveway. My brother lifts his hand up, waits, then darts for the laundry room window—it overlooks the driveway. We follow.
He leans around a pile of clothes, and slowly lifts the tan drapery. The laundry room is dark, and we can see the driveway. No one is there—just a car. We keep watching; my sister wraps the end of my T-shirt in her fist.
Poom! Poom! Poom!
We jump, the back door shudders with each impact. They must have walked around the house. The back door is in the laundry room.
“Opennnuup,” the man says.
“Just wanna talk,” the woman says.
We make a run for it. The blinds on the glass door are open, and the glass door is next to the back door. If they get to the glass door before we reach the hallway, they will see us. Barnabas runs beside me; my sister runs and whimpers; my brother is faster than all of us.
We reach the hallway and cram into a closet, the towel closet—I don't know whose idea it was. I bring the bat, and my brother brings the phone. It's hard to close the closet door from the inside, but we do it. We can hear them at the glass door, now. We can hear Barnabas barking, and hear them yelling at him for barking. My sister cries, quietly; my brother reassures us.
“We're probably just being stupid,” he says. “These people are harmless.” He sounds unconvinced, and my sister puts her fingernails into my arm; I let her.
I watch the crack of light coming in beneath the closet door, watch for shadows, wait for sounds. The dog is still barking. I watch the crack of light until I can see its outline with my eyes closed—until I have put an arm, and then a leg, to sleep beneath my motionlessness. I can smell our sweating, hear us slowly adjusting our weight.
I wait and watch and pray. I know I should pray, and so I do; the words have been planted inside of me—they grow out of my nostrils, leave on each breath, leave all on their own. I am afraid, though I know that I’m not allowed to be—my father would say that fear is a sin. I know this. But I'm afraid; I am always afraid.
I used to tell him that.