“Hey baby,” I smiled at him. “It’s okay, RyRy is here.”
Kane didn’t care that I was there. He continued to cry, and scream, and because of this, so did Alec.
“Alec, it’s okay,” I said, my throat tight because I was fighting off a sob. “It’s all okay.”
“Mama,” Alec cried. “I want Mama!”
I wanted our mama, too. I knew I couldn’t search the house for her, or my dad, because I couldn’t leave my brothers alone while they were crying. I needed to protect them and make sure they were okay even though I was so scared that I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I looked from Alec to Kane and tried to pull the bar of his crib down, but I wasn’t strong enough to do it, and that was when my own tears fell. I tried my hardest not to cry, but I was scared. I didn’t know how to make my brothers stop crying, and I wanted my mama.
I wanted her so bad.
I looked at Kane, then wiped my eyes. He was only a baby. He couldn’t even walk yet, and he needed me to help him. I was six, I was a big boy, so I had to be brave and take care of my brothers because I loved them, and they loved me. And when you loved someone, it meant you took care of them. That was what Barney said, so that was how I knew it was the truth.
“I’m coming, Kane.”
I used all my strength and pulled Alec’s toy chest to the front of the crib, then stood on it. I jumped, pulling myself over the bar of the crib, and fell next to Kane. He was still crying, but when I sat up and reached for him, he calmed down, but only a little. I lifted him into my arms, which was a little hard to do because he was starting to get a little heavy. I hugged him to my chest and kissed his face. It made me feel better to do that, so I kissed him a lot. I set him on my legs and wiped his face. I smelled his dirty diaper then, and I realised why he was crying.
“Alec,” I called my brother who was sitting on his bed holding his brown teddy bear, watching me. “Come help me. Hold Kane when I give him to you, just until I get out of here.”
He climbed off his bed slowly, lowering himself down until his feet touched the floor. He stood on the chest in front of Kane’s crib, then he raised his arms and waited as I lifted Kane over the bar. I struggled to lift him high enough, but I knew I made it when Alec grunted, and said, “Got ‘em.”
I quickly pulled myself over the bar once more and lowered myself onto the chest. Alec was struggling with Kane; I saw his little arms lowering because he couldn’t hold him up anymore, so I quickly took him in my arms and told Alec to get back into bed. I carried Kane over to the bed and pushed him up onto it. I grabbed a clean diaper and the wet wipes I saw our nanny use to clean Kane back when she worked for us. She hadn’t worked for us in a few days. She usually took care of my brothers at night-time, but now that Mama fired her for wrestling with Daddy, it meant that Mama should be taking care of Alec and Kane ... but she wasn’t here to do it.
I removed Kane’s pyjamas and told Alec to play with him so he wouldn’t move while I was changing his diaper. Alec put his face next to Kane’s and pulled a funny face and made funny sounds. Some of them were so funny that Kane stopped crying long enough so he could laugh. I laughed too ... until I took off the dirty diaper. The stinky mess was so bad that I wanted to cry again. Alec complained of the smell, so I quickly grabbed two handfuls of wet wipes and cleaned my brother’s butt and his pee-pee.
There was doo-doo everywhere ... even in his butt crack. When I cleaned it all, I grabbed a fruity smelling bag and put the dirty diaper and dirty wet wipes into it and tied a knot. I put it in the diaper bin, then went back to Kane. Putting a fresh diaper on was hard. Really hard. It took five tries, and a few different diapers until I figured out how to get it on properly. I put Kane back in his pyjamas because they were still clean. He should have been okay, but he started crying again, and that was when I started to panic because I didn’t know what to do.