An Analysis of My Gilbert

The Analysis

It was a dreary afternoon, snow had been piling on the roofs and sidewalks of Wehringen, Germany. A mother’s screams were ceased and a new sound rang out; the hoarse, guttural sobs of a newborn baby. He was small at an even 6 lbs, and incredibly cold. Having a low internal temperature was something he would carry with himself for his entire life. When he was cleaned and swathed in blankets and his mother’s arms, he finally opened his eyes. Red.

Two years later, the child, who had been dubbed Gilbert, was content as an attention-grabber with his peculiar eyes and hair. What had been a very light shade of platinum blond had altered to a white as bright as the snow that often blanketed the town. He looked at the world like everything belonged to him. It was all free and new and his for the taking. He would learn.

On Gilbert’s fifth birthday, his grandfather visited with war relics, stories, and something very special for the boy. Once the ceremony of the birthday candles had been finished and an after-meal silence settled over the family, Gilbert’s grandfather knelt down in front of him. Fritz, nicknamed Fries by the small, ill-speaking child, pulled out something from his pocket. Two very important life-altering, and saving, events were about to be set in motion. It was an old German Cross, dangling on a tough black-wire chain. Fritz had worn it. Now Gilbert would wear it. The child, still so young and naive, became very serious. He promised never to lose it. He kept his stony-faced expression until his mother called him over and announced to the small entourage of grandpa, father, aunt, and child. “You’re going to be a big brother.”

    Three months after she told him, it came true. The baby was much larger than Gilbert had been, 10 lbs and 8 oz. I’m a big brother, I’m a big brother, he kept repeating. This is going to be awesome, Ludwig will be my understudy and I’m gonna teach him how to do everything! He was disappointed when he saw that Ludwig’s eyes were the brightest blue, instead of red.

At age twelve, Gilbert lost his self-esteem. When he came home from school, pencils launched out of the bus windows as he stalked away with his feet turned in, he folded his arms over his chest and blinked rapidly. The seats next to him had been cold during lunch. His corner of the locker room was always empty, aside from the echoing cat-calls and laughter from jokes about his sexuality. Girls giggled in the hallways as he passed, long hair swinging behind them as they fell over each other to split a path. Rumors said he only showered once a month, that he didn’t brush his teeth. Some days he’d come in to see his locker plastered with sticky-notes reading faggot, witch, freak. They played a game on the bus sometimes. Who could keep his backpack away from his desperate hands for the longest time? One afternoon, to make the game more exciting, a girl tried to tear off his necklace. The next day he received his first detention, gloating glares sent from a clique of girls across his science class. With animated motions, one of them was telling a story, black-eye showing through her makeup. His mother said it was just out of jealousy. He’d always reply with a shaking, “Of what?”

    Two weeks before the end of the school year, he was called down to the office to speak to the school counsellor. “We’ve seen your grades drop, is everything alright at home?” he’d asked, the fat of his neck shuddering with his jaw movement. It was distracting. The counsellor called home, directed the weary mother to take him to a psychologist. The woman at the office was patient, but always seemed to be judging him from behind her thick glasses. She was. He was diagnosed with ADHD that summer.

   When he was a freshman, his family split. His father, Elmar Beilschmidt, left a note on the kitchen table the first day of October. As a laid-off businessman, he took to vegetating on the couch over a nice pint of liquor, draining the bottle as much as he drained his wallet. During one of his more sober spells, he left. Packed his old suits and ties and belts and took the bus out of town. In the note he said he just simply wasn’t the man he wanted to be for his family. He didn’t mention that he blamed his wife for not trying to help him more than he blamed himself. Elmar found a job as a janitor in a hospital, somewhere in the eastern half of Belgium. He sent a postcard for Christmas. Gilbert hid the postcard, silently clinging to the hope that one day his father would be a shining, statue of a man again. It confused him. Weren’t parents supposed to be disappointed in their children, not the other way around? Agnes cried. Gilbert did not.