First of all, ophthalmologists are surgeons; they're doctors with M.D.s, and they can cut your eyes. They make the most money. Then there are optometrists—also doctors, but not with an M.D., and there's no cutting. It used to be that optometrists were Jewish, and men, but now there are plenty of women. Also, Asians. Last—opticians. They grind lenses for eyeglasses, and, being grinders, not doctors, the money they make is not much. I give this information now, instead of later, because it could be important in a certain moment, and I'll forget to mention it.

Gloria, my sister, is an optometrist. She works at the Wal-Mart Vision Center in a part of Baltimore that's not so nice. Highway ramps everywhere. Rowhouses, chain link fences, sullen dogs and people. The waterfronts are still dingy; poor people still live near them. You see industrial park after industrial park. She—Gloria—said to me once that "park" in this context is misleading. That is such an understatement.

It's not easy to explain, exactly, the things that happen, especially when they happen to you. Or even when they happen near you. I remember it was Michael's idea to go to Gloria at the Wal-Mart. Michael's our brother. He was shipping out in August and he needed new glasses, and he said he was through with Army doctors. Assholes, all of them. They never took his stress seriously—not the twitching that woke him at night, not the migraines, not the black and white spots before his eyes.

Gloria does our eye exams for free. In the car, I said something to Michael about the gratis eye exam. That was what we argued about first. He had questions—angry questions—about the word gratis. What does gratis mean? Why use gratis when I mean free? How did I learn it? When I told him the word was from the Latin, forget it. He had a fit. Why would I use a Latin word that means exactly the same thing as the English word?

I hit the steering wheel with both my hands, raised them in the air. My fingertips grazed the felt ceiling. It was too much. He is, often, too much.

"Enough with the questions," I yelled.

I'd taught high school English for seven years before my children were born, so it shouldn't have surprised him that I knew some Latin words.

And then I had to hit the brakes hard to avoid rear-ending the car in front of me. That was our second argument: Michael yelling at me for my bad driving.

"You could've killed us," he shouted. "You could've killed them."

He pointed out the windshield. "You drive a car and you act like it's no big deal, but it is a big deal because you could kill innocent people."

He got very hot about it. He stuttered a little, cracked his neck a few times, shook a twitch out of his left arm. And he wouldn't look at me. We drove with no words at all until I parked.

In the parking lot, there were trees with blossoms in full color. They were crape myrtles—the bright pink, not the white—and I said that I love crape myrtles, and then it started again. How did I know they were crape myrtles? Did I ever study trees?

It's hard to know how you know things. How did I know crape myrtles? I didn't want to have words with him over trees; he'd be shipping out soon. But still, he kept asking questions like that, right into the heart of Wal-Mart.

It wasn't much, the Vision Center. Wedged between the Photo Drop-Off and Electronics, it was only a wall, plus a little. But the wall was the main thing. On it there were shelves of contact lens products. Rows of eyeglass frames. Chains for hanging eyeglasses around your neck. Near the door to my sister's office stood a lazy, rotating display case of tinted lenses, for people who wanted to see the world in certain shades. I loved those lenses—round, curved, full moons in rose, blue, yellow, gray.

One stool at the optician's counter was empty; the other held a customer trying on glasses. Him, I remember well. He was fat, in a Santa way. Also, there was the tracheostomy; he spoke using a talkbox that he held to the hole in his neck.

Now—some more terms. The trachea is the windpipe. A tracheotomy is an operation in which a surgeon cuts a hole in the windpipe; with the hole, air makes a safer, surer passage to the lungs. The hole itself is a tracheostomy. The patient with a tracheostomy is lucky because he can breathe; unlucky, because the air never reaches the voice box—the larynx—where it would mingle with words. No air, no sound.

The customer held a talkbox to his neck, but talkbox is not the right term. Some people call it an artificial larynx. It brings air to the voice box, and in this way, the words have voice.

The optician, a twiggy girl with black hair, called him Mr. Del Toro. Several times she asked him to repeat himself, and he didn't seem to mind.

Then she looked past him and asked if she could help us. Michael read her name tag. He said "Good morning" to her and used her name, Fatima, which he said like this: "fa-TEE-ma." I called her "FAT-ih-ma" and told her we were there to see Gloria.

She didn't correct either one of us about her name. She only said that Gloria was dealing with a patient. I saw them, walking into my sister's dark office. The patient wore a Wal-Mart apron and had a haircut like my mother's, but she was younger than the hair. As the door closed, she blew a kiss to Mr. Del Toro, and he winked at her through empty frames.

Michael and I stood and waited. With Michael, there is no small talk. He doesn't know how to do it. His left wrist started to twitch, and then he stilled it.

After a while, he said, "My punishment, for being the smart guy in the squad? They made me the RTO."

I didn't know that term. He told me the RTO is the radio-telephone operator, and the radio-telephone weighs thirty-five pounds. He has to carry it everywhere they go, which means he carries thirty-five pounds more than the other guys.

"It's an antiquated piece of crap." When he said "crap," beads of spit flew from his lips.

I wanted to be clear. "You're the smartest guy on your squad?"

"That's not saying much," he said.

"So it's an honor, then, to be the RTO?"

"No, it's a punishment. It's always a punishment."

He wouldn't look at me; something like shame came over him. I told him it was an important job, telling everybody what's happening.
 
"I carry that thing on my back," he said. "Thirty-five pounds. And also my water, my food, my clothes, my weapons."

Still, I insisted, an honor.

"Rosella," he said. He sounded like our father. "How many miles have you marched across a desert?"

I tried for a blank stare; I remember trying for that.


"With sand flies in your clothes?" he continued. "With fifty-five pounds on your back? How many miles, Rose?"

I asked him why, if he was the lifeline, was he in the line of fire? Why was he carrying weapons and shooting at the enemy?

His look changed from anger to pity.

"Rosella," he said, again. A one-word sentence. "You want to think that I'm special or something, because, like, I'm your little brother. But you're wrong."

I told him to stop talking to me like I was a child. Maybe I used the used the word condescend, because he got pissed off.

He turned away from me, steaming, like he was about to take another fit. He tensed his fingers. He stretched his neck. His left eyelid twitched.

He wanted to walk away from me, but there was nowhere to go. Taking a step back, he bumped into Mr. Del Toro, who dropped his talkbox on the floor. He gave Michael a look to kill him. Michael picked up the talkbox, put his hand on the man's shoulder and said, "Sorry, man, really sorry."

Mr. Del Toro took the talkbox and turned his attention to Fatima. Michael scanned the saline solutions and re-wetting drops stacked on the wall. I tried to picture him on the radio-telephone, sending news of a horror. Would he use the Army codes, the jargon? Or, in the thickness of the fight, just plain words? Christ. My little brother Michael, calling in the war.

Gloria's office door opened. The patient walked out slowly. As Gloria followed, we could see her gentle face had turned to stone; her rosy skin was white. Everybody knew that something was wrong. Then her patient spun around and pointed her finger in Gloria's face.

"But you're not a real doctor, are you?" she said.

Gloria started to speak, but the lady came up into her face, very close.

"You shut up," the lady said. She said it again, louder. "YOU SHUT UP."

Mr. Del Toro came off his stool and rushed to her side, holding the talkbox against the hole in his throat.

"What's the matter, baby?" he asked.

"That little girl says I have multiple sclerosis."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Michael tense up. His stance changed. He became alert. Watching. Ready.

Gloria used her calm voice, but I could see clouds over her. She was very polite and called her patient Mrs. Del Toro and told her that nothing was a hundred percent. By all means, she should go to her family doctor and get tested.

"Shut up, bitch," said Mrs. Del Toro, her finger still in Gloria's face.

Then Michael stepped between them. He put his body between Gloria and the Del Toros. He used the palm of his hand to push the woman's finger away from Gloria's face.

"That's enough, now," he said. He looked at her Wal-Mart name tag. "That's enough now, Lydia."

Mr. Del Toro grabbed Michael's arm and pulled it. Michael bumped into the display of tinted lenses, and the lenses fell, scattering across the floor. Perfect blots of color clattered across the dull linoleum.

Michael pulled his arm out of Mr. Del Toro's grip. Mr. Del Toro turned his hand into a fist and tried to punch him. But Michael blocked the punch with his own hand. "Relax," he said, "relax, man."

By now, Fatima had lifted the phone.

"Put it down, Fa-TEE-ma," he said. "Don't call security." He still held Mr. Del Toro's fist in his hand. "We don't need security, Fa-TEE-ma. We're all right here. Aren't we, man? Aren't we all right?"

Slowly, he lowered his own hand and Mr. Del Toro's. Fatima put down the phone. Lydia slumped to the floor and cried. "She sees that disease in my eyes."

"Corazon," her husband said, and he slumped down beside her. "She's not a real doctor."

Lydia looked around wildly.

"Baby, I can't see," she said. He put his talkbox on the floor, then put his arms around her, his fat Santa arms. He said nothing, just held her.

Gloria kneeled down and opened up her hand to reveal a contact lens case.

"You can't see," she told Lydia, "because you forgot to put your lenses
back in."

As Lydia tried to put in her lenses, her hand trembled so much she couldn't do it. So Gloria did it for her—the three of them kneeling on the floor, passersby stepping around them. Gloria's fingers were soft, and pink, scrubbed clean. When she held the lens on her fingertip against the light, her skin was almost translucent. She put the lens on Lydia's eye, easy. She did it again with the other.

Michael helped Fatima pick up the tinted lenses. I didn't know what to do. I watched, the only person standing, and Michael looked up at me.

"The thing I didn't tell you," he said, "is the radio invites death."

I don't remember what I said.

He carried on: "If you were the enemy, who would you aim for? We call the radio the death-stick."

Death-stick can mean a few things. It can mean cigarette. It can refer to a certain kind of steel-tipped hammer. Also, apparently, it is the radio-telephone in war.

The Del Toros left. Gloria stood up and smoothed out her pants. It was the saddest thing, the way she smoothed out her pants. Michael put his arms around her. He didn't say much, only called her "Sis," and said, "It's your job." He kept his arms around her until her storm passed. I should have done that, but she's the tender one, and he's the sentimental one. I'm something else.

Instead, I sat down with Fatima and picked up the last lens. I don't remember the color exactly. I held it in my palm and looked at it, how the light hit it, how it curved, how it tinted the skin of my palm. The rim was hard and crisp, definite. The lens was not heavy; it was very, very light.

Since then, I've tried to picture Michael—over there, in the war—but I can't. I can't picture him in a desert—can't picture him marching, can't picture him inviting death. I don't understand how he's supposed to be both in the war and radio it in. I have no idea what a radio-telephone looks like. All I know is how that tinted lens felt in my palm. I know it exactly.

—Christine Grillo lives and teaches in Baltimore."Definition" is one of twelve stories in a collection tentatively titled Thanksgiving and Other Meals. Recently, other stories from the collection have been published in The Southern Review and LIT.