Some things are harder to write about than others. Writing about my brother is one of those things, but I’m not going to be able to skip over the tough stuff. I don’t talk about my brother much, it’s too painful for me.
I was 2 1/2 years old when we went to the adoption agency to pick him up. I have vivid memories of this day.
The floor is a black and white checkerboard pattern, the tiles seem ginormous to me—I think of Alice in Wonderland. When I look down I can see the lace on the bottom of the dress I’m wearing, my legs are covered with white tights and there are shiny black shoes on my feet. There is a nurse in a stark white uniform, white tights and white shoes with a crisp white nurse’s hat pinned to her head. Her hair is short and dark with large soft curls. She is smiling but I can’t see her whole face. I feel scared.
I have been told that we are picking up my baby brother. When the nurse emerges from the swinging double doors all I can see is her carrying a huge yellow blanket. This blanket looms very large and very yellow in my memory. It is folded in such a way that it looks to me like the corners of the blanket are pointy and sharp.
I can’t figure out why my parents are so excited about this blanket. I don’t see a baby in there. The nurse bends down to show me and I see his tiny little head in the middle of the big sharp edges of that yellow blanket. That is the end of my memory of the day we “got him.”
My mom told me that when we were back home and I was allowed to look at him laying in the bassinet, the first thing I did was smack him. I’m sure I was just jealous since I was used to all of the attention until he showed up. Pretty typical stuff. We have always had a complicated relationship.
He was small for his age so I was very protective of him. If anyone would bully him they would have to answer to me. He was adorable with his blond hair and piercing big blue eyes. I have dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. My eyes are so dark it’s hard to see my pupils. We don’t look like brother and sister.
Our parents fought and screamed at each other a lot, especially at night when we were trying to sleep. I would sneak into his room and climb in bed with him and we would whisper jokes to make each other laugh. Our favorite joke was, “What should you do if you break your toe? Call a tow truck.” We thought that one was hilarious. I don’t know if he remembers that, but I sure do.
I protected him at school, but at home we fought like “cats and dogs” as my grandparents used to say. I would really hurt him. It’s so sad to me that I took out my anger on him. Our parents were a shit show. Our father was an abusive alcoholic, and our mother drank along with him, and then they would fight like “cats and dogs”. It’s no wonder that we mimicked them.
The last physical fight I had with my brother was in high school. He was a Freshman, and I was a Senior. I was all dressed up in my favorite red business suit for a job interview I had that day. When I was about to leave, we got into a screaming match. I have no idea why we were fighting. I hit him(per usual) and he hit me(per usual), but this time it was different. He hit me in the face and split my lip open and, needless to say, there was a lot of blood. We were both stunned, and that was the moment we realized he was no longer in the body of a boy, he was becoming a man.
I pretended like he knocked my tooth out(I was quite the little actress), and he started crying and profusely apologizing. He kept repeating, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know” over and over. I finally let him off the hook and told him he just split my lip open and my teeth were fine. I cleaned myself up, changed my blood-stained blouse and torn pantyhose, and went to my interview with a fat lip. That was the last time we hit each other.
He didn’t graduate from high school, but he got his GED so he could join the military. As soon as he finished boot camp, he was sent to Iraq to fight in the Desert Storm war. I was beside myself with worry. He was just a shy, sweet kid who liked to go fishing, how was he supposed to fight in a war?
He wrote me letters, and I wrote him letters. He would send me lists of items he and his buddies needed, so I was shipping care packages full of Chapstick, magazines, candy and chips. It meant so much to me to be able to provide a little comfort to them. For a little while, I could feel like I wasn’t the shitty sister that I thought myself to be.
The older my brother and I got, the farther and farther we drifted apart. He had his life and I had mine. We are estranged now. We don’t talk to each other unless my mom is on the phone with him and she shoves the phone in my face. Then we talk to each other like we are merely acquaintances that just happened to run into each other at the supermarket. There’s a lot to say about our failed relationship, but the gist of it is, we have absolutely nothing in common other than growing up in the same dysfunctional home.
There is a story here about our mom and dad and the splitting of our family that is at the root of the demise of our relationship, but I don’t think I’m ready to write about that just yet. My body is setting off the alarm bells.