oh brother

I have two brothers, an older and a younger, both by three years. This is about the elder. 

I distinctly remember, in detail, several bits from my pre-teen years, which is odd for me and my mushed-up memory. These memories come back suddenly, like a bad dream lingering in my waking hours, like a foul taste I can't brush away, Nirvana mumbling Smells like Teen Spirit in the background. The time he cussed out my mom, ran and locked himself in his room, my dad taking a hammer to the door, me laying in my room with a pillow over my head to drown out the banging. The day he left for rehab. The day I found my mom crying alone at the kitchen table in the dark, a broken plate on the white and green linoleum floor. The day he threw a brick at me, the time my new computer went missing, the day my grandparents got back from their Alaskan cruise to find their kitchen trashed, dirty pots and pans, muddy footprints, drug residues everywhere. 

But I don't pause on these memories too long when they surface. I stuff them back down. I've cried enough for him, for those days, for the lost years, for my lost brother. I wish I could say the same for my parents. My mom has made her peace, she's released him from her life, he is no longer her baby. How hard that was to do I can only imagine, and I never want to know for sure. My father can't do that. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. He chooses to keep sending money, keep talking to him, keep trying, keep believing in him. The rest of us have given up, but he can't. He's an enabler, sure, but what else can he do? 

As for drugs, I don't know what he's on and what he's not. Nothing hard as far as I know. He's in Portland, I haven't seen him in two years, and I haven't talked to him since Christmas. Even then it was a stolen conversation on someone else's phone, two minutes at the most, hardly long enough to say Merry Christmas. Before that, July, his birthday, and no more than 30 minutes. I have nothing to say to him. Talking to him is like visiting those days again. I shrink down to 12, I whoosh back to being that sad, shy, lonely little girl. He makes me feel small and helpless without trying, twisting my words to make me seem mean and hateful. I avoid that, like crossing the street when you see an old enemy coming. Who wouldn't? I avoid conversations about him too. I don't want to know what lies he's told, what failures he's had, how much money he needs now. 

I suppose it's not as bad as it sounds here. He supposedly is in school. He's supposedly engaged, to a tattooed thrift-store employee with a ten-year-old son. He's even supposedly in counseling. But I am conditioned to believe nothing. I doubt he's ever picked up a book-- that tuition my parents sent? Probably paid for his Vegas trip. I've seen the pictures on myspace. That woman? She exists, but I doubt they'll ever marry, and him, a step-dad? Counseling? Yeah, right. The boy who wouldn't talk to his rehab counselors, wouldn't talk to the four different psychiatrists he saw, wouldn't talk to my parents or anyone who was trying to help. Another ploy for money. He's a manipulator. A classic manipulator. And I will no longer be manipulated.

I used to miss him. I feel cheated. As a child, he was a typical protective older brother. He was supposed to remain that, I was supposed to be able to turn to him for advice, for love, for protection. I turn away from him now. I wonder how I would feel if something terrible happened to him, if he died. I think I'd feel the same way I feel now: angry, sad, and cheated. Maybe a little faith remains, a little hope that one day he'll grow up and be my brother. I would cry for the loss of that, and I would mourn for my parents, more than I already mourn for them.

There are worse things that could have happened to me. We all have tragedies. This was, and still is, one of mine. I want it to go away, and I want it to stay, because it's all I really have of him.