I have small memories of my sister growing up. My Dad’s voice telling me ‘your sister is just, different. She thinks with only her heart’. He also said things like ‘when you talk with her try and remember that you’re talking with a grown-up but she thinks like you do, if not more naive’.
Before I knew what an awful place this world could be when you could walk all over the city or town where you lived without the fear of being abducted (or before you knew any better) my sister and I would go on adventures. I was around 6 years old and she was around 18. Taking the bus to Northgate Mall to simply walk around the mall, although she used to love going to Red Robin and we would share a burger, her treat, I had an allowance but she always insisted on paying. I should mention that her name is Robin; no matter where we might try to take her Red Robin has always been her favorite place. I remember when on a walk where we grew up we made a trek over to the nearby Sears, Marshalls, and a little book store. Crossing the street there was dangerous..there was a light but it was farther up than we wanted to go so we always booked it across this almost forgotten about the back road between the businesses. I remember running and her yelling faster, holding my hand, and then she tripped and landed almost flat on her face. A jeep came around the corner and that was and still is a very scary memory. I grabbed her arm and tried to drag her or get her up but she had skinned her knees and her fanny pack was broken and ripped (pause for laughter, yes she had one and loved it and because I didn’t know any better I thought it was cool) and then the jeep skidded to a halt and a man came running and helped us off the street. I remember thinking we should just go home as we were both very shaken up but she wanted to shop, I guess. I don’t remember if I ever told my parents about this memory, I do know that this is the first time I have ever written of it.
Another memory: Eating at the Denny’s, again in the town we grew up in and a nice walk from the house, I don’t know what we ordered or talked about but I do remember that I was around 10 years old and my sister couldn’t pay for our meal. I remember being scared that we would have to do dishes or that the cops would be called. But they let us go, they were not that happy about it but we got a free meal so my sister took my hand as we crossed the street and we walked home in silence. Another story I have yet to speak or and or write about.
It could be the cruel girls I had as friends growing up with that caused me to be mute on the subject of my special needs sister. In my 20’s I had friends for 10 years who never learned that I had a sister. She has caused my parents much pain, saying that she ‘makes poor decisions’ is putting it nicely but she code poorly in men, she always felt she had to take people in that needed her, it’s a sweet sentiment until there’s abuse or other awful things I still cannot speak of.
We’ve always had a feeling of dis-stain about her first husband, whether we have all felt that she deserves better, despite her faults and condition, or the odd relationship of a second man in the home they shared or the fact that he spends all their money on video games leaving my sister to manipulate others to get what she wants and or needs and be lonely. But she would always defend him, always. Sounds like your textbook abused wife right? I don’t think any of us will ever know the truth, about anything regarding my sister. She has lied and tricked me in the past. You could argue that she has developed a coping mechanism, I don’t give a shit, we have pain, ‘life sucks, get a fucking helmet’. She makes my Mother a wreck and my Father has either given up or utilizes his skill of ‘clearing out the pain’ that served him so well in a 30-year long career where he dealt with death and all the horrible things about this world on a daily. Either way, when my Mom told me that she had run off with some guy she volunteers with and is living with some random family, my heart and my stomach felt nothing. All that passed through my mind with that girl that held my hand as we walked across whatever busy street, a proud big sister, there was so much that she couldn’t teach me, so much that she couldn’t buy me but she could do that. Walk with me.
-B
