Paradise

The first time my sister and I fought, we were ten years old. We also met that same year, and I think the fight was three days after she came.

And in one afternoon we made up for every squabble we ever missed by not starting as babies together. The fight revolved around a little plastic family I prized. Yes, I played Barbies till I was 10 (ok, more like 13 and I would be happy to play again if my five year old would get on the ball) and this family was my favorite; there was a mom, a dad, a girl baby and a boy baby.

I have to describe this briefly, because as I talk about it, I will feel myself getting a little bit mad. She took the little plastic dad and would not give him back. She told me I should use a Ken doll. I mean, what the Hell? You can’t just replace the dad! Just have some new guy move in as a sub because the real dad has been kidnapped! Plus, my Ken was already with this other Barbie doll, so it would cause problems on both ends.

The thing that really threw me was that she didn’t even like Barbie dolls at all!!! And prior to this incident, having had a decade of only childhood, I had never had a person take some thing away from me just for the hell of it. JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT!
AND, after screaming, yelling, crying (on my part completely, she just sat staring bemusedly at me) she gave me back his head.

This was the basic formula of our interactions for the next ten years, she did stuff that any stable person would roll their eyes at, but I fell to a thousand neurotic little pieces. Well, that was part of it, and also, I was really really mean most of the time. It’s kinda in my nature. And I used the biggest weapon at my disposal: tattle telling. You know, on stuff she did, on stuff I did that I blamed her for, stuff I figured she would get in a lot of trouble for if I accused her of doing.

And I am pretty handy with the cutting words too. We’d get in to it, she’d get my goat, and then I would say what ever I could think of to hurt her (and she is pretty thick skinned so I had to hit hard) and the worst thing I have ever said to ANYONE in my whole life, I said to her. I told her, my adopted sister, that it wasn’t any wonder her parents didn’t want her. And it was the only thing I ever said that seemed to touch her.

My sister.

It’s her birthday today. I was just telling someone all about her and talking my head off, but I don’t really know how to write what she is. I think the main thing is, I have never given her enough credit.

When she comes up in conversation, I say she had a hard life, that she is pretty …different.

But she asked me to send her some pictures I have that I have carried in my wallet from when we were teenagers. She wanted copies. She’s been bugging me forever. So I mailed them to her in her birthday card. Yesterday she called me to tell they had made her cry. Well except the part where I threatened her life if she lost them. She thought that part was cute, since we both know full well, from testing, she can kick my butt blindfolded when she first wakes up. (Ok seriously, don’t blind fold her and wake her up, she hates that)

She had them copied, enlarged in color and black in white, and sent them to me. Happy Birthday to her, I am the best sister ever, hu?

She never told on me. Ok well once, for kissing a boy once when I was 11, but she told out of desperation and I deserved worse.

She’s fearless. Literally, she doesn’t care what any one thinks of what she says or does. The only thing she ever did show a little shame about, I can’t write. But she didn’t want me to know it. I was the only person she hid it from.

She doesn’t get mad. She, by all rights, after every thing she has been through, she should be the angriest person on Earth but she takes it all in stride. And she’s usually genuinely happy. I admire that in her. I should tell her.

Sometimes people ask me if I have any “real” siblings. I am even guilty of this. To the question “are you an only child” I often answer, “well yeah I am sorta. And I kinda have sister.”

In eight grade, the most socially disturbing year of most people’s lives, I had a series of small epileptic seizures in school. Not a big now, but talk to an eight grader about what they think of a girl that has seizures. When I have them, I get pretty disoriented and I am supposed to go in to some kind of emergency mode to prevent a bigger one but eight grade is not really the time to be putting health before status.

I remember wandering after school toward the bus, with friends I barely recognized staring in my face and asking what was wrong with me. Then I remember her finding me, and that I didn’t have to tell her a thing; she just knew what to do. Not knowing much, I knew I needed to follow my sister. And she held my hand (even though kids laughed) and showed me where the bus was.

I remember a bus full of kids staring at me and I wanted them to look away. And it seemed to me, she made them. It was like watching through a tunnel, but I was watching her take on a whole bus of junior highers.

We got home, I was taken to the emergency room and things went back to normal. I am 99% sure she raided my room that night and read my diary. Later, she made fun of me for crying on the bus, I put stolen candy wrappers under her pillow. It was nice.

She’s left before. She disappears for months. She has stolen my ID and used my credit. She has said that I don’t really matter as much as her “real” half sister he dad had a few years ago. More than one therapist has said she has an attachment disorder and that she will never “really connect” with anyone, that she doesn’t really know how to love. They have said worse, actually. I have had it explained to me that my sister would kill me as easily as save me, because of some personality disorder or another they think she has. It’s been pointed out that she derived pleasure form torturing me emotionally (but I WAS an easy target, I would torture some one as lame as me too).

In church when we were younger, she used to lay her head on my lap and I ran my fingers through her hair and “drew on her back” with my finger. I know this isn’t evidence that she loves me, but she taught me about some things I am glad to know.

She taught me every one has a reason for being who they are.
She taught me that it’s worth loving someone, even if there is no promise they will love you back.
She taught me too, something else that I can’t quite explain. I think it’s … how dare they tell me she doesn’t love? How dare anyone tell anyone what love is? The only thing anyone knows of love is a perception of what it should be.

She took me to the bus. That’s enough for me.

A few weeks ago, at the end of a phone call, I said to her, “I love you kid.”

She said, “I know you do. And that’s why you are still alive.”