Revertigo

Last Monday evening, we went to pick up my uncle from the bus station, so that he’d be here for the funeral and everything in the following days. My grandfather, sister, and I drove the 35 minutes to the station, with me lying in the backseat, sicker than a dog with bronchitis and a stress that caused me to puke up every gut in my body, the entire duration of the car ride. I wasn’t feeling conversational in the slightest, but I kept being dragged into the conversations of the two in the front seat.

At one point, the conversation turned to the childishness of my sister. I’m sure that sounds like a negative thing, but we wouldn’t ever look at it that way. My grandfather was talking about how I had grown up long before I should have had to, but that I did have to, and he told my sister he wanted her to stay a kid forever. I simply laughed at this, but it’s true.

Though she is 27 months older than me, the “baby” of the family, I have always looked at her as more of the younger sister. I’ve taken on the older role, and I’ve always been content with this. I feel like the Mother Bear, and she is my cub. I’ve always looked out for her in any way I could, and I try to protect her from all that I can. Sometimes, I fear that isn’t going to be enough.

Our oldest sister doesn’t remember much of anything from our childhood. She has blocked out and blacked out both the good and the bad. My other sister remembers only the good. She knows the bad was there but has chosen not to see it. I have taken on the opposite stance, remembering the bad. I cannot remember much of the good, and any that I do is because it was directly related to something negative. I have tried to be like my oldest sister and forget the rest, but for whatever reason, I cannot do this.

I refuse to let my sister see what I see. I refuse to sit down with her, looking at old pictures, and tell her that the youth she remembers is a lie. A fairy tale she dreamed up to cling to any shred of happiness she ever thought she’d had. I will keep these things to myself, because I look out for her and want her to be happy.

Earlier today, we were taking a little trip down memory lane. She asked me how our childhood could have been so bad, yet we have so many happy pictures. I shrugged and kept flipping. One particular photo stood out to me. She used it as an example for what she was saying, but I saw something different.

In the photo, my father is on his hands and knees. You cannot see his face. I am no more than six years old, climbing on his back, a big grin on my face. My oldest sister is making a funny face and leaning in front of me, trying to block me from the photo and steal the spotlight. My other sister is standing to my right, laughing at our antics, my arm around her shoulder. My mother had taken the photo, and she did manage to capture a momentary sense of happiness.

What I didn’t tell my sister is what came next. What I didn’t tell my sister is that every photo we have is because it was a happy moment. That we don’t take photos of bad moments, because we don’t want proof of them. That for every good photo we have, there could have been a hundred bad ones.

After the picture was taken, my mother told us it was time to get ready for bed. It was late. We couldn’t stay up and play with daddy, because we had an early day. It was the weekend, summer was approaching, and if my memory serves correct, we were going to some sort of park the next day. My father told her we weren’t going to bed, that we could stay up and play with him. He had a long day at work and deserved to get some quality time with his daughters. It turned into an argument when my mother pointed out that if he really wanted quality time with his girls, he would have come home hours before, when he had actually got off work. Not gone to the bar for hours, gotten drunk, and then subjected us to his drunkenness.

Were we allowed to leave the room and get away from the fight - which is what it soon became? No. We were supposed to take sides. Did we want to go wherever fun it was we were supposed to go in the morning, or did we want to stay up late and play with daddy? She told us we had to choose. He told us we didn’t.

It turned violent, as it almost always did, and we spent the night with our grandparents, as we almost always did. We didn’t get to go where we wanted to go, and we didn’t get to be around our father. Though, by the end of the night, we didn’t want to be. It was my mother’s fault for trying to argue with a drunk. It was my father’s fault for being an irrational drunk. It was our fault for thinking what was in that picture could have lasted.