An Anecdotal Life

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

         My brother was always seen as an underachiever. Nothing motivated him, my mother said. He just doesn't move fast enough, Grandma agreed. The men were more apt to have sympathy for him, but he was always quiet and kept to himself, making him harder to read, harder to relate to. Even they couldn't offer much in the way of defense.

         We children were even harder on him; perhaps because children are cruel, or perhaps just because we were. As his big sister, I should have stood up for him more often. The problem was, as his big sister, I had to live with him the most and was, as a result, the most annoyed by him. Still, our first cousin, Brent, was the one he clashed with most despite the fact that he was our most constant companion. Simply a difference of personality, in retrospect, but back then it was a battle of good and evil, and damned if I knew which was which.

         "Maybe if you'd just do it," Brent snarled once, "we could go on playing."

         "It" was to create a crown made of paper. We were pretending to be royal somethings-or-other and the crowns were imperative to our make-believe. I was born with art in my bones, like it or not (most often not), and Brent could draw a straight line without a ruler sometimes. Jerry, on the other hand, didn't know circles from squares. Art was not his forte.

         "Shut up," Jerry growled back," I'm making mine how I want."

         Brent shut up and began tapping his pencil rapidly on the countertop. Ever the coward, I found a bottle of glitter to busy myself with.

         "Stop it!" Jerry finally burst, throwing down his own pencil to glare at Brent.

         "Forget it, I don't want to play this anymore." Brent reached to take up Jerry's half-finished crown. Jerry snatched it back, the resulting tear surprisingly loud. Paper makes a terrible tool for tug-of-war.

         The battle was on then. No fists, never any fists, but shoving and name-calling and sulking and isolation. Jerry's torn drawing lay on the floor between them, trampled and forgotten.

         Ten years later, Jerry was one of the best techinical artists I have ever seen. He had new struggles then, harder ones. One would never expect one's own mother to be an instrument of destruction, but one would be surprised.

         "I just don't get what's so hard about it, Jerry! They're just goddamn numbers! You can add and subtract and multiply and divide, can't you? Can't you?!"

         Mom was screaming at the top of Jerry's bent head as he sat at the dining table, glaring at the exam before him that bore a bright red "F". Algebra had been the bane of my brother's existence for quite a while, despite several paid tutors and ruthless hours of studying.

         I knew he wouldn't sit there long; he rarely did anymore. God knows it's hard enough to take my mother's screaming--and I do literally mean screaming, as in we feared she'd have a stroke, her face was so purple--but to be a proud teenage boy who's taken more than his fair share of licks, it's impossible.

         "Whatever," he mumbled, shoving back from the table to rise.

         "You sit down, young man!" Mom screeched. "We are giong to sit here until we figure out what is wrong and how to fix it!"

         I would have snorted, but I didn't want to draw attention to my hiding place at the top of the stairs. She had tried that tactic before, with no success; when he wasn't friends with the right people, when he wouldn't clean his room, when he wouldn't dress how she liked. Sometimes, if the issue was right, I would draw fire for him, but this was not one of those times. Not yet.

         "You figure it out and you fix it!" Jerry's voice suddenly rose a few decibels as well. "You're so goddamn interested in what's wrong with me, you should be an expert by now!"

         He came stomping out of the kitchen toward the stairs. I didn't move except to scoot over so he could get past.

         "You will not speak to me that way!" Mom blazed after him. She could see me now if she looked up, but I didn't care.

         Jerry didn't respond to her command, choosing to storm silently past me to his room instead.

         "I'll tutor you," I said quietly as he passed. I was an A student in advanced calculus, might as well put that useless knowledge to some good. He nodded his acknowledgment before slamming his door. Mom was glaring at me when I turned back around.

         "Glad to see you're finally behaving like a sister should," she snapped, apparently not done with her rant. I looked at her calmly, but my heart was beating like hell against my ribs.

         "He didn't ask before, and I didn't want to insult him," I said lamely through my stuffy nose. I always get clogged up when I'm truly and thoroughly pissed.

         "Jesus, anybody could see he can't do it himself! Did I raise two complete morons? I thought I was pretty smart myself, where did you come from?"

         I bit my lip. It would not do to insult my elders, that was deeply ingrained into my being.

         "Well, see what you can do. I don't know if anything will help at this point. I know nothing I've done has," she sighed. I rose, forgetting myself and shamelessly paraphrasing a line from a play I'd seen.

         "Someday," I said evenly, "you'll have to tell me how you managed to create the whole world in only seven days."

         Things were understandably tense after that. I helped the best I could with Jerry, but I was, admittedly, not a very good teacher. Whatever he did, he did on his own, in his own way, and ended up pulling a B for that class. At the very least, my role in his success was getting Mom off his case so he could do it.

         After that I went off to college, leaving him to fend for himself. I felt bad, but I got plently of punishment for all my sins in the form of a boy from Kentucky and one terrible night. When I came limping home, the golden child was hopelessly tarnished and Jerry finally had a chance to shine. I know that one had nothing to do with the other, but I would endure a hundred nights like Kentucky if it meant a better opportunity for my brother to succeed.

         I came back a month or so before his high school graduation and was able to see the fight he put up in order to walk that walk. He ended up succeeding right on schedule, and with not a bad record at that. I screamed for him the day of the ceremony, louder than anyone had ever screamed at him before, and I hoped it was all he could hear.

         And when he came running down the hill to meet us and he swung me up into the air first, I knew it was.

         He's a good man now--as always--serving in the United States Air Force. I am proud of him, of the things he has overcome and of the man he has always been, and most of all, I am proud to call him my brother.