Brothers and Sisters
Apr. 19th, 2009 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947Night fell and the woodcutter did not return.
Gretel began to sob bitterly. Hansel too felt
scared, but he tried to hide his feelings and
comfort his sister.
“Don’t cry, trust me! I swear I’ll take you
home even if Father doesn’t come back
for us!” Luckily the moon was full that night
and Hansel waited till its cold light
filtered through the trees.
“Now give me your hand!” he said. “We’ll
get home safely, you’ll see!”
The tiny white pebbles gleamed in the moonlight,
and the children found their way home. They
crept through a half open window, without
waking their parents. Cold, tired but thankful
to be home, they slipped into bed.
(Early version of Hansel and Gretel)
Sisters can be annoying sometimes. My sister Stela refuses to read any of my stories; and her reasons are hard to keep track of. By my calculations, they have changed three times over three years. When I first told her that I was writing a web-journal or “blog” in 2006, she dismissed my invitation to read it, saying that she never opened her email and never used the internet. Her aversion to computer technology was the only reason she gave until overhearing a conversation I had with our mother a year later. I was reading a passage describing our younger sister Gracie, from a story I’d written on the occasion of the graduation party for Carlos, our nephew (see Carlito’s Way – Culmination). In my narrative of the party, I included some reminiscences of Gracie, through time. Suddenly Stela stormed into the room.
“How can you say that?” she exclaimed. “That’s not what happened!” She challenged my memory of events and interpretation of actions. I tried explaining myself, but she dismissed me, leaving the room and saying that this was but another reason why she refused to read my stories. I shouted my apologies for any slights I caused, and conceded that perhaps it was best that she not read my blog, since our views and opinions of past family events differed. The matter remained at this impasse until last week, when I visited Stela and my mom during Spring Break. We were talking about my recent visit to Mexico when I mentioned that friends and family members sometimes suggested topics or events for me to write about. I had written such blogs about my brothers Art and Eddie, and mentioned Alex and Gracie in others. At that point Stela interrupted, declaring that this was yet one more reason she refused to read my blogs – I hadn’t written one about her. My first reaction was bemusement.
“If you don’t read my blogs, how do you know I haven’t?” I kidded her.
“Mom would have told me” she countered.
“Would you read my blog if I wrote a story about you?” I teased.
“Nope” she replied. “It’s too late. If you have to ask, it doesn’t count. I wouldn’t read it”.
“Well I can’t win with you, can I?”
“No you can’t”.
Sisters can be frustrating sometimes.
Estela is the fraternal twin of my brother Arturo. They were born one year and three months after me. Despite our closeness in ages, I have very different relationships with these twins whom I nicknamed Tito and Tita, from the Spanish diminutives of their names, Arturito (R2D2) and Estelita. Once past infancy, Tito became my sibling rival and nemesis while Tita was a childhood friend and ally. She and I tended to see things the same way, and shared similar views on how to get along and get our way with people. Tito had a contrarian perspective all his own which always seemed to get him in trouble. It took me 21 years to get an inkling of how to understand him (see Giri – family obligations) . Over the long course of our lives, our sibling interactions have changed. We were playmates, teammates, and school mates until eighth grade and adolescence. Through high school and college we lived together as family in the same house, but we were really independent explorers discovering the mysteries of scholarship, friendships, dating, and personal ambitions. College graduations, the draft, and the death of our father dramatically redirected our lives into education, where our previously fanned-out paths converged into parallel career lines. Stela and Art became elementary teachers and I taught at the junior and high school level. The biggest deviation occurred when Arthur and I wed and had children (Gracie had married two years earlier). Except for our jobs, we each lived separate lives with distinct interests. Now, it is hard to remember our past lives as children and teenagers together, especially those early years when we lived on Amethyst Street, Duane Street, and Cove Avenue. My clearest memories of Tita in those hazy days of childhood have to do with hospitals and fears of abandonment.
When Tita was 3 or 4 years old (and I was 4 or 5), she was hospitalized for an unknown lung or respiratory ailment. My hazy storybook version of those events went like this. We were spending the evening at our grandmother’s house with the youngest aunts and uncle, Lisa, Charlie, and Espy (see Nacimiento Stories). Lisa was making popcorn and we were settling in to watch a Million Dollar movie on television. At one point I was demonstrating how I never wasted a single piece by eating even the un-popped, toasted kernels at the bottom of the bowl. The next thing I remember Tita was coughing and coughing. She couldn’t stop. The hacking continued that night and into the next day. A doctor came to our home on Amethyst Street the next afternoon, but he was unable to identify the problem. The coughing continued and my parents took Tita to the hospital and left her there. I recall looking back as I walked away, and seeing her sit, alone and forlorn, in the middle of an oversized crib-like bed, with bar-like rails. I felt miserable. As the eldest brother, I thought it was my fault and I was abandoning her. A few days later my father announced that x-rays had revealed a spot on Tita’s lungs that appeared to be moving around. The mystery was solved when doctors extracted a corn kernel from the lung and she came home soon after. To this day I feel personally responsible for her hospitalization. I believed that by showing her how I ate the burnt kernels of un-popped popcorn, I encouraged her to imitate my actions.
For about three years, from 3rd to 5th grade, our family of 6 lived in a triplex on Cove Avenue, a hilly street south of the Silver Lake Reservoir area. Our bottom floor residence was cool and airy in the summer and cold and drafty in the winter. We would go through periods of colds, sore throats, and runny noses, and some of us would get sicker that others. One day our parents were mentioning tonsils and operations at dinner time, and suddenly they were scheduling tonsillectomies for Tita and me. I can’t recall why we were both having them at the same time. My first thought was the surgeon was offering a two-for-one sale; but that hardly seemed likely. I liked to believe that Tita was the one who really needed the surgery, and the double tonsillectomy idea was proposed for two reasons: 1) the operation was scheduled so early in the morning that it would be necessary to be admitted the night before; and 2) Tita still had very negative feelings towards hospitals, and my sharing the room and the operation would make it easier for her. This was a rationale that appealed to me as a “big brother”, a role I took very seriously in my younger years. My mother and father had been very consistent in inculcating the duties and responsibilities of the “oldest child” in a family. I secretly felt that going along with this plan would also expiate my guilt over having caused her first hospitalization. Of course my parents didn’t stress the practical and logistical reasons for the operation; instead they emphasized the novelty of a private bedroom with a television set and unlimited ice cream after the operation.
I was very quiet on the drive to the hospital, staring out the car window and noting the significant streets and important landmarks. The entire family (Mom, Dad, Tito, Tita, Gracie, and me – Eddie was born soon after) was in the car as we drove down Glendale Boulevard, past St. Teresa of Avila Church on Fargo Street, the Mayflower Moving complex, to the Alvarado Street split, just before crossing Sunset Blvd. Glendale would take you to Echo Park Lake and the Angelus Temple, but we continued south on Alvarado, past St. Vincent Hospital, Westlake MacArthur Park, and Westlake Theatre, to Hoover Street. At a V-shaped intersection, with a gleaming white church at the point, Alvarado merged into Hoover, and we proceed further into the Pico-Union part of town until we reached the hospital. As my siblings evacuated the car in a flurry of banging doors and excited cries, I studied the traffic on Hoover Street, mentally retracing the route we had taken. Satisfied that I could find my way back home, I turned and followed the family troop into the lobby of the hospital.
There is always a festive air when all family members join in saying farewell. Curiosity and excitement reigned supreme as Tito and Gracie explored the hospital and our room. They gazed enviously at the television set mounted on the wall, the separate beds, and the convenient bathroom. Their constant refrains, between “ooohhs” and “aahhhs”, were “You are so lucky!” and “I wish I could stay here!” The happy banter and enthusiasm helped disguise their inevitable goodbyes and the menacing silence that filled the room after their departure. The friendliness of the nurses, along with the novelty of “room service” and remote-controlled television, helped distract us, but before night fell, we were alone. I kept up a steady dialogue with Tita until she finally slept. Once she was asleep, the sterile solitude of the dark room hit me full force. It wasn’t the absence of sight and sound that scared me so much, as it was my inability to recognize the shadows and noises that scurried under the crack of the door, and slipped between the slivers of open curtains and blinds. I willed myself to sleep and mentally counted sheep. I even tried mumbling five Hail Mary’s and begging the Virgin Mary to help, but to no avail. My childish desperation finally compelled me to slip out of my covers and stand by Tita’s bedside. The proximity of her steady breathing and deep slumber mocked me. How could this little girl sleep through this cacophony of whispered sounds and fearful noises? Without further thought I inched into bed with her, knowing that any sudden movement might awaken her.
“What are you doing?” Tita said in a sleepily irritated voice.
“I’m scared and I can’t sleep” I whispered, unable to think of a convincing lie.
“Oh, okay” she replied. She turned her back and went to sleep.
Although I felt comfortable, nervousness over my change of beds kept me awake until the nurses changed shifts. Soon I heard a nurse enter the room. Keeping my eyes closed, I imagined that she peered down into one bed and then the other. “What will she do?” I wondered fearfully, straining to hear her reaction. However, instead of being rudely shaken, scolded, and ordered to return to my proper bed, I heard the nurse open the door and leave. From outside hallway, I heard her calling to a companion in a hushed voice:
“Alice, come and see this! The little girl got into her brother’s bed to sleep; how sweet!”
I took a deep breath and allowed myself to relax. The Virgin Mary had answered my prayers by sending two nurses who were leaving us alone and saving me from embarrassment. For the first time that evening, feeling Tita’s warmth nearby, I knew we were safe. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
Brother and Sisters
Date: 2009-04-21 02:00 am (UTC)Ahhh, sisters you've gotta love em.
Espy
Brothers and Sisters
Date: 2009-04-22 07:31 pm (UTC)TRH
Brothers and Sisters
Date: 2009-04-22 07:38 pm (UTC)TRH
no subject
Date: 2009-04-22 07:41 pm (UTC)TRH