Whether We Like or Not... (I was bored.)
It's been raining for three days now. I look out the window and see nothing beyond the thick curtain of rain. I tune in to the afternoon news and see orange-clad men in rubber boats, fighting a raging river that wasn’t there before. I grab the remote and switch to the next channel, where they were playing a video of children sleeping on a cold gymnasium floor - next channel - a shot of a man on a roof, soaked to the bone with rain - next - a hospital floor submerged in murky water. A week’s break from school is no fun when people are dying.
I turn off the television with a sigh and slink into the hallway, wondering what my brother is up to. He’s been awfully silent today. I poke my head into his room, and my jaw drops. My brother, in all his narcissistic, self-centered glory, was filling a box with old clothes. I peer inside and see towels, worn but still soft; blankets, holey but thick; and some of my brother’s old shirts, baggy and huge. I stare at him with wide-eyes, tempted to feel his forehead for a fever. I half-expected him to shoot me a sharp remark, but he simply folds his shirt and, in a quiet voice, tells me to do the same.
There’s always a sense of purpose in helping people, especially with family. As I savor the feeling of finally being able to do something useful after days of lazing around, I look around the living room. Our coffee table, once bare and unused, is now covered with heaps of old clothes, stacks of spare food, and piles of blankets. My brother folds clothes and hands them to my mom, who stacks them and wraps them in clear plastic. She tosses them to me and I do the arduous task of putting them in small boxes. We are a conveyor belt of cloth and plastic, moving with a single purpose. After a half-hour of silently stacking and packing, I grow tired of the sound of crinkling plastic and turn on the radio. But instead of hearing the urgent voice of a storm-watcher, the first few lines of The Killers’ Somebody Told Me blare from the speakers. I glance at my brother. We used to sing this song in the car when visiting our grandparents for Christmas. Hearing the familiar chords, he looks up. We both stop what we’re doing and grin at each other, waiting for the right moment. Then…
“WELL, SOMEBODY TOLD ME THAT YOU HAD A BOYFRIEND WHO LOOKED LIKE A GIRLFRIEND THAT I HAD IN FEBRUARY OF LAST YEAR…”
We belt out the song so loudly and suddenly that Mom drops a can of food on her toe. We chuckle as a stream of incomprehensible words spews from her mouth. As we help her to a chair, I look at my brother. This, I realize with some guilt, is the closest we’ve been to acting like siblings for years. I find it shameful it took me a major disaster to remember what we used to have. Looking back at a childhood filled with games and playful banter, I try to remember what ripped us apart.
We both grew up to be tough and dauntless, but it wasn’t the games that made us what we are. My brother and I used to fight about the most insignificant things: who ate the last Pop Tart, who’s hogging the Internet speed, whose turn it was to clean the bathroom. But as we got older, the fights started getting bigger. We’d have heated debates about issues like fraternities and psychological manipulation. Our fights get so intense the neighbor’s little kid cries when our voices reach a crescendo. Sometime in the past few years, we started distancing ourselves. We thought if we pretended we weren’t siblings, we wouldn’t have to fight so often. We built a wall between ourselves and neither was willing to break it down.
But right now, as my family packs for those who lost theirs, that wall has started to crumble. While The Killers’ last chord fades in the background, I look at the man attending to my mother. This man of 20 years - once a pudgy little boy who pulled my hair, now a muscular, sharp-witted relief operation volunteer - is my brother. And I am his sister. Whether we like it or not, we’re siblings.