Brother and Girl were made of the same genetic flotsam. Mother was a separate person from Girl. Father was even further removed. Brother was made of the same DNA and dirt as she was.
He was the only other person who had the same life as Girl. Mother and Stepmother had never been to Father’s house in Alaska. They had never smelled the odor of jet fuel inside of Father’s plane or felt his condo’s rough carpet itch their bare legs as they sat on the floor watching TV, because Father had no couch. Mother and Stepmother didn’t know how the sun glinted off the water in Alaska’s Prince William Sound where Girl and Brother sailed every summer. Father didn’t know the color of the dirt in the backyard of Mother and Stepmother’s house that got lodged under the children’s fingernails and no one made them clean. Father hadn’t seen the view from Girl’s bedroom window and had never run his fingers over the 1945 inscription in the basement wall behind the water heater.
Brother was companion and adversary, playmate and competitor. By the time the children entered grade school they fought viciously every day over TV channels, toys, who got the front seat of the car, who looked at the other the wrong way. Brother could hit harder, but Girl grabbed onto his upper arm and dug her fingernails in as deep as they could go. He hit her over and over with his free fist, but she hung on until he called for Mother. Girl couldn’t outhit him, but she could outlast him.
Brother was cross-eyed and started wearing glasses when he was three, whereas Girl didn’t wear glasses until she was ten. He wouldn’t play Star Wars with her, even though Girl had a Jawa and Princess Leia and promised not to touch his precious AT-AT or Tauntaun. He made her watch G.I. Joe on Saturdays instead of Strawberry Shortcake. There was no taking turns; there was only who got to the TV dial first, and his arms were longer. The rule was, if the children woke Mother up the television went off, so Girl had to give in even though she didn’t want to. Still, though, they walked to and from school together every day, traded books back and forth, and occasionally had to wear each other’s socks.
The children thought they were poorer than everyone else at school. They weren’t, really, but their parents scrimped and saved for summer vacations and future college expenses. Their parents didn’t lavish the children with Jordache jeans, like their classmates wore. The children’s Toughskins jeans and shirtsleeves were never long enough for their gangly limbs, and their clothes weren’t cool by a long shot—which their classmates were quick to point out with colorful word choices and scornful glances. Brother and Girl despised each other as much as everyone else at school despised them, hating the mirror of uncool they reflected back at each other.
“Why couldn’t I have been an only child?” Girl asked Mother on an almost-daily basis.
“Because if I only had one child, I would have only had Brother. He’s oldest. That’s how it works.”
“That’s not fair!” she protested, even though she was old enough to understand basic biology and timing. Girl occasionally prayed that Brother would get hit by a car, though she knew this was evil and wrong.
The turning point came when Girl was in fourth grade. It was her birthday, and she wore her favorite pink dress to school. She loved pink, and her sailor dress was dotted pink-on-pink cotton, and even though it didn’t have lace or ruffles, Girl felt pretty in it. That day she wore her pink dress with her pink sneakers and the corsage her father had sent. She didn’t understand the purpose of the pin-on flowers. It wasn’t nearly as good as the new Barbie dolls she had been coveting, but at least he remembered her birthday this year. Normally he sent a box in the mail a week or so late, but the flowers had come on time, and she liked being the only one wearing a corsage to school, as if she were someone special.
Girl and Brother walked home from class together, the strange, old-lady flowers still pinned to Girl’s dress. Rogers Middle School was a mile and a half from their house—they missed the cutoff for busing by three blocks. Girl and Brother always met up in the halls filled with slamming lockers, swinging backpacks, and yelling voices. Even when they were in the middle of a fight, they would never leave the other behind to walk home alone.
Brother seemed kind of nervous when Girl met him in the hall. He didn’t confide in his sister about his problems, but she could tell he was eager to get out of there as quickly as possible. “Let’s go,” he said, banging closed his gray locker door that still smelled like back-to-school paint. They went out the side door into the sunshine. It was the first week of school, what they called autumn but was still technically summer. Their house was a mile or so from Lake Ontario and the warm wind had just a kiss of September coolness at the edge of it. They walked on cracked sidewalks in and out of shadows cast by maple and oak trees. Brother and Girl cut through the Catholic school parking lot and through
