Resistance

My sister did not announce her leaving, nor was there a precise point in time that occurred.

There was no suitcase standing by the door one day, no argument that finally tipped the balance.

It just gradually happened over a period of months; it was like she was fading away from my memory as she grew older and took charge of her own life.

Leaving was not a decision she explained — it was something she prepared for quietly, the way you prepare for winter by fixing what you can and accepting the rest.

She had always been older than me in ways that had nothing to do with age. She understood moods before they arrived. She knew when to speak and when to disappear. 

When Orren entered a room, she would straighten slightly, as if bracing against wind.

He noticed her.

Not in the way men notice women — not yet — but in the way insecure people notice resistance. 

He corrected her more than necessary. He questioned her tone and her attitude.

He repeated things she had just said, louder, slower, as if translation were required.

 Sometimes he spoke to me about her while she was in the next room.

“She’s filling your head,” he said once, casually, while fixing something at the table.

“You need to be careful,” another time. “She doesn’t always want what’s best for you.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I understood the intent. A wedge doesn’t need sharpness — only persistence.

My sister knew it too.

He had tried that approach with her when we had arrived at the farm. He'd given her a Coke bottle and some chocolate and told her not to share it, that too much sugar would be bad for me.

She would have none of that and shared it with me anyway. She was my big sister, I was her younger brother, and that was it. It wasn't fair to exclude me, end of discussion.

But lies repeated enough times eventually become indistinguishable from the truth, especially if you're a child and don't know any better than what you're being told by an adult.

I remember us doing the dishes together one evening after dinner, having been promised that if we did them quickly enough, then we could watch some soap opera on TV afterwards.

I relished the excitement I could sense in the air, that we were doing something meaningful together, with a clear purpose and a promised reward at the end, even if I today have no idea about what we ended up watching, or if I watched it.

I remember her in charge of washing the dishes, and me being her invaluable assistant on the sidelines, drying them quickly each time she handed me one.

What mattered to me was that this mattered to her, and that was enough for it to matter to me.

We'd grown up together and loved each other like brother and sister when we arrived at the farm.

When the poisonous wedge had done its job, we hated each other.

I hated how she called me names and compared me to vermin.

She hated how I was always being treated better than her; it didn't seem fair to her.

She told me many years later that she hated that I had been taken away to live with our grandparents, while she had remained behind at the farm.

That it had felt to her like a betrayal that nobody was seeing what was being done to her, just because it wasn't visible on the surface.

I didn't understand at the time that the dynamics between siblings change when puberty knocks on the door; that younger siblings become insufferable to teenagers, regardless of who or what they are.

I know now that she didn't really hate me, but it felt like she did at the time.

The man my sister left with was older, but not dangerous. 

He was quiet. Kind. Safe.

He had a car and a place that did not smell like damp wool and old anger. 

At the time, the age difference didn’t register as something to question. It was a different time. 

People were more concerned with whether you survived than whether you arrived there by the correct route.

She didn’t leave for him. She left through him.

She later told me that she had loved him, but wasn't IN love with him, that she had to leave at any cost.

She became pregnant at the age of 15 and had her daughter shortly after her 16th birthday.

At that point, he found a place for them in the region's capital, and they moved there.

Then she was officially gone, even if she'd been unofficially gone for a long time.

After my sister left, the house rearranged itself.

Her room became storage. Her books disappeared into boxes. The space she had occupied — physically and otherwise — was quietly reassigned, as if it had been waiting for permission.

 Mother leaned on me more. Not deliberately — not in words — but in presence. 

I learned the difference between her tiredness and her fear.

I took care of my youngest brother during the summers, who needed constant supervision due to his undiagnosed autism.

I was still a child, but the house had begun to treat me like something else.

Responsibility had arrived without ceremony or consent.