How to Be a Sister by Eileen Garvin (icecream ebook reader .TXT) 📗

worst of all the above, and they were certainly tied to her autism and to the pain or discomfort or anxiety that she simply couldn’t explain to the rest of us. Fat lot of help we were, standing around, alternatively soothing, yelling, cajoling, pleading—or, as in my recent case, getting too close for comfort—as she tried to cope with whatever mania was coursing through her at the time.

It wasn’t just the screaming that was hard to deal with. In our young past, the waiting was often worse than the outbursts themselves. During every holiday, every birthday, every family outing, the rest of us had this feeling that something bad was about to happen. And we were usually right. We just couldn’t say when it would happen. The waiting made us nervous and jumpy. When I finally left for college, I felt like I’d been holding my breath for eighteen years.

After the rest of us left home for school and then working life and marriage, Margaret often became very upset whenever we came home to visit. She would come over from her group home, and we’d all come from our respective towns in states or countries far away. At some point in the visit, something would set her off like Old Faithful at Yellowstone, and the family would act out our choreography of dysfunction and unhappiness. I knew my family was unremarkable in this. Adult children returning home to visit are usually on their worst behavior, drawn back into a role that no longer fits, like an itchy old sweater you can’t bring yourself to give away, even though you have nicer stuff to wear, and it doesn’t go with anything else in your closet. You check your real life at the door when you cross the threshold of the childhood home. I knew that was how I’d felt. I would feel especially upset to see Margaret continuing to act out. I’d think, Man, I can’t believe she is still doing that. She was probably sitting across the room from me, thinking, My God! I can’t believe she is still acting like this. And then she’d get up and rush across the room to give me a big smack on the rear.

Remembering this, I have to admit that although I hate being spanked, watching Margaret spank someone else is absolutely hilarious. Most adults have lost that sixth sense we carry as children—the radar that alerts us to the fact that a sibling/cousin/friend/schoolmate has targeted us, is zeroing in at warp speed. Most grown-ups have forgotten to walk around with their backs to the wall to fend off a surprise attack. In this naïve and thoughtless way, they are usually completely unprepared for what they feel when Margaret swings into action. Her victims are so innocent, so vulnerable, that she has plenty of time for a running start and a complete windup: A grown man standing with a beer in his hand chatting about stocks and 401(k)s with my brother at the barbecue has no adult context for the sensation of being whomped on the rear by a near stranger. He jumps around, spilling his beer, with a child’s look of fear on his face. His fear turns to embarrassment, as if he must have done something to deserve this unexpected reprimand. Then it dawns on him that he is thirty-six, not six, and hasn’t done anything to deserve that. A look of anger creeps across his face. And there stands my big sister, hooting with laughter. “You don’t hit people on the bottom! That’s bad manners! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” But what can he do? She’s not “normal,” right?

This kind of behavior, however, was normal for us. So when I came home to visit and Margaret behaved badly, I’d get angry and sad at the same time, even though she often made me laugh, too. I’d yell at her or not, but I’d feel incredibly pissed off either way. If I yelled at her, she’d usually laugh at me. And if I tried to ignore her, she’d keep doing whatever it was she was doing, trying to get a rise out of me. I just wanted it to end, the misbehaving, so that we could all try to enjoy one another’s company. I’d leave feeling shitty, wondering if my presence was bringing out the worst in her. So now I was trying to think of how we could change things.

That was part of this whole interest-sharing concept. This effort at normalcy was a challenge for all of us siblings, because although we functioned well enough in the world separately, when you brought us together we were a bit off. We tended to act like foreign exchange students in our own country: “Oh, I see; it is customary to purchase a card and even a small gift on the anniversary of the birth of a relative or other special acquaintance.” Or, “At mealtimes, all persons enjoy eating and drinking and even visiting for an extended period of time around the table. Usually none of the participants throws food at the others.” So we tried to act normal, and though we were not fooling one another, it helped to go through the motions. We went out to lunch. We went out for coffee. We shopped. We visited our grandmother. We’d become more collectively normal, at least on the outside.

The first few times I hung out with Margaret away from my parents’ house, she shocked me with her calm. There was no hair pulling at the lunch counter. No spitting of soda back into the glass or weird grabbing motions or funny noises. One afternoon she sat at a restaurant with me, Ann, and Larry, just eating her food and smiling. Every once in a while she’d look up at us and grin. “Hi, Ann! There’s Ann!” she’d say, with real joy, over and over again.

NOW, IN THE car, we wound our way up to the top of Mount Spokane,