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

also loved to laugh, and when she did she was all sunshine. Moreover, as an adult I understand now that she wasn’t exactly angry; she was just setting boundaries and making rules that she expected people to follow. Period. In my house, nobody had time to ride herd on us, and with Margaret’s autism and my Dad’s short fuse, rules were often a moving target.

Deanna McRae, in her typical fashion, approached Margaret as she would anyone else. She set rules and stuck to them, like when it came to her record collection. Unchecked, Margaret would sprint across the driveway between our houses and crash through the side door. Then she’d rush into the living room, throw open the cabinet, and madly thumb through the family music collection until she found what she was looking for. “There’s Percy Faith!” she’d exclaim. “Okay! That’s better!” And then she’d slam the cabinet door shut and speed-walk out of the house, not speaking to anyone and slamming the door behind her.

This just wasn’t okay with Deanna. So she simply explained to Margaret that she needed to knock on the door, be welcomed into the house, ask permission to search the collection, walk into the living room slowly, and carefully look through the records. She actually walked Margaret through it one step at a time, praising her as she went along. After laying out these rules, she usually let my sister in, as far as I can remember. This was the first time in my life I’d seen anyone get Margaret to consistently slow down. Deanna was like a snake charmer. Of course, Margaret couldn’t really slow herself down all the way, and what resulted was a comical mix of fast-forward and pause. She’d sprint across the driveway and come to a screaming halt in front of the door. Then the knock, and when she was told she could come in, she’d throw open the door and fire her request at whomever happened to be sitting there.

Even if it wasn’t Deanna, she’d say, “Doyouwanttochecktherecordsplease, Mrs. McRae!” With permission granted, she would walk as fast as she could walk without actually breaking into a run into the living room to take care of business. Often she would bang the door shut behind her as she left and, remembering, would crack the door, poke her head back in, and say, “You don’t slam the door!” by way of apology before she slammed it again.

Occasionally, of course, my sister forgot and rushed into the house, but Deanna just made her go back outside and start over. And she did. It was like magic.

Deanna was tough, but I always knew where I stood with her, and so did Margaret. By the time we were in middle school, most of our parents’ friends were used to Margaret, but I had the sense that many of them didn’t really know what they were supposed to do with her if she misbehaved around them. It wasn’t their fault. We didn’t know what to do, either. We just tried everything, and nothing seemed to work, so we tried something else. Deanna had somehow found something that worked.

As for me, Deanna never told me to stop coming over every day, although she would tell me when it was time to go home. She never told me to stop decimating the candy jar, which sat on the counter, always full of Hershey’s Kisses and Rolos, and made me edgy with its constancy. At my house it would have disappeared forever in five minutes. She just told me to stop leaving my balled-up wrappers in the jar.

There were other things Deanna never said to me. She never congratulated me for being such a good sister, which many adults did when I was growing up. I think they must have felt so uncomfortable about Margaret’s weirdness that they needed to make a hero out of me. “You’re a very good sister!” they would say with tight smiles. I never knew what to say to that. Deanna also never commented on the chaos at my house, which the entire McRae family was privy to given the proximity of our homes. She never mentioned the screaming or slamming of doors. She never said anything about what she couldn’t have failed to notice—that we other Garvin kids were getting the short end of the stick because Margaret’s autism took up so much of my parents’ time and energy.

My childhood did eventually end, although some nights when I drifted off to sleep, I still thought of that perfect hiding place for kick the can that I discovered down by the Youngs’ trailered sailboat. Unfortunately, I found it just about the time the adults decided that we boys and girls were too old to play games that involved hiding in the bushes together in the twilight.

By the time I moved to Oregon, I hadn’t seen many of our old neighbors in decades. Some of them were dead, others had moved away, and a few, like my parents, still occupied the same familiar houses of the South Hill. So much time had passed since we were children that most of the days we lived through had been forgotten. Others were indelible, polished and worn like coins and arrowheads of childhood treasure, many involving Margaret and how people treated us because of her.

MICHAELA’S FAMILY, WHO lived up the block, moved to our neighborhood from California when I was in the fifth grade. Michaela’s dad taught English at a local community college. I remember thinking there must be something wrong with him, because he didn’t scare the crap out of me like dads were supposed to. He was goofy and liked to make his kids laugh. I never saw him wear a tie, either, which made him even harder to take seriously. I once watched with incredulity as he worked a can opener and made us sloppy joes. A cooking dad was something I’d never seen before, like a dancing