“There is about three years of of my life I do not remember,” my ailing brother said at one point during our vist, “I did bad things and for bad reasons. But I do remember the promise we made to each other.”
I looked at him blankly, not understanding.
“The day of the accident. I remember that we said it was just us.”
My heart clenched, emotion spilling over, and I’m sure it showed on my face. Oh yes. That promise. “It’s just you and me now,” he’d said to me almost 21 years ago.
I don’t know that I viewed it as a promise at the time, given the fact that I was 13 and our parents were dead. I’d never held a job or had to run a household. I’d never had to worry about a roof over my head, or getting food on the table, or making sure there was toilet paper in the bathroom. My mom used to clean my room for goodness sake. Promise?
But maybe it was just that – a promise to each other. A trust in each other placed under horrible circumstances. I believe I stood by that promise.
Even when he would disappear for days on end. Even when there was no food in the pantry. Even when I went to school with torn and worn clothing and was mocked and teased.
I stood by that promise as he declined into drug addiction. Even when he would sit at our mother’s kitchen table getting high for days on end, rambling about a fantasy future filled with ill-gotten money. Even when the sheriff came to move us out of one place or the next, because he’d used our rent money to buy more drugs.
I ran away once, but the shelter I ran to called my brother. And when he came to pick me up, I stood by him even as he threatened to have me committed to an institution as a troubled teenager. Even when he called me a pitiful orphan and threatened to take me to an orphanage.
Even after I moved out of his house at the age of 14, I still stood by him and never once turned him in for any of the stuff I’d witnessed. When I got a job, he’d call me for money, claiming he was waiting for another check. And I stood by him, at 16, and I gave him money out of my miserly earnings. And he took it – a 27 year old, capable man.
I held unknowingly to that unspoken promise until I was 18. Because he was my brother and my guardian. Because, when I was 13 and he was 24, he said to me it was just us now.
I wonder, can he say he did the same?
Posted by mmkeekah 
