Standing on My Brother's Shoulders by Tara J Lal

Author:Tara J Lal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780289045
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2020-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

By the time I had returned from my travels Jo had already cleared a lot of the stuff out of the attic in our house. With hindsight I realized how unsupported she must have felt doing it on her own. I had happily shunned the responsibility until I’d returned home. It is the decision-making that cripples you. What to keep and what to chuck? Everything has a memory, an emotion, attached to it.

Together Jo and I spent many hours in the loft sifting through family memories. Do you read every letter you find? Do you keep your dead mother’s wedding dress? Do you keep your dead brother’s schoolbooks? Do you take the risk and throw away boxes of papers and cards that you haven’t had time to look at? I was paralysed: What if I chuck my brother’s schoolbook and it has something important in it? What if he’d scribbled a poem?

There was a permanency about throwing things away that stank of death. Yet a part of me wanted to rid myself of everything, as if that way I might shed the pain too, so that I could start my life afresh.

Jo and I became more ruthless as time went by. Our motto became ‘fuck it, chuck it’. Painfully and slowly we cleared our family house. Eventually the ‘For sale’ sign was replaced by a ‘Sold’ one.

When the time came to move out, the stress and resentment had built to such an extent between Jo and me that it boiled over into a full-scale screaming match. My annoying habit of crying, something I couldn’t seem to control, only made things worse. I cried when I was sad; I cried when I was angry. It was frustrating that when I wanted to show my anger, the tears always seemed to get there first.

We started arguing about where the removal truck was going to park. I became increasingly frustrated, and then the tears came. Jo knew exactly which button to push.

‘That’s right, cry like you always do,’ she snarled from the top of the stairs.

Something in me snapped, an overwhelming rage enveloping my body.

‘I fucking hate you. You stupid, horrible, ugly bitch!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs, using every muscle in my body. I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say or why, only that I hated her and wanted to hurt her in any way I could. A feeling born of a deep resentment for every hurt she had ever caused me or my brother. Now I laugh at those words. Ugly? Was that the best I could come up with? My sister is in fact very beautiful. A piece of cheese came hurtling toward me from my sister’s hand in retaliation.

It was the only time I have ever shouted in rage at another person and the intensity of it shocked me. Anthony and Nic, my sister’s boyfriend, looked at each other nervously from their respective corners. Eventually Anthony suggested gently that I should talk to Jo.

‘I’m not speaking to that fucking bitch,’ I replied with venom.

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