Human Sister

Brother took great interest in how the milk swirled and dispersed into Grandma’s tea, and Mom and Dad took great interest in First Brother’s great interest, and I appeared to intentionally bump and spill the cup, though I claimed I just wanted to see, too. Mom scolded me, saying she was once a little girl and knew naughty when she saw it. I protested by pulling off all my clothes and running around the house, screaming and tossing everything I could onto the floor until I was captured and put to bed for a nap.

    I don’t remember being scolded for my bad behavior during First Brother’s visit, but evidently the visit lurked somewhere in my mind, for one day while Grandpa was leading me through some multiplication drills, I blurted out, “I want a brother to play with.”
    Grandpa—his white hair and bushy eyebrows like clouds on his long, angular face—looked at me intently with gray-blue eyes. Shadows pooled in hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones, and his pale skin appeared as thin and fragile as filo pastry. But he exercised daily, was tall and slim, with confident posture, and nearly always brimmed with energy—certainly enough energy never to let me step far out of line.
    “I happen to know,” he finally said, “that First Brother plays games very well.”
    “He doesn’t like me. I want a new brother, a nice brother who’ll play with me.”
    “I don’t believe you are correct in thinking that First Brother doesn’t like you.”
    “He’s not interested in me. He looks bored.”
    “Bored? Look bored for me. Let me see what it looks like.”
    I pursed my lips and stared blankly over Grandpa’s head.
    “Are you bored now?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “But you look bored.”
    “So?”
    “So, one can look bored but not be bored.”
    “But I was pretending!”
    “And are you quite certain First Brother wasn’t pretending? Are you certain he wasn’t actively engaged in some exciting mental activity? Since when do we jump to conclusions based merely on one visit and a few ambiguous expressions?”
    Unconvinced, I pinched my lips together.
    “You should not presume that you are uninteresting to First Brother,” Grandpa persisted. “Your mother and father tell me he said he would like to visit us again.”
    “What kind of a name is First Brother?”
    “It’s just a name. He was your first brother to be created. Would you like to give him a different name?”
    “No.”
    “What would you like, then?”
    “I want a brother who’ll play with me. I want a brother who’ll talk with me, at least look at me.”
    “And what are you prepared to do for him?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you want First Brother to talk with you and play with you. I suppose you would also like him to love you and hug you. Is that right?”
    “Sure.”
    “Imagine, then, that deep inside him something wants to love you, hug you, and play with you, but there are some underdeveloped connections that inhibit his expressing brotherly feelings for you.”
    “You think he wants to hug me and play with me?”
    “Yes, if you’ll be a good sister to him.”
    “What does a sister have to do?”
    “Be patient with your brother; play with him; help him develop emotionally; help him become more like you.”
    All I wanted was a brother to play with. But I didn’t say anything more because I knew that in being difficult with Grandpa, I would be treading close to a meditation session on his study floor.

    My formal education, which began before I can remember, consisted primarily of Grandpa’s tutorials: a multitude of questions presented in logical order, each building on the previous ones, each waiting for me to search and stumble and finally grasp its solution. To help ensure that my mind wouldn’t wander too far or too often from my studies, he insisted I minimize my exposure to frivolous information. Consequently, until well into my teens I was not permitted to watch or listen to popular media productions or enter into group activity of any kind on the internet. Unlike what he considered most other humans of our time to be, I was not going to become an imitative assemblage of other imitative assemblages, contaminated with every desire and so-called need festering in the world beyond our security walls.
    Grandpa’s prohibition extended to all mathematics and most science books—books, he said, which were full of answers that would steal away my rapture in discovery and spoil my capacity for wonder. Like