In this memory, I am six, sitting in my elementary school classroom. It’s Valentine’s day and I’ve chosen a Hello Kitty goody bag filled with pink and purple candy. I’m proud of this goody bag. It’s the first time I’ve gotten an American holiday right. Someone walks into the classroom and gives my teacher a lollipop. The teacher calls my name to the front and hands it to me. He tells me, “You’ll know who it’s from.”
After school, my older brother waits by the flagpole. Our designated pick-up point for whichever parent drives to school that day to pick up the four of us.
“Did you get it?” My eyes light up at his question. I know he sent it.
“This is the last year we attend the same school,” he says.
“Why would you say that?” I say with a huff.
Before he can answer, my fatheropens the door for me to get in. We climb into the back and I slam my backpack to the floor of the car.
“Did something happen at school today?” my father asks, looking through his rearview mirror.
I turn my gaze downwards, my brother shrugs.
I want more time with my brother.
In this memory, I am 12, sitting in my older brother’s room. I run my fingers through the tassel of his graduation cap and glide my thumb against the bedazzled 2012 charm as I help him get ready. We watch him throw his cap in the air amongst his graduating class. His friends beam wide in all the photos, and his smile matches theirs. Once the graduation ends, he joins them for an after-party, for one last get-together. They dance to Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” The song repeats three times that night, and he dances to it each time.
A week later, our mother hovers over his suitcase. She wraps the head of the hookah in cotton. He places one folded shirt over the other, bumps his head to the music. I leave the room. I can’t watch him pack.
***
Six years pass, he’s back living with me, my parents and siblings again. I’m 18. I want nicotine through neon-colored vapes, late-night parties, and no curfews. My general disregard for my parents’ opinions gets me grounded for the entire summer after my high school graduation. My mother leaves a breakfast platter at my door every Sunday. I eat the eggs, the cucumbers with labneh and olive oil, leave the beans untouched.
My older brother tries to coax me into leaving my room to watch the latest movies on HBO or into a round of pool at the local billiards. On Sunday mornings, he invites me to participate in preparing brunch like we used to. Him, dicing the tomatoes, chopping the onions and serrano peppers for the beans, and I, in charge of the guacamole for avocado toasts with eggs.
Then, I learn his role in grounding me. So, I decide that 18 years is more than enough time watching movies, playing games and eating together, and I stop speaking to him entirely.
In this memory, I am 19, and he is packing again. He loads his suitcases into the trunk of his car, his television buckled under the backseat belts, his license plate.
He leaves for an analyst position at a travel and car insurance company headquartered six hours south of my parents’ home. He finds a place overlooking the California coast. He says he likes to watch the sunrise on the ocean while tracking the stock price changes on his phone. He shows us pictures of the home he will be renting with an ocean view, street views of the neighborhood and all the activities that will become available upon moving. He says he wants to learn how to surf and has found the perfect place to begin.
He makes new friends, gets a new number, and learns to surf. He visits us less and less. Eventually, he doesn’t come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I learn about his life like a long-distance friend, through the screen of my phone. I listen to his voice notes, carry his voice with me everywhere around the house. He only calls while driving.
In this memory, I am 20 standing barefoot in the dusty garage waiting for his car. It rolls onto the driveway. He beams. It’s Covid and his world has shut down. He can finally be with us, he says. I smile. We’re adults now and I value the time that we’ve been gifted.
We spend the afternoon educating ourselves on how to make a TikTok video. Choose a dance, learn it, realize our coordination sucks. For hours, we film, we squabble and refilm until we are both satisfied with the results. We join everyone for dinner, and they mock us for how we spent our afternoon. Like children. We shrug.
All four of us together, my older brother works remotely at his own pace as my siblings and I study. We spend the next few months watching our professors through Zoom. By the afternoon, our books and laptops are shut, and we are arguing over the pool floaties. We fight about music then shuffle Spotify for early 2000s playlists. We have family dinners and watch movies after. We are granted time and spend it well.
My older brother leaves a few months later, “my boss wants me to return to work.” He returns to Newport Beach and convinces me to attend graduate school in the South instead of Michigan so we can be near each other. I spend months working on my applications. I get into the school he prefers, accept my seat in the writing program. It’s not Michigan, but still a good writing program.
I live at my sister’s townhouse in Los Angeles until I can find my own place. My older brother works through the late hours of the night, but still visits. He shows up in a moving truck and carries my dresser and mattress from the second floor down. Once all my belongings are packed, he drives 40 miles south to Irvine to help me unload.
“You’ll be okay?”
I nod, but I am livid he no longer lives in Orange County, that he instead shares a home with our younger brother in Los Angeles.
He says he will call me when he wakes up.
I don’t want this life in Southern California. He’s the one who convinced me to come here and abandon my loving, considerate community— the one I had spent years building—
when I could have moved to Michigan for a fresh start after college.
***
In this memory, I’m 21. I rest my head on the arm of the couch at my brothers’ place. “What do you want to eat?” he asks. We decide that I’ll cook seafood for us. My older brother drives us to the store and we make our fish selection. We eat and watch a movie they select. “You should sleep over,” he says.
Their house used to give me a sense of safety when I first moved, but I use my assignments as an excuse to leave and head home.
***
In this memory, I am 22, we are sitting in my parents’ dining area. My brothers stand on opposite sides of the dark oak table that overlooks the kitchen. Something is off about my older brother’s behavior. He only leaves the house to purchase cigarettes with his gun in his waist band. His gun has never left its safety box since it was purchased a couple of years prior. He keeps glancing at the windows until he gives in and, lowers the curtain. If the doorbell rings for a package delivery, he refuses to open the door.
He spends the duration of the day filming TikToks. The videos range from claims of being followed, tested and watched by the government and individuals whose name are left unmentioned, to videos of him explaining the economy and finance. Some videos contain drawings of stick figured aliens. He spends quite some time drawing aliens on his tablet. He prints the name of an emotion over the alien’s head in place of a name. The emotions range from love and fear to sad and excited. It reminds me of a toddler’s drawing. His transition is documented in the videos. His hair grows, and so does his agitation, his nervousness, his paranoia.
He does not allow my brother to touch his food, he switches off his phone, and sells his car for parts in fear of being tracked through its GPS system. My younger brother and I watch him closely.
Somehow the conversation turns to the lives we would have liked to live.
“I want to plant my own food, cook from my garden and raise children in nature,” I say.
“Plant what?” he asks.
“Everything possible on a farm.”
“Huh, so in our ideal lives, we are farmers?”
“We are,”I say, grateful for this moment.
He rises to leave but refuses to step beyond the welcome mat of my parents’ home. We do not understand anything beyond that it is the beginning of an illness.
***
The change in my brother overwhelms us. I cannot sit in a room where my mother weeps and my siblings stare down. Later that night, I crouch by my duffle bag, I shove my clothes in.
“I should have never come here.”The whole house hears it.
I lift my head at the turning of the doorknob. My older brother enters the room shutting the door behind him.
“Please don’t go,” he says.
I stop packing and sink to the ground. He sits across from me.
“I really want you to stay the weekend.”
With that, he gets up and leaves. He does not understand that we are distressed and heartbroken over him. He is unable to recognize his own illness. I hold my tears.
I give myself a few hours before starting my journey back South. The hours turn into days, and I stay the weekend. We have breakfast Sunday morning before I get on the road. All the food despite its heavy seasoning tastes bland. It is our last breakfast in years.
My siblings and I leave, and he does too. He packs two suitcases with all his belongings and vanishes into the world.
***
In two years, he returns with a drawstring bag, an overgrown beard and curly long hair tied into a bun. There is a look in his eyes when he looks at us that indicates a lack of recognition. My parents refuse to see it, but my siblings and I notice it immediately.
I listen to him ask himself which matrix he is in. He wants to know where his real family is. I crouch down, hide behind the counter by the wine fridge, and remain still to listen a bit longer. His conversation is one-sided, and his words are strung together without any meaning.
***
In this memory, I am 24 and he is back but not present. I stick my head into his room every sunrise on my way to work and ask, “you doing okay? Can I bring something on my way home from work today?”
He stares at the ground, his cheekbones sunken-in, his spinal cord wearing his skin like a glove. I think I can count the disks. He lifts his head and says, “No, I’m okay.”
I step outside into the garden, he jumps up from the backyard chair and runs across the grass. “Please leave,” he says, “do not get any closer. Get away. Please.”
Unsure of what to say, I go back inside the house and return after exactly five minutes when I’ve collected my thoughts, I begin to ask, “brother, are you sure—”
“I am not your brother. You are not my sister. You’re not here. Please leave me alone. Please go.” He fidgets, his voice growing louder by the word.
When I return inside, I notice my father had been standing inside watching. He meets my gaze, and hands me a coffee. He tells me that God will heal him and begins to pour himself a cup.
I turn to watch my brother through the glass double doors.
Painting Courtesy of Our Featured Artist Fahed Mohammed Shehab
