Myrtle Neck, Part One
Excerpt from I Know This Much is True
I sat on my grandparent’s bed, chatting excitedly with them. We tried to come up with names for my new baby brother or sister. I just knew it was going to be a brother, even though I really wanted a sister. I wanted a captive audience and permanent best friend for the rest of my life. I wanted someone to dress up like my dollies, and play tea party with. A brother would provide none of that. All the books I had read up to this ripe old age of four years and four months had indicated that sisters were sisters for life, and brothers were nothing but a nuisance.
When I first saw Michael, I was instantly in love. Brother or not, he was mine. He looked like an alien, with brown wrinkled skin, weirdly shaped head, and a forehead like an old man’s. He was tiny, and yet, looked wise beyond his years. I loved looking at his fingers and toes, and secretly wished his legs were fat and chunky because I thought that’s what babies were supposed to look like.
It never occurred to me that I would lose time with my mom, who at this point in my life was both my best friend and my subordinate. I’m sure by this point, I was already bossy, demanding “wopples” (waffles) and Captain Kangaroo. My mom says I was “born grown”, and has occasionally deemed me the moniker “The Little General”. But lose time with my mom I did, and I retaliated my anger at not being the center of her attention by stealing my brother’s diapers and peeing in them in my closet. Part of that was rebellion at being four years and four months and no longer having my mom’s attention, because I obviously did not want to be a baby; and part of it was sheer curiosity at how diapers actually worked. I’ve always been fascinated with the how and why of the most ridiculous things.
I adored this new addition to our family, even though he was the biggest pain in the butt ever, as brothers are supposed to be. Being the youngest, he seemed to get away with a lot more than I did, and I was both jealous and in love. He grew to have a mass of curls atop his head, as I did when I was his age, but being a boy, everyone seemed to focus on his rather than mine. By now, my hair was almost black, straight and down to my waist. By the time he was two, and I was six, my grandmother took me to her salon and had my hair chopped off. I wanted it in a wedge, like Dorothy Hamill, it ended up just looking like a boy.
Mikey Mikey Mikey. Everyone loved Mikey. He was charismatic from birth, it seemed, and I wanted to be just like him. I was starting to see cracks in my parents’ marriage here and there, not enough to be alarmed yet, but my father wasn’t perfect anymore. I knew that I could rely on him for the most part, especially for the truth, but the façade was slipping. So my brother became my new idol.
I loved seeing him sitting on the steps outside our apartment when I came home from school, waiting for me. I felt special. I loved coming home from visiting my grandparents and him being so excited to see me, too. One particular trip, however, I came home to see that he had drawn all over the face of one of my favorite dolls. I had left it in my room, on the bed, and yet I was chastised for not putting it away. I felt I was too young to have to be this responsible, and was more angry at my mom than my brother. This became a pattern in my life, blaming my mom for too many things.
We moved to Florida when I was eight, and Mikey was four. I flew down ahead, and my mom, brother and Auntie Gail drove the U-Haul. I’ve always been secretly jealous that he got to have that road trip with my mom, but I’m sure I would have been a nightmare. There was never enough entertainment, and if I was bored, I would talk. Incessantly. My grandmother would bribe me with snacks and little coloring books on our drives to and from Florida just so I would shut up. I’m sure she was the one who invented “Quiet Time” just to get some peace from my ever-running mouth. I have cassette tapes that we used to send back and forth to each other since long distance phone calls cost per minute, and who wanted to spend $300 million listening to me prattle on? The tapes are 60 minutes each side, and I barely give anyone else a minute to talk themselves. I read stories, and tell stories, and just. Talk. So. Much.
When my brother and I are together again in Florida, we move in with Gramma and Grampa until we can find a house to rent. My brother and I run all over their back yard, playing hide and seek in the trees, playing in the sandbox, and at night, running around and around their floor fan. He earns the nickname “Two Moons” because as he runs, his diaper slips lower and lower, until his hind end is hanging out. I think he adores me, too, and does whatever I tell him. We mimic the noise of my mom’s hairdryer, and make noises into the fan, distorting our voices. Even though I had originally wanted a sister, I decide that a brother is way better. Boy games are so much more fun, and dangerous, and exciting. They play with trucks, and throw rocks, and climb trees. They are loud and rambunctious, and hardly anyone reprimands them for it. Girls are supposed to be quiet and ladylike, and I hate it.
