A Closet Sexist
Uploaded by jenonthelake on Apr 30, 2001
My brother was the tallest man alive seven years ago. I know this for a fact because it’s not true now and humans notice what surprises them. I rarely look at Jose Luis now but when I do, I am sometimes startled that he does not stretch looming above all for seven feet as he does in my vague memories. When I was very young and only the members of my family had a place in my consciousness, I was extremely proud of my strong, tall brother whom was on the surface, the family’s pillar of strength. Esther, my older sister, and me would sometimes absurdly pretend to be his mother, she remembers though I no longer have those memories; we would play and giggle on my mother’s bed.
Today, Jose Luis and I are separated by deep bitterness that is more an unspoken tradition and the residue of an old fight than anything else. We live in the same house though I rarely see him and never speak with him. Somewhere along the road for reasons I can only vaguely remember and which have in importance with time we stopped talking and it is not at all the five-year age difference that caused this change. I felt a deep resentment for him that has faded today but now it no longer matters. My young mind formed hurtful perceptions and eventually it seemed to as that the root of all my problems was my brother.
We moved to our second apartment when I was eight years. My father separated with a thin wall the largest of our two bedrooms to allow for my sister and I to have a room of our own. I hated the cramped space that had to fit the small lives of my sister and me; hated how it always seemed that my brother was preferred. His tiny room was all the less tiny because of the sister he didn’t have to share with and it made so little sense to me that two existed in the same space occupied by one.
It also seemed that while my sister and I were neglected of our parents love, my brother was showered with it as well as concrete representations of that love. My father who could not understand or particularly like his quiet daughters after the age of six bestowed all love and attention on his tall laughing...