I am my sister’s keeper

LIFESTYLE

Growing up, my sister and I always had each other’s backs.
Probably because it was only the two of us for a very long time before our other siblings started showing up. I was the first born and my sister the second. We were born exactly four years apart and for eight years after she came along, it was just the two of us. There are seven of us now.
When my sister was born, she had a very rough time in those first few months of life because she kept drifting in and out of sickness. Like this one time she was sleeping in her baby bilum when she suddenly stopped breathing and remained this way for a good minute or two. Had it not been for God’s divine intervention and my mother’s gut instincts and quick reactions, my sister would have left us that day. But she didn’t and so this story comes to pass.
As children, my sister and I did many things together. Because of the gap in terms of our ages, we found it easy to interact with each other and be normal kids. Sometimes I would pinch her and make her cry because I didn’t get my way and at other times she would throw a pebble at me and run off and I’d run after her too and try to give her a taste of her own medicine. But all in all, we were just two siblings sharing that part of our lives together.
Little did I know that slowly but surely we were creating this bond that would bring us even more closer and do us good when we reached our teenage years and then later in adult life.
Since I was the eldest, I got the chance to be the first one to attend school and when I did, it was the greatest feeling ever. It kind of gave me a sense of pride and made me feel all grown-up in some kind of way.
It made me a bit of a show-off too in front of my sister, might I add. Every morning when I left for school, my sister would be hit with the realisation that she would be home alone all day and so she would wait for my return home so she could start buzzing me up with questions about how it was like for me at school. I would then take out my school books and start telling her about my day and in the process, play teacher to her.
A few more years and my sister joined me at the same school for her preparatory year. I was in Grade 3 by then. From the day she started at my school, I became my sister’s keeper, always on the lookout for her and although our father had a job at the time, money was always scarce.
Some days we would not have enough lunch money for the two of us. On these days, I would remove a little bit more from my lunch money and add it on to what my sister had so that she would have more than me. This was the 10-year old me, loving my sister and caring for her and just simply looking out for her and making sure she had enough of the little that we had.
One time my sister fainted in school and her friends ran to my classroom to tell me the news. The beating of my heart was nothing like I had experienced before as I ran to where she had fainted. I knew straight away that she must have fainted of hunger or something of the sort. After picking her up and dusting her off and making sure no real threats were imminent, I managed to send a message through to my father who then came and picked her up soon after.
Years later, my sister told me that it was all an act that she had put on. She said that she just didn’t feel like school that day and so she had to do what she did. I killed myself laughing but not before scolding her very badly. But this is the kind of relationship bond my sister and I had and we still have to this day.
When I reached Grade 7, my sister was in Grade 4 and by this time, my father had lost his job and so had to return home with the rest of our siblings. This resulted in my sister and I being separated since we had to live with different relatives. The only time we got to see each other was at school.
God knows how painful this was for my 14-year-old heart to deal with. I never used to sleep well and eat well where I was because most nights, I would be thinking about my sister, whether she was being looked after well, whether she had eaten well, whether she was sick or if she was missing us, my parents, me.
However, we were blessed enough for the fact that this did not go on forever as a little over a year later, my father found a new job in the city and we were reunited as a family once more.
By the time I had reached high school, my sister had just transitioned into puberty. We still lived together as a family and what I have left out of the story thus far is that in all those years we were growing up together, our father had a bit of a drinking problem and us kids grew up in the kind of environment that results from having a drunk parent/s.
Whenever my father got back from one of his drinking expeditions, he had this habit of waking all of us kids, both my sister and I, even at the dead of night to make him tea or to sit with him while he finished off his beer and as kids, we never enjoyed these moments because they were indeed fear-driven moments.
My sister always trusted me in those moments. She knew that as long as I was around, I was going to protect her and that no harm would come to her so long as I was there with her. And most times I did protect her, I did stand up for her because no way in the world was I going to just stand by and watch my little sister being hurt by a violent drunk father. So yes I started being a protector of women at a very young age, for my sister, in fact a protector for the first two women in my life, my mother and my sister.
Looking back now, I realise I feared more for my sister and my mother’s safety than I actually did for my own. Protecting them from my drunk father was my number one priority growing up and because after completing high school, I felt like I was finally man enough to stand up to my own father and was ready and willing to engage in full on man to man brawls with him when it came to protecting my mother and sister.
By the time I started working and helping to feed our family which had now increased to six members, my sister, overall, felt so much more relieved and much more safer with having me around her, finally a man that was going stand up for her as I was no longer a boy.
My father, on seeing this, began to gradually change his ways towards us, especially towards my sister and my mother because he knew now that I was finally a man and that I was not going just stand by and watch while he inflicted pain and hurt to the first two women whom my heart first loved and who mattered so much to me.
Every time he tried to pull off any stunt of his, I was right there to battle him off. He had no choice but to finally accept me as another man in the house, a man so different from him. A man who had so much love and respect for his mother and his sister. More importantly, he finally understood that I was indeed, my sister’s keeper.
For me as a big brother, I was happy that I was a safe abode for her at a time when she needed to be protected and to be loved and cared for. This much I was willing to do for my kid sister. This is why when
When my sister finally made that decision to marry, it didn’t go well with my parents, my dad mostly and even though I felt like I should go against her decision too, at the end of the day, it was her life, her future, her happiness and mostly, her peace of mind that mattered most.
My sister may have had her own reasons why she had to marry so early but I knew full well some of the contributing factors that may have influenced her decision making at the time and so I accepted the fact that my little sister would now go off to marry.
Over the years growing up, my sister had her share of mistakes in life and I did as well too. Sometimes I hurt my sister and sometimes she hurt me back too but one thing remained strong and true, that we were never ever breaking the bond we had formed between ourselves as our parents first children and because it was quite a long time before any of our siblings came along, my sister and I had eight years of childhood memories and bonding before we were joined up by the rest of our siblings.
And while the siblings that came after us may not have experienced to a greater extent my father’s drunken ways since he had made some changes in his overall behaviour by the time they arrived, my sister and I however, had gone through an upbringing so different compared to our siblings but all in all, we are now able to look back on so many years passed and thank God our heavenly father for seeing us through some of the most difficult times of our lives.
My sister and I are thankful enough to still be alive and share the close family bond as brother and sister. I am still her big brother and she, my kid sister. We have long since forgiven our father and brushed aside the experiences of the former years and we love him regardless and wish him nothing but many more years of good health and happiness.
And even to this day when we are now both adults living our own individual lives, nothing will ever change the fact that I am and will always be my sister’s keeper.

• The author wants to remain anonymous.