"We were alone in the world, my brother and I.
Our mother died during childbirth while giving birth to my baby brother. After her death, my father completely detached himself from everything. He no longer went to work, he neglected us, and he drank a lot.
I was six years old at the time.
I was too young to be exposed to the harsh reality of life, but at such a young age, I was forced to understand.
My brother almost didn't make it, and in a way, it seemed like my mother exchanged her life for his. She made sure he was delivered into this world safely before she drew her final breath.
It was selfish, I often thought her decision to save him was selfish. She wasn't thinking about me, or my dad, or how it would affect our family going forward.
And maybe that was the reason why I couldn't bring myself to love my brother, no matter how sweet he seemed.
My earliest memory of my mother was when she sang my favorite lullaby, I loved the way she sounded when she sang. And every night, when I remember that my brother is the reason she could no longer sing lullabies to me, my hatred for him grows a little.
We were left in the shell of what used to be a home. The walls still held her scent, her photographs were still hung on the wall, but her absence was felt by all. There was no food in the fridge, the house seemed colder and dirtier, there was no laughter, only the cries of a baby.
My father tried in the beginning, or maybe he didn't. Maybe I only imagined he did. He held my brother once, when he was taking us home after the doctor announced my mother's death. He also hired a nanny to take care of him. However, he stopped looking at me with love in his eyes, he stopped looking at everything. But when he did look, it was always at the bottle.
He didn't hit us. I suppose that should be counted for something, but it wasn't like he loved us either. He still had some drunken affection left for me, I think. But not for my brother, he hated him and he never tried to hide it. He couldn't even stand to be in the same room with my brother.
And to be honest, I didn't blame him.
We had one of those strict business type nannies who believed feeling and bathing a child was the full extent of nurturing. She did what she was paid to do and never tried to do more. After a few months, my brother stopped crying entirely. Maybe he'd finally learned that no one would come.
A few months later, my father went back to work.
I remember a time, when he was around five years old, he drew a picture of all three of us, him, my father and me. He ran down the stairs to the living room to receive my father, who was just coming back from work. My younger brother was eager to show my father his drawing. My father took one look at the drawing, frowned and crushed it without a word and walked away. I watched the whole thing from the stairs. My younger brother picked up the crumpled paper he had worked so hard on and started sobbing silently.
I didn't comfort him, I didn't say anything. I just went back to my room and shut the door. Deep down, a part of me enjoyed knowing he felt the same thing I felt. That loneliness, the feeling of being forgotten and unwanted.
And maybe, he had it even worse than I did.
On many occasions, he had tried to sit with me and talk, to try and bond. But I wasn't interested. I didn't completely push him aside like my father did, but I tolerated him the same way you would tolerate a stranger's child at a family gathering. I was polite but distant and cold, and yet, he always came back with a smile on his face.
He knew he wasn't loved, either by his father or his sister, but he always came back with a smile. He always tried to please us. He never made a fuss, never caused trouble, never threw tantrums, never asked for anything.
He just wanted our love. But that was the one thing we could never give him. We just couldn't.
We were all he had, we were family. But he was the only one who thought that.
It didn't help matters that his face greatly resembled my mother's. Looking at him in the eye brought back unpleasant feelings that I wanted to suppress.
I got used to my fathers drunken smell that seemed to linger around him. As I got older, the smell started to subside so I assumed he stopped drinking as much as he used to. Or maybe the scent of whiskey clung to him so much that I stopped noticing it.
By the time I turned sixteen, the house had completely lost the remains it had as a home. The nanny left when my brother was seven, she didn't give a warning or notice, she just vanished one morning. I didn't blame her, there was nothing in our house that was worth staying for.
After that, I became the default caretaker. No one forced me to, and I didn't exactly make the choice myself. It wasn't because I suddenly felt some sisterly obligation, but because someone had to make sure he didn't starve. I'd boil noodles or fry eggs, or whip up a whole meal every morning and night, then leave them on the counter and retreat to my room before he would catch me. At first, he didn't eat the food. Perhaps, he thought it wasn't for him, but then I started leaving notes to indicate that the food was his.
My father stopped eating at home, and he never demanded meals either.
My brother always came to my room to thank me for every meal. Every single time, but I never responded. I convinced myself that I didn't care, that I just had to keep my head down and finish high school.
The plan was that I would forget about this family and never return to this house once I enter college.