For my little brother

Two Souls

"My father wasn't always drunk and violent. I remembered him playing with me as a child. There are photos of him and my mother together, happy."

I listened quietly as Ricky lamented about his past life. In my mind, I thought about my own father. He and Julio sure were close, like peas in a pod. I pictured the two seated by the dining table, playing the card game that they had invented themselves. Laughing. Joking. Bonding. Occasionally, Julio would get caught cheating, and dad would respond by producing his own hidden deck of cards from under his shirt.

"He changed drastically after my stillborn sister came out. For several days, he was convinced that my mother would die. He refused food, didn't go to work, didn't leave the house for anything, but only stayed at home to cry hysterically. He almost became paranoid of childbirth. He was not pleasantly surprised when, three years later, my mother found herself pregnant again. My father wanted the pregnancy aborted, but my mother refused. 'I will not kill my children, even my unborn ones,' she said firmly. My father began talking and talking to her less, and at times was even hostile to her. When my brother was born, he wouldn't even look at him."

He bowed his head. "His attitude towards children, especially his own, changed forever. He saw the burden in taking care of them, the way they costed him time and money. His stillborn daughter still shook him, and his work ethic was already very low. To work harder to provide for an extra child that he had negative thoughts for was too much for him to bear. His health and strength vanished, and he became nasty. In the past... sometimes, he could go for a full day on only a plate of rice; he was hale and hearty enough for that. After my brother was born, he needed to smoke a pack a day to control his violent tempers.

"I remember one night when we really had nothing to eat, no food on the table for anyone. My father had gotten into a drunken fight at work and was violently dismissed. He came home, his breath strong with the smell of hard liquor, unable to walk straight. After he had thrown up, he lay across the dining table, bawling uncontrollably like a baby. My mother nervously reached out to comfort him, mostly to clean up after his mess. His hands shot out and grabbed her violently, shaking her body every which way. 'I'll forever hate the day you refused to get rid of him!' he barked, his voice red-hot with raw anger as he pointed at my brother. 'I always go to bed hungry because he ate all the food!'

"I took my brother out, with my sister following closely. After he had cried for a long while, he said, in a timid voice, how guilty he felt being in the family. He was well aware of the fact that his father did not like him, and that we often skipped meals so he could eat. I told him that he was wrong, that we really loved him, and that he was no burden on us. It felt terrible, lying to him like that. Many times I was tempted to just leave him on his own, letting him fend for himself. Every time I was about to leave, though, I felt like I was committing a crime."

He turned to me. "How could you leave somebody behind like that? Somebody that you willingly go hungry for. Somebody that you dropped out of school to work for. Somebody that you don't realize how close you are to until they're one of the only things you have left." He grimaced as he fought the flood of emotions that were welling up within him. "Me and my sister, we had a choice: ourselves, or him. And we both chose him. At times, it seemed foolish, the decision we made. Why would we kneel before him? Logically, it made sense to just abandon him. After all, he was the cause of our current situation. If he had never been born, I wouldn't be here right now. My father wouldn't be the mess that he was, and I presume, still is. My mother wouldn't have to die. Me and my sister would be in school right now, getting an education, a future, an opportunity to stay off the streets. If I had just thrown him out, pretended that he never existed, forgot about him, wouldn't we be able to repair our lives? Things would be better for all of us. All except him. The four of us versus him. Wouldn't more of us benefit from getting rid of one?