[H] Brother’s Skirt - Chapter 2

I put down the children’s clothes my brother was holding and walked towards the toilet paper aisle.

My brother caught up, hooked his finger into the waist of my pants and peered inside. “Oh, wearing blue today, huh?”

I slapped his hand away. “Don’t make me beat you up right here.”

He grabbed my wrist again and said, “It’s not like we haven’t tried that before.”

Ahead were the shelves of toilet paper; I grabbed a couple of packs and headed to the checkout. My brother, still clutching my wrist, asked why I was rushing. He just loves to ask obvious questions.

I said, “Picking out your ‘pouches’.”

He bent over in front of a nearly chest-high shelf, picked for a while, then turned and whispered in my ear, “I don’t want the cool-feeling ones, you always make me shiver.”

I randomly picked a box, and he leaned in again to complain about the scent.

“You choose,” I said.

In the end, he handed the cashier three boxes of ultra-thin ones. The cashier looked at me and then at my brother. At moments like these, I’m glad we don’t look alike, saving us from nosy citizens calling the police.

There was a promotion at the entrance of the store, with a clown twisting balloons as part of a children’s milk powder promotion. My brother asked me to get one for him. The clown asked how old my child was; I said twenty-three. The clown paused. I asked, “Can people with disabilities get a balloon?” The clown hurriedly said yes and twisted a poodle balloon.

After receiving the balloon, my brother asked, “Why was that clown staring at me?”

I said, “Probably wondering where you got your clothes.”

The street was crowded, and my brother carefully guarded the balloon, saying, “The first gift you ever gave me was also a balloon.”

I didn’t remember, but according to my brother, it was a Mickey Mouse helium balloon.

After we each entered our adoptive families, my adoptive parents threw me a birthday party, knowing that my brother and I shared the same birthday, so they invited his family too. The helium balloon was part of the party decor, and I gave it to him because he liked it. Now that he mentioned it, I do remember some things. He loved that balloon so much he tied it to the window frame in his room. His adoptive parents, citing it as a distraction from studying, let it go. We were just preschool kids then, the little we learned hardly enough to distract us. But when my brother tearfully told me the balloon was gone, I learned his adoptive parents were already making him recognize first-grade characters.

“You surely don’t remember; back then your family was rich, always thinking of stuffing me with gifts,” my brother said, holding my wrist.

Indeed, my adoptive parents provided me with a great life when I was young, basically giving me anything I wanted. I once gave my brother a Batman backpack, which I never saw him use. When I went to play with him, he said his adoptive parents told him not to just take things from others for nothing, and they hid the backpack away where he couldn’t find it.

“‘Others’? Who’s that?” I asked.

“You.”

I burst into tears and shouted, “I’m not ‘others,’ I’m your little brother!”

As I cried, my brother joined in, and both of us were too busy bawling to explain why. My adoptive parents came over to comfort me, and my brother was quickly taken away by his adoptive parents.

Later, I sent him paints and sketchbooks because he liked to draw. Cardstock, glitter, glitter glue—I sent all these for his crafts, but his adoptive parents confiscated them all. My brother once told me the reasons they gave, but I don’t remember that nonsense now; they certainly had no shortage of excuses to prevent him from accepting my gifts. My brother eventually asked me not to send anything anymore. I refused to listen, always picking out small toys that he could hide, and taught him how to lie to his adoptive parents that he hadn’t taken anything from me.

In elementary school, some of my classmates already had mobile phones, so I bought one for my brother. Fearing it would be confiscated, I taught him to set it to silent mode, and we agreed to call or text each other after his adoptive parents went to sleep. He told me he hid the phone in a hole at the foot of his bed in the bedroom, a broken spot only he knew about and hard to discover.

Sometimes, if his grades slipped and he fell out of the top three in class, his adoptive parents would scold him, and he’d secretly call me at midnight, crying himself to sleep. I had to wake him up to make sure he hid the phone before going back to sleep. His family couldn’t afford a tutor for him, and they only had some practice books that he’d do, erase, and do again; he could recite them from memory, which clearly wasn’t enough. I told his adoptive parents that my family had hired a tutor and that my brother could come and study with me.

His adoptive parents said, “No need, we can teach him ourselves.”

And then they continued to scold him for only coming fourth.

On weekends after my classes, I’d have the nanny take me to the base of my brother’s apartment building. I’d have him leave the window open for me, and I’d toss candy into it from the small iron frame. At first, I couldn’t aim well, hitting the window frame with loud clinks, drawing his adoptive parents to look out. I’d immediately pull the nanny to hide under the eaves. After waiting a bit and seeing no one, I’d try again. With practice, my aim improved—maybe that’s why I later got good at shot put.

My brother would pick up the candies, sit on the window sill, wipe his tears and eat. After finishing, he’d throw the candy wrappers out the window; he couldn’t throw them in the trash at home for fear his adoptive parents would find out. I’d catch those fluttering colored wrappers, on which my brother had written with the markers I sent him: Little brother, I miss you so much.

Reading my brother’s words, I cried along with him, tears and snot streaming down my face.