Talk

I had a conversation with my brother today that lasted for about ten minutes. Probably a little less. It's ironic that even though he lives at home now, we still barely see each other. Maybe over breakfast, as the coffee maker gurgles and gags away by the steaming rice cooker. Maybe for a few minutes at night after he finishes dinner and I'm downstairs to brush my teeth before I go to sleep. Weekends are the worst. We are separated only by one wall one foot thick. I can hear him when he opens a drawer and when he sneezes. When his phone buzzes, I reach for mine. We never really talk, though. Hurled insults masquerading as greetings. Identical grunts of indignity at our father's lunch (and dinner) whistles. A collective sigh as we descend the stairs to the kitchen.

It took a load of laundry for us to see each other face-to-face for the first time since I enacted Operation Grouchy High School Senior, most of which involves me sulking about and hiding in my room.

How ironic. It's the laundry again. I just realized how strange that is. The last time there was a major laundry family bonding event, my mother told me the story of her mother's journey across China on foot to find her father. Of course, a sixteen-year-old girl walking across China wasn't anywhere near exciting enough for my grandmother. She just had to go and do it during the Japanese occupation. And my mother just had to tell me this story while she was doing the laundry.

These modern times are so very hard.

Anyhow, I was folding my mother's panties and my brother was folding my father's boxers, and we just got to talking about my life. Because that's the sort of thing that happens in this household. We discuss life over laundry.

I said something incredibly inane about pulling off an A in AP Chemistry for the first quarter, and he responded with some vague congratulations. He'd turned the television on, but had apparently forgotten about it. An infomercial for a pan that rotisserie-ified chicken burbled on behind him. I dug one of my father's shirts out of the laundry basket and started folding it, chattering on about how difficult school was, finally asking him where he thought I would "end up" next year for college.

I am a completely, utterly bull-headed, insensitive brat.

Sometimes, I just wish that I had been born in a nation in Sub-Saharan Africa so I wouldn't be such a self-centered idiot. I'd have to worry about malaria and other water-born diseases and whether or not the guy with the machete (fine, AK-47) down the dirt path was going to rape me. Or marry me. Or sell me. Or something along those lines that actually warranted being worried about. Instead of agonizing about a 96.6% in AP Chemistry and a 92.8% in AP Lit and where I am going to end up for college. Because it's obvious that I'm going to be able to continue on in this nice little civilian bubble of textbooks and pop quizzes and term papers for the next four years of my life.

I should be celebrating by actually memorizing these O-Chem functional groups that have been burning a hole through my shredded conscience for the past week. I should actually be annotating these plays instead of Spark-Notes-ing them the day before my exam. I should appreciate every chance that I have that he hasn't.

Because, as my begetters so kindly emphasize at every other meal, I don't want to end up like him.

Heaven forbid I should strive to emulate my older brother. It might even tear a hold in the fabric of reality.

I vainly struggled to soothe away the melancholia of this laundry conversation at the piano when I discovered that someone had moved a little framed picture to sit right on top of it, smack dab in front of my line of sight. It's a family picture of happier times in Alaska when my brother would smile for pictures and I would not. He's... sixteen? I'm still in primary school. He stands to the right of my parents and I to the left.

A wall between us.

Oh brother I can't, I can't get through.
I've been trying so hard to reach you 'cause I don't know what to do.
Oh brother I can't believe it's true.
I'm so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you.
Oh I wanna talk to you.
: Coldplay, "Talk"