FLY, FLY AWAY Little Brother

[Zochitl]

 

I loved my bedroom. Mom had made such a lovely place for me to live in. the bed was a double bed with a Louis XV  headboard in a cream and   gold penciled-in design all around the edges and I had a little commode to match and a dressing table with a mirror to boot. I didn’t allow my brother to come inside because he was reckless and loved to investigate what I had.  He would sneak in and look at all the nice things that I had on my dressing table  like my little perfume bottles and hand cream and would open them all up and throw them on my lovely pink carpet making me shout and scream until mother would come and scold me for allowing him to come inside my room. I was always to blame. 

He was the youngest and supposedly so delicate, since she suffered in his delivery and almost lost him giving him birth.   I was constantly told that he was a miracle baby and he loved to lavish about himself in that story all the time.  I was always the bully because Jack was born when there weren’t any incubators yet and was only a mere 2lbs. having to be placed in a box surrounded by warm cotton that they had to keep warming up and feeding him with an eye dropper every two hours.

I was a born a very healthy baby and two years his senior. I was a very strong little girl, always trying to be good, so I never had any problems whatsoever.  Mother was always worrying about him. Watching every move he made and making me always have to take care of him. I couldn’t go out to play or be with my friends   because he had to come with me and my girlfriends and I didn’t care to have a pipsqueak listening to what we would say or do.  He was such a tattletale and would go tell mother.  He would sometimes even making stories up just to get me in trouble.

Well, why did I have to put up with that?   Well I wanted to please my mother so I would not say anything. I don’t know why he had to be treated so special? He was a monster in disguise!  He was strong and could run like the wind with those skinny legs of his when he wanted to disappear.  

 At six years old he was worse than Dennis the Menace!   Always on the sly doing things around the house and having somebody else take the blame for it.   I, being the strong one, supposedly, always took the brunt of things! Being that he was such a sneak, nobody would see when he broke something.   I would go to pick up the pieces and then I would get blamed for what he broke.

Well one day I decided to play a little trick on him. His nanny has just combed his golden locks and was getting him ready for kindergarten but he loved to feel he was Superman.

“Hey why don’t we go up to the roof and play?” I said smiling. “We could play Batman and Robin and I’ll lend you my cape so if you want to fly you will look exactly like him.”

He was all excited and we sneaked up to the top of the roof. He began to chase me all around the tiled roof playing Tag as we kept running all around laughing and me pretending to catch him.

“Now I want to fly” Jack shouted suddenly.

“What?   You want to fly?  ”Okay let me go downstairs and get ready to catch you when you come down in case you forget the right words to start you off” I answered.

He began to button the cape. He wasn’t a tall boy but instead he was thin and lanky and the black cape was longer than his small three foot frame.

I ran downstairs and stood watching Jack get on the small ledge of the roof as he kept flapping the cape up and down, back and forth,   like it were the wings of a small bird.  Most of the time his small arms would get tangled in the heavy cloth and he had to wave them the opposite way trying to untangle them.

There was a canopy just below him and as he finally decided to take the plunge I quickly ran and began to roll the canopy to make a sort of bend on the heavy canvas material.   I had realized that if he hit the stairs below it, he would become a flat pancake and then I would get the blame and would never hear the end of it for sure.

He came down like a piece of lead; so fast that I was happy I had begun to roll the canopy sooner, as he hit it.  I quickly began to roll it inwardly covering him completely.   I just couldn’t stop his screaming and I saw my mother and his Nanny come out of the kitchen door.   Hearing his screams and the ruckus that we were doing they knew something was wrong.   Jack kept struggling to get out of the canopy screaming at the top of his lungs but I had rolled it nice and tight.

“What is going on?”  My mother began showing a troubled look on her face shouting at me. Then she heard the muffled screams of my brother from above.  “You better let him out of there, right this minute.”  She screamed at me now with an angry look on her face.

I let go of the rope that had been holding my little brother prisoner, wishing he could just stay all rolled up forever in the canopy.  It slowly began to unroll and Jack fell to the ground. He began to cry but I knew he had not gotten hurt.   All he wanted was mother to get angry at me and not punish him for falling off the roof.

Well, he convinced mother that it was my fault, even though I didn’t touch him and he wanted to do this. Except of course I did coax him a little.  But still, I didn’t push him.  He did it himself.

I got punished and sent to my room where I could only get out just to go to the bathroom or to the dining room to have my meals.   Jack would constantly walk by smiling as he passed my room and moving his body from side to side and then sticking his tongue out at me.  I just smiled back.   He didn’t know how happy I really felt that I didn’t have to watch over him.