Warm and Bright

I don't know her

The first memory I had of my sister was her laughing on her little plastic scooter. She loved to waddle around the entire house in the plastic contraption throwing random objects at the wall. She loved the sound of things breaking so my brother and I would find any scrap piece of paper we could rip to make her laugh. Her laugh filled the entire house and it was the sort of laugh that filled every single crevice with lightness. Her laugh was musical to us. It filled us with the greatest joy. She was our little sunshine. 

We went to the beach as a family a lot. Some of my best memories with my sister were at the beach. She was always incredible at creating and she would make wonderful little castles with rocks and pebbles she would find around the beach. She would settle herself in the sand and work on it patiently till she was satisfied with the result. Once she would finish, she would drag me by the hand to show me her masterpiece. She always had some sort of story about some princess being whisked away by a dragon or a giant dove far into the sky. She liked fairy tales and whimsical things. 

 She didn't like being in the water much. She was talkative back then. Sometimes my brother and I would get annoyed at her for talking our ears off but it was infinitely better than the silent her. With her big cheeks and toothy grins, she was the owner of my brother and I's happiness. 

Her favourite form of comedy was pranking my brother. Once she managed to draw a tiny version of the Starry Night on my brother's forehead. When he realised he was thoroughly pranked, he would always pull this expression like a baby deer caught in headlights. She would laugh at this over and over. I would laugh with her. She was probably far more impressive than my brother and I combined. What she lacked in grades, she made up with her art. She was incredible. 

She never enlisted me to help her with her pranks because she liked having her own secrets. We had a lot of quiet conversation but she would always share the joke with me at the end. She always dragged me to watch my brother realising that there was something unusual on his forehead or that his entire jacket was covered in clothing pegs. We would laugh together and fill the entire house with noise. Sometimes, our dad would yell at us but mostly he would just watch and giggle to himself. 

Banu loved to laugh. She laughed and laughed and laughed until one day she stopped.

It was slow. Then one day, we realised she didn't even smile or talk or do anything she used to do. She was growing up in front of us. She spent more and more time in her room and less and less involved with my brother and I. She withdrew more and more until one day, she ran away. 

My parents didn't think anything of her isolating herself until she started fighting with me. At every opportunity, she would pick something to argue about. It never got physical but in front of my very eyes, I was losing the only thing that mattered to me. She was becoming venomous. Every word, every sentence became an opportunity for her to bite into. We became predators and she was in defence mode. Despite all our attempts, we couldn't find what was wrong with her. Somehow, through the years we had become something she had to fear and avoid and force out. 

I didn't know my own sister anymore. She was a complete stranger with no hints of the laughter and the happiness that my sister carried. There was this monster that blew up in between us and the more we put pressure, the more harmful it became. It all blew up last year when I fought back. I thought, maybe standing up for myself was the secret cure to her anger but it wasn't. In fact, she ran away. 

I blamed myself for it. She probably thought she only had two options: fight or flight and even as a young girl, my sister wasn't apt at fighting. She was only able to argue because no one fought against her. We were all scared to. We didn't want her to withdraw into herself more and more to the point where she disappeared altogether. A good sister would have known what to do but I didn't. Distance ensured that she stayed home at least where she was safe and surrounded by people. Once she was outside, she was alone with the sharks and with her barely communicating, we were wary to say anything or do anything to completely draw her out. We were desperate to keep her alive.