Homecoming: No Glory in Limbo

My 19th birthday marked the 40th day since I had seen my friends or left my house. We cut a chocolate cake and my brother, Peter, allowed me to give him a brief hug.

Peter and I have never been close. He was born 20 months before I was: not only in a different decade, but in a different century. Though we ended up attending the same college, even on campus, we rarely saw each other.

In my first semester, we enrolled in CS50 together and went out of our way to meet up once a week in Cabot Library to talk over p-sets. Under the fluorescent lights and surrounded by freshmen, we glared at the 20th compile error of our session. After an hour, he would have to pack up and make the long trek across the river for golf practice. I would be left sitting at the high tables, picking at my nails and wondering if I would see him again the following week.

I knew this feeling well. The emotional distance between us had emerged when we were young.

To be fair, I was the epitome of the annoying younger sister. He was meticulous; I was antsy and frantic. He was STEM-oriented; I liked the humanities. We foiled each other. I couldn’t help but compare us at every moment.

When we were very small, he would kneel on the carpet, dark, curly hair obscuring his face, and spend hours methodically lining matchbox cars in row after row. I envied those plastic cars. How could four little wheels captivate him more than his sister? To steal his attention, I would sneak close, before snatching one quickly and sprinting down the hall as fast as my four-year-old legs could manage. After a stern reprimand, I would be sent to my room, lonelier than before.

I lived in the shadow of my brother, even though that shadow was imagined. Our parents never pressured me to follow Peter’s path. In fact, my mother refused to sign a permission slip that would allow me to take Advanced Placement Biology. She pushed the pen away and crumpled the neon orange paper, correctly guessing I only wanted to take it because Peter had.

While I was wrestling with the curtain I thought Peter had smothered me in, I, too, had placed him in shadow.

I was born with a cleft palate that left a hole in the roof of my mouth. It was patched when I was nine months old, and although my missing uvula is an interesting party trick, other, more serious ramifications of the birth defect lingered. Yearly tests always confirmed slight hearing loss and my eardrums were polka-dotted with perforations.

Though I suffered from all of this, a secret thrill accompanied the medical mess of my ears and mouth. As my parents crowded in the examination room, I couldn’t help but quietly savor their attention. Sanitary paper tearing beneath my weight and diagrams plastered on bleach-white walls held a small corner of my heart.

Each check-up and each pre-op I underwent with my parents was a time when Peter was completely alone. I was too preoccupied with the care I was receiving to be conscious of the care he was not.

The month before my freshman year of high school, I had surgery. My parents drove me to Tampa to spend the night before the operation in a hotel. They let me order vanilla ice cream from room service and we rented Pitch Perfect. I do not remember where Peter was that night, but I know he was not with us.

When I was in first grade, they carved my tonsils out. I ate mac and cheese for every meal and ice cream for breakfast. One morning, Peter asked if he could have some too. I taunted him, sneering that he shouldn’t be jealous of my medical woes. He countered: Well, at least he could use a straw. The pressure of a straw might have increased bleeding from the stitches in my throat. He’d won the fight.

By the end of my first semester at college, I had only seen Peter a handful of times. I wondered if we would always be more like acquaintances than siblings. After all, the only thing that tied us together was shared blood.

And yet, in the past 46 days we have spent more time together than in the past 18 years combined.

Since the quarantine began, we have taken to camping out on the sofa for hours, annihilating bags of pretzel logs, and cursing Cersei Lannister. We wander hazily into the kitchen between classes and take turns boiling pasta for lunch. We cross paths at midnight and exchange bleary-eyed nods. I have started texting him memes and forcing him to watch Tik Toks I make of our dog.

We don’t brush each other off. He starts conversations with me, makes eye contact, and laughs at my jokes. Sometimes, when he passes my room and the door is open, he looks inside and sees me wrapped in bed, on my side. The lights are off, and I’m illuminated only by my phone screen and stray rays of sun leaking from the cracks in my shutters. In these moments, I like to believe he can feel my sorrow in a way our parents cannot. He too mourns the loss of Cambridge, the cancellation of a sports season, and the gaping absence of our friends.

Peter glances at me for a few seconds before disappearing from the doorframe. He returns with our dog, Zaza, nestled in his arms. He bridges the distance from the hall to my bed, striding across the carpeted floor and navigating the haphazard piles of books. Carefully, Peter eases Zaza into my arms or settles her under the covers where she can curl on my legs. This has become our quarantine ritual.

There is no competition for attention or glory in this limbo. We’re in our childhood home, but quarantine has pushed us past the petty tensions of our earlier years.

In a few weeks, my brother will drive 20 hours to New Jersey to pick up his girlfriend. Without the quarantine, I know what his answer would have been. But today, when I offered to tag along and share the burden of driving, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.

— Staff writer Jackie E. George can be reached at jacqueline.george@thecrimson.com. This is one of five essays published as part of FM’s 2020 “Homecoming” feature.