12-03-06

On the day my brother was born, I was seven, and my friend Hanzhi, who later changed name to Harry was six, and no one even started to make fun of us for being friends until I was about nine and he was about eight, and it served us right because we were asking for with our role playing games—I was his wife, he was handsome, we serve in the secret service and spent our entire lives trying to vanquish the top enemies (his dad and my dad of course), and in our free time we pretended to sleep like husband and wife, and because we were so freaking hyper all the time, when we pretended to sleep, we actually fell asleep, and all the grown ups, and all the grown children fawned at us, and whispered annoying things like, “They’re so crazy when they’re conscious, but look how beautiful they look now,” as if we were better unconscious, as if the most beautiful state we could ever achieve was like being in a coma!
On the day my brother was born, Cindy was in her last year of high school and mom was starting to cry because Cindy’s only requirement for picking a college was that it be as far away from New York as possible, and I asked her in the middle of our grayest December day in all of 1991 why she would ever leave this place, I asked her to please tell me why would she want to spend her life away from here, and she crouched down beside me and picked my eyes wide open and said, “Wake up you idiot, this place is a piece of crap.” On the day my brother was born, it was Christmas and I begged my mother the year before when she asked me if I wanted a brother or sister for Christmas to please not give birth to the male version of Cindy, and please please please not forget to get me a real present if for some horrible reason my baby brother or sister was to be born on Christmas, but despite all that I woke up at seven in the morning and ran downstairs to find my friend Hanzhi’s mother cooking ground pork and green spicy peppers, which I could not even digest because I had a poor intestinal system, or so my dad said whenever I refused to eat the crud he cooked on the weekends, and my friend Hanzhi drawing pictures of big fat presents coming out of Santa’s butt.
“Guess what? You’re brother is being born. He’s got to come out of your mom’s butt.” His mom didn’t understand English, and I hit him for grossing me out first thing in the morning.
“Not her butt, you idiot. Don’t you know about the other hole?” He had his violin case with him, which meant he was supposed to practice thirty minutes in the morning and another thirty in the afternoon. I played the piano and I had to do one full hour, and it didn’t matter afternoon or morning. I picked afternoons because I was the kind of person who waited until the last minute, and sometimes in the afternoon if I was cute all morning my mom would let me finish ten minutes early.