The Cousin Who Wasn't There

          Have you ever forgotten your keys? Your mail? Your watch? Maybe someone you lived with for years? If you answered yes to all of those, then you can relate. 

The Past

         Oh, I had memories here and there of her as a child - sliding down the hill at home and smacking into the swingset, or eating from a bowl of cough drops together, or sharing a bed and whispering to my disembodied brain-prince as she slept. (Yes, that was my imaginary friend.) Still, I always figured that she'd been sleeping over. 

         Fast forward several years to the apartment of my sixteen-year-old burnout cousin and me, now fourteen, who'd gotten a bit too hard-core for the burnouts. She was always the coolest to me, though. I always carried a flask or a bottle and I always found a party; she gave me a place to pass out or somewhere to say I'd been. She gave me a safe place to get high and never made me do anything I didn't want to do. Sometimes, we just ran in the rain or took glamour photos of each other. She is the one who put the idea in my head to begin modeling, and helped me start on that path... not that I was quite ready at this particular moment.

       I don't know if I mentioned it, but my family never celebrated holidays. I suppose if I owe them anything it was that one honesty, that Santa didn't exist and birthdays were about everyone but you. I did hate being pulled from school for Halloween parties though, and never getting to experience any artistic holiday. This brings me to the day my cousin, who was raised the same way, and I decided to buck the system and decorate Easter eggs.

Easter Egg Revelation

          Ah, me with the half-shaved spikey-head, black lips, Megadeth tee and pastel eggs; it must have been cute. :-)

          Anyway, I'm not sure how we got around to the conversation, but we started talking about what happened to me. I remembered one moment, in the closet, very distinctly, but I felt that there was more. She said there was! She said she was there! She put her eggs down and looked at me with disbelief as she told me she'd lived with us for two years - didn't I remember!?

          What she told me next I still don't remember: She said that her step brother had come to stay with us as well from time-to-time, and that my brother molested us all. She said he used to put a penny down his underwear and make us reach for it. He'd had his dog trained to lick his penis on command and he made us watch the whole event. He played games with us together like that, but then he would take us separately, and she didn't know what happened then. 

          She remembers much more than I do. She was older, and my brain broke to protect itself. She's since said that she was trying to protect me, and that I'm selfish and ungrateful. Needless to say, we're not close anymore. It's hard to be grateful for what I don't remember, but I have remembered more.

          My brother liked to test me. He'd done it now and again before I left home. I didn't know what he was doing at the time; I thought it was odd though. Now, given perspective, I understand. Once he told me about a man seated at the bar near us. Supposedly, the man said to him, "I wonder whatever could have happened to a girl to make her feel the need to dress like that." Yes, what indeed.

-DC