All the Horrible Girliness

Random writing from the last few weeks

There are a few good ways to eat edamame. You can get it in your mouth, just holding the tip, and bite between the beans to pop them out. You can bite directly into the beans, popping them out smushed, and get leftover bean skins afterward. You can pull the string off so that the shell opens up to you, like unzipping a lady's dress.

I like edamame better with soy sauce than with salt, though both are good. You can drizzle the soy sauce over the whole batch, but the problem with this is, you could get too much soy sauce on some and too little on others, plus what if you can't eat it all in one sitting? Then some would have to go back in the fridge with soy sauce on them, marinating. You could also just make a little pool of soy sauce, in a separate dish or cup or just in the corner of the plastic thing the edamame comes in. A patient pourer can get just the corner filled with sauce. Then you dip the edamame in it and turn it upright, so the soy sauce drips down, then eat it before it runs onto your fingers.

I am reading and eating tonight. I'm reading a book I've already read, that didn't particularly strike me as anything amazing the first time I read it, and I'm eating whatever I can get my hands on. Also, I am wrecking my lips, which I've been trying not to do for a couple of weeks now.

When I tell people what happened with my brother today, I lie. To my mom, I said I told him to go fuck himself. To my husband, I say I told him to eat a dick. The reality is I was weeping and gentle and even apologetic, and flustered like I always am with him, because I care so much what he thinks of me. He got the last word. The end result is the same, though, because we're pretty much done. I have to start hating him now. I wish it were easier.

It should be easy. He's a hateful person himself, full of displaced rage. He is selfish and rude and mean. He doesn't see how he hurts people. He doesn't care.

The last several years, he has lived between thirty and one hundred twenty miles away from me. I have done nearly all the driving. I was there when he graduated from basic, I was there when he graduated from Drill Instructor school, and I have gone to graduations for Marines I don't know because he was presiding. I went to see him when his girlfriend broke up with him and he was miserable. I have invited him to every holiday and party, but he won't attend. This year, he spent Christmas cleaning his apartment. That was more fun or interesting or important than meeting his first nephew.

Around my brother, you can't do anything right. You feel his judgment on your back. So you spend your time trying to impress him. You wheel and deal. In high school, I used to have to promise to buy him things for him to go anywhere with me. He got used to that treatment.

My birthdays, Christmases, wedding, the birth of my child – none of it was important enough for him to visit or even call. We stopped even attempting to give gifts to one another almost a decade ago, though I promised him one if he'd just come up for Christmas a couple years ago. He didn't.

I'm done now, and there's this hole in my heart. He thinks I'll be very sorry, because he's planning on dying in Iraq this year, but I'm working really hard on hating him now. I wish I could. I have all the facts in front of me, but I can't. All his bad qualities together, if you just unfocus your eyes a little, a 3D image of him as a child comes popping out. That smile, that voice, that tender heart. You want to believe that person you grew up with is still in there, somewhere.

I've spent years making excuses for his behavior and now I can't anymore. He's been doing the rounds, saying what could be final goodbyes to the family before he goes, and he was planning on getting around to doing it to me, too, but he won't now.

My mom had back surgery when we were teenagers. He was just starting to hate her. I was worried about the surgery, but he told me he wasn't, that he wouldn't care if she died on the table. If I told people he'd said it, they assured me that he did care, that he talked that way specifically because he did care, and for the last ten years I have believed that too, but I don't now. If I died today, he wouldn't care.

He wouldn't care wouldn't care wouldn't care.

He's a dick and I hate him I hate him I hate him but I love him, so much my ribcage hurts from it all. The only way I've found to get away from the pain is to read and eat everything I can get my hands on: bananas and edamame and oranges and meat pastries. It works for awhile but then I think of him, the heat of his back through his tee shirt, his hilarious stories, his beautiful face. I have a letter he wrote me when he was going back to Okinawa from being in Korea, where he killed people, and it breaks me in half to read it again. I think of him hurt, bleeding, and a scream rises up in my belly. I feel that I have to protect him, I have to help, I have to pray and hope and love hard and maybe it will create a big hamster ball of energy that will encase him and deflect bullets and explosions and make him live a long, healthy life where he finds out what it is to hold your own child in your arms, where you come home to food and smiles and love and a warm bed.

If you could only hear his voice on the phone. How bored he sounds with the whole prospect, the whole idea of me, how worthless I sound through his voice, how utterly unimportant, how quickly and easily he passes me off as not worth his time, how my weeping throws him into rage in a finger snap.

Is it any wonder that I collect brothers? I smother Mister Aran's brothers, and I only have this blog because Brendan had one and I thought he might read it. If I had an inch less pride, I would go to his house and force myself on his family.

I just miss my family, my dumb mom and my nutso dad, my frail grandpa and my scheming grandma. I miss my senile great aunt and her massively overweight, lesbian daughter, with their opinions and pets. I miss having my own people. Mister Aran's people are quiet understanders, but my people are loud arguers. When there is nothing to argue, we create something, because that is how we know to relate. Here, I am loved and cared for, but I feel alone.

The bad things are coming back into my head now, so I should take a shower and go to bed. Everyone else is fast asleep.

*

Here is the scoop on The Bug: if you lay him on his back, he will roll to his belly within seconds. He is a pro at it. After he discovers he's there, though, he gets royally pissed off and whines until I turn him back over.

He figures out toys that are months too advanced for him. I think he's past twenty pounds now. His arms and legs look like they may burst through his clothes, though they are for babies much older. He still has only his first two teeth, which came in together: his bottom front two. He eats fruits and vegetables and turkey. He seems to enjoy squash, carrots, mango and turkey best. He likes to watch us eat. At restaurants, he gets a taste of marinara sauce and lemonade, just so we can see the expression on his face. We gave him a breadstick once and he went to town on it, covering it with slobber.

He's figuring out his voice, making it go squeaky high when excited, shrieking with joy when we tickle in just the right places. I kiss him on the mouth, which he leaves open, and I get his drool on my upper lip. He grabs at anything he can, figures it out, then doesn't want it anymore. He doesn't amuse himself for long. He is frustrated a lot of the time. He thrashes. The other night, he struggled enough to tip his carseat over, even all belted in.

*

It's now Sunday, some time after ten p.m. I am having a turkey and provolone cheese sandwich, with spicy mustard, and my favorite kind of orange, and water.

Today I am annoyed and angry and I have only thought of blood seeping from my brother's mouth a few times. I was busy and didn't have time to panic.

This morning, on the way to have breakfast at the Gypsy Den, we were diverted onto another road because marathon runners were coming through, and there they came, five or six African runners. Their bodies were beautiful, sleek in their thin clothes, and it was fifty-one degrees. I was happy to be on that wide street in the cool winter morning just in time to see the runners. Then I wondered what they would tell their families at home about America, about people who munch on sweets in crystal bowls, how they sit all day long, the rows and rows of food at the supermarkets, the choices, the cars, the wide streets and the fat children.

Then of course I wonder where my brother will be, what he will be feeling, dread or excitement or both, or maybe more fear and rage than I will ever know. I wonder what it means to be a citizen of Fallujah, where he is going, where nothing is constant, where you see people and places blow up, where you could have to run for your life, where it is normal to lose a child in the most horrible of ways. I think that I would hate me, too.

I saw a program when I was pregnant about the Russian children who lived through that terrorist thing in the school – I have to ask Mister Aran to remind me; my memory is bad – and these little boys and girls with their big eyes and serious faces, talking about things they should know nothing about, talking about revenge. I couldn't watch it now. I'm fragile, weak. A citizen of Fallujah would think I am weak and fragile because I can't handle the sight of people in pain anymore, even if it's fake, even if it's entertainment, even if it's animated. I'm no good at separating myself anymore.

I get to concentrate now on the move, on feeding The Bug, on Mister Aran's back pain, on my little skirmish with my brother. It's candy, this stuff I get to think about, because I can't handle the meat of life. I can't save my brother, I can't protect my son, I can't care for my husband, like I want.

So, I'm going to eat this orange and fold the clothes on my bed, and kiss my husband and check on my son, and try to sleep.

posted by Samus @ 10:51 AM