NOT LIKE JUSTIN

I’m not at all like my brother, Justin. With coffee-colored hair, hazel eyes, and a simple, symmetrical face, I am nothing special to look at. Justin is different. Thinning flaxen hair clings to his milky scalp, and his bruised blue eyes pool sadness; mourning wasted youth. Chemo has discolored his skin to white from the inside-out, like a faded ragdoll. He’s a timid five years of age, barely discovering the world, and not mature enough to know he has to leave it soon. He wants to be a power ranger when he grows up.

My nights consist of staying up late, scrubbing the crusty remains of microwave macaroni and cheese from blue plastic plates, storing thirteen bottles of multicolored pills back in the cabinet. The television is on, but it is merely a gray voice in the background. Meaningless. Mother’s slung herself over the arm of the couch again, tousled hair, eyes as bland as the sounds of the television. I’ve never seen anyone so tired before, except for my brother. He’s curled like a cat on his bed upstairs, too fatigued to bathe, peaceful and rosy in the glow of his circus lamp. The clowns frighten me. They mock the four months he has left.

“Katie, Honey…” Mother moans from the flickering, yellowed spot on the sofa. I turn, dry my hands. She picks at her cuticles. “Can you give Justin his nutrition drink?”

I can. It’s in the refrigerator. I take it out, expertly yank on the silver tab, and pour the chalky, artificial white into a sippy cup. Liquid calories, calcium for ruined, spongy bones, a vanilla taste to please a young one’s tongue. I could get a job doing this. I’m an expert.

I carry it upstairs, and my stomach is heavy. I try not to think of why my mother is so drained, unable to bat an eyelash at what I would like, or what I need. I’m so selfish.

“Justin?”

He’s snoring, and I shake him. He wakes instantly, but refuses what I have for him. His stomach is in knots. I pull the trash can in close to the bedspread. The whole room is choking with a yellow light, the weak color of the terminally sick. I stare at the wooden bed frame, and attempt to ignore the sour smells, the empty pill bottles on the floor, the little child’s sunken eyes and deflated cheeks.

We go to the hospital tomorrow. It’s another round of poison, and Justin faces it with bravery no five-year-old should know. He has the serious and ancient eyes of an old man. I want to stroke his balding head, feel the feathery yellow down of a baby bird, but I know it will fall off in my hand. It’s happened.

I turn away from the stony doctor as he lifts up Justin’s nylon dinosaur shirt to access the tube in his chest. Everything is cold, and smells of chemicals. The odor stings, much like the edge of a dagger. I suppress a sneeze, as my brother holds back tears against the burn of the medicine. It slithers stealthily into his veins, lurking into his heart, and is pushed through the rest of the arteries and capillaries branching through him. I want to be in there. It’s unfair that the chemo knows my brother better than I do.

Everything is fake. Brightly-colored toys and baskets of stuffed animals look out of place, congregated awkwardly among the tubes, the monitors, and the aluminum poles. A television set hangs from the white ceiling, next to a tired, ticking clock. Two more hours. My brain has converted the venomous scent of morphine into a bitter taste. I’m disgusted of this plastic, Cytoxan world.

Justin is forced to wear a little blue surgical mask on his face now. It’s a papery cap against germs, turning away any infection that may endanger his broken life. I’m not allowed to hold him, and my chest is in flames of frustration as if I were the one who had just been loaded with drugs. The world spins for me, too. I wonder if I’m inhaling too much of the hospital. The pediatric oncology ward is like one violent, sticky virus.

After washing her hands vehemently with harsh, green antibacterial soap, Mother straightens Justin’s coat collar with determination. The stiffness in her movements and the glaze over her deadened eyes say loudly, “I’m NOT the mother of a dying child.” I stare at the blue-flecked tiles with hurting eyes. My synthetic, shining hair, and loops of plastic beaded jewelry around my neck yell in their own voices: “My younger brother does NOT have cancer.” Liar, liar.

At dinner, Mother broods over a cup of coffee. It is seven at night and she’s struggling to stay awake, absently picking at the frozen peas with her fork. I feel grinding in my insides as I think of my grades, dropping slowly, not unlike the liquid chemo from an IV bag. I should be doing my homework. Instead, I’m holding a Popsicle for Justin in my numb hand. His eyes spill over with crystal pain, whimpering at the smarting of the giant, volcanic sores in his mouth. A clump of his golden hair is latched to his shoulder, and I want to brush it away. He sheds more than the family dog, and it’s not at all comical.

The surgical mask is redundant and forgotten, between his puffy, sallow hand, and the rainbow of capsules lined up uniformly on the wood. I think I’ll ask for an extension on my biology project. The teacher is going to ask why, but I’m not going to tell her. She’s not going to find out that I’ve become the mother of the household. She’s not going to find out that I vacuum my brother’s hair from his bedroom floor every morning before I go to school. She’s not going to find out that the bone marrow transplant we pursued last June failed. She will remain ignorant.

My grades are wavering, sort of like the autumn’s dead leaves. I have unwashed coffee-colored hair, ageless, disturbing hazel eyes, and a hollow, symmetrical face. I’m empty, and I’m glad I don’t have to smell Heparin anymore. We’ve thrown out the Prednisone, and the other gel, coated, and chewable tablets. The manufacturers really are dense; giving a drug a strawberry flavor only makes things worse, too counterfeit. Mother gets home at a decent hour. She doesn’t drink coffee at seven in the evening anymore. Tonight she’s decided to cook penne pasta, seasoned with fresh garlic. The supermarket can keep their Easy Mac and their frozen peas. I’ve lost my taste for food you can prepare in less than fifteen minutes.

My biology homework is completed, with clean, ball-point pen handwriting marching across crisply lined paper. It’s in its neat little folder, bright fire-engine red. Artificial. Stupid.

I slip upstairs in my socks, and hesitate at the closed door on my left. One of Justin’s drawings is still taped to the middle of the wood. The crayon tiger growls a warning at me: “turn away!”. There’s nothing for me here. I go in. A stack of brown cardboard boxes stands uncertainly next to the dresser. I think of the circus lamp, and the clowns… packed away.

The walls throb, and the room is radiant with a clear, crystal white, not institutional like the hospital, and not a muggy, nauseous yellow like disease. I wind my hands very carefully around one of the bedposts. It’s smooth and cold, no longer rich with a little boy’s fever and agony. I spot another container of steroids, partially hidden behind a corner of threadbare, mint-green sheet. The medicine inside waits, undecidedly, for its ill boy to return. He won’t.

If I lie very close to Justin’s vivid, fluffy bedspread, I can smell him… Cheerios, finger paints, baby Aspirin, and sickness. His teddy bear sits forlornly on the pillow. He has little black beads for eyes, and they shimmer with the grief I won’t expose. The cotton bandana around his plush neck matches the stale color of the long-discarded surgical mask.

I’m glad I’m not like Justin.