section 3

When I was ten and Andrew was four, Andrew was diagnosed with autism. It sounds really simple. You go to the doctor and—what? It’s not like an eye exam or a throat culture, you don’t just get an answer that easily. That’s why it took four years! And when Mom and Dad started going to support meetings they found out that Andrew was lucky. Some kids weren’t diagnosed till they were nine or even older.

When Mom got pregnant when I was five I decided that she would have a baby girl. It just made sense for the baby to be a girl. A little girl could wear my old clothes and play with my old toys and when she was older she could play Barbies with me and we could play dress up and have tea parties. Besides, as any five-year-old knew, boys were icky. I was dead on having a little baby sister that I could care for and play with. I even bought her a beautiful pink rattle when I went to the store with grandma.

So when Mom came home with a Andrew I was bit surprised and put off. “This is Andrew Reed Cooper,” Mom told me, holding him down so I could see his. I was so angry when she said his middle name was Reed. My name was Brigitte Reed Cooper. Reed was Mom’s old last name and she gave it to me. It was supposed to be something special, that’s what she told me, she wanted a little girl so much. She said that I was was her “something special.”

Besides the name stealing, Andrew wasn’t too bad at first. A quite little guy with the same curly brown hair that I had and blue eyes that Mom and Dad both said would probably change to hazel, just like mine did. Mom and Dad let me feed Andrew his bottle every night after dinner and I even got to help change his diapers, although that wasn’t that much fun.

I can remember celebrating his first birthday, the theme was trains so everyone bought him little trains and his cake was covered in them. Instead of rolling them around though, all he wanted to do was line them up. I tried to show him how to play with them—maybe he didn’t know—he got upset and started crying. Aunt Trudy said that he was a late bloomer, at the time I didn’t know exactly what that meant but figured it had something to do with him not talking yet.

The next year would be the year I would remember as “the year of the doctors.” Being seven-years-old and constantly being dragged around the state to visit doctors was not how I imagined it would be. There were minimal perks, like the iPod Dad bought for me so I could so something in the car. I remember Mom and Dad getting in to a fight after that.

I was in the living room. The TV was on blasting some cartoon that I can’t remember, it didn’t help though. I could still hear them through the walls. I remember looking down at Andrew, he was sitting cross-legged on the play carpet Mom bought me for my fifth birthday. It had a hopscotch court on it and a target to toss bean bags on. Andrew had one too, with a layout of a town on it, but he didn’t play with his like he was supposed to. Andrew sat there with two red blocks in his hand clapping them together, counting the claps out.

“One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. The TV continued on, my parents continued to yell at each other.

I lost it. I had a happy life before Andrew was born. I had my parents all to myself and toys that weren’t drooled on. Dinner was happy and not filled with Andrew flinging the string beans everywhere. “SHUT UP, ANDREW! Just shut up! It’s all your fault. I wish you weren’t my brother! I wish you were never born!”

Andrew looked up at me, his lip quivered and his eyes began to water. Then he started wailing. Mom and Dad came out of their room and stepped in to the hallway, standing in the arch between the hall and den.

“Brigitte Reed Cooper!” Dad bellowed. He looked angry and Mom looked surprised. “Why is your brother crying?”

“He’s not my brother! I hate him! I wish he was never born! I hate him so much!” I was kicking and screaming.

Mom got that panicky look on her face that she had when I broke my arm when I was five. Dad was red in the face. “Go. To. Your. Room.”

“No! Put Andrew in his room. Send him away even. I don’t care. I hate him so much!”

“Go to your room now!” Mom added in, her voice was cracking. She pointed to my room like that would make a difference. I continued screaming, however. I remember that Dad ended up picking me up around the middle and carrying me to my room, I kept kicking, scuffing up the walls with my pink light up shoes. Dad set me on the bed, “You stay there until your mom and I come in and talk to you.”

I was in there for forever. Eventually, Mom and Dad came in and talked to me. They told me that Andrew would always be my brother and that he loved me very, very much and that he needed my love as well because he was special and the doctors were trying very, very hard hard to figure out what was ‘so special’ about him. I sniffled and looked away during the entire conversation. I went and said sorry to Andrew, he just stared at me and talking in his weird baby language. He could count to a bazillion but that was where his language stopped.

I just wanted a normal brother. One that could talk, one that wouldn’t have temper tantrums and scream at the top of his lungs when he was in the mall because he was missing a TV show. I wanted a brother that I could play tag with at the park.

After the talk with my parents I quieted down about hating Andrew. I realized that they didn’t want to hear how I felt about the situation, I realized that they didn’t care. By the age of ten I had learned to shut up and put up with it. I wasn’t happy though. They didn’t care though, they were crusaders for Andrew, doing everything they could to get him help that he needed. They missed my 4th grade Christmas recital for a seminar on some autistic thing. My ninth birthday was pushed aside so some specialist could come in and help “organize our life. Children like Andrew thrive on order, Brigitte, this will help him out.” She had already turned around when I asked, “What about me?”

Six years later, at age fifteen, the question was still ‘what about me?’

word count: 1188

grand total: 3064

to go: 26,936