My sister, Cathy, is about three years younger than I am.  We were very different kids, which at the time I thought might have something to do with being adopted, although my own two sons are very different also.  I was quiet, introspective, bookish, compliant.  I wanted more than anything to be left alone, and for things to be calm, and for these reasons I mostly stayed out of trouble.  Cathy was outgoing, impulsive, and needed approval more than I did.  Much more approval, and from everyone.  She had a far tougher time of it growing up.

She was seven months old when she arrived, and apparently had spent those seven months in a more indulgent foster home than I had.  She was plump, with a taste for sweets and not much else.  My mother, naturally, required compliance at meal time as she did at all other times.  It did not go well.  Mealtimes became what must have been a horrible ordeal for everyone.  Cathy was fed, resisted, was forced to swallow, threw up (violently at times) and was forced to eat the thrown up food.  Eventually meals were given in the bathtub, as the whole process was quite messy.  I don’t remember any of this, thankfully.  I only remember my mother telling me about it, in a way that suggested that my sister was a stubborn baby and she was an heroic parent for overcoming this problem when some parents might have just given up and let the child…well, not eat her own vomit.

When it came to learning, I’m afraid I caused Cathy more trouble.  My mother had a high standard, based on the achievements of the smartest kids she knew or read about, and the perfect absence of error.  Then there was what I could do – mostly a disappointment.  Then there was what Cathy could do, which was mostly a disaster.  She was really an average or better student, but she suffered by comparison to me, and her talkative and impulsive nature (and her complete inability to understand jokes) didn’t help.

I don’t remember the feeding, but I do remember a nightmarish incident that must have happened when I was about six or seven, and my sister was three or four.  My father was not home, which was usually bad.  My mother and my sister and I were reading the story of Hansel and Gretel together.  My sister found the story frightening.  My mother began talking to her, both angry and sort of mocking her for her ridiculous fear of the idea of children being cooked in an oven.  I don’t remember how we got to this point, but eventually she was dragging Cathy down the hall and into the kitchen, and even opening the oven door.  I don’t believe I really thought my sister was going to be roasted, but I wasn’t sure how far things would go.  My mother was a skilled and practiced dramatist, after all.

At some point, during or after this, I’m not certain, my mother explained that she was trying to teach Cathy not to be so gullible.  She hated gullibility.

Perhaps it is hindsight, but I think this was the first time that I realized something was seriously wrong with my mother.