Proxy

I remember carrying her, my cousin, when I was ten and she was five and clingy as a limpet: two only children making siblings of each other, with none of the skills honed by everyday friction. Our mothers, actual siblings, had no skills in open attack and defence, so they conducted their war through us. I inherited logic from my father, though. His sense of the way things should work. Of no use in guerrilla conflict. Not for him, and not for me. Things were always blowing up. We kept looking straight ahead, for the answers, for the exit.

That day, the sweetshop was about to close, and back then, the proximity and absence of sweets overshadowed my life. Which is why it made no sense for me to wait. I explained, eyes on my Timex, the tiny second hand circumnavigating the hours at reckless speed, how I could run on my longer, faster legs. If she would wait just here, I’d be back before she knew it. I spoke of the things I’d buy: the yellow foam bananas, the milk teeth, the sweet cigarettes in their tiny packet. We were already halfway, too far to bring her back to the side-by-side tents our families holidayed in, the everyday cruelty hushed to whispers so as not to be overheard. She refused to wait, the way a five-year-old refuses: like their life depends on it.

I was raised on expectations: to be faster, to be smarter, to be taller, to be thinner. Things that were and weren’t in my control. I pulled her but she wouldn’t run, couldn’t run. She sat down on the damp grass of an Irish summer and cried, the way five-year-olds cry: noisily, like it’s the end of the world. I was raised not to make a scene. I was raised to draw no criticism to myself. So I lifted her because she wouldn’t walk further. I carried her because she was little and I was bigger, and because that it what you do when you are the older sibling. I carried her, without realising that the sweets were of much less importance to her. I carried her, and my arms ached. I carried her, and when we got there the shop was already closed. ‘You’ll have to walk back now, I can’t carry you anymore,’ I said, and put her down on the hard path.

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