My Brother the Other Hero

I mentioned that my mom was our hero when she would stand between our father and us and take his blows. My brother was the other hero.

My father still hated my sister. Probably even more after she started school than when she first disrupted his world. She came down with mono and missed a bunch of school. She was so sickly and in his eyes she was defective. Every time he could he would take out his wrath on her. I saw it and I'm pretty sure my mother and brother did too.

He was still in the habit of punishing all of us if he didn't know who had done the infraction that set hm off. There were times when I knew who had caused us to be punished but I couldn't say anything. If the culprit were to lie (which happened) the punishment would backfire to the "tattle tale". If one of us "tattled" on the other sibling and they didn't come clean we'd not only get it from him but we would get the cold shoulder or worse from the one culprit. My mom seemed unhappy if we told on each other so after once or twice nobody ever did it again.

If the punishment was shared between us it was not as severe. Sometimes we didn't confess if we couldn't take the punishment alone. I confess I did it too. My brother like me seemed to know that our father was harder on my sister than he was on us. My brother may have even noticed as I had that our father was easier on his young son than he had been on me even.

There were a few times when I knew my sister had been the culprit but my brother would confess and take his the whacks in her stead. He did it for me once too. I'm not sure if he even knew it was me. For all of the times he shared punishment to make it easier on us and for all the times he took those whacks for us he was and is my hero. I'm sure he probably doesn't even remember but I do.