You Are Only A Girl

You Are Only A Girl

We moved from the army housing to University Apartments, these were a huge step up. They even had a swimming pool!

It wasn’t long before I noticed major discrepancies between the way my brother and I were treated. The most obvious to a little child were gifts; my brother’s birthday was a month and a half earlier than mine so the differences were obvious. Dad would buy Big Wheels and Bicycles for my brother and I would get these hollow plastic baby dolls. How I hated those dolls. I wanted a bicycle too! But when I asked, pointing out that at the time my brother had 5 bicycles and 3 big wheels, dads response was that he wouldn’t have enough money to go my brother a new bike if he got me one. One year my dad got my brother 2 bikes (?) one was a girl’s, and since he didn’t want it anyway, it became “my” bike. I loved it; it had a banana seat and fringes from the handlebars and could really go.

Presents from New Zealand were weird like that too. I’d get nightgowns several sizes to small (as if they had remembered I was the younger sibling instead of the older) and my brother got toys. I asked my mom if we could ask them for something else or tell them my size, but the answer was always “no”. So all presents from relatives were worthless, or “it was the thought that counts”.

No matter how hard times got, I felt that we were in this together, that we would get through it and there would be reward at the end. Mom made me believe this and I believed it with all my heart, that this difficulty was temporary and things would be all right in the end.

Things slowly got better, I started getting stuffed animals and dinosaurs and horses in lieu of the plastic baby dolls, and I actually started to get closer to equal things at times, like Lego sets. Dad would phone though and spend ½ an hour talking to us, 25 minutes for my brother and 5 minutes for me. That’s the first I remember starting to get panic attacks about not being loved. Mom was making up for the Boy Without a Father; Dad was dong the same, and I were left in the surf with no one.

We ended up getting those… you know, Big Brothers and Big Sisters things. My Big Sister, Debbie, would bring presents for both kids, my brother and I and my brother’s one Tim would only bring stuff for him. I tried to talk to my mom and I got the “Never Mind” so I talked to Debbie about it when I next saw her. She said she liked buying us both presents cause she thought kids were cute. So I went to Tim and explained the inequality and he said that he had no obligation to get me anything because he only had a contract to be the Big Brother of my brother about it and he wouldn’t be getting me anything. EVERYTHING worked that way. My brother was getting fucking rose petals showered on him like he was the emperor of fucking China.

Debbie’s roommate had a fiancé that was a child psychologist. He’d drag me out of class and we’d do role-play with puppets or look at optical illusions, or play with a dollhouse. I’d pull all the people out of the doll house and replace with dinosaurs, Dad was the t rex of course. The females were herbivores. I’ll bet he got some interesting notes.

***