My first memory is desperately trying to muffle my brother's cries. My Dad is towering over us, yelling that we should shut the fuck up.
Crying always made Dad angry. Everything did, really.
The old fuck died years ago, but he stays a part of me. I'm an angry girl. Not easy to love. I have never had a boyfriend. I never even had friends, really, except for my little brother.
He is the functional one. Doesn't even remember half the stuff Dad did to us, just kind of... blocked it out, I guess. He is able to live. He has tons of friends. He even managed to fall in love, and they had a baby girl. I always wanted kids. I never got the chance. The jealousy was eating me up, but I wasn't really angry at my brother. I understood why everyone prefered him over me.
And he is the only one who ever loved me.
That is, of course, until the night he asked me to babysit his kid.
I still remember his screams. The terror in his eyes. The blood on the crib. Him trying to get it off, to fix his only daughter, to make her breathe again. Have you ever seen someone giving CPR to a baby?
It didn't work.
I just stood by and watched. Everything. The trial was a blurr. I barely heard my sentence.
Even now, the only thing I can focus on are my brother's letters.
He hates me for killing his baby girl, but he has kept in touch. After all, there was a time where we were the only good thing in each others lives. He knows that I saved him back then. A bond like that doesn't break.
And so he keeps writing.
I hold onto these letters. Every word about him recovering, him living, him thriving again, has been a tiny spark. A confirmation that I made the right call.
That is until I saw what he wrote yesterday.
"I'm going to be a Dad again."
I put the letter down quickly. I was feeling sick.
My father was the scarriest men I ever knew.
Until I arrived at my brother's house that fateful evening and saw him standing over the crib, covered in blood.
"Shut up", he whispered, "shut up, shut up, SHUT THE FUCK UP."
I cleaned him up. He just kept staring into the distance. Murmuring. And by the time I was done, he had just... blocked it out.
So I took the blame. I took the sentence. He was my baby brother. And he had a life to live. He is a good man. He is a kind man. One moment was all it took. And he does not even remember it.
But I am sure, when his next child cries, my father will awaken once more.
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