Sometimes people don’t understand my sister so I try to do the talking when we’re out shopping or eating at a restaurant.  I make eye contact with whoever is helping us and hope they can read my expression. This is what I’m trying to say: “I know she’s weird, but I’m not. Really. Just help us, make it fast, and we’ll be on our way.”

            I do this because my sister wants to talk to everyone she meets even though they may not want to talk to her. She doesn’t seem to pick up on body cues or facial expressions. She’s always been talkative and very friendly. But it’s different now. I don’t think she sees herself as others do, sitting like a tiny bird in a wheelchair.  Plus, there’s this: since her stroke, she talks with a kind of cartoon-like Chinese accent. Sometimes it sounds Middle Eastern.

            I don’t understand my sister, either, but in a different way. None of us do, my other sister who is a year older than this sister, an older brother, and a younger brother. What we don’t understand is how we got to this place with her. The physical and mental part we get. It’s the other we don’t understand: why none of us will take responsibility for her.

             “Hi-di-ho,” I hear her say through the receiver. It’s 7 in the morning and the phone has woken me. “I know it’s early, early,” she continues. I can hear a morning news show blaring in the background. She’s got the phone on speaker. That’s the only way she can talk. Her left arm and hand don’t work. Her arm hangs from her shoulder, an uncooperative appendage that has lost any resemblance to its original form. She pauses to light a cigarette with her right hand. She’s been up for hours and just wants someone to talk to. She can’t get showered and dressed on her own. The muscles in her left leg, like her left arm, have atrophied and even if her brain had been able to send it the right signals it now wouldn’t be able to hold her. She uses a tripod cane to walk. Even then she battles the laws of gravity, tripping over things that seem to appear out of nowhere.  Sometimes she can’t get back up and she’s stuck, like a turtle on its back. She wears a call button around her neck for an emergency response company.

            She tells me she’s hungry but doesn’t want cold cereal or toast, something she could fix unassisted. Her home health aide comes at 8. I ask her what she’s been up to, although I know the answer.      

            “Doin’ doin’, “she says.

            My sister was an executive secretary for the manager of a major department store. She was married, divorced many years ago, and has a son who lives across the country.           

            She was 55 when she had the big stroke. The earlier stroke or strokes came, the doctors tell us, during surgery for a brain aneurysm. It’s hard to describe the way my sister was before the surgery. Afterwards it was as if any good parts of her disappeared. Only the bad ones remained, and they got amped up. Even the doctors asked us what she had been like before. “Before what,” we asked.  

            It’s been that way with my sister for as long as I can remember. She was the quintessential middle child, always in trouble, stubborn to the point of destruction, and the only one who didn’t know to duck or hide. She was the party girl who never knew when to stop.

            So she’s faced with the steady accumulation of bad decisions and brain chemicals gone awry. She’s a disabled, broke, drug addict nearing 60. And none of us want to take care of her. We love her but we don’t like her.

            It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I always imagined the big extended family my father presided over continuing for generations even after our parents’ deaths.  I guess I knew it wouldn’t happen. There were signs of a break-down long ago but somehow I thought it would change, my sister would change.   

            I don’t know how to end this story. I’d like to be able to say somehow everything was magically fixed, but I’ve never been much for fairy-tales.

            I take each day as it comes, or as my sister says, “doin’, doin’.”