My five-year-old brother is picky, and when I refer to the word “picky”, I mean it in the most elaborate sense. He has his own menu somehow embedded in everyone’s brains, and on it are listed a few specialty dishes and also a number of random snacks he will undoubtedly accept. He likes peanut butter-and-jelly the most, and so this is what I make him on any given day, if I am left fumbling for a substitute for a culinary masterpiece I have thought up in my head that I know, deep in my heart, he would reject.  And so I spread the condiments on the potato bread, always scraping up the jelly first, for I would not like to poison it with a peanut butter-coated knife. When I open the jar of peanut butter, it drips through my fingers, and the very smell poking through my plugged nostrils sets my brain on fire—I run to wash my hands, still convinced it lingers in the air like a moist fog.

I return to the counter, and there are only so few finger I can use to pick up the jar and put in the knife. It feels as if my throat is closing, though I know that does not happen unless I ingest large quantities of the substance. I spread it on the bread, and I slap the slices to together, and the clap draws my brother’s eyes around and snaps his head to the side, and he asks, with far too a great a concern than should be possessed by a young child, why I made that sound. I said I was just making sure it was well-mixed, which is true, and cut the crusts off the way he likes. I then bring up the menu, and scan through the list quickly, considering the few combinations that his taste buds would allow. Beef jerky strips land on one corner, and I sprinkle just the right amount of dried cranberries and cashews, mixing them in the same corner. He needs fruit—I cut an apple.

The plate is ready, I’m positive, for his juice has been poured and a yellow straw, bent at an angle, has been slipped in the cup. A miniature metal bowl holds three pieces of candy corn—his favorite candy—and I place it all in front of him. He smiles, and gets eating and says “thank you, sis,” from time to time, but I know he appreciates it deep inside.

It is odd how easily I slip into becoming a mother, unsettling even. I’m not sure why this is, because, although my mother and stepdad work quite a bit, it is not as if they aren’t around to care for my brother like I do. I suppose it’s that he is everything to me, and I am inclined towards keeping everyone alive, a nature my mother has smoothly passed to me. Although I don’t have as much of a need to, like she did, it is in me, nonetheless. Anger is also within me, a nature my father has so kindly given me. I do not use it, or show it, for that was not how I was raised. And I didn’t see it from him, because I didn’t see him, and I don’t mind at all, for my mother, and now stepfather, were always more than enough. However, like my inclination towards worrying about everyone, anger does not drift from me yet. It remains, which is why, when my brother becomes irritable and, sometimes, grumpy, as all five-year-olds sometimes become from time to time, I grow very annoyed, furious even, if he says things that are mean, after all my worrying about him. I do not say anything, for fear of saying something I would never mean, and so I wait for his mood to shift, and for him to come to my arms so I can comfort him and kiss the top of his head, which is almost blond, a trait his father gave to him. I think I may just love him too much, and, therefore, grow so angered by his not realizing it, am so determined to make him happy, and to never feel without love.

When I got to my mother’s office in Manhattan on a dreadfully icy Wednesday, my brother was sick, and, as he put it, sick of being sick, as well. I was cold, and, judging by his stiff fingers, he was, too, though I had wrapped him in a coat and gloves—with his hood covering that head of his. We walked through the doors to the lobby, but needed a key-card or identification to get in. I found this odd, for I been to the office on multiple occasions and would tell the security my mother’s name and the company’s name, whereupon they would question my morals and my soul until, finally, they grew tired and let me in. Today was not one of these occasions. We had just walked from the station, after taking the 7 train from Queens, and my brother, like my mother and I, had a tendency to become motion sick on any moving vehicle. He was sick from the ride, with a possible cold threading through his body, but he had survived the trip, and he was ready to see his parents. The security guard was a middle aged woman, gray streaks shining through her dark hair, and I am sure she is a fine lady, for she did not carry an air of snootiness, let alone extreme and unnecessary worry, but, on this cold day, she was anything but reasonable. Ever since we moved to New York, no one has ever called me a child. It’s not that I don’t think I deserve the term, but rather that I don’t carry myself like a child when I’m with my brother, partly because I can handle him and always get him what he needs. I trust myself to do just that. I could keep him alive and healthy on my own if it came to that, which I pray it wouldn’t—but the thought that he would be okay in my care is almost comforting. Regardless, the guard had called me a child, and said she couldn’t let me in the elevators alone because of it. I had gotten my brother—who was a child, and an occasionally uncooperative one, at that—ready that morning and played with him all day, for he was too sick to go to camp and my family had not expected it, and had to go to work—and I had no school. Consequently, he was staying with me. I had taken him to the city, and I figured that, if I could get him there, I was surely capable of getting him into an elevator and riding to the tenth floor with him. The guard kindly let us after a while, probably because we were occupying a third of the room with our conversation. It had taken a while, though. I realize it shouldn’t have gotten to me.

I am a freezer, my mother says. I freeze upon impact, upon fear. I freeze as a car is heading towards me, ready to crush my bones and threatening to spill my insides. I freeze as a glass is falling towards the ground, ready to shatter defiantly. It is almost as if I am waiting to see what happens, waiting for life to show me the preset path one takes. I am waiting for everything to receive its fate, and for me to receive mine. However, my mother says I am not like this with my brother, and it is, most definitely, the only time I am not like this if what she says is true, because I fear a lot in life, though I like to convince myself otherwise. She says I would take a bullet for him, and would not hesitate—or freeze—upon doing so. I suppose I can only believe her, force it into my soul that I would move in time. I would die for him in an instant, but my perception of time as things are falling apart is mediocre, at best, and so, I worry I would not take action, and then it would be too late. I just want him to be carefree, and to never be hurt, but I know this is not possible, and, frankly, that is what scares me the most.