My brother John was born when I was 2½ years old.

He was a difficult baby. He came with crooked feet so he spent his first several months with casts on his tiny legs. He was bluish at birth and colicky in the beginning, and when he outgrew the gas he turned into a projectile vomiter. My normally impatient mother became a sucker for him, running at his every cry long after he grew too heavy to be carted around. It was like she felt guilty about his problems or something, the way she catered to him. Or maybe it was what she told me later – how if a woman is lucky she has two love affairs in her life: one with her husband and the other with her firstborn son.

I don’t recall feeling jealous as much as angry. It just wasn’t fair. And the fact was I loved John my baby brother. I was just drawing on his casts, the time I left the crayon in his crib. I didn’t even know I was missing the magenta until Mom found John with his bright red mouth; I certainly never meant him harm.

That was just the first of the injuries I caused him. When he was two I got him fake-hiccuping in the kitchen, and he banged his chin on the table and his teeth pierced his lower lip. If it hadn’t been for the seven stitches he probably would still be sucking on his bottle today, but I got spanked instead of thanked.

And it was nobody’s fault but mine when I put the horseradish in his ice cream, just to see what he would do. He was four and I was almost seven. He got a mouth shock, a nose burn, and an eye tearing. Then he figured it out and took off after me. I made it out of the kitchen but he smacked into the edge of the formica counter and the resulting gash in his eyebrow required a dozen stitches (my parents yelled that it could have been his eye – it was this close!).

I was selfish. I wanted my questions answered. I definitely wanted the biggest cookie on the plate. (I was into quantity over quality then. I bought those paper strips with dots of sugar candy on them, for a penny a yard, or those nickel candy necklaces that left apostrophes of pastel color on my throat. I was almost 13 before I matriculated to small purchases of fine chocolates.)

Once I tried to keep sleep booty. I had a recurring dream in which I received one of those plastic net stockings filled with individually wrapped hard candies. The sweets were mediocre I remember – glossy soft-centered fruit balls, tacky confectionary ribbons, and common candycanes all wrapped in clear or colored cellophane and dumped into a red net bag that was shaped like a foot&leg – but it was the type of treat my parents never bought and I wanted it for myself. I tried to bring it with me to the morning, but it was nowhere when I woke up. The next night I clutched tightly to the stocking, but still it didn’t survive the trip back to awakeness. Finally I came up a plan. The next time I got one of the dream stockings, I carried it very carefully into my house and to my room and my bed and I shoved the whole stocking right under my pillow where I was certain to find it when I woke up. I remember my astonishment and dismay the next morning, when my thoughts rose to consciousness and my right arm rose to seek my treat, and all I found beneath my pillow was cool unblemished sheet.

(continued tomorrow)