NYC-Feature Story

My Sister’s Keeper
Seeing my twin get bullied ignited a protective love

By Anonymous

Many people wonder what it’s like to be a twin. Do twins think the same thoughts? Do they share the same feelings? I am a twin, but growing up I never experienced the things most people imagine. My twin sister Nicole (not her real name) is mentally retarded. Her condition put a barrier between us from the beginning.

As we grew up and I started doing things for myself, she remained unable to do many things, like pick out her own clothing, or eat so that food went into her mouth and not anywhere else. My mom was her eyes and hands.

I treated Nicole like a rival, the way any kid might treat a sibling. In fact, I was extra competitive because of all the attention she got from my mother, who I considered my best friend.

I fought for my mom’s attention. I won soccer and hockey games and the medals mounted up across our room. I did well in math and science, too. But it seemed all the games I won and all my math and science awards meant little to my mom. Whatever pride she showed lasted a brief moment and then her attention shifted back to Nicole. It made me feel disgraceful to envy someone helpless, but I did.

Feeling Guilty

At the same time, though, I always felt guilty that I escaped Nicole’s fate. What happened to her could have happened to me. Both of us were partly strangled by our umbilical cords in my mother’s womb. As we were being born, we were both losing oxygen. I got out first, delaying my sister from coming out. Those last minutes permanently damaged the left hemisphere of her brain. I know it’s not my fault, but I still feel guilty—especially because deep down, I can’t help feeling glad to be the one who was born unharmed.

Until we started our second year of school, Nicole was so happy that I never noticed anything different about her. But as the year progressed, our classmates started to make fun of her. She started to cry over going to school, where before she’d been excited to go. Ironically, it made me want to spend more time at school to get away from the hurt she let out at home.

When we reached 3rd grade, my father took the money he’d been saving to buy us a house in Rockaway and instead used it to send me to an expensive private school. Our family of four lived in a one-bedroom apartment so we could afford tuition. Meanwhile, my sister was stuck in a poorly-funded public school. I didn’t feel I deserved this lopsided love from my dad and it made me feel ridiculous.

Cruel Family

I can’t vividly describe Nicole as a child because our lives were so separate after I switched schools. Also, as she got older she grew quiet, in a way that made me depressed being around her. She was a mystery, at times coming home from school and not saying a word. I never knew what was going on with her.

But I always noticed how my father and his family mistreated her. His family used to call Nicole names, which drove my mother to lash out at them and caused problems between her and my father. Meanwhile, Nicole tried hard to get my father’s attention, but he ignored her or acted like he was ashamed of her. If she said “Hi” to him, she’d get no reply in return. He’d yell at her when she unintentionally broke stuff in the house, or when she didn’t do things as quickly as someone else might. His words still echo in my mind: “What did I do to deserve this?” and, “You’re retarded in the mind, not body, so stop embarrassing me!” I was too young and scared to tell my father off, but I wanted to.

I Got the Message

By the time I got to junior high, I was less oblivious. I saw how my sister endured all those heartbreaking comments without standing up for herself, and I began to get angry. I decided my father’s actions were making my sister more introverted and delaying her emotional development.

I started to have dreams about my sister. In my dreams she was pitiful and helpless. It was weird, but these dreams woke me up to the bad treatment my sister got in reality. I finally got the message: Nicole needed me.

I decided it was time to stand by her, and I developed a powerful protectiveness toward her. I started thinking, “Why should my sister be the only one who is being looked at as a failure?”

I began rebelling in every way I could. My dad wanted me to continue being the champion in sports, so I quit them altogether. He wanted me to play nice with his family; I stopped visiting them. That started a separation between my father and me that still exists.

Stopping the Bullies

Meanwhile, Nicole and I were about to become closer. One day when she left behind a science project that she’d worked hard to finish all on her own, I decided it was worth being late to my school take it to her.

It was the first time I’d set foot in her school. It seemed normal, until I was directed to the special education floor. Going through those halls made me want to cry. I saw kids with all kinds of physical and mental disabilities, and all I could think about was their families and the pain they must have gone through. As the crowd thinned, I saw two girls kicking a helpless girl on the floor. I realized the victim was Nicole, my baby sister. How could anyone do this?

I dropped everything I was holding and slammed one of the girls to the wall. I punched her with all the potency I had. Then someone jumped in and knocked the second bully unconscious.

I was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and battery, but the charges were dropped because I was defending my sister. The other girls were expelled. To this day, the thought of the pain they inflicted on my sister makes me feel the anger all over again.

A New Openness

It took this event to make me care about Nicole the way I always should have. After it happened, she finally opened up to me about everything that was going on with her in school and life.

Was this my sister talking to me? I felt like I was talking to a stranger, since she went from being silent to giving me a book about what was going on in her mind. She told me how girls wrote hurtful comments about her in the bathroom (thinking she couldn’t read it), how boys gave her a hard time, and so much more.

As time went on, I gradually left my friends behind to be there for my sister. I didn’t notice until one of them pointed it out. I was accompanying her everywhere she went like she was a baby because I was scared for her safety. But my other reason for pulling away from my friends was remembering how cruel they’d been to the disabled students in our school. They used to shove them to the floor and throw food into their faces. Watching them, I’d tried to suppress images of my sister, and the pain lingered for days. Now the thought of it all just disgusted me.

After that, my worry and stress about what would become of Nicole each day started to give me panic attacks. My heart would start racing and I’d have trouble breathing. My emotional instability was taking a toll on my physical health, but I couldn’t stop worrying about my sister.

An Idea

Then, one day, I watched the movie The Karate Kid and got an idea: I would send my sister to Tae Kwon Do and self-defense lessons. I knew it was ridiculous to expect her to be some kind of ninja like in the movies, but just the idea that she could build some self-esteem and develop strength to protect herself made me hopeful. I decided to pay for the self-defense lessons from my birthday and babysitting money.

For the first few days of classes she didn’t want me to come. She said I would make her nervous. I was nervous, too. I was worried she might not understand what was going on in class, and that she wouldn’t be accepted. I also did not want to make things worse for her. If her teachers gave up on her, it could deepen the shame she felt about herself.

But seeing her come back from class each day with a less gloomy face soon eased my fears. During the third week, I saw bruises on her arm and part of me wanted to explode. Then I realized it was a relief that, unlike coaches who had rejected her in the past, the people at the Tae Kwon Do school actually treated her as roughly as they treated anyone else. It showed me they had respect for her. They weren’t treating her like fragile glass—or like nothing.

My worries for her self-esteem gradually faded. She started ignoring the nasty stares of girls at school. She seemed less embarrassed and lifted her face more. With her hair tied back for Tae Kwon Do practice, you could clearly see her angelic features.

A Juvenile Record

One day, about a year after she started taking the lessons, the dean of my sister’s school called, telling us to come immediately to the school. My mother and I rode all the way there, saying nothing and dreading the worst.

We arrived at the dean’s office only to be redirected to the nurse’s office. I saw Nicole with a small cut. The relief in my heart was incredible. But then I snapped back and thought to myself, “What was all the commotion about?”

It turned out that the other girl was hurt, and Nicole was the one charged. I couldn’t have been happier, as awful as that sounds.

But this was just the first of many fights. Before long, Nicole began building up a juvenile record, which caused me so much stress that I started getting migraines.

My mother blames me for making Nicole violent. I do feel guilty, but I also don’t see how my mother can blame me for helping her stand up for herself. If it takes fights and even arrests at school for Nicole finally to protect herself, it’s worth it.

Love Deepens

Since then I’ve also helped Nicole progress at school, researching where to get affordable extra help for her. I found some amazing state-funded programs that offer free assistance. My mother and I agreed to send Nicole to an educational center that used tutoring, peer group work, and other teaching methods to reach out to disabled students. After a couple of years of hard work, she finally switched some of her special education classes to regular classes.

These days, I’m less anxious about my sister. Last summer in Pennsylvania, she fought her first Tae Kwon Do tournament and won 4th place. As the months have gone on, I’ve seen beauty in her that I never saw before, all because of this simple sport. She thanks me, but the only credit I take is for putting her in those classes and paying for it. The rest was up to her.

I’m overjoyed at what she’s accomplished. But what keeps me up at night, and what is so hard to wake up to each day, is the thought that hatred in this world will never stop and what she’s gone through so far may be just the prelude to her future. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop worrying.

Still, I know that what will also endure is our love for each other. I’ve learned that love can deepen so much with time, even love for people you’ve spent your whole life with.

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