Instalment 0004: The Sister Who Forgets
She was the first. The first to hold our mother’s secrets. The first to face our father’s wrath. The first to be told, in quiet, complicated ways, that love meant carrying more than your share and never letting it show. The eldest. One and a half years older. She wasn’t the villain. She was the vault. The one who absorbed the tension in the air, the bruises no one spoke about, and the shame that hovered in corners we never dared name. Growing up, she knew everything before I did. She was the one who knew where our mother had gone when she left us at twelve. She was the one who kept that silence. Maybe she thought she was protecting us. Maybe she was. Maybe she felt the youngest was too young. Maybe she felt I was too loud. Too likely to tell an aunt, or say it out loud in a way that would break the rules of our silence.