Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything

by Marissa Walsh

  “Yeah, he’s cute,” I said, encouraging, but silently, deeply envious. Her life was so carefree, while I had responsibilities tossed onto my shoulders through no will of my own. Even if I could get a boy to like me, I probably wouldn’t have time to see him.

  At home, my mother was at the changing table, a towel thrown over her shoulder. My sister wriggled around, her feet poised in the air, her bare butt bouncing against the mattress, her pudgy, dimpled hands swinging from side to side like an orchestra conductor’s. My mother was laughing, pretending to eat my sister’s stomach, nibbling on toes and heels, tolerating the facial battering by my sister’s feet. I made my presence known. My mother looked up from my sister and her expression changed, to something adult, something that smacked of obligations.

  “Great, glad you’re home. Can you run out for a new pack of diapers?” I backed out of the room and the cooing noise returned. “Who’s Mama’s favorite baby?” I heard her say.

  On the walk to CVS, I surprised myself with my tears. I’m not a child, I thought, so why am I so jealous? I left the store grasping an enormous, unwieldy box of Pampers, while other customers smiled. Did they think the diapers were for my baby? I longed to be my sister, with the years of fun still ahead of her: going on play dates, crayoning stick figures with poufy, polka-dotted skirts, gluing trunks on elephants, watching Saturday-morning cartoons while clutching a beloved frayed, stuffed rabbit in her fingers. I did not want to pick a major or do my own laundry or get a job to pay for future sundaes. I wanted to sit on a blanket all day and play with pretty, colorful shapes.

  But high school graduation came anyway and before I knew it, I was wearing a bright red robe and hat and accepting a rolled-up certificate. After the ceremony, my family waited to take me out to lunch at a local diner. I looked around at my now ex-classmates. They were surrounded by older brothers and younger sisters with flowers in their hands. Their sisters squealed, “Congratulations!” and their brothers stood around quietly but proudly, drawing circles in the gravel with their sneakers. My sister was snoozing away in her carriage, dreaming of unicorns or rainbows or happy polar bears, oblivious to this monumental event in my life.

  I left the house for good when my sister turned a year old. From then on, in her eyes, I became a visitor, an auntlike figure whose sudden appearances changed the atmosphere of her predictable surroundings. When I came home from college to visit, my parents devoted the weekend to me. In her room, my sister sulked, the warm yellow glow of their attention faded for the time being.

  Since my parents wanted me to be close to my sister, they often left me in charge of her for an evening. We would play a few games, my sister glaring at me suspiciously, wondering when “her” parents would finally get back. We would watch Barney together, she sitting in front of the television screen cross-legged with a cup of warm milk, and me on the couch with textbooks, studying for midterms.

  From time to time, she would lisp “More milk” or “Barney,” or she would just start to cry—long, heaving, inconsolable sobs. When my parents did get home, I would run to greet them at the door, breathing in the outdoor cold emanating from their coats, relieved that they were about to take over the tough job of entertaining a toddler.

  As the years went by, I channeled my jealousy into the persona of strict parent. Since my sister took advantage of my parents’ exhaustion by pressing for late bedtimes, gorging on television and eating finicky, carbohydrate-filled meals, I tried to be the disciplinarian. Observing my parents as pushovers produced a stew of bitterness and condescension within me.

  “Lights out,” I would bark at her doodling form clad in cotton pajamas.

  “Why do I have to?” she would whine. If she expected more leniency from me, she would soon learn that I was unyielding. I still remembered being in bed by nine o’clock; no Dukes of Hazzard, no questions asked.

  “Because I said so!” I turned off the light, watching as her drawing pad slipped to the floor and she pulled the covers over herself, defeated and angry.

  My parents joked that under my reign, my sister lived in fear—her broccoli would get eaten, the television would be turned off. It was the only way I knew to relate to her. But clearly, it was no fun for either of us.

  “Liza! Come say hello to your sister,” my mother would call when I returned home for the weekend, a bag of laundry in tow. After a while, when we were sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of tea, my sister would finally enter the room.

  “Do we have any cereal?” she would ask my mother, her hand already poking around the biscuit region of the cupboard.

  “Can’t you see Irina is here?” my mother would remind her. My sister would skim by me with a half-hearted pat on my back on her way to obtain milk for her cereal. Before she shut her door, we could hear the cheerful music of Nickelodeon emanating from her room. A part of me was ashamed—despite so many more years of insight, I felt able to offer her little more than she offered me.

  “You know, if you have any questions and you don’t want to ask Mom . . . ,” I began one night, sitting on the edge of her bed, trying out my best conspiratorial voice in an effort to remind us both that I was a sibling—not a parent, and not the enemy.

  My sister appeared to think, crinkling her nine-year-old nose and staring up at me from the depths of her pillows. "I know,” she said at last, jerking up to a sitting position. “I would ask Grandpa!” I nodded. The orange bear alarm clock by her bed said ten o’clock. An hour later, I still saw the telltale strip of light beneath her door, but I didn’t have the heart to demand that she turn it off.

  When my sister started junior high, I decided to tag along with my parents to her open house. We strolled the halls of the school with my sister, meeting her teachers and reading the students’ work on the walls. My parents had moved to New Jersey from New York when I was in high school, so it was not a familiar environment to me. But one of my sister’s instructors recognized me at once; she had been my high school geometry teacher all those years ago. A compact, energetic woman in her fifties, she grabbed my hand, gushing with memories, swearing I had been one of her very best students.

  “You’re a very lucky little girl, Elizabeth,” she said. “To have such a smart sister. And imagine, I never connected your last names at all, isn’t that funny?” My sister looked up at me, a newfound respect in her eyes, as if our worlds had intersected for the first time.

  On the wall, we found her assignment hanging among all the others. It was a timeline of her life. At 0, my sister had planted her own birth and what followed afterward: to the right was a bright, compressed series of events—a memorable birthday party at +5, a vacation to Cancún at +10. But all the way to the left, almost off the edge of the green construction paper, I found “My sister is born” at -17. Since our own timelines always begin at 0, it felt unsettling to be located at -17 of someone else’s. But at least I was there. I stood staring at the timeline, taking deep breaths before the proof of my existence in my sister’s life.

  It probably wasn’t easy for Liza to grow up under the shadow of a sister whose childhood imperfections were long forgotten. To her, my parents made me out to be the ideal child, who made straight A’s (truth: not really), who helped my mother with house-work (truth: once in a while, if I was in the mood), who enjoyed going to museums and other cultural events (truth: if I was promised the restaurant of my choice afterward), and read voraciously (truth: OK, that was the truth, actually; I was a big geek). How could my sister compete with this ideal image?

  I didn’t dispel those myths either. Last year, during my sister’s bat mitzvah, a man was interviewing guests with a video camera. “Say something to Elizabeth,” he said, shoving a microphone into my hands. Behind him, Liza’s friends were hopping around on the dance floor at the command of an ebullient DJ. I faced the camera and no words came to my mind. Do I go mushy or funny? On the spot, I opted for funny.

  “My dear sister, if you accomplish even fifty percent of what I’ve accomplished in
life, you will be very lucky,” I said, mugging. The cameraman laughed and moved on. Later at home, my sister watched and re-watched her video, pressing Pause during my speech.

  “What’s up with that?” my sister asked, straight-faced. I shrugged. Sorry, it was all I could think of at the moment. For months afterward, my family tormented me. "Fifty percent!” They would sputter pieces of food and break into a whole new round of laughter. My sister joined in the fun; she was learning to joke around with me.

  The closer she got to becoming a teenager, the more she started coming to me with questions. “How long did you have your braces on?” she asked, hesitantly at first, a new band of metal gleaming in her mouth.

  “Six years,” I told her.

  “I’m supposed to have them on for three,” she announced, proudly, and then after hardly a pause, “When did you get your glasses?” Soon the questions would tumble out in a rapid procession: “When did you have your first kiss?” “How did you like high school?” “Did you do as badly in gym as Mom says?” On her bookshelf, I spied my high school yearbook. She had pored over it, reading the inscriptions (“I didn’t really get to know you, but good luck in college!”) and possibly even seeing pictures of Andy, the boy who never really liked me at all.

  It was around that time that I realized I had to quit playing the parental role and start having fun with my sister. She is fourteen now, old enough to trade makeup and boy stories with, and even, I am happy to say, share clothes. Last August, on one of my visits back home, the two of us went to the mall and returned home to order Chinese food and hunker down before the MTV Music Awards.

  “He’s hot,”my sister said, pointing her fork at Usher in dark shades, her mouth stuffed with chicken and broccoli. "He has a six-pack.” I could see what she meant, and I agreed; he was hot. As we slurped our sodas, dangling our feet off the couch, we swapped opinions on Ashlee and Jessica, Beyoncé and Evanescence.

  Since my sister did not have the benefit of my era’s teen heartthrobs, I introduced her to River Phoenix, the beautiful actor from my childhood who starred in movies like Stand by Me and Running on Empty, and who died tragically young. He now serves as my sister’s computer screen saver. She has become a groupie, watching any of his movies she can get her hands on. She even added her thoughts to his memorial fan Web site. Because of me, she has seen The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Lucas, and all the great teen movies of the 1980s. Since the eighties are back in style, she seems pretty cool to her friends, with her large database of retro movie knowledge.

  The more we hang out, the more our jealousies dissolve. We’ve both been writing novels, and we wonder whose book will come out first. But she has other things to do, like make it through high school and keep up her grades. Just a week ago, she received her class picture. In it, she looks so mature, her dark brown hair long and sleek—no braces or glasses in sight. She wears a black crewneck top and a tiny black leather necklace; I can’t believe she’s already fourteen.

  “Write something,” I said, recalling my own high school traditions, when we inscribed one another’s wallet-sized class pictures. She thought for a minute and scrawled something on the back. Then my parents came into the room and we turned our attention to planning Thanksgiving dinner. I stuffed the picture in my wallet without reading it. Only days later, back in my own apartment, 300 miles from New Jersey, I remembered that I hadn’t read my sister’s inscription. I opened my wallet and slipped out the picture. On the back of her ninth-grade photo, in which she is only two years younger than I was when I found out she would be entering my life, my sister had written, “Fifty percent of what you’ve accomplished wouldn’t be so bad.”

  TEST YOUR JEALOUSY QUOTIENT

  Reed Tucker

  As long as humans have been on the earth, jealousy has been with us. It even made one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s Prada.” Maybe it wasn’t quite worded like that, but you get the idea.

  And as long as magazines have existed, quizzes have been with us. They let us know how into us our crush really is, and how much like our favorite celebrities we are (whatever the point of that is).

  Are you a jealous type? This quiz will explain all.

  To your surprise, you land the lead in the school play, much to the dismay of the president of the drama club, who also tried out for the part. You:

  Pat her on the back and assure her she’ll get it next time.

  Throw your dirty costume into her grill and yell, “Light starch!”

  Immediately punch up imdb.com and log in her latest role as “the loser.”

  You studied all weekend for a math test, and when you get your grade, you discover that your best friend, who hardly ever hits the books, scored better than you. How do you handle it?

  Congratulate her on a job well done and tell her you’ll buy her a soda.

  Pop the tires on her bike and leave a note that reads, “Can math help you now?”

  Do research on the Internet into experimental brain-wiping techniques developed by the CIA that you can use to make your friend forget everything she ever knew about fractions and equations.

  When you hear your parents praising a sibling, what emotion do you feel?

  Pride. When one member of the family does well, we all do well.

  A slow, creeping anger. I can do whatever they did, only better.

  What was the question? I’m suddenly seeing only spots, and I’m starting to sweat, shake, and feel light-headed. . . .

  You’ve secretly had a crush that you never did anything about, but suddenly you find out the guy’s dating your younger sister. What do you do?

  Tell yourself your sister had no idea about your crush and find another guy to date.

  Start leaving really lame New Kids on the Block and Jennifer Love Hewitt CDs around your sister’s room in hopes he’ll break up with her.

  Secretly steal your sister’s identity by wearing her clothes and getting a new haircut, then steal her boyfriend, just like in that really bad Josh Hartnett movie.

  In any given week, how often would you say you become jealous?

  Pretty much never. I’m cool like dat.

  Definitely no more than once or twice a day.

  How many minutes are there in a week again?

  You show up at the school dance, only to find that your archrival is wearing the hot dress you really wanted but your parents refused to buy for you. What’s next?

  What’s the big deal? We both look hot.

  Surreptitiously affix a fake price tag to the back of her dress that says $9.99.

  Keep pointing to something imaginary on the floor so she’ll bend over and everyone at the dance will see from the lines that she’s wearing granny panties.

  Even though you’ve started as sweeper on the soccer team for two straight years, the coach decides to start someone else. You conclude he:

  Is just doing his job. Maybe the other girl is playing better right now.

  Must have it in for you. He’s hated you ever since you laughed in sex ed class when he tried to put a condom on a banana, unsuccessfully.

  Is secretly in love with the other player’s mother and will do anything to win her favor.

  When you take quizzes like this in books and magazines, you:

  Share your answers and have a laugh with friends.

  Keep the answers to yourself for fear that your friends might have scored higher

  Why are you asking me this, you creep? Who are you going to tell about my score? I didn’t do that badly, and really, I totally wasn’t trying.

  Scoring:

  If you answered “a” most of the time, you are a completely cool person who rarely gets jealous and has no need of this book. Now drop it and go see a movie.

  If you answered “b” most of the time, you might need help dealing with what your school nurse might politely call issues. Others better hope they never cross you.

  If you answered “c” most of the time, you’re not someone
to be trifled with. Your rampant jealousy would make you the perfect villain on Desperate Housewives. Or at least cut out to run for Congress.

  CONFESSIONS OF A JEALOUS GIRL

  Susan Juby

  The first time I felt jealous was when I realized there was a difference between my family and those families I came to think of as ski people.

  Ski people drove Volvos with skis tied to the top. Ski children got good grades. Everyone in a ski family had blond hair and was taller than average. They were healthy and vigorous and vaguely Scandinavian. This was in contrast to my family. We were just vague. My mother drove an orange Lada, which was, to my mind (and probably the automakers’), a cheap and pathetic imitation of a Volvo. We didn’t ski. Instead we kept chickens. Not a lot, but enough so you’d notice. That made us chicken people. What was worse, those chickens weren’t just for rustic effect. We actually ate them. My stepdad killed them himself.

  When I was very young, I didn’t know enough to be embarrassed by this. In fact, my older brother and I even had this game in which we took bets on how far the chickens would run after they’d had their heads cut off. I have this indelible image, accurate or not, of us watching some unfortunate hen sprinting, headless, across the pasture and me looking up to see a Volvo full of ski people passing, watching us. I could practically hear them saying over the hum of the German-engineered motor, “Look, Svend, look at those chicken children!”

  As I grew older I graduated from being jealous of ski people to being jealous of anyone more fortunate than me in any conceivable area. Self-consciousness descended like an ax and I began to resent nearly everyone, including girls whose hair feathered better than mine, girls whose parents took them on holidays to warm places, girls who got new clothes (even ugly clothes), and girls who had better-shaped eyes than mine. This last area was of particular concern to me. I liked an almond-shaped eye and thought that my whole life would be better if my eyes were just slightly less round. I felt that my puffy postsleep eyes were headed in the right direction, and I tried to train them to stay in that shape through excessive sleeping and salt consumption, but with poor results.