I am Not My Brother's Keeper

With my oldest siblings out of the house, it was just my brother and me left in the house with my parents. I keep trying to work out how old I was based on the memories I have. I think I was 17 or so, and my brother is 6 years older than me. It had to be on Saturdays because my mother worked on Saturdays, but my brother did not. My mother would come into my room on Saturday mornings before she went to work, and she'd wake me up and tell me whatever she wanted to tell me. And usually, she was irritated because I was still in bed, on a Saturday morning when I didn't have school, I guess. I'm half asleep, trying to understand and remember whatever it was she was telling me. Oftentimes, she would tell me things that she wanted my brother to do, and I was the one who was supposed to tell him.

I cannot for the life of me remember why she didn't just tell him. Maybe he wasn't home for some reason? Maybe he'd been out the night before so he was still asleep and apparently, it was ok for him to be asleep and not woken up, but somehow, I was the one who needed to be woken up to be told what HE was supposed to do that day.

It could be a particular chore she wanted him to do, or something different she wanted taken care of. Whatever it was, it wasn't something I could do, or at least it would require both of us to do it. So I'd have to remember whatever she told me, as I went back to sleep for a bit after she left, and then later, after my brother woke up, I would tell him what our mother had said for him to do. These were probably things he wasn't keen on doing anyway because they were chores of some kind. But can you imagine how happy he was to be told by his six-years-younger sister what chores he had to do on a Saturday instead of whatever else he might have wanted to do, because it wasn't like there had been any warning or notice ahead of time that our mother had wanted him to do these things.

And the day would wear on, and I'd tell him again about the things our mother wanted him to do. How keen do you think he was about that? There was no way that I was going to be able to make my six-years-older-than-me brother do something he didn't want to do, even if it was something our mother wanted.

And then he might go out on a Saturday night before our mother got home from work. And he might have done one of the things she wanted but not everything or maybe even none of it. And I would be the one to get in trouble. I'd get scolded because things hadn't been done. I'd tell her that I told him, but that never mattered. I mean, I never got punished for it, but it was clear that she was unhappy, and she voiced it, and I was the one who had to deal with it.

It wasn't like she never told him directly when she wanted him to do something. But on the many occasions when she would tell me to tell him, and he didn't do it, I don't recall a single time when she was angry or irritated with him that it wasn't done. She was either ok with it, or she'd be mad at me. I had zero control over whether or not the thing was done, but somehow, it was my fault for not being able to get him to do it.