Intervention Handbook for Disordered Sisters

by Shelby Wardlaw

2020 Fiction Contest Honorable Mention

Lies, most often told: pl. n.
By your mother: 1) I’m fine. 2) Things are getting better. 
By your disordered sister: 1) I’m fine. 2) Leave me alone.
By you: 1) I’m fine. 2) I love my job.

Line Editing: n. your current job (see also Independent Contractor, accidentally becoming; see also Writer, aspirations of being). 
Job description includes: 
a) correcting tiny mistakes to ensure that they don’t add up to one enormous, fumbling, inarticulate document, i.e. forcing clarity; 
b) specializing in manuals, instruction pamphlets, and handbooks—projects range from operating descriptions for imported products to HR handbooks for large companies; 
c) straining your eyeballs until the blood vessels pop. You buy lubricating drops in bulk and guzzle them through your eye sockets. 

Mania: n. the first phase of your sister’s bipolar disorder.
Your sister’s mania burst forth in torrents of midnight phone calls, during which she talked for hours describing her latest artistic project that never came to fruition (see also Gullibility, persistence of). During these calls, she never once asked about your life (see also Distance, creation of). 

Masticate: v. the act of chewing; a first step in the process of digestion; an act your disordered sister rarely engages in. 
Growing up, you used to watch your sister chewing at the dinner table, the way she anxiously worked a piece of chicken around and around in her mouth. Perhaps it was this mesmerizing performance that caused you to overeat, or perhaps (as your mercilessly intuitive psychologist suggests), you have always had difficulty separating yourself from your sister. When she underate, you overate to make up the difference, sometimes swallowing bites whole.

Melancholy: n. the second phase of your sister’s bipolar disorder. 
After the mania subsided, melancholy descended on your sister, wrapping her up in a plush, rich sadness. It was beautiful in a way. You felt both captivated and repelled by it (see also Writer, aspirations of being). 

Migraine: n.
1) A recurring condition marked by severe, throbbing headaches that begin on the left side of the head and spread to both sides, accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to light or sound. 
2) For your mother and sister, the average length is three days. 
3) When you were young, your disordered sister took care of your mother during a migraine. She brought your mother hot soup and fresh water; she rubbed her feet. She performed all tasks willingly, without being asked. Perhaps she felt the opening of the condition in her own small body. 
You, meanwhile, escaped into schoolwork (see also Self-Worth, measurements of). You could not muster appropriate sympathy for your mother. You were frustrated with her, and (as your relentlessly astute psychologist points out) you were frustrated with yourself for feeling hurt when your mother disappeared. You managed to check in on her occasionally, tiptoeing into her darkened bedroom where she lay like an unused mask across the bed. At times, you whispered words of encouragement. But it was your disordered sister who did all the nursing. 
You admit that you resented your mother’s migraines. Some part of you felt they were indulgent. Your psychologist says that lying listless on a bed and letting someone else take care of you is the kind of thing that you would never allow yourself to do. (You wish you could break off the pointed tip of your psychologist’s perception and throw it like a dart into the wall. Or maybe back into her.)
4) As your disordered sister got older, she began to show symptoms of migraine. When you were seventeen and your sister was fifteen and your mother was forty-three years old, two migraines struck at once. For days your mother and sister lay side by side in the darkness, each with a silver bowl to catch the vomit. You stayed home from school to take care of them. You ordered expensive takeout on your mother’s credit card. You wandered the quiet house. 
At some point, you padded into your sister’s bedroom and tried on her jewelry. You found her bag of weed and her diary. You read it. You discovered that your little sister had lost her virginity. At this point, you had never even kissed a boy (see also Self-Worth, measurements of). You replaced the diary carefully. 
After the migraines retreated, you needled your disordered sister about her love life until she confessed, blushing, that she had had sex and that it had been painful. You took this news very seriously. You warned her not to move too fast. You insisted that she buy condoms. 
You had no idea how to use a condom but your sister never asked. She probably knew that you couldn’t explain it. 
5) You have always suspected that your disordered sister is more alive than you are.

Misogyny: n. a prominent aspect of your disordered sister’s boyfriends, all of whom are precipitously stupid. 
You once asked Boyfriend #4 if he had any hobbies and he said, “Eating mostly, haha.” Eating is not a hobby, you boring sack of turd. It’s a necessary prerequisite for life. Then Boyfriend #4 pinched your sister’s stomach and made fun of her for being a “scarecrow.” 
You admit that you wanted to hit him, and your psychologist says that you translate your emotions into anger as a form of self-protection. (You also want to hit your psychologist.)

Mississippi: n. the location of your disordered sister’s rehab clinic, which she entered at age nineteen. Also the state where your mother was born. Also the state where your maternal grandmother was born, the one who tried to kill herself. 
Before the intervention, you told your sister that the state should be called “Miseryppi,” because everyone there is trying to leave. It was a terrible joke, but your sister laughed at it and then you laughed because she was laughing.

Mistakes: pl. n.
1) Something you thought that you would grow out of, like bad grammar (see also Self-Worth, measurements of). 
2) The time you and your sister snorted OxyContin at a mutual friend’s house several blocks from your childhood home. The drug scared you, but you wanted to join your disordered sister in something, to see what her world felt like. A month later, you read a letter at her intervention (see also Forgive, inability to).

Motherhood: n. a state of being that involves extensive sacrifice, usually without recognition, as your mother often points out (see also Mothers, altering perceptions of). 
After the intervention, your mother joined a Creative Circle of other middle-aged, career-oriented, mostly white women. They each made a craft that represented motherhood. Your mother made a papier-mâché mask with X’s over both eyes, the left one shedding three tears. The mask’s mouth was sewn shut and there was a cut across one cheek that bled red glitter. After you became the first person in your family to finish college, she put the mask in your bedroom and meditated in front of it.

Mothers, altering perceptions of: v. to observe a mother from different angles; to understand a mother as many-sided; to develop one’s own opinions, usually at a distance. 
Before the intervention, you understood your mother to be a goddess. She knew everything, saw everything, and was always right, as she often pointed out. 
After the intervention, you noticed that she had several nervous tics. You noticed that she was, in fact, a very anxious person, perhaps more anxious than your disordered sister. You sympathized with this. You recognized it in yourself—the way you knocked on furniture to dispel negative thoughts, the way you picked at your lips, the way you woke each morning with an aching, throbbing jaw, as if you’d tried to chew through your dreams. We are each of us trapped inside our own personalities. 

Moving: v. an act that occurs every four years or so when your mother—an obstetrics nurse—transfers to a new hospital, usually citing “bad management” and “impossible people” at the administrative level.

Nurse: n. your mother’s profession. There is only one person in the world she can’t heal. There is only one person she wants to.

Opioids: pl. n. your disordered sister’s substance of choice (see also Heroin; see also Terrifying New Year’s Eve When the Disordered Sister Was Completely Unresponsive but Turned Out to Be Fine the Next Day Whereupon She Ridiculed You for Being So Worried, Possibly Because She Was Worried Herself).

Phone Calls, frequency of: n. after the intervention when your mother started calling you on a daily basis. At first you were irritated, but later comforted by her calls. The intervention was an unmasking in more ways than one. You began to feel close to her again. 

Poverty: n. a financially compromised state that your mother claims she is not in, not as a result of the rehab fees. 
Your ruthlessly perceptive psychologist says that you have internalized your mother’s shame. She points out your irrational fear of well-paying jobs. She points out that your desired professions tend to require a lot of education but offer little compensation (see also Writer, aspiration of being). You point out that you’d have more money if you didn’t have to spend it all on therapy appointments.

Prostitute: n. a profession that your mother thinks your sister will fall into if she keeps using (see also Phone Calls, frequency of). You insist that your mother call them “sex workers.” Your absolutely intolerable psychologist points out that you often hide behind your fancy education, because it is the only thing that distinguishes you from your mother and sister.

Psychologist: n.
1) On the way to your first appointment you get into a minor car accident. 
2) You arrive at the psychologist’s office in tears with a sprained wrist and several bruised ribs and declare that you want to carry on with the appointment as scheduled.
3) You spend the entire hour crying and insisting that you are fine, that your life is very privileged, that people are starving in other parts of the world, that you don’t need to be here, that you don’t know why you are here, that you are fine. 

Questions: pl. n. no. Stop.

Selfishness: n. yes, too often. You hope it can be forgiven.

Self-Worth, measurements of: pl. n. mistakes, all of them (see also Mistakes).

 Shame: v. when you drove your sister to the intervention. The sound of the car wheels speeding along the highway made you want to vomit. 
You led your sister inside. Your whole family was sitting there, including the intervention counselor who insisted that everyone use a standardized script to express their emotions. You were not allowed to mention your disordered sister’s name. Instead, everyone had to refer to each other by family roles: mother, sister. The system was supposed to make you feel safe.
You watched your sister on the couch, confronted by all of your family—aunts and cousins too—who read statements from trembling sheets of paper while your sister’s black eyeliner smeared down her face, while she sat there with her thin, bleached hair wisping along her cheeks, her body so small on the cushions that you would have eaten the whole world for her then, to fill her up, to fill yourself up, so that you could both be whole. Instead you watched the interventionist carry her away in a white van, and ever since that moment you haven’t been able to discern which part of yourself is a mask and which part is the wound the mask is supposed to cover. 

Systems, lies about: pl. n.
1) Your psychologist tells you: You are not at fault. Disorders are terrifying, not because of what they destroy, but because of what they illuminate. Your sister needed help, and so did you.
2) There is no system that will fix your disordered sister, whose name is actually Maeve. She can’t be defined by her disorder. She can’t be fixed by a new definition. 
3) Throw away this handbook.

Published July 19th, 2020