Keep Me Together

”You’ve been trying to live for two,” Elenia’s therapist said and clicked his pen. “You have been living your own life at the same time as you’ve tried to keep Olivia alive.”

Elenia stared at her fiddling fingers. “Someone had to do it,” she admitted in a low voice.
“But why did you cling onto her with all life? Why couldn’t you move on,” the young man asked her in a serious tone. “Tell me how she died.”

Elenia got tears in her eyes as the memories raced to the center off her head. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”
“You pushed your brother away from you from the day he was born; why is that? What do you feel when you see him?”

All the questions confused her, but she tried her best to answer them. “It felt like dad and mama replaced Livvy with him when he was born. Robbie doesn’t know a thing about Olivia; he’s only seen the pictures that hang on the walls; he never got to hear her sweet and catchy laugh, nor to see her beautiful eyes – the same colors as my mother, but brighter than anyone else’s. And her smile never failed at cheering me up. Robbie is clueless.”

“Why haven’t you told Robbie about her?”

Elenia sat next to her brother on the couch. He eyes were captivated by the TV-screen were a cartoon were running. Elenia had a big album on her lap – she found it at the bottom of her wardrobe covered in a thick layer of dust. It was an album her mother had made for her a few months after Olivia’s death.

She had browsed through it every day for two years; until her brother was born and it became too painful. She hadn’t looked in it for eleven years, but now she had no other choice but to open up the past again.

“Mind if I talk to you, Robbie?” she asked her brother softly.
He quickly glanced at her. She noticed he had grown again. His eleven year old face was slimmer than the face she’d always pictured him with. His cheekbones were more prominent and eyes shining brightly. Elenia got a lump in her throat.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled.
“Can you turn the television off?” she questioned.
Robbie sighed but pressed the button on the remote control. “What do you want to talk about?”
Elenia opened the first page of the album, revealing a picture off two brown haired girls, one with brown eyes and one with eyes as gray and bright as silver.

“Do you know who she is?” Elenia asked him and pointed.
Robbie stared at the picture off a second. “There is something familiar about her, but no.”
Elenia smiled; he’d probably seen the familiarity in the mirror. “That is our sister, Olivia.”
“Yeah, mama mentioned something about her,” he mumbled and turned the page.

It was a picture from the hospital, the day Olivia was born. 1o month old Elenia sat in her father’s lap. Olivia was packed in a pink blanket in her mother’s arms.

“We were born the same year, me in January and she in December, it felt like having a twin, but at times she acted older than me, being more responsible,” Elenia smiled at the picture. “We were inseparable, shared everything; bed, food, candy, teddy bear and always wanted to be dressed in matching clothes. We didn’t have many friends; we didn’t want to share the other with anybody else.”

“She looked like you,” Robbie noted on the next picture; the two holding hands; dressed in pink dresses on their way to kindergarten.
Elenia smiled at him and shook her head softly. “You look more like her; I never noticed before.”

“What happened?” he asked.
Elenia’s face fell. “We were sick and had to stay home from preschool one day. It was one of those rare sunny days and we ran away from home because we wanted to play at the beach. None of us noticed a storm nearing before it was too late. I was too weak to save her from the waves.”

They were silent for a few minutes, looking at the pictures.
“That’s the reason why you are scared of the sea,” Robbie said.
Elenia nodded wordlessly.
“I’m sorry for jumping off the cliff last year,” he said to her and took her hand. “I wouldn’t have if I knew.”
“I know Robbie,” Elenia held his hand tightly.

“Olivia always wanted a little brother, I didn’t, she was all I needed,” Elenia confessed. “She would have been a better sister for you than I ever will be.”
“But you are the best sister, Elenia,” he said and stared at her with big eyes.
Elenia chuckled sorely. “We both know that’s not true.”
“But you can change, right? I’m sure you can be just as good to me as Olivia would have.”

She smiled. “When did you become so wise?”
He grinned proudly. “I have an excellent sister, she’s smart, and I look up to her even though she doesn’t know.”
Elenia wrapped her arms around him in a warm and unfamiliar hug. She rested her head on top of his soft black hair.

“Your sister loves you, even though she’s not good at showing it,” she whispered to him.
“I love you too, Leni,” he whispered back.