The Real Laura (Part One)

by Anna

My father said that she was a wasted life. My mother said that she was possessed by satan himself. My brother said that she had always been different and strange. They didn't know her like I did.

This is my story about my older sister Laura.

We sat silent, huddled together as the miracle happened right before our eyes. Little by little the shell gave way as the tiny duckling struggled to emerge. I could see its head now poking through. I could hear Laura's soft voice, "Look at it, it's so beautiful". Laura and I held each other as the duckling pushed its way from the last bit of shell that had protected it through the many days and nights it had spent in the incubator. When it was finally completely out of it's shell, Laura gently cradled it in her hands and brought it to her cheek as she talked soothingly to it. The little duckling relaxed and sat still. She was with it's mother now. There were nine other incubators with duck eggs in them that would soon hatch, but this was the only one that we were lucky enough to witness.

As the ten ducklings grew, Laura fussed over them. She fed them, kept them clean, held them often, and loved them as if they were her children. The ducklings lined up behind her and followed her everywhere she went. There was a creek on the bottom of the hill that we lived on. Laura would lead the little ducklings down to the creek so that they could swim in it. Laura said that they needed the water. As I walked behind them, I could see car after car slow down as the drivers stared at the small prossession of little ducks waddling behind my sister.

After awhile, there were no longer little ducklings following Laura everywhere she went, but full grown white ducks. Laura's ducks were notorious in our small corner of the world. Often, the neighbors would stand outside their houses watching as Laura led the ducks out of their pen and down the hill to the creek. It was an everyday occurance and it was a sight to see. Those ducks loved her. The rest of us kids treaded lightly around some of the ducks. My siblings and I learned that a full grown duck can give quite a bite when they didn't want to be touched. The only one that the ducks would never bite was Laura.

At night my sister Laura and I would hold each other in our shared bed while our parents screamed at each other in the next room. It was if we were merging so that our combined energy could survive through the turmoil of our parent's constant, insidious war. If you have ever seen the movie "Nell," you would know how Laura and I were together. I cried so hard during that movie because Nell and May were just like me and Laura. I was closer to Laura than to any other living person or creature on the Earth.

Sometimes during the night Laura would slip out of bed and wander out to the backyard to spend the night with her ducks. She had her ducks and I had an old oak tree that I used to climb for comfort. What a pair we were. Often in the morning we would wake and Laura would find herself surrounded by her duck children and I would find myself below the old oak. Those were the times when we just could not take what was happening in the room next to us anymore.

We were children then. It's when Laura began to get older that I noticed a change in her. She became distant and violent. She began to write out plans to kill my father. I remember her writing out the plans and showing me how she would kill our father. I told her not to do it because she could go to jail. I thought that that would stop her. Her rage at my father was growing stronger every day. My father was an alcoholic and he was often abusive when he was drunk.

Laura became so violent that I started to be afraid of her. I began spending more time with my friends and there were times that I did everything I could to avoid her. I could see the pain in Laura's face, but I didn't know what to do about it. Part of me wanted to say, "Laura please come back to me," but she never did. She just got worse and worse until I didn't know who she was. I lost the sister that I had known and loved. I lost the sister that I used to hold on to, as she held on to me.

Laura started cutting herself and smearing the blood all over things. She would smear the blood on our mirror, on kitchen appliances and on the bed spread. I don't remember what my parents did about it. All I remember was the sight of it and how frozen I felt when I saw the blood.

When I was thirteen and Laura was sixteen, I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that Laura was acting stranger than usual. I looked at her and she was holding an empty aspirin bottle. I got up and took the bottle out of her hands. She looked at me and said, "Goodbye." I ran to my parent’s bedroom and shook them until they woke up. They looked at me and yelled at me to get out of their room. Then I showed them the empty bottle and said that Laura was holding it when I woke up. They both got out of bed and rushed Laura to the hospital. The doctor said that they got her there just in time. They said that Laura would have died if they had not gotten to the hospital when they did. That was the first time Laura tried to kill herself.

After that, I watched Laura more closely. It was hard for me to sleep. One day while I was watching Laura in our room, I had the radio on. It was an old radio and the batteries were starting to go dead. I was about to turn it off when a piece of classical music came on. To this day I have not been able to find out what that piece of music was, but it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard.. I sat there listening to it. It was so faint. I turned the volume all of the way up and it was still so faint that I could barely hear it. I saw Laura get out of bed. She lay down on the floor and pressed her head against the radio so that she could hear the music. She stayed like that until the music stopped playing. I will never forget it. I sat there watching my sister struggle for even the slightest moment of beauty. Something to reach out to in the darkness. I will have that picture in my soul forever now.

About a week after Laura took the aspirin, I went into our room and found Laura kneeling on our bed. As soon as I looked at her, she started to scream. I had never heard anyone scream so loud and with such anguish. I could hear my parents running down the hallway and when they got to our bedroom, Laura was still screaming. I'm not sure what came over me, but I looked at my parents and I yelled, "Leave her alone". Something inside of me knew that Laura had to keep screaming. Something deep in me wanted Laura to scream until she didn't need to scream anymore. I had never raised my voice to my parents before, and I have never done that since. My parents didn't listen. They rushed over to Laura and stopped her. That night they took her to the mental hospital.

The psychologists at the mental hospital decided that since I had been so close to Laura when we were younger, I should be brought to the mental hospital every weekend in the hopes that it would bring Laura out of it. The first time I was brought there, the locusts were everywhere. Every step I took I could hear them crackling beneath my feet. My mother told me to just not look at them. I remember walking with my eyes shut trying not to see the locusts.