Useless Alice
He had it all. The fans, the fame, the fortune, and the good looks. Worse still he had the talent, the dedication and an on stage presence that left me with the all too familiar taste of bitter burning jealousy in my mouth. The prat, the show off, the pompous ass. I don’t particularly like him, but the rest of the world sure does.
My brother is still the same now as he was then, back when we were kids competing for our parent’s affection. It was a fight he always won.
“Why can’t you be good at sport like your brother?” “Why can’t you be an academic like your brother?” “Have you done your flute practice? Why not? We pay good money for those lessons, why can’t you respect that like your brother does, eh girl?” Hurtful words said long ago echo through my mind as my brother walks away from our smiling parents, towards the corner where I am now, sulking, and waiting for the press conference to be over so we can go home for lunch.
“How’s it going useless Alice?” he asks. I glare at him. He rubs his jaw in an absent minded manner, remembering.
I had been about 14; he around 17, a smart mouth, a braggart and the apple of Ma and Pa’s eye. We had been at a press conference all morning for his band, I’d escaped the media crush and was sulking out the back waiting for it to finish. My brother and one of his mates had spotted me during a break and decided to come over.
“Hello useless Alice, how’s it going eh girl?” my brother’s eyes were glittering in the artificial light as he emphasized Pa’s favourite words, “Done your flute practice? Getting good marks? Why can’t you be like your brilliant brother, eh girl?”
I winced away from him as he reached to ruffle my hair. He was rubbing salt into fresh wounds and his dumb friend knew it, laughing like the paid puppet he was. I snapped then. Maybe if the dumb friend hadn’t been there I wouldn’t have done it. But the event happened, and courtesy of the media gaggle it was documented in colour photographs and bold titles the very next day. It was one page of the family photo album we avoided pointing out to visitors.
“What did you just say?” I’d asked, quite menace layering my voice.
“Just reminding you of how much of a disappointment you… argh!” He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. Fourteen years of living in my brother’s infernal shadow boiled to the surface of my conscious mind in a haze of red, lending me the strength to smash his nose and bust his jaw. My overstated attempt to wipe the self-assured grin off his face. His idiot friend was on the receiving end also; I kicked him as he tried to restrain me, before returning to attack my brother, all the while screaming insults at them both. It was like a dam had burst; I was in that moment removed from myself, a mere observer of my own actions through a ragged mist, as I unleashed the backlog of insults, retorts and frustration I had thought, felt and been holding back for so long. By the time security had dragged me off the boys, their faces were a bloody mess, and I was slowly coming to the realization that I was in for the biggest lecture of my life.
The words that flew heatedly around that confined space were the hardest I’d had to listen to, ever. I sat in silence, bearing it all, listening to how I was a disappointment to them, how I had failed to live up to their expectations. It had hit me then, it didn’t matter what my parents and other obscure relatives thought and expected of me. It mattered what I thought of myself. Before I could expect them to respect me, I had to respect myself. Before I could live up to their expectations, I had to live up to my own. I cried myself to sleep that night, not at the thought of being punished for possibly ending my brother’s music career, but because I was finally free to walk out in my sun, not in his shadow. The prospect of being grounded for the summer and being sent to boarding school might have added to those tears, but ultimately I was weeping with relief at finding freedom.
My parents got a phone call the next morning from a local dojo asking if I would like to go and train there. I wanted to, and they had reluctantly agreed to allow me to attend the twice weekly training sessions, aware that the physical and mental discipline would be good for me. For once I was free of the influence of my brother and free to enjoy the things I wanted to, not the things he had been good at.
Ten years later, not much has changed about my brother, he’s still full of himself, but I am more assured than I was. I have achieved much; I have written several books and represented my country in my chosen sport. My brother spends his life running from the media, doing gigs and trying to write to deadlines. I on the other hand now live a life of anonymous success under an assumed name. I like it how it is; I am no longer just useless Alice to my parents, but someone they have to acknowledge as an actual person, because I have acknowledged it myself. The bitter taste of jealously I felt briefly this morning, was more past feelings surfacing momentarily than actual jealously. I swing my arm around my brother’s shoulder; he winces as my hand arcs around near his face and up to ruffle his hair.
“You done yet?” I ask, possibly sounding a little impatient.
“Nearly, only the book signing to do now.” He says. I groan, it seems it will be a while until I get my lunch.
Hannah Dearlove
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