"You don't have to act so smart", my brother yelled, and I could tell he was really mad. Daddy wanted to know why we were fighting again, so I told him. "We've been having a contest at school about the new baby. I wanted a little sister, and Bill wanted a little brother, so the kids in our classes have been helping us pray for what we wanted." I didn't tell Daddy that Bill started it in his class, but he did.
"So, when you told us last night that we had a new little sister, I told Bill that my class prays better than his class does and this morning when I said that, he got mad. Then Sister Godfrey found out about the prayers from Sister Catherine Mary and she told Brother Gilbert, and they decided we shouldn't have praying contests in school."
Daddy leaned his head back and laughed so hard I thought he was never going to quit. "Are you all right, Daddy?", I asked, kind of worried. He nodded his head up and down, and put his arm around me and said yes, he was all right. Then he went out the door to the kitchen, and I heard him laughing some more. I still didn't know what was so funny.
Bill went in his room and slammed the door. I guess he was still mad at me. Big brothers are very strange, and sometimes I didn't understand mine at all. He teased me all the time and called me names and tickled me when I didn't want to be tickled.
But if I got in trouble, he acted like he was my guardian angel. Like the time that mean kid Charlie from the upstairs apartment was outside playing with one of his friends. I went out to see if I could play too, in the big vacant lot next to the apartment building.
They mostly didn't let me play with them, but that day, they smiled and said sure, come on over. Charlie's friend had a long piece of metal in his hand. He held it out to me. "Feel how cold this thing is." I took hold of it with my hand and screamed, with pain. I didn't know they had been holding the end of the metal piece in the trash fire that was burning on the back of the lot.
I ran inside, screeching and crying. My mother put me in the car to take me to the doctor's office, and later I found out that my big brother Bill went outside and beat up Charlie and his friend. So I decided I could count on him to help me out sometimes.