I peed on my sister’s head, and she saved my life.
In 1974 I was a ragamuffin four-year-old with unkempt mousy brown hair who wore the same outfit most days: patched polyester faux-denim bellbottoms and a Strawberry Shortcake blouse. My sister Mardi was two years older, an earnest, sensitive child with the habit of pulling out her hair when anxious.
Mardi is The Good Sister. Her record of kindness remains unblemished. She is a garden designer who says, “Let’s give her a little drink!” when she sees a plant in need of water.
But in 1974 I was just learning about Mardi.
Our bathtime arrangement was a simple, verbal agreement. Mardi and I alternated sitting underneath the faucet. That we chose to bathe together is among the murkier and most confusing facts. We lived in a large, rambling house with many bathrooms and joint baths were unnecessary.
I don’t remember why, but we got into the bathtub before it filled with water. One of us sat naked, cold and shivering, until the warm liquid made its way past the sister in front and filled the back half of the tub. This only took a few minutes, but as children time passed slowly for us and the wait for warm water was excruciating.
The bathtime routine had been established months earlier and it was my turn. The rules were clear, yet Mardi climbed in and positioned herself at the front and began adjusting the temperature with a complete disregard for my rights. My cheeks burned fire red and my chest pounded violently as I stood, tub-side and nude, processing the injustice of this treatment. The bathroom scene is my earliest memory of blinding anger. A tendency toward rare but hot-headed outbursts was just beginning to brew as a core personality trait in my budding psyche.
It is perplexing to my adult brain that peeing on Mardi was the logical retribution, my first impulse. In a story that has been re-told by family members over the course of fifty years, some distortion of the facts is inevitable. But there is no question that I climbed onto the metal frame of the frosted shower door and released a full bladder directly onto Mardi’s face and into her scraggly curls. Her contorted and confused expression covered in urine remains tattooed in my brain. My anger immediately shifted to aching regret.
“Why?” was her only response. I remember her robin’s egg blue eyes blinking quickly as a night’s worth of lemonade-colored urine flowed into them and a nutty ammonia smell wafted up with the steam from the hot faucet water.
It was likely an innocent mistake. Knowing Mardi as I do now, I am certain that I miscalculated the faucet schedule. I don’t recall if Mardi cried or ratted me out to our mother. My guess is she did neither, that she relinquished the spot immediately.
A year later, Mardi woke up in the middle of the night, noticed my pillow was wet with blood, and alerted my parents. Tonsil-removal surgery had gone awry and I was bleeding out. My parents raced me to the hospital. I remember Mardi standing in the driveway, tearfully gripping my grandmother’s hand as we sped away. Her presence in my bed and her attentiveness likely saved my life. I slept on the blood-stained pillow until I went to college as a sort of twisted reminder of my sister’s kindness and of the power of forgiveness. I have spent my life trying to repair my assault. Since I peed on her, I have been especially careful with Mardi’s emotions. Sometimes I think of this incident before I send an indignant email or lash out in anger. That day I began to grow up, to understand that human interaction is complicated, that I should take a beat before reacting, and that sisters are precious.
