Words by: Anonymous 
Art by: Jennifer Hoang

On family trips, me and my little brother always had to take turns sitting in the middle. Our little bodies squished, the annoying hump in the middle of the car floor forcing our legs into an awkward V. 

Shoulders and thighs being constantly touched. No door pocket to put our six-hour car ride-worthy entertainment items. The frantic bum tilt as seatbelts were fastened into the little red and black buckle before dad started driving, and the car let out a round of petulant beeps. 

My sister, being the oldest, the tallest and above sitting in the middle, was never subject to this ordeal. When it was just mum and us kids on a school pick-up, my sister was always entitled to sit in the front passenger seat. 

Being five years older than me, my sister has always exuded coolness. I would go to her for advice about my primary school boyfriends, who my parents were NOT allowed to know about, and she confided in me about wanting to break up with her high school boyfriend. When I was in prep, a stupid boy had pushed me up against a wall (violence against women starts young), and within seconds, she had run over to me from seemingly nowhere and torn the boy from my body. She has always been my greatest protector. 

When I was in year eight, my sister started uni in Melbourne, so my brother and I went through our teenage years without her around. I remember being frustrated that, as he did the same subjects and assignments as me a year after I had done them myself, he would get better grades than I did. When I was in year nine and he year eight, we were constantly at each other, me annoyed at him for not cleaning up after himself in the kitchen or just eating too loudly. A couple of years later, as our teenage angst subsided, he told me he had always been mad at me because I had always been mad at him. 

My brother is trans, and before anyone had an inkling of it, I remember my mum had told him she needed to wax his armpit hair the night before the swimming carnival. This ritual, where my mum would bring us into the bathroom, lay hot wax and a cotton piece of cloth on our overgrown hair, then rip it off, was something I didn’t mind, but my had brother hated. On that night, my brother holed himself up in his room, as my mum outwardly wondered when he would be ready to be waxed. I went into his room and found him crying. He just really, really didn’t want to do it. I think you can understand why, as you read this, but I didn’t. Even still, I grabbed his hand, walked him out to mum and said ‘he doesn’t want to do it’. And that was that. 

A couple of years later, my brother started to question his gender. We went on this long walk with my mum, and we talked about what he wanted. He wanted to cut his hair short, be called he/him pronouns at home, and he wanted to be closer with our older sister. I told my sister what he said, and she teared up and said she had been wanting to be closer to him, too. 

In 2021, we went on our annual beach holiday, and something was off with my sister the whole time. She was short with me, she berated me for laughing about something to do with COVID (a coping mechanism, I think we all adopted), and when she yelled at me for taking the key to our shared hotel room without telling her, I finally snapped. I ran into our room crying. Eventually, she came in and told me she was sorry and that she never wanted to make me cry. I told her that she needed to remember that I was an adult, I wasn’t a kid anymore, and she didn’t have to try to parent me. Then, as I had suspected, she told me that she and her boyfriend of five years were planning to break up. It wasn’t about me the whole time, but I think that was the moment I can pinpoint where our relationship shifted to an adult one. The burden of mentorship was over for her. 

Today, the three of us all live in Melbourne. We go out for dinner, my siblings come over to my place for cake and tea, we go hang out in the city together, and we dissect and celebrate our parents’ happily separated lives. My brother looks to my sister and I for fashion advice, my sister apparently shows pictures of my brother and I to her friends and raves about how great we are when she gets drunk. My brother and sister are closer than ever and share a meme language I don’t quite understand. 

And on car trips, we offer each other the front passenger seat.