At four, my sister declared that I was her best friend. Through the years, she’d maintained that stance. No matter what she was going through, she typically came to me first.
A night out with the girls? I held her hair up while she hurled in my toilet.
Dreary mood? Dinner at her favorite restaurant followed by a rom-com movie night.
Bad breakup? She used my shirt as her Kleenex as she bawled her eyes out.
Shitty boyfriend? I beat his ass. Period.
But …
Today, I wasn’t in the right headspace to deal with Baby Sis. I didn’t have the energy to comfort her or help her come up with a plan. Today, I was in my own little funk. Rejected. Dejected. A little angry. Mostly sad.
“I’m gonna fail at this, too,” she mumbled, her voice so low, so small.
Frowning, I peered at her. “At what?”
“The test.” She shrugged.
Still confused, I asked, “You have to help me out here, Erica. What are you talking about?”
My sister sniffed into a tattered piece of tissue. “I feel like damaged goods. I’m never going to find someone to marry me.”
Erica was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder about a year ago. Up until that point, she’d hid it well, but then the pieces started to click together. The anxiety, the compulsions she’d waved off as being careful, the way she obsessed about everything. Her house was pristine, not a single thing out of place. Her cabinets were organized by color and size.
After her last breakup, though, things spiraled out of control. She’d become abusive to herself, overly consumed with morality. Her condition started to disrupt her work life to the point where she’d refused to come out of her office for a meeting.
Seeing my sister curled into a fetal position behind her desk, crying her eyes out, begging me to tell her what the hell was wrong with her, haunted me. I still remembered carrying her out of the building and bringing her to the hospital. She sobbed for three weeks straight. I moved her in with me and took care of her.
It had been a long, slow road of therapy and internal work. But since then, she’d been laser focused on working through it, taking her meds, and continuing her sessions with her psychologist. She was better. But I still worried about her.
Sitting up, I rubbed her back. “Baby Sis, you got this.”
Tilting her head toward the ceiling, she let out a tiny whimper. “I’m glad you think so. It’s just …” She dashed a tear from her cheek. “I’ve been doing the work, but there are times when I just want to hide, when I feel like I’m sinking, when I feel like the worst person in the world. And I can’t shake it off. It’s hard to stop obsessing about it, asking myself all the questions. What if I fail this assignment? What if Granny is disappointed in me for not rising to the occasion? What if there is no man willing to be with me knowing about my OCD? What if I mess up?” Another sob broke through. “I feel I’m already so behind on everything. I can’t think, I can’t focus. Now this … I’m a wreck.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her to me. Kissing her brow, I whispered, “You’re not a failure, and I promise you, Granny would never be disappointed in you. I swear you’re her favorite.”
She let out a watery giggle. “I think you’re it.”
“Nah”—I shook my head—“she loves you. Sheknowsyou.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m wrong about a lot of things, but not this. I really feel like you’re putting too much into this whole marriage thing. Granny isn’t going to disown you if you decide to stay single.”
“She sounded so upset,” Erica said. “I’ve never seen her like that.”
“Yes, you have.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re right, I have.”
“But you’ve also seen her dedicated, kind, and giving.”
The woman who’d given us that ultimatum was the woman who ran a multimillion-dollar corporation. That woman had single-handedly taken Batchelor Corp to new heights. But Granny was also generous, loyal, caring, and understanding in ways the average person wouldn’t expect.
I’d seen her empty her wallet to an unhoused person on the corner, witnessed her cancel contracts with companies with discriminatory hiring practices. She didn’t simply donate food to the shelter on Thanksgiving, she worked there, too. Every year. She’d purchased housing for employees down on their luck, bought cars for people so that they could go to work, and paid the tuition of countless Detroit public school students.
Granny had been there for me. She’d pulled me out of my personal gutter and encouraged me to assume my rightful position in the company she built. Even now, after everything that had happened recently with Ms. Tea, she sent texts every day to check in on me.
