The boughs of blood and binary

In which our Hero is reminded of how strong his hands and how short his reach

I never know how to explain Pinafore. I don’t talk about her. For that matter, I kind of avoid her phone calls. But if she asked me for help, I would try for her. I might grumble, and I do, but that’s because I’m not noble, just loving, and she, if I were pressed to define her, is my sister. More than her big sister who lavished me with her attention, and more than her brother who is a warmly regarded stranger to me.

As I frequently repeat, I come from a big family. The brevity of the clan in the New World still makes us seem massive compared to the family lives of most I see around me, and that’s not counting the brigades in the old world. Pinafore said to me that a nephew was getting married and I laughed and told her she’d have to be more specific. In our family, those are terms that cover so many people that I could fill a few buses. Like some families and unlike others, we manage to stand each other over world spanning distances and life spanning times. The examples seem strange and unlikely but I watch my father with an uncle, the cousin who was a close childhood playmate, and a gap of 40 years without contact is erased as they chatter at each other.

Pinafore’s mom… I think about her. My mom’s little sister. The only memories I have of her are when I was a 10-year-old and she was starting to lose ground to cancer. I don’t know the woman beyond picking her out in photos or in the faces of her children. I don’t know her. I want to say that she was kind to me, and I’m certain that she was. I want to say that she made me feel loved in the few hours we spent together, but I was a 10 year old boy, and what I retain was the awe at playing with firecrackers with her son, and Pinafore showing me what happens when you touch a mimosa plant.

But when she passed away, her sisters curled in a little closer around those kids, to make sure they had a little maternal contact on their way. And now with Pinafore on this side of the ocean, and my mother the only sister surviving, my mom is her mom in practice and I’ll admit to some relief. Pinafore likes to talk and I duck talking to her because it’s never a short conversation.

Which makes me a little bit of a shit, but on the flipside, she’s mine. I may not be good at the social stuff, but that’s not unique to her. And when she has a need I can help with, I will. Because that’s how I define my people.

And right now, she need help with her computer. It’s not the biggest problem on the list of things she has to deal with, but it’s the loud, flashy one. Her drive has crashed, she’s taking some online course stuff and she needs to get back online, and maybe even recover her pictures too. And I can do that, I’m good at that. Heck, just checking if her machine is okay is something I have skills and hardware to do in minutes. Replacing components and repairing them are equally in my wheelhouse.

But I can’t, because she’s in the States. And because her husband is an asshole who wants her to leave without any support obligations so he can settle in with the girlfriend we’re not supposed to know about that. So not only is he not helping her with her stuff, he’s sabotaging her when he can. And we can’t call her except when he’s out because he takes it out on her. And I can’t just visit to take care of this because then I’m a foreign national on US soil and the harm he could do me by calling in a threat of some kind would be immeasurable.

So I sit on my hands and watch her struggle. I do nothing but warm myself by my own rage.