"Sis, something has to give." I said in earnest.
Jenn just sat there looking at me with her eye black and swollen, a little cut below her cheekbone oozing blood.
"It's okay, Donny. I deserved it. Brandon said so... I shouldn't have taken the last beer." Jenn, said, still a little out of it.
"No, Sis. It's not supposed to work like that..." I said in exasperation. At 18, I shouldn't have had to deal with this kind of situation.
I loved my older sister, but she was a train wreck. I still remembered what she was like before she fell in with the wrong crowd back in school. Hormones hit her like a freight train, and she went from straight A student to dropout in two quarters. From honor society to hustling money for booze and weed and God only knew what else. Dad tried to keep her on the straight and narrow, but being assertive with women wasn't really his strong suit. If it had been maybe mom would have stuck around longer.
Jenn's nominal "boyfriend" Brandon was the poster boy for dead ends, and the local representative of the bad seed society. Seriously, the dude had a chip on his shoulder the size of Montana, not that Jenn could see that. He kept talking dominant, but showing bully, and she followed him right down the rabbit hole. It wasn't the first time she'd taken a beating because of something trivial, and I'd begun to be truly concerned that she'd never wise up until it was too late.
An "old soul" Dad had called me. I'm not sure how accurate that was. I just did what I had to do to keep things more or less together.
"How are you gonna get to work looking like that?" I asked
"I won't. I'll quit. I'll just get another job." Jenn tendered.
I heard this one on a regular basis. Fired from one suckshit job to take another suckshit job to get fired for not showing up, or showing up high, or showing up too hung over to work.
"Really! When's it gonna be enough, Jenn?" I demanded.
Donald Donaldson. Dad said it had been mom's insistence. She'd been gone since just before I turned one. Last anyone had heard she was living with a couple of guys in Alaska. None of us wanted the details, but Sis was pissed off at her, no doubt. Even though ironically, she was following closely in her slutty footsteps.
Dad was a construction manager, and had gotten a sweetheart deal in Dubai, but wanted me to stay put and graduate high school where we'd grown up. I appreciated that. Sis was nominally supposed to run the roost, but I think both Dad and I knew that there were long odds on that working out. It hadn't.
She was drunk as shit the night the officer dumped her off at our front door. I had to help her inside. The car was totalled and how she'd gotten the trooper to bring her home and not press charges was a miracle. At least I thought so until the following morning when I went to do the laundry and found her underpants from last night, crusted with dried sperm. Thank you Trooper Jones.
How she kept finding new jobs was a testament to how much she wanted the things she wanted. Drugs, booze, ink, and piercings. Every dollar earned went to those things. Nothing to the upkeep of the house. I kept the bills paid from the money Dad sent. I put meals on the table. And finally, that night, I put my foot down about Brandon.
She was nodding off on the couch pretending to watch a movie. I saw her eyes. Pupils dilated, rocking slightly back and forth. This wasn't my sister. I had to do something.
When Jenn woke up she was handcuffed to her bedpost. She was wearing her panties and a nightshirt and she felt like a shit sandwich. She looked around for her phone. She had to call Brandon. He'd take care of things. That's when I came in.
"Hey you little shit, let me go." She started.
"No, Sis." I said. "You're not going anywhere for a while. By the way, work called. You're fired...again."
"Fuck you!" she spat. "Get me my phone. I need to get ahold of Brandon."
"No, Sis. You don't." I said in a tone that made it clear I was pissed off.
"Then get me that bottle of vodka in my top left dresser drawer." She ordered.
"It's not there anymore, Sis. In fact all the booze in the house has been....eradicated." I said meaningfully.
"You wouldn't dare." She hissed.
Suddenly she'd realized that if she were in her nightshirt that I had probably dressed her in it.
"Hope you got a good look, you perv." She spat.
"As a matter of fact, I did. But that's beside the point." I stated, adding "The point is that there are going to be rules, and you are going to follow them."
"Oh. Yeah. Right." She said sarcastically. "Now let me go. Please?"
It was starting to dawn on her that I was serious.
"You are to call me Sir, when addressing me." I stated.
"You're kidding, right?" She replied.
I stood there glowering at her in silence. Eventually I left the room. Twenty minutes later I heard her shouting for me. "Donny! I have to pee real bad. Would you just let me go!....C'mon, Donny!"
She was starting to sound really ragged. Ten minutes later I stuck my head in the door of her room. "How ya doin' Sis?"
"I gotta pee, Donny." She said through clenched teeth.
"What? I can't hear you, Sis." I responded.
"I need to pee, Sir." She said quietly.