My Brother, Brothers Wreck and I
By Nayuka Gorrie
I was only eighteen months when my little brother came along.
We had a lot of love in our family. Mum says I was Mummy’s Little Helper and we did everything together, but amidst all that love was the threat and realisation of violence. My then step-father was a violent man and we were lucky to make it out. Before I understood my own identity as a fully realised person, I understood myself as a big sister. I knew there was a little person I was helping make sense of the world.
My brother and I have gone through this world together. Aside from his weird metal phase, our tastes in music, television, film and politics have evolved together. We moved from Brisbane and Melbourne to study the same Arts degree at the same time and dropped out at roughly the same time. Our lives are often so meshed it can be hard to know where I end and he begins. His fights are my fights and his anxiety has often been mine. Most fights I had at school were for him. Some racist girl in his class saying something racist and because — as a black boy — he is threatening, I say something. I am threatening too, particularly when positioned against a white woman. But it’s easier for me to say something.
We don’t have to be stuck in the trauma but, until we have a chance to work and are given the right empathy and support, it can feel like we are doomed.
Something we have both understood, though never really discussed, is that he is a black man and he can never defend himself the way he wants to. Too loud and he is aggressive, too defiant and he is suspendable, too defensive and he is dangerous, too anything and he could be arrested. The world was so scary, so often, I have wanted to wrap my brother in cotton wool. I have wanted to protect him from the world. Any fight too long or too loud followed by a running up to his room and silence, I was worried that I would walk in there and find him dead. I never wanted to be angry at him for too long.
Brothers Wreck found me reliving those fears. In some ways, being a big sister feels like having Horcruxes housed in the bodies of other people. If they hurt themselves, if someone hurts them, they hurt you too. In Brothers Wreck we are given a glimpse into how one family responds to trauma. The whole time, however, I am wondering — what is his sister Adele’s response? The moment she does try to get help for herself, the attention is then redirected back to someone she is looking after. How does Adele feel? What is Adele when she is not a big sister or a girlfriend? Did Adele want to take responsibility for everyone around her, was she socialised to be that way or did they demand it of her?
I can’t help but believe that the Australian society isn’t equipped to deal with trauma appropriately. Aboriginal people en masse have been traumatised and re-traumatised since colonisation. Each generation dealing with something new; massacre, land theft and destruction, cultural genocide, and yet each generation dealing with the same; incarceration, stolen children, sexual violence and ongoing racism. On a structural level, this country is ill-equipped to help traumatised people work through their trauma. Working through trauma can cost money that the state is not prepared to spend (although they have benefited from the things that have traumatised our people) and time that people cannot find.
These (our) people are often funnelled through structures and instruments that do not exist to heal but create further cycles of trauma — the child safety system, youth detention centres and prisons. Ruben’s journey through counselling and support reminds us that it is possible to move forward. We don’t have to be stuck in the trauma but, until we have a chance to work and are given the right empathy and support, it can feel like we are doomed.
Brothers Wreck tells us we are not doomed.
