DON’T YOU WANNA THROW DOWN?: A Guest Post by Neena Viel

Listen to Your Sister tells the story of an eldest daughter struggling to meet her family’s needs — all while enduring unrelenting nightmares. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Neena Viel on writing her debut novel.

Ten years ago, I sent my boss a lengthy apology email and left the office in the middle of the day. The apology email was the latest in a long embarrassing thread, a digital record of my failings.

I rushed to the high school, where my teenage brother was in a claustrophobic back room with two administrators. All three of them were red-faced and sweating. I felt the red, the sweat, creep over my own skin because the scene instantly pissed me off. If I were the kind of parent the school respected¾ older, white, married, available to chaperone and tappy tap at bake sales ¾they wouldn’t have dared questioning him without my presence.

But I was a guardian, not a parent.

Before I could even deliver a scathing, yet professional rebuke, my brother threw his chair.

The clatter was deafening. He stormed out spitting curses, slamming the door hard enough for it to bounce back open, offering me a view of all the very shocked folks outside. They stared at me, which, hello, I was also shocked.

And jealous.

God, I wanted to throw something instead of dealing with the aftermath.

My brother didn’t slink home until two am. That was plenty of time to cruise around the neighborhood looking for him, harass his friends, make a dinner that went cold, and stare up at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes while anxiety ate me alive.

In the events that followed, the chair incident became nostalgic. Almost cute.

And I was irrevocably changed.

In the opening of LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER, Jamie, the sixteen-year-old baby of the family, doesn’t throw a chair in a stuffy high school office. But his sister, Calla, still ends up in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, being eaten alive by the newfound responsibility of tending him. There are threats in every corner, a good number of which Jamie himself causes.

For many of us, someone else’s life eclipses our own. We take care of risk-taking baby brothers and slice carrots for toddlers. We schedule appointments for Granny and pick up nieces from gymnastics. We send money, so much money, to relatives on the opposite coast. We bake under the sun in a parking lot, digging for wet wipes in the trunk.

In the midst of this loving domination, we still have to wash our hair and say something insightful at work and stagger through the grocery store and appear functional even when we’re losing our shit.

 Most of us do not get to throw chairs.

All of us recognize what Calla is discovering —

It’s just so hard.

It’s especially hard keeping a Black child alive.

Photo credit: Arturo Garza