The Smaller Side of Things

Look at yourself now. Now imagine taking all of that and switching it with this kind of scenario. Both your beautiful, smart, hard-working parents, now drug addicts and dealers. Your comfortable, warm, filled-with-your-treasures home, now a practically garbage dump apartment room in the Bronx, New York. Now imagine you, maybe being the oldest, or youngest, or the middle child, or even an only child; wearing clothes you picked from your favorite store, going to school and talking to friends, playing on your phones and electronics while hanging around. Change that to you being the youngest, not going to school because the kids make fun of you for being dirty, wearing any kinds of clothes that, well, can be considered clothes. All of this is placed onto the shoulders of Elizabeth (Liz) Murray. She didn't have the privileges we do now. She didn't have dedicated parents who worked to pay rent and put food on the table. She didn't have much at all. Me, myself, have a hard time imagining how I would survive in these conditions, let alone going to Harvard. But, of course we don't think of us being in these kinds of situations that often. Instead, we think of ourselves having more, wanting more, getting more, BEING MORE.

But anyway, back to the main topic. I'm not here to talk about Liz. You can read about her yourself. I'm here to talk about her older sister, Lisa.
Now Lisa is a little closer to our modern day type of girls than Liz. Lisa went to school. As she grew older, one of the lines states, "Her walls were covered with posters from teenybopper magazines, airbrushed boy pop stars, and feathery-haired female teen idols. Lisa took a small broken piece of mirror and walked back to her bed, puckered her lips at the glass, and batted her eyes." (Murray, 97). She cared about what she wore and how she looked and what others thought of her and what to do with her hair every morning. In a sense, she kinda ignored the situation back at home. Not saying she wasn't affected by her parents wrongdoings, which she was. She actually complained the most. Always complaining about the food, living conditions, and even her little sister Liz. At one point in the book during the winter when the weather was cold and the family didn't have enough money for heating, Lisa says, "'I'm your older sister,' she'd scream. 'You have to listen to me. I'll dump cold water on your head of you don't move your ass!'"(Murray, 57). Boy, this line sure got to me. You would think the oldest person in the family has this sort of responsibility to take care of the rest of the siblings and/or the whole family, but she didn't do anything! Like, sure, being a child and a girl makes it hard to make that big of a difference, but she didn't even bother to comfort her little sister, who by the way, stays at home and takes care of herself. By herself. I just think it's completely insane for someone of older age to not even attempt stopping her parents, or just being an older sister. But that's just me. Some people may think that was her way of trying to cope with the situation, others may think she did help by not making the situation worse between the family. Of course, you have your opinion too. Oh wait. You probably haven't read this book before. Okay. 'Nuff said. Go read it and tell me what you think.

P.S. This is an image of their mother when she was 17. Liz kept this picture with her all the time because she loved seeing how beautiful her mother was and it just made her feel safe keeping it with her.