There you are, on the tire swing. Your sister is swinging you so high. You and she have names for all the types of swings you have, names like the Disco Duck or the Double Dutch Bus. She swings you high, with all her might, and you have to hold on tight. She grabs hold of the tire swing and she flings you one way, hard, so that you are spinning around and around.
There you are, climbing the tree with your sister. It’s not as much fun. Turns out you like to go fast, but you don’t like to go high.
There you are, lying side by side on towels. She has earned money from her paper route so that she can buy Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil that glistens on her golden body. You use it, too when she’s not looking, and you flat out lie when she asks you if you did. Your own body is white with little raised bumps on your arms and red pubic hair beginning to grow between your legs. It embarrasses you. Everything about bodies embarrasses you.
There you are, pretending to be an Egyptian, wrapped in old scarves, your Finnish-American blue eyes darkened with kohl liner. You are in love with King Tut. Your sister is in love with King Tut. You know that King Tut is dead, but you also feel jealous that King Tut would probably like your sister better. Your little pot belly pooches. King Tut was so beautiful. Your stepmom Rita comes out with sandwiches—pita bread sandwiches with cottage cheese and home-canned peaches—and Country Time Lemonade. The air smells like cut grass.
You want to go back to this yard, where you and she are sisters. You would still let yourself burn to a crisp under the hot Western sun. You would still imagine that you could be loved by a dead Egyptian pharaoh or at least compete with your sister for his love. But if you could go back, you’d know how little time there is. You’d understand how hurt your sister had been at the hands of your mom’s monstrous husband. You know nothing except your own jealousy.
You are so filled with regret for the ways that you’ve been unable to love her. The ways in which jealousy frayed the sisterly bonds of affection, as someone might say in a Jane Austen novel. And there’s so little time to love the people we have been given the opportunity to love. Now you and she are past middle age, most of your days spent.
Yet there you were, age 16, alone in the bathroom, the lock broken so the only way to lock the door was to pull open the drawer. You were sobbing so hard snot was running out of your nose. David McCullough had broken up with you. He never really took you anywhere. You met over at the nearby field where you sat on the slope, and you kissed for hours. The kissing was energetic, full of tongue and teeth. But he was Mormon and you were Catholic and the girl he’d end up taking out on a real date was Mormon, too. And when you found out, you realized that he’d just been practicing on you. Nothing more than that. But what you remember most about that time was the fact that someone knocked on the bathroom door and asked if you were okay.
It was your sister.