The difference of sisters
Out of the same earth, we three grew
Nothing is more helpful or hurtful than having a sister. Nothing is a brighter badge or a sharper knife. No one has seen me as cuttingly, has seen me as naked, has seen me at the source of what I have become. Imagine: out of the same marled earth all three of us grew, witnessing one another’s branches growing crookedly, both away from and towards each other.
I was six when my younger sister, the middle of us, was born and my dad picked me up early from school. We drove to the hospital, too quick for the slick February roads, and my dad was quiet and smiling. At the hospital, I was told to sit in a chair by the bed where my mom lay and given a wrapped bundle that everyone was saying was mine. There’s a photo of my unsure smile and my Gap fleece and my small arms holding a pink-faced baby, suddenly a part of me.
When our baby sister was born two years later, I split my little life into another piece. Again none of my clothes or toys were truly mine and my world somehow grew smaller and bigger at once. The three of us never truly knew ownership—only a life shared. Suddenly they were both witnesses to the same things I was witnessing. I was not crazy because here were two others, seeing what I was seeing, bearing all that I bore. Albeit differently but at least the same.
I was probably ten when I would bribe my sisters into playing school with me. I would seat them both at the foot of my bed as I stood above them, a long stick in my hand as a pointer, a Bristol board taped to my bedroom wall with my teachings. I would explain to them how to spell “restaurant” and did they know there’s a “u” there, in the middle, and did they know not all words were spelled like they sounded? I would see their faces looking up at me, enraptured, and I had never before felt such power or responsibility or confusing shame—to be followed like that. Surveilled by two shadows so minutely, everything I did needing to be good enough so that it could be done again, by two small and fragile others, twice over.
I have sisters, I tell people. I have them both—there are few things that belong to me more deeply than what we shared. We grew up and down and apart and forward together. The rest of the world is too polite to mention the things my sisters say openly to me, without pause. No one shone a light on my insecurities like they did, younger than me and somehow knowing all my fears. It was a commotion of girl noise, our childhoods, violent enough to draw blood one second, only to be gentle and giggling the next. My sister cried herself to sleep because I wouldn’t let her blow out my birthday candles at the party with my friends but she sat cross-legged with me the next morning, our knees touching slightly on the carpet in front of the TV, watching Arthur and sharing Eggos. My other sister and I shared a bedroom for years—an injustice I worked overtime to correct. But every night for months, when she awoke from her inevitable nightmare, she would crawl into my bed. I would pretend to be asleep as she folded herself into the half of the comforter I had left hanging off the bed for her to take.
My sisters and I used to slam doors. We yelled I hate you through the walls so loud our throats ached. I was older but I wasn’t old, I would think. I was told to act the grown up for them and so I resented them for not letting me be just a girl. But then I remember that I was thirteen on the Halloween I was late for my school’s coveted haunted house because I spent hours making my sisters look like Belle and Cinderella, drawing my mom’s pink L’Oreal lipstick into moons of blush on their still-round cheeks, gently pushing their eyelids shut to brush glitter onto them. I fluffed their plastic-y tutus and handed them the purple pillowcases off my own twin bed to fill up. I pushed sparkly barrettes into each of their fine, soft heads of hair. I hung back at the start of the driveway as they walked up and got their candy and I remember a ballooning in my chest, the name of which I only now know to be pride.
They were so pretty and little, these girls of mine. They’re always 8 and 6 to me and I worry about everything I can’t control. One day my mom pointed furtively to her belly and told me what a sister was and suddenly I was their parachute, their protection my biggest role. It has kept swelling, that feeling I grew like a new organ at the driveway watching them go, and now I’ve turned a corner and there are these two women. Their faces a different dialect of mine, my face a silhouette of theirs. For so many years I overheard them laughing in the other room—can you believe that luck? The other day, I remembered all their overdue books on my middle school library card. Isn’t it funny what we never thought we’d miss?
I can’t explain what it is to have a sister but I know that it’s different. They were the images in the mirror that proved I was there. They know when I smile even in the midnight dark.
Thank you, as always, for being here, right on time. I love having you here. If you enjoyed this little love letter, I want to know! Shoot me a message on Instagram: @ramnasafeer. If you have another question or comment or sweetness to share, you can also send me an email at ramnasafeer@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.
I hope you stick around. Sending love and rest,
Ramna