Sisterhood
Meet the Brown sisters. Every summer for 40 years, these siblings gathered for a summer vacation and made sure to memorialize their trip by posing for a group photograph for a family friend. Forty years later, they’ve published a beautiful pictorial collection of those summers. The publication is an exercise in strange magic, time chiselling the sisters into formidable women.
Sisterhood is a short story I wrote as a homage to the delicate dance between women.
“Have you seen my grey leather belt?”
“Nope”
My sister deliberately shoved the word out of her mouth, smugness gleaming in her eyes.
She knew exactly how to scare. Never with full-on hostility but with indifference. I was a girl who strove to be acknowledged, noticed, and important day in and day out. But, instinctively, my sister knew dismissiveness was poison and walked away without glancing back.
Uncertainty crept in, and I wondered if I was losing my mind. The leather belt, intentionally greyed and frayed with distress, purchased for a large sum of my hard-earned tip money, “Where had it gone if not taken by her?”
I can’t remember or recall what outfit I ended up choosing. But, whatever the choice, I adjusted and made do without the belt and went out for a long overdue date with my husband.
What I do recall was our return. Bubbling over with laughter and alcohol, my husband and I stumbled back into my parent’s bungalow, dutifully walking downstairs to the den to say hello, thank you for watching the little one, and good night.
The sight of my parents and sister sitting around the television brought a broad grin to my face, and I greeted them all, gushing about the fun we’d had. My sister, momentarily on my side and happy for me, began to cheer, raising her fisted palms above her head in a triumphant exaltation for our evening of merriment. But as she waved her arms wildly, her cropped cotton t-shirt raised to reveal her bare torso cinched tightly by a distressed leather belt discreetly wrapped around her waist.
Shock arrested my face, and my eyes settled onto hers, first with surprise and then with recognition. Recognition that she was not who she often showed herself to be, that underneath the careful layers of earnestness and concern lived a malignancy that could no longer be hidden or contained.
She locked eyes with me, saw me see her, and slowly grinned. She grinned as if she were deeply satisfied by the silent revelation that passed between the two of us. I never said a word, never confronted her, nor mentioned the moment again. In the morning, after breakfast, I found my belt lying on my childhood bed, a white flag acknowledging defeat.