Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Sisters (4 page)

Her words trembled. I nodded hard and sucked the salt out of a lock of hair plastered against my cheek. Josie went back to rocking me, resting her chin on top of my head. I laid my head against her chest, listening to her heart—
tha . . . thump . . .
tha . . . thump
—answer mine.

At sunset, Josie and I walked the shore under a rose-washed sky. Happy and silent—only the two of us in sight. We played the game of smashing the foam and stamping out the clam air bubbles with our big toes, counting to see who got the most. Our feet hit concrete only when the last rays of light dimmed and the ache for food called us home.

We ate—eyeing each other across the table in silent understanding. Josie bathed me and we stood at our grandma's bedroom door and told her good night, focusing on the red glow of her one, nightly cigarette. At dark we slid between the white sheets and lay with our faces close to the screens, cooled by the mist from evening thunderstorms. As sleep moved over me, I felt the pulse of the waves nudging, swaying and rocking me to sleep in rhythm with the sounds of the nearby sea.

Carol D. O'Dell

IN SEARCH OF A SIMPLER TIME

W
e were partners in crime. What started as mischief became a yearly ritual we looked forward to every Christmas.

There were more children than money in our large family, but every year our parents managed to make Christmas a celebration to be remembered.

But one of my fondest Christmas memories is the secret shared only with my older sister, Barbara.

Our crime was committed while shopping for our siblings. Our father would give us a crisp $5 bill with stern instructions that it was to be spent only on presents for our sisters, then drop us at the nearest dime store, with instructions to shop and then wait by the door until he returned. Once our shopping was completed, Barbara and I would sneak to the soda counter, climb up on the tall round stools, plunk down our leftover change and count to see if we had enough. We always did. Grinning, we ordered hot fudge sundaes, then sat there, conspirators in crime, skinny legs dangling as we giggled and licked the thick, gooey chocolate from our spoons.

Fast-forward fifty years. Barbara was diagnosed with incurable cancer. We were told there was no cure, but “palliative therapy” would make her more comfortable. Every day for weeks, particles of energy were bombarded through her brain. Fatigue and nausea became daily companions. Next, chemotherapy, with all its unpleasant side effects. However, with the help of new medications, soon we were pleasantly surprised to find that Barbara no longer experienced nausea. Her appetite even returned. That is when we began our quest. We were determined to find the perfect match of our childhood memory. The ice cream must be the hard kind, the harder the better, since the thick, hot fudge will cause it to melt right away. It had to have a cherry on top and it absolutely must be in a glass dish shaped like a tulip. That was the recipe.

We spent the entire time she was in treatment in search of the absolutely perfect concoction. We didn't tell anyone else what we were doing; once again it was our secret.

Treatment day was always Monday; by evening she could barely keep her eyes open. The week became a blur of growing fatigue, confusion and weakness, but by the weekend, Barbara would begin to rally and by Sunday she was ready.

“You think we will find it this time?” she'd ask. We'd laugh then climb into the car.

We ate a lot of ice cream that year, but it always seemed something was slightly off-kilter. Soft ice cream wasn't the same as the hard-packed we remembered, chocolate syrup didn't give the same sensual delight as the thick goo of our childhood, the cherry on top was missing, or even worse, it was served in a paper container. The exact replica seemed impossible to find. Week after week we searched for the perfect combination. We were on a mission—in search of a childhood memory and a simpler time.

“We didn't find it, did we?” Barbara sighed one morning. I knew exactly what she meant.

“No, but we're not giving up!” I replied. “Are you up for a road trip?”

The next day we took a longer trip than any we had previously attempted.

By the time we arrived at the ice cream parlor bedecked in 1950s décor, she was drained. She needed help just to get out of the car.

As the waitress held out menus, Barbara spoke softly. “We won't need those. We already know what we want—hot fudge sundaes. Do you use hard ice cream?”

“Of course,” the waitress replied.

Barbara beamed at me. “I think that we might have found it.”

Soon the waitress returned carrying two tall tulip-shaped glasses filled with cold, hard, vanilla ice cream smothered in rich, thick hot fudge sauce, topped with a squirt of whipped cream and a cherry. “Is this what you wanted?” she asked as she plunked them down on the counter.

I turned toward my sister. Our eyes locked. The silent, secret question hung in the air between us.
Was it?
Slowly we picked up our spoons, plunged them into the sweet, cold confection and took them to our mouths. As I licked the thick, rich chocolate goo from my lips, I looked toward Barbara and saw she was doing the same. We began to first smile, and then giggle.

Mission accomplished. There we were—not two overweight, middle-aged women enjoying an afternoon dessert with more calories than either needed. We were two giggling little girls, perched on high stools, skinny legs dangling, sharing the precious bond of sisterhood, carried back to a time when life was simple and “palliative treatment,” were just words that had no meaning.

Nancy Harless

THE WAGON

L
ast month on her sixty-third birthday, I reminded my sister of the following incident. She asked if I remembered it or if it were just part of our family lore. I'm not sure, but I do remember a ride in our red wagon.

Adored by her parents, aunts and uncles, for the first sixteen months of her life my elder sister basked in the attention that is showered on an only child. Then I arrived on the scene, and she had to divide that attention with a red-faced, bawling little creature who needed quiet times for sleep and craved to be held in her mother's arms.

As we grew older, we often fought over rights to panda bears and other toys meant for our mutual enjoyment. Exasperated by our constant bickering, my parents finally told my sister, “If you can't play nice and share the toys with your little sister, we're going to give Beverly away to your cousin Jerry.”

My sister knew a good thing when she heard it. One day as I continued to encroach on her territory, she put me in our little red wagon and began to pull it along the sidewalk. Coming to a corner she was not supposed to cross by herself, she waited. Our mother came running down to the street corner, yelling, “Stop!” After she caught her breath, she asked my sister, “Marilyn, where are you going?”

“I'm taking Bee to Jerry's house; he can have her!”

Beverly McLaggan

MY SISTER, MYSELF

T
he first time I visit my father's bungalow at the University of Nigeria, I perch on a vinyl settee in the parlor and drink milky tea while my father rambles on about the student riots, the military government's Structural Adjustment Program, his college years with my mother, what he recalls her saying about her family's farm in Washington State—never a pause for me or anyone else to speak.

Meanwhile my stepmother, another stranger, flits about the room, dipping forward with black-market sugar and tins of Danish biscuits, slipping coasters under our cups the instant we lift to sip. From the darkened hallway come the slap of flip-flops and giggles.

“You have children?” I ask politely, as if this were a question for a daughter to ask her father, as if it were not the question I traveled halfway around the globe to ask.

When I was not quite two, my father, a graduate student from Nigeria, returned home, leaving clothes and books scattered across the floor of his rented room. He was to attend to family business, scout out job prospects and come back. Though my parents had split, and my mother was raising me alone in Seattle, she maintained relations with my father for my sake. “I want you to know that this is not a good-bye,” he wrote to us from a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, nervous about reports of ethnic and religious tensions awaiting him. “I shall look forward to our meeting so long as we are all alive.” My mother never saw him again.

Now, more than two decades later, my stepmother nods at my question and glances at my father. She is light-skinned and solicitous, with a wide nose and a voice like the breeze of the fans she angles at me.

“Yes, yes, there are children.” My father waves his hands. “You'll meet them later.” He is short like me, his weathered skin dark as plums. A strip of wiry black hair encircles the back of his head. There's a space in his mouth where a tooth should be. I don't see the broad-shouldered rugby player who stared out from my wall all those years. The only feature I recognize is that round nose.

A blur flashes tan and red in the hallway. I glance up to see a velvety-brown girl in a scarlet school uniform receding into the dimness, familiar eves stunned wide in a face I could swear is mine.

It's not possible,
I tell myself. Even if the girl in the hall is my sister, we have different mothers of different races. How can we look so alike? For twenty-six years I have been an only child, the only black member of our family, our town.