Allily

"Mother," I asked one day, "why is my sister's name Allily, and mine, Marie Chris?" "Well," my mother answered, "it's the combination of my and your father's names." "Ah." I won't go into the second half of my question, for fear of your laughter, but thus began a small grudge towards my sister which only evaporated when we were both adults, and graduated from college.

Having forgotten the question momentarily, when I was growing up, I was inseparable from her — and though there are three years between us, there was an entire year where we dressed alike and I went to her school like a lost kitten following a mother cat, sitting in on her classes, being fed answers to teachers' questions, and raising my hand like the overall moron I was. I wasn't old enough to go to school then, but when I was, I would always wait for her so we could go home together. My memory of going home with her was hazy — I didn't really remember whether or not she begrudged me for tailing her around all the time — but that went on until she was in sixth grade. Come high school, we were gladly separable.

Although not quite. What she took up or found interest in, I also did — karate, guitar, CB radio, the X-Men. My mother must have felt relief then, me getting out of her own hair and having a pastime of my "own." Wherever my sister was, I was glad to be — be it selling turon one summer — we were poorer then — or getting my ass kicked by adolescents much bigger than I was in the karate gym. There was this one time my sister and I were partnered together to spar, and I, again, the overall moron that I was, thought she would go easy on me. She did, but then she didn't. I went home with bruises the size of grapes on my wrist, but then I do that every day we go to the gym anyway.

Come high school, and come boys, and come inklings of mortality, my sister and I grew apart. One night, she asked me quite a morbid question, thinking about it now: "Who would you prefer to die first, if it were your choice, ma or pa?" And me, again, moron, after five seconds to show that I thought about it hard, said, "Papa." And she delivered her response, much like a chess grand master would deliver a killing blow: "If it were me, I would rather it be myself." At least she didn't smirk. Though it was nighttime, and I wouldn't be able to tell.

"That's not fair," I thought. Then: "Asshole," or what counts for it in my then-budding-teenager brain. There she was, exposing me for the selfish moron that I was, but then also I couldn't but help feel guilty at my answer. I mean, it was an impossible dilemma, and, barring answering "No one," I didn't think of a way around it. She did.

A week later, her boyfriend dumped her, and she was crying. We had bunk beds and I slept on top, so I heard her sniffling in the night. At a loss as to how to comfort her, I just said her eyes look pretty after crying, in the moonlight. She laughed at that, and said, "I'll be sad when you die." I don't know what it was about her and death and everything else — must be how her hormones were whacking her.

We grew apart, after ten years of going to different schools, and having different sets of experiences and lessons learned from them. We barely talked when she was in college, except for when times when she would chase me around the house trying to kick my noisy ass for waking her up to do the perennial dishes. (She really did want to literally kick my ass — and she can — and nearly did sometimes. My mother would just look at us running around the small house, shaking her head.) When I graduated and forgot to take a bow on the stage (so I had to go back and give a hasty bow), she was shaking her head, hiding a laugh, perhaps, but then hugged me as I came near to where her and my mother sat. "Whew," I felt, "it was now over. We are both adults now."

It's easier, now. Well, harder, in some ways. We had to bury my mother, whom my sister found on her last day in bed. She has unending stress, and problems, and worries — everything from the kids to the budget to the cat to running over the cat to whatever you can name. More often than not it is I who get to deliver questions that might sound like the questions of an asshole, but in context, needed to be asked, much like her question long ago — and, much like her answer, if it were the universe itself asking her a question as to who should be suffering so others would be happy — she would still give that answer: "I would rather it be myself."

 

She still does look pretty crying in the moonlight, though.