Sisters

Just before I stood up, I glanced back some fifty years, to when Clara turned to me and patted the imperceptible round of her belly, that sardonic smile forming. My heart sinking as she said, “he’s mine – he wants me, Doris, not you. It’s never been you.” Her words vaulted at me in slow-motion, the letters slamming one at a time. Her green eyes squinting, so full of sin. I hated her then, not him. She kept patting her belly bump the whole time she said it – how he told her he loved her when she told him she missed her period. How he said, “everything will be all right.” My hate swelling. She wanted to see me shrivel. I shriveled. While she, kept growing inside.

My sister now knobbed and curled like a Joshua tree. Would she even have remembered that day, the goring of my heart?

I slowly walked up front to give the eulogy, changing my carefully chosen words. Her open casket taking up so much space.