About My Sisters (22 page)

When Déja started seeing Danny, she began spending most of her time at his house. Unfortunately, Danny was living with a couple of guys who redefined the word
squalor
as a mode of existence. There weren't many surfaces in the house that weren't either sticky or punched with holes and Déja refused to take a shower in a bathroom that sported several as-yet undiscovered forms of mold and bacteria. She and Lavander made a plan to
move in together, but Lavander was set on living in the condo she'd found within spitting distance of our parents. “What's the point of moving out,” Déja said, “if you're going to be living that close to them?”

Bo made a halfhearted attempt to coerce Danny (who had become one of his best friends) to “kick Déja to the curb” and move in with him, but Déja wasn't having any of that. That they all move in together seemed a logical option, but the three of them took some convincing.

“How am I supposed to live with my brother and my boyfriend?” Déja said. “What kind of situation is that?”

Bo played on her insecurity about the whole thing by threatening to walk around in his underwear and stating that Danny would have to keep his “hands off my little sister,” which sent Déja into mild hysterics. Danny remained mum (which he'd found to be a good course of action) and let the two of them hammer it out. Variously, the remaining members of my family advised them to make the leap, because, we reasoned, at least they could trust each other, and if, ultimately, it wasn't a tenable situation, it wasn't as if they couldn't all go their separate ways again after a year.

That was six months ago. It hasn't been the smoothest of sailing since then, although it's Déja who's had the roughest waters to navigate. It's turned out that the men in her house are moodier than the woman. Déja is forever settling ridiculous squabbles between the two of them over who will or should take out the trash, who should be paying the phone bill and why there are so many extra charges on the cable bill. Equal division of labor is a concept that doesn't go over too well in their house.

“You don't know what it's like living with two guys,” Déja says. “It's impossible. Especially if one of them is your big baby brother.”

In a sense, Déja has been uprooted from her position as the
baby of the family since she does a fair amount of mothering for the two men she now lives with. This has been an interesting transformation to watch. Of course, when she tires of her new role (which happens often enough), there is always Maya to turn to. The two of them have lately become each other's staunchest defenders, even when defending isn't necessary. Like now, for example, I can see Maya getting ready to agree with Déja. I can see the words, “This is not a ghetto!” forming on her lips, but the smoke alarm stops abruptly and so does she.

It can't be easy for Bo, either, I think. I don't think he really believes what he is saying about the apartment. The problem has more to do with the fact that, for the last six months, his intense need for privacy has been compromised by living with his sister and her boyfriend, no matter how close he is to the two of them. I have a moment of sympathy for him and then it passes. In the end, what's easy about this life we live? He's got it better than most, I reckon.

“Time for presents!” Lavander exclaims, breaking the potential argument between Déja and Bo. The gift giving begins. Lavander unwraps a handbag, a pair of earrings, and a bag of beauty products. There are no big surprises. The wow factor is a little low. Then again, Lavander has been absent for many big days this year, including several birthdays, and this is a possible explanation for the lack of fanfare. Still, she seems happy with what she gets until the last present is unwrapped and the last card read. She turns to Bo, who is still tossing plates and cups in the kitchen, and says, “Nothing from you? Why isn't there a present from you?”

Bo looks at her, genuinely perplexed, and says, “I made this party for you.”

“And that's it? I don't deserve a gift?”

Bo folds his arms and glowers at her. “Why do you have to be that way?” he says.

“Hey,” I tell Lavander. “I didn't get a gift on my birthday,
either. And I definitely didn't get a brunch.” I'm trying to lighten it up, but my words go over like a lead balloon. It's gotten very quiet in here, which is actually more alarming than if the room were filled with shouts and yells. Even the smoke alarm would be welcome right about now.

“I think I have a right to ask why my brother doesn't feel that I'm worthy of a gift on my birthday,” Lavander says, and, for Bo, that's just the last straw.

“Fuck this,” he says and drops whatever he's holding, some sort of utensil by the sound of it, into the sink. “I've had enough. I've got to get ready for work.” With a huff, he disappears into his room, closing and locking the door behind him. There is a moment of utter silence and then all the air in the room seems to shift as everybody gets up at once and starts moving.

“Well, I guess the party's over,” my father says.

“What? What did I do?” Lavander says. “Why are you all looking at me like that? I mean, is it wrong to think that he might have given me enough thought to get me a present on my birthday?”

“You know, he took a lot of trouble getting this all together,” Déja says, gesturing at the table and its mostly eaten contents. Nobody else, it seems, wants in on this debate. For once, my family is uncharacteristically free of opinion. My mother confers with Maya about her plans for the day. Déja and Danny start clearing the table. Lavander stands in the middle of it all, and says, “But it's hurtful, you know?”

“I think you hurt
his
feelings,” my mother says.

“Fine,” Lavander says, and walks over to Bo's closed door. “Open this door!” she shouts. “I'm sorry, okay?” There's some sort of muffled growling from behind the door, but nothing intelligible enough to make out.

“Leave him alone,” my mother says. “He's got to get ready for work. Let him be now.”

“Why am
I
sorry?” Lavander asks herself as she gathers her gifts and prepares to leave. “It's
my
birthday.”

“Get over it,” my father tells her.

“I don't think you understand,” Lavander says to all of us. “My brother is the most important man in my life. The most. He's my best friend. I spend more time with him than anybody else. It didn't have to be a big thing, you know. It could have been just a token. Just something to tell me he knows how I feel.”

There is a brief silence and then somebody says, “Well, that
is
true.”

“Let's get this cleaned up,” Maya says, and so that's what we do. We bag the leftover bagels, put the juices in the fridge, clean the pots and pans, and load up the dishwasher. By the time Bo reemerges from his room, the kitchen and dining room are spotless.

“Thanks for brunch,” Lavander says as he walks to the front door.

“You're welcome,” he says. “See you.” And with that, he's out. Lavander stands still for a moment, as if hesitating between two courses of action. Conflict flickers briefly across her face and then she makes a decision.

“I'm going to go talk to him,” she says, and follows in his wake.

“On the other hand, he doesn't have to be such a baby,” Déja whispers to Maya. There is a collective shrug in the room. We gather our things and get ready to go.

“So I guess the next one's back at your house?” my father says to Maya as we leave. “Maybe you want to make dinner tonight?”

“Funny,” Maya says. “You're so funny.”

We walk down the stairs to the parking lot. Below us, we can see Lavander and Bo standing near his car, talking. They are too far away for us to overhear what they are saying, but their body language implies shared secrets and experience. And laughter.

All is forgiven.

october

I'm on a plane, headed home after a short trip to Albuquerque for some book business. I've only been gone for twenty-four hours, but last night was a school night and Blaze had science homework to do. Maya promised me that she'd try to help him with it, but she wasn't very optimistic.

“Atomic structure isn't really my specialty,” she said when I called to check in yesterday. “I'll give it a go, but we might just bake a cake instead.”

My money's on the cake. Maya and Blaze have a special assortment of things they like to do together when I go away. Homework isn't one of them.

A flight attendant drops a tiny bag of nuts on my tray table next to the equally tiny cup of coffee I've got sitting there. I
inspect the nuts for a minute (it can't be my imagination, these bags are definitely getting smaller) and smile to myself. In my family, especially among my sisters and me, the phrase “nuts from the plane” is fraught with meaning. The first part of that statement, “I brought you some,” is most often left off for the purposes of conversational efficiency. Everybody knows what it means, anyway.

The phrase originated with my mother's sister, Auntie, who died in February. Auntie was my mother's only sibling and the two of them were as dissimilar as it was possible for two sisters to be. My own sisters share this view. In the past, Lavander and Déja have gone so far as to ask my mother whether she was sure that she and her sister had the same parents. They had the same parents, all right. Any glance at the old family photos proves that much. It's how differently the two of them developed from those parents that really poses the conundrum.

Both my mother and her sister were born in South Africa to Russian immigrant parents who had lost many of their own family members to pogroms. Both were raised in the long shadow of this tragedy and both grew up under the specter of apartheid. From a very early age, my mother felt an acute sense of displacement and knew that she would have to leave South Africa, which, of course, is exactly what she did. Her sister, on the other hand, never felt the need to make a permanent move from her birthplace, although she traveled often and extensively.

I can never know exactly how my mother felt as a young woman, nor will I ever understand, fully, the relationship she had with her sister or her parents growing up. The dynamic of her family of origin is lost to me because she broke free from it before I was even born. What I do know about my mother, however, is that she is one of the most forward-moving individuals I have ever met. By this I mean that she has always been on a
quest to evolve and, because of this, has been able to break from old patterns of thinking and behavior and move on. For me, her willingness to accept change and to modify her way of thinking is one of her best qualities. She is
hip
, for lack of a better word. And herein lies what was always the essential difference between my mother and her sister.

Auntie was only seven years older than my mother, yet the two of them might as well have been born in different centuries. Auntie was…well,
colonial
seems a fitting word. She married young and had four children over a seven-year period. Her husband became very wealthy through the garment business and, in time, she opened her own upscale boutique. They had a big, beautiful house, drivers, gardeners, and maids. Auntie's youngest child was born a few months after me, my mother's first. By the time I was old enough to understand what an “auntie” was, she and her family were already quite affluent. The flip side was that my mother and her family were, as far back as I can remember, the poor relatives. It's a cliché to say that money distorts relationships, yet clichés exist for the truth within them. In this case, the disparity between the net worth of my mother and her sister was a constant source of stress that fluctuated in intensity over the years but never, ever went away. Then, of course, there was the distance. For almost all of their lives, my mother and her sister had an average of five thousand miles between them.

My mother's relationship with her sister was a complicated one. They shared a powerful connection, but there was always a great and unyielding strain between them. By contrast, the relationship my siblings and I had with our aunt was fairly simple. We were never particularly close to her, geographically or temperamentally. When she came to visit, which was fairly often considering the distance, we morphed from people with individual
personalities to “the children,” amusing objects in my mother's virtual curio cabinet to be paraded out, clucked over, and put back away. For a long time, my mother went along with this dog and pony show, which pissed us off no end:

“Darling, can you go make us some tea, please?”

“Aren't they sweet? Like little miniature helpers.”

“Maya, bring out your violin and play us something, darling. A little concert.”

“Doesn't Debbie look lovely in those jeans? Do a little modeling for us, sweetheart. Let's see your figure.”

This was only part of the show, however. A large portion of the theater that was a visit from my aunt involved the distribution of gifts. This is where the nuts came in. My aunt often brought clothing, which was hauled out and tried on and fashioned. But the special gifts, the ones she presented with the greatest ceremony, were things like nuts from the plane. It wasn't just the nuts, of course, because my aunt always flew first class. There were also slippers, headphones, chocolates, and blankets from the plane.

If I had to choose the precept that was most important for my parents to teach their children it would have to be the act of giving and receiving. Naturally, I am not talking about material gifts here. My father has always said that “money is the easiest thing to give,” a sentiment echoed at various points by every one of his children. Time, attention, and love are the gifts that count, the gifts that should be graciously and generously given
and
received. It is here that I see the greatest gap between my mother and her sister because “nuts from the plane” has become the symbol of who our aunt was to us—what she gave and what we received.
My
sisters, her nieces, all became aunts themselves fifteen years ago. What they give, and receive, in that capacity marks the ultimate contrast in the two versions of “auntie.”

As Blaze has grown older, his individual relationships with my sisters have become layered, intricate, and unique. Each one of them adores my child and loves him unconditionally. Yet each one holds him to a slightly different personal standard. Each one has different expectations for him. Blaze, in turn, modifies his behavior, even his personality, depending on which one of my sisters he's spending time with. His ability to morph into individual versions of Maya's nephew, Lavander's nephew, or Déja's nephew is fascinating to me. It is as if he is able to find and connect with the essence of my sisters and this is why he relates to each one differently. Through him, I am able to learn about my sisters on a level I wouldn't have access to any other way.

Blaze and Déja, for example, are only nine years apart, a much smaller age difference than the one between Déja and me. In a sense, she is more like an older sister to him than an aunt. And, of course, Déja was more like my baby than my sister before Blaze came along, so it all makes one of those perfect life loops.

Blaze has had a special kind of affection for Déja since he was a baby. Out of every member in my family, Déja has always been the one that Blaze has associated with pure fun and simple joy. Blaze always had unlimited access to Déja and to her many friends. He never got the kind of parental discipline from her that he got, in varying amounts, from everyone else. What he did get, aside from tremendous love, was a fierce protector and companion. For many years, Déja was also Blaze's primary baby-sitter. When Maya and I were both working nights, Déja came to my house, most often with friends in tow, and spent the evening there. Before she started driving, Déja gave up many of her weekend nights to stay with Blaze. Of course, there was something in this for her, too. Déja and her friends could hang out in
our house without fear of parental interference or judgment. Maya and I always encouraged them to do this. We liked her crew and trusted them implicitly.

Almost all of Déja's friends, a bunch of slightly bent thespians like herself, were involved in the theater with her and well invested in the drama of life. Déja has formed more close friendships outside of our family than any one of us and many of her friends have become like extended family members, always welcome at any one of our houses. Part of this must have to do with the fact that, of all of us, Déja has moved around the least. She is the only sibling to have gone through elementary, middle, and high school in the same place. It's conceivable that she will maintain friendships forever with some of the people she first met in sixth grade. I find this astonishing. I have met several adults in my life who have these kind of long-term relationships and it always seemed somewhat exotic to me. For me, friends have always been transitory; gradually fading icons frozen in whatever part of my past they represented. I have very few close friends for this reason and, of those, only a couple I've known for longer than a decade. It has been much the same for Maya, although she has long been the more social of the two of us.

It was always important to Déja that her family liked her friends and that her friends liked her family. There was never a problem in either direction. Déja's friends were a diverse and unconventional group. Many of them were drawn to the theater because that was the social niche where they best fit: a minisociety where differences and alternative lifestyle choices were not only accepted but encouraged. And of course there was the constant drama, a very important component. For me, at least, unusual has always been more intriguing than usual and so Déja's friends of both sexes were always interesting and fun to have around. More than being interesting or unusual, however, almost all of
Déja's friends had one very important thing in common and that was a genuine kindness. I saw it often in the way they treated Déja and always in the way they treated Blaze.

Because they were at our house baby-sitting so often and because he adored everything about her, Blaze became close to Déja's friends, especially her posse of beautiful girlfriends. Emily and Meagan played games with him, Starkey took him trick-or-treating on Halloween, and Jessie cuddled him. All of them had long talks with him and were genuinely interested in what he had to say. Although they could hardly be considered his peer group, Blaze got along famously with this set of Bohemian teenagers.

Although I am loath to admit it, there were periods when I took Déja's devotion to Blaze for granted. Fortunately, there have also been times when I was reminded just what I had. One of those times happened on Blaze's eleventh birthday.

It was a Saturday and the height of the summer season in the restaurant where Maya and I were waitresses. I'd long since given up trying to create birthday parties for Blaze after a couple of spectacular failures, settling instead for small family affairs. Blaze never demanded much on this score anyway. If there was cake and a couple of gifts, he was generally content. That year, we had a muted celebration in the afternoon and at the end of the day, Déja arrived to baby-sit and Maya and I went off to work.

It was an exceptionally long night where it seemed that everyone who walked through the door wanted an extra dessert, another drink, more coffee, and no, were not yet ready for the check, thank you. I called Déja frequently throughout the shift, apologizing for being so late and promising to be back as soon as possible.

“It's no problem,” she said. “A few of my friends came over and they're just waiting with me until you get back. Is that okay? You don't mind, do you?”

“Of course not,” I told her.

It was almost midnight by the time Maya and I dragged our worn-out, garlic-scented selves home. I felt terrible about making Déja wait for so long as I was sure she had some kind of plan for a Saturday night that involved something a bit more stimulating than hanging out at my house. When I walked in, I saw my living room festooned with balloons and wrapping paper—none of which had been there when I left eight hours before. Also decorating the floor and couches were several of Déja's friends, drinking tea and eating popcorn. Déja herself was in the kitchen cleaning up the remains of what looked like a chocolate-chip-cookie-baking bonanza.

“We had a little party for Blaze,” she said. “He just went to bed a little while ago. He was so excited. Look, everyone brought him something.”

It was true, there were gifts everywhere. They had bought him board games and videos and a set of walkie-talkies. They had spent all night playing with him.

“I don't know what to say,” I told the room at large. “You're all so sweet. This was such a nice thing for you to do for him.”

“It was no big deal,” Jessie said. “We love Blaze. He's so much fun.”

I went into Blaze's room to say good night and found him sleeping, several gifts scattered on his bed. He stirred when I bent down to kiss his cheek.

“Hi, Mom. I had a good time tonight. We made cookies.”

“I know. I saw all your presents.”

“Yeah,” he said, and drifted back to sleep in total contentment.

Of course, it wasn't the presents that made him so happy because Blaze has never been a very acquisitive kid. It was the time he got—time I didn't always have and couldn't always give
him—that meant so much to him. Time and love were what he always got in abundance from Déja and what he—and I—could always count on.

In the comfort and warmth of all this freely given time, Blaze developed a complete trust in Déja and would often share feelings with her that I never got to hear. This started somewhat slowly and built as Blaze became more expressive in general. When I stopped waiting on tables and started working at home, there was no longer a need for Déja to baby-sit. The two of them started scheduling specific times to go out together. Together, they went on Blaze's favorite kind of adventure, an aimless drive. He'd tell her, “I don't want to ruin our time together with a destination,” so they'd head out wherever the road would take them (as long as it passed some sort of convenience store so that he could get a Coke, a drink he and Déja shared a passion for).