Little Murders

We are gathered once again in the small one bedroom apartment in the city. This is our fourth year. It was interestingly enough the youngest of the four sisters who began this tradition. There we join for what she terms a sister’s slumber party, forty eight hours of togetherness, four women over fifty in various stages of recovery from our abusive yet privileged childhood. Talk about little murders. Invariably we spend the first twenty four displaying ourselves as we see ourselves, and it is only in the last few hours of the Sunday morning that we speak of the past. You’ve got to admire how we stick to form. Friday evening it is fuss and womanly noises as we flutter to this perch on 105^th St. This year, the youngest and I set off to one of those epicurean supermarkets to pick up goodies as my friend Marie always calls them. “Oh! How about some of the pine-nut salad and let’s get some of the roasted vegetable salad with eggplant.” She kids me about insisting on the vegetable sushi rolls, “They don’t belong!” she says but I tell her I’ll pay for the bottle of wine. We’re tired, we all got up early to make the cross country trek and so we soon roll out the mat on the floor and once again, I am sleeping with my sisters.

Saturday is usually spent doing something or as we were raised to say, being constructive. Now it wouldn’t be fair to say that my older sister suffers the most, she just hides it the worst and that is a crime coming from our English family. So in truth, I can’t say that we don’t all suffer the same but it is inevitable that I find myself thinking about who is doing better than whom. I know that last year I was the loser. As I said then, "Forgive me for bleeding in little spurts now and then, I can’t help it but I’m trying." This year I am more assured. Yet, as I see my older sister’s distress from the pressure of this forced intimacy, I find myself suggesting that maybe this year we could tackle it? It always surfaces and we’ve always handle it the same way we were taught to: Using politeness, we wait till the moment changes and then move on. But the two youngest are not ready for such healing moments and switch the topic to the beautiful fall day and the delight that comes from searching out the treasures that the city offers. “We can’t help, really”, they say, “So let’s not deprive ourselves.” “Come with us”, they urge, and I must look at my love for them and for her. So I choose to stay. I guess I can’t bring myself to reinforce their choice for I have come to cherish my sister despite her vulnerability. As they are walking out the door, the youngest says to me, “She scares me, what if what is in her is within me?” With those words, I realize that I am not afraid because I have accepted it is within me. I get my older sister to reluctantly go out with me and we have a fabulous afternoon. So this day is passed and once again we feast, this time on Indian take- out and we share another bottle of wine. But actually it is only two of us that drink, the youngest and I, and I am drinking too much, using that correct upbringing to not get sloppy, but as I lay down on the mat I think to myself, “What led to that?” “Why do I always think it comes out of the blue as if it’s the wine and not me.”

Come Sunday morning we’re all up early, breakfast is leisurely, there is time to spare. And then as we sit to wind down this ritual, again it is the youngest, the most reserved and proper of us, who brings up molestation. “Did we know that it was cousin Joe who told our youngest brother that cousins were for fucking?” Gasping, we all inhale in astonishment. Me, that she was the one to mention it. But from there the conversation turns to the past and we begin the ritual of recalling its radioactivity; dealing with the alcoholic molesting uncle and of course, our own family’s burden’s, the hiding in closets, the listening to and enduring of beatings and rages. What a coincidence this year to realize that while she hid in the closet, I determined to get out, and eloped two weeks later. I didn’t know that.

We make our departures, this one to catch her plane, me to get the train. Our farewells are so gracious. We do love each other. Can these yearly visits repair the past I wonder? Does acknowledging the little murderous moments we sometimes shared and sometimes didn’t, promote healing? I tend to think that in truth, we do it on our own and these visits are a form of updating our progress. As if to say, “How afraid am I still, in the recesses of my mind and am I free enough yet to be kind?”