“What is it? Why is only one of you screaming?”
“She ruined my picture! She ruined my picture!” Haylee cried, pointing her finger at me and pumping the air as if she could poke out my eyes.
“Stop!” Mother shouted, so loudly her voice seemed to bounce off the walls. Her eyes looked like they were about to burst like egg yolks.
She rushed forward, took hold of us by our earlobes, and marched us out to the stairs, ordering us down to the great room.
“Sit,” she commanded, and we did. Despite her exclamations of double love for us, she could get as angry at us as she got at Daddy. A cloud of red rage hovered over her, threatening to drown us in cold, hard rain. Haylee kept her head down, and I lowered mine. Although Mother never hit us, we couldn’t help anticipating that she might—and as hard as she hit herself.
“How many times have I told you?” she began, in a much calmer tone than I’d expected. “Don’t you know how important it is that you defend each other and protect each other? You will never, ever have a friend more loyal or caring than your sister. If someone attacks one of you with a nasty word or does something physical to one of you when you attend school, you must defend and attack together. You must always think of yourselves as one.
“Let me tell you why,” she continued, her voice becoming more like her teacher voice, patient and reasonable. Haylee looked up, and so did I. “Because you are so close and so dedicated to each other, jealous girls and boys will try to get you to hurt each other. They will try to . . . to wedge themselves between you.” She pressed her hands together and sliced the air. “They will whisper terrible things in your ears, claiming one of you has said something nasty about the other.
“Some,” she said, now strutting up and down like she did when she gave us a lecture in our home classroom, “will be very, very clever about it. They will act as if they really don’t want to tell you these things about your sister. Oh, how much pain they’ll pretend to be in. They’ll make it seem as if you demanded that they tell you something so they can’t be blamed for starting trouble.”
She smiled. “Think about the way I explained how Adam and Eve lost the Garden of Eden. The snake whispered into Eve’s ear and made it seem as if God was afraid that she would realize how beautiful she was, how much like a goddess she was. The snake, which was the devil, made God seem bad. Remember?”
We nodded simultaneously.
“Good. Well, other students, and, I’m sorry to say, other girls mostly, will want to ruin your beautiful relationship with each other. They’ll be whispering in your ears. They won’t have anything like what you have as sisters. Every friend they’ve trusted has betrayed them, but you will never betray each other, because that would be the same as betraying yourself. See?”
Again, we nodded. She reached down to stroke our hair and pat us on the heads.
“You are my precious,” she said. She didn’t say precious what, just “precious,” because we were her precious everything. “Now,” she continued, “this is why whenever there is an urge to disagree or argue, you must battle it, smother it, stamp on it, beat it to death. Those bad urges will be fanned by the snakes around you. So I don’t want to hear you raising your voices to each other, and I especially never, ever want you telling stories about yourselves. If you break something, you don’t tell who broke it. You both broke it, understand? Don’t tell on each other, even to your father or me.
“Yes. I saw the look on your faces when I said ‘even me.’ I know too well how a child can get her parents to favor her by constantly running to them to reveal something bad that the other child did. In my time in school, among my girlfriends, I saw many sisters—who weren’t identical twins, of course—try to get their parents to favor one of them over the other. Of course, they were nowhere near as close to each other as you are. Jealousy and green envy. That’s what caused it. You’re too young to fully understand this, but it’s scientifically called sibling rivalry. In time, you will fully understand what it is and why it is the worst sin of all for you. Then you’ll remember what I told you today and be grateful.
“However, the truth is that you don’t need to worry about sibling rivalry, because there is no way I would favor one of you over the other. That would be like my favoring my right leg over my left. I want both my legs to be equally strong, don’t I? Otherwise, I would limp. That’s how you must think,” she said, obviously excited about the analogy she had just made. “Yes, yes, that’s it. You must think of yourselves as parts of the same body, the invisible you, the Haylee-Kaylee you or the Kaylee-Haylee you. If you don’t, you will always limp through life. Do you understand?”
We nodded. I understood a little, but I didn’t think Haylee even wanted to understand any of it.
“Good. I knew you would,” she said, and then, as she always did when we were side by side, she knelt down, embraced us both, and hugged us both against her breasts and her face, actually kissing us with one kiss, her lips touching Haylee and me simultaneously. “Now, go back to your room and think about all this. Cherish it.”
We rose, and I took Haylee’s hand so we would walk out together. Mother loved to see us do that. The more we touched each other, the happier she was, and we both wanted Mother to be happy, almost more than we wanted happiness for ourselves. Or at least, I did.
Now, though, when Mother stepped into our bedroom this time, she looked very upset, even though I hadn’t had the chance to argue with Haylee about whom Mother looked at more for the right answers when she asked questions. Something else was obviously bothering her, something far worse.
“Somebody went into my jewelry box and played with my bracelets and necklaces,” she said. “They are not where they are supposed to be, and for a little while, I thought something very valuable was missing. Who did this?”
I looked at Haylee. I knew I hadn’t done it, but I didn’t know for sure that she had, and even if I did, I would never say it.
“She did,” Haylee said, and pointed at me. “I told her not to. I saw her go into your bedroom and go to your jewelry box.”
I held my breath. I had never done that, and Haylee knew it. It was shocking to hear her accuse me, and for a few moments, I had trouble breathing. It was as if some very heavy thing had been put on my chest.
Mother stepped forward, her eyes looking like sparkling ashes in the fireplace. I wanted to shake my head and say that Haylee was lying, but I didn’t, because then I would be accusing her of something. Mother looked at me as if she expected me to say it. When I didn’t, I was surprised to see a small smile on her lips, but then she reached out and pinched Haylee’s earlobe, practically lifting her off the floor. Haylee screamed.
“You’re in detention,” Mother declared. “March out.”
“Why?” Haylee protested. “I didn’t do it. She did it.”
Mother stopped. “This was a test,” she said. “No one touched my jewelry. Didn’t I tell you never, ever to hurt each other, blame each other, or get each other in trouble? Didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Haylee said through her tears.
“Well, you just did it. You disobeyed a very special and important rule.”
“I’m sorry.”