“I did and we’ve been. I’ve got three waiting for me at home.”
Rolling my eyes, I opened the door and came face to face to the lady herself. When I looked at the woman beside her, I did a comical back and forth between the two of them – at least, it would be comical to them. For me, what I was seeing was confusing the hell out of me.
“How’s there two of you?” I asked, still looking to see which one was the real Gloria.
That question was answered when she gently nudged me aside to get in. “This is my sister Rita. She’s over from Jamaica for a couple of weeks and wanted to meet her nephew’s woman, so here we are.”
Smiling at Rita, I shut the door behind them and watched as Gloria picked up Elodie who had come running to see her.
“Oh my god, she’s beautiful,” Rita sang, walking up to see her.
Elodie’s face went bright and then the smile dropped as she looked back at Gloria. Then she looked at Rita and pushed the top half of her body away from Gloria with a hand on her chest.
“What’s wrong, little button? She’s doing that because you’re ugly,” Rita told Gloria, giving her a smack on the arm for good measure.
Elodie looked over at me and let out a little squeak, her bottom lip wobbling slightly.
“This is my sister, Elodie. Her name’s Rita, can you say Rita?” Gloria asked her, and Elodie looked back at Rita and shook her head.
“She calls Jarrod cawot,” I told the duo as I walked past them to the kitchen. “If she can say Rita, he’s going to be so mad.”
Following behind me, Gloria gave me hers and Rita’s coffee orders, and then reluctantly let Elodie – who was now warming up to the fact that there were two Glorias in the room – go to her sister.
Once the coffees were made, we sat down in the living room with Elodie excitedly showing Rita every single toy that she had.
Looking between the two, I was shocked at how much alike they looked even after seeing Jarrod with his brothers. I mean, I looked like my siblings, but not to the extent that this family did.
“I didn’t know you were a twin?” I asked. “That’s pretty cool.”
Putting her cup down on the table, Gloria shot Rita a look. “My twin is a pain the ass and we definitely do not get along.”
Maude shot me a wide-eyed look that reflected what I was thinking at that moment, too – awkward AF – and her lips pressed tightly together as she kept in the questions she no doubt was dying to ask.
“Yup,” Rita agreed, stroking Elodie’s purple teddy and grinning at her. “Gotta take her in small doses.”
Well, it was probably best that they lived in different countries then, I guess. When the silence dragged from ‘reflective silence’ to ‘awkward as hell silence’ I started to think of questions to ask that would be diplomatic and neutral.
“So how often do you see each other then?”
“Once every five years or so,” Gloria replied, watching Elodie with a warm smile on her face, which threw me seeing as how she was in the presence of a sister that she apparently didn’t get along with. If that was me, I’d be struggling to smile and be tense.
“Last time I saw the b…” Rita stopped and looked down at Elodie who was now holding a fabric ball out to her, “burned out piece of trash was two years ago,” she said, then glanced over at Gloria. “And she looked like a burned out piece of trash. Bright pink spandex leggings, highlighter green tight top, tits bursting out, and her hair looked like she’d been dragged through the streets and then swirled in a toilet. It was during Carnival, but still.”
Gloria pulled a face and then pointed at Maude. “She does good hair. You know my wig with the hair to here,” she pointed just past her shoulders and got a nod from Rita. “She styled it so perfectly, I didn’t want to wash it.”
Maude had been thinking about something through this, so she didn’t hear what was said. Instead, she tilted her head and said to Gloria, “I didn’t see any spandex or bright clothes in your wardrobe. That would totally suit you, and I could rock a hairstyle to match them. You need to get some more because that wig you’ve got with the auburn highlights in it would kill with those colors, and then we could put some curls through it, give it volume on top…” she trailed off, lost in her hair fantasy. “Oh, what about that wig at the shop we went to that had the long bangs at the front like Katy’s? We could totally make it look like Cher in that Turn Back Time video when she’s in the tiny little leather swimsuit thing with boots up to her thighs.”