Excerpt from "Three Attention Deficit Sisters and the Mafia"
"... Sophie doesn’t notice our hand-me-down cribs. Instead, she celebrates, the sister she’s longed for up close in a bed. During my first months, her voice crests and ebbs like a singsong of tides, reminding me of another childhood summer. Not only of the sounds of it, but also its textures, where the salt water met the sand feeling like a raw egg that could be skipped over or sunk into, the yolk of our sisterhood carolling in sea foam and froth.
Overlapping waves are where my sister and I first merged, hitting the shore with a melodic surge. We’ve been together as twins, and not, invariably that chattery ocean spray bringing us. Theories of our transposition abound, first Sophie, then me or vise-versa. Any one doubting our coalescence could just ask me about the unborn stars whose flames shone like kerosene lamps along with the surf and symmetry. We’re living proof of that kinship, our luster preceding us, moonglowed from sea swells into dawn, now side-by-side in parallel cribs.
Because Sophie’s first, she can make herself tall. She clutches the hand bar to pull herself up. I unfold from sitting and crawl to my edge. She is above me between the wooden slats, the up-and-down bars of our cribs. My sister is striped and I giggle. We begin a silly peek-a-boo, out popping from behind the railings. Sophie is giddy-faced, squatting, wiggling her toes, then high up, squealing in ecospeak. I grab the strip across the top, and am standing, all of me is upright. I let go, am tottery yet straight enough. ‘Hurrah!’ Sophie says. The mattress underneath me is spongy and my feet are like springs. Sophie is clapping and jumping and we hooray and hooray until I grow dizzy and we are not together anymore...."
Carole, you are so cherished.
