John eventually drove away. Though I had narrowly escaped him again, the fear of men followed me for a very long time. When I got home I unplugged the phone from the wall and disconnected from trusting my big sister forever.
I had nobody to tell what had happened. I couldn’t tell my mother. I didn’t have any real, close friends. I had never really fit in. Even if I did, how could I have explained it to a kid from a regular household who ate dinner at six o’clock, went to bed at nine thirty, and got in trouble when they didn’t brush their teeth? They’d never be able to understand. Big sisters are supposed to protect you—not pimp you out. So I didn’t tell or trust anybody.
But as a girl, you still want your big sister, and dandelions are still flowers when they first bloom.
One visit from my sister, among all the visits and memories, marked me the deepest.
We tried to have tea. Tea was a thing in my mother’s house, but it was anything but proper. There was no cheery, whistling kettle; we boiled the water in a small beat-up saucepan on an old stove in the tiny, flavorless, dingy, grime-colored kitchen. Matching cups and saucers were certainly nowhere to be found; we had mismatched cups and mugs, the kind found in the box marked “Free” at yard sales on Long Island. English breakfast was the staple tea flavor; we each had a cup with a steeping tea bag. I had a thick ceramic brown drip-glazed mug that was chipped at the lip. I was holding the steaming, fragrant black tea with both hands when the phone rang.
“Oh hello, Al,” we heard our mother answer. It was our father.
We were both a little shocked. My father rarely called my mother’s house, and if he did, it was almost always to scold us about something. Alison and I exchanged a quick glance—who had done what now? Suddenly my mother looked in my direction, and I could tell they were discussing me. I vigorously shook my head “no” and mimed refusal. Alison and I were just about to have tea, maybe even a rare light moment, and I knew I’d have to get serious when it came to talking with our father. And who knew what Alison might have done that I’d have to hear about.
But Mother didn’t cover for us. “Yes, she’s here; hold on,” she said, holding the phone out and shaking it at me. Whatever “normal sister moment” Alison and I were trying to create was totally blown. I straightened my face, got up begrudgingly, and took the phone. Then I shook it and stretched the cord over to Alison, gesturing for her to take it.
“Nooooo, you take it,” she said back. A silly back-and-forth commenced between us for a few moments—a game of who would take the burden of talking to Father. It was almost fun.
Finally I put the receiver to my ear. “Hi, Father. I’m fine,” I said, repressing the urge to let out a little giggle. As I went through the mechanical niceties of the conversation, my sister began gesturing wildly, shaking her head and slicing her hand across her throat, signaling for me not to let on that she was there. As I tried my best to carry on the conversation with our father, I made silly faces back at her, doing all I could not to break into laughter. My sister could be pretty theatrical, and in that moment I found her extra hilarious. I thought we were playing a game. Eventually I figured it was her turn to try and talk seriously to our father while I tried to make her laugh, so I said, “Guess what—Alison is here! Want to talk to her?” Laughingly, I motioned at her to take the phone.
But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking down at her mug of still-steaming tea in her hand, and when she lifted her face, her eyes were rabid, without a trace of their former playfulness. Before I realized what was happening, she yelled “No!” and, in a flash, threw the boiling-hot tea on me.
The next thing I remember I was stripped down to my waist, and a doctor was removing the remaining bits of my white-and-turquoise diagonal-striped top, which was embedded into the flesh of my shoulder, with large tweezers. The doctor had had to slice off my shirt with an instrument, as some of the fibers had begun to fuse with my skin. (I fucking loved that top—one of the very few cute pieces I had, and now it was out of rotation, stuck to my back.)
My back was splattered with third-degree burns. I couldn’t recognize it as mine, as it turned different shades of maroon from the violent scalding I received at the hands of my sister. The horrific physical sensation had been so intense that I blacked out. Afterward, my back was numb and couldn’t be touched without causing me excruciating pain. It took years before I could accept a simple pat on the back, as most of my skin had to completely renew and repair itself.
The deepest injury, though, was from the emotional trauma. Feelings are not like skin; there are no fresh new cells coming to replace ruined ones. Those scars go unseen, unacknowledged, and unhealed. The truly irreversible damage to me came from the burn of my big sister, not the tea. Her arson was deliberate—she
