More than Santa Claus, your sister knows when you've been bad and good. --Linda Sunshine
I am going to spend time in the "bad place" for my work as a sister on this earth. As a young child, I looked for ways to elicit a negative response from them. I used humiliation, covert operations, and plain old meanness to counteract the frustration of not belonging in their group.
It must have been the mid-80's when I got Western Barbie for Christmas. She had this neat gizmo in her back, that when you pressed it, one of her blue eye-shadow eyes would blink. Her arm was bent at the elbow and her hand pointed toward the sky as if to say "Howdy!" That didn't satisfy me. She was so much more than a winking cowgirl. So I took her apart. She was like the Terminator on the inside; a plastic skeleton of interlocking parts. I cut her hair, dyed it with red and blue food coloring and inserted deep red Estee Lauder blushing gel in her eye sockets. When my sisters boyfriends would come over, I would call to them in a panicked voice from upstairs. As they entered the hallway, I would drop Western Terminator from the second floor and allow her freakish body to dangle from the bannister by a string. The guys were horrified, and probably a little in awe of my work. My sisters were just plain pissed.
Nothing grabs the attention of your teen sister like the threat to exploit her underdeveloped, gawky body in Kodak fashion. I used to line the bottom doorways of their rooms with some 25lb test fishing line while they would take their shower. I waited; crouched in a corner, as they tripped over the invisible nylon thread, wearing nothing but their cotton bathroom towels. I snapped pictures of their ugly falls with my disposable camera, that quickly got disposed.
My sisters used to store their beer in the old cinder block wall in the alley of our house. Their friends would stop just short of the backyard, out of eyesight, and let them out. The bricks were laid in a way that there were holes in them big enough to stick your arm down in. One day, I must have watched the oldest sister pull 20 single cans of beer out of there; passing them off to any outstretched arm coming from the idling car. The next weekend, I walked my step-dad to their make-shift "cooler" and pointed out their act of depravity. For the next few months, as I rode my bike down the alley, I checked for Budweiser cans in the holes of that old wall. I only pulled out cobwebs. Consequently, there wasn't any friend traffic in our alley either.
I wondered if they rested easy at night; knowing that I was forever by my lone. If they did, I had to give them some tiny reminder that I am still very much here and very much a sister who would enjoy a fun time or two. My mom asked me to rake the leaves and place them in trash bags. I could have sworn she said pillow cases. I filled both sets of my sisters pillow cases with the brown, dried, allergy-provoking leaves and placed them neatly back on their beds. I waited for them to lay their sleepy heads down on what they thought was a 600 thread count pillow case. Profane language quickly filled our night air.
Being older and of a somewhat responsible age, my sisters had to babysit me after school. They weren't crazy about this because it meant they could have zero fun with their friends. The big thing back then was to race to the video store as soon as school let out. My oldest sister was friends with the clerk who allowed her to rent "R" movies. My tender eyes could not watch "The Evil Dead" so they locked me out of the house so they could enjoy the gore in peace. I found a window with open shutters and watched the entire first half of the movie from the front porch. When my mom came home, I told her about their scheme and worse yet, what I had seen. My sisters told my mother I was lying and had been playing outside the whole time. I had no other choice but to go into detail about the horrific "vines" scene. All the while, my sisters faces were turning pale and my mother's was turning scarlet.
Decades have since passed. We are all very close and each have our own children now. For Christmas last year, my eldest sister gave my daughter a Barbie she found at a yard sale. She was adamant that this Barbie be well taken care of. "She's an antique!" she said. "Don't let her destroy her!" She is a 1960's Barbie with sun-bleached hair and happens to have blue eye-shadow.
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