Two Sisters

by Jeffrey Anderson

did get that hard or how the cloudy balloon helped prevent pregnancy. All she saw was a yellow piece of wood coated in snug rubber, like a wrapper on one of father’s cigars.

  Brooke pinched the pucker of rubber at the end. “That’s where the sperm goes.”

  Leah was more confused than ever. But to placate Brooke and not seem stupid, she nodded and handed the banana back.

  Brooke looked at the clock on the wall over the door. “We’d better clean this up before Momma gets home.” She slipped the condom off the banana and dropped it on the table. She took the banana to the sink and lightly rinsed it, then wiped it off with the dish towel. She said, “Glad for K-Y” over her shoulder but knew Leah couldn’t see the words and wouldn’t understand them if she could. She ran to put the banana back in the bowl, positioned exactly as before.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Leah had carefully rerolled the condom and was sliding it back into the foil package. “What are you doing, Lee?” Brooke cried.

  Leah held the foil pack toward her sister, one corner of the lopsided condom sticking out from the torn wrapper. For you, she gestured.

  Brooke burst into laughter. “That one’s no good anymore, Lee. Probably got a splinter from that wooden banana!” She laughed at her joke—imagine getting pregnant due to a splinter hole! “We’d better deep six this gross thing.” She entombed the condom and its wrapper in several layers of paper towels then stuffed the wad deep into the trash. When she looked up from closing the trash can, Leah was staring at her. “What?”

  No condom for you, Leah asked, designating “condom” by making a ring with her thumb and forefinger.

  “I’m taking Matt, remember?”

  And Danny?

  “Oh,” Brooke said, startled by the question. “Don’t you worry,” she said as she glanced away. “I’ve got that under control.”

  Leah never worried about Brooke except when she didn’t face her directly. Then she worried.

  “You want a peanut-butter sandwich?” Brooke asked, looking up quickly before turning to hunt for the bread and hoping the peanut butter wasn’t gone like the bananas.

  Later that week, Leah asked Momma who called Mrs. Stafford to see if Leah could attend the waltz classes in Brooke’s place, since they were already paid for. Mrs. Stafford expressed reservations, not for Leah or the unusual situation but because Leah’s natural grace and dance training would show up the older girls and either intimidate them or incur their envy. But if Leah wanted to come by on Saturday, she’d ask the girls and see what they said.

  Well, the girls—only fourteen stayed for the waltz classes, less than half—“said” about what she’d expected: Hell, no! only not in so many words, using facial gestures and comments like “she can’t hear the music” or “she’ll slow us down” to convey their disapproval.

  But when Mrs. Stafford entered the waiting room to break the bad news to Leah, who was patiently waiting in the chair, alert and in perfect straight-backed posture and gazing calmly out the window, she was again struck by how beautiful and graceful this girl was, already a poised young woman. And in that moment, just before Leah sensed her presence (probably by the change in the room’s air pressure or the residual odors of sweat and exertion emanating from the studio) and turned, Mrs. Stafford hit on a compromise.

  Leah looked up at her in a perfect deb pose—eyes steady but not insistent, hands folded in her lap, shoulders square, neck straight. Some skills can’t be taught Mrs. Stafford thought with a mix of admiration and self-defeat.

  “Leah, I think it best that you participate from the observation hall,” she said, referring to the hall to the office behind the one-way mirror. “There you can follow at your own pace, and rest if you tire.”

  At first Leah was puzzled by the suggestion. She would have no trouble keeping up with these girls and felt she’d need the space of the studio to fully practice the waltz. But just as fast, and intuitively more than consciously, she sensed the reasons behind the suggestion. She nodded acceptance and offered a small smile of thanks for the opportunity and special consideration.

  Mrs. Stafford nodded. “Very good, Leah. I’m so pleased to include you.” She turned but paused in mid-stride then came back. “If you can stay after class, I’ll be glad to work with you in the studio and refine your technique. And I can take you home after we’re done. It’s not far out of my way.”

  Leah’s face burst into a broad and shining smile that more than compensated the instructor for her time and special attention.

  Mrs. Stafford smiled. “Good. Now get ready. We’ll be starting in five minutes.” She disappeared inside the studio.

  Before Leah slipped off her shoes and sweatpants, she ran out to the parking lot to tell Brooke.

  “And she’ll bring you home?” Brooke asked.

  Leah nodded with excitement.

  Brooke laughed. “Now if only you could go to the ball in my place.” She started the car as Leah ran back into the building.

  Deb Day arrived hot and oppressively humid. Brooke had to get fully assembled at home, as Memorial Hall, the ball venue downtown, had no dressing rooms and ancient and cramped bathrooms with poor lighting and tiny mirrors. Leah raised the full skirted satin gown over Brooke’s head as she stood in the middle of her bedroom dressed in underwear, a strapless bra and white slip, and frost-colored pantyhose. She raised her arms over her head and closed her eyes in a gesture intentionally balanced between surrender and compliance, neither one a natural pose for Brooke. Leah paused for the briefest moment to burn that portrait into memory, acknowledging all it had cost her sister to get here, would cost over the next few hours. Then she lowered the gown, burying Brooke in yards of white fabric, no sign of her sister’s skin anywhere.

  Then ever so slowly Brooke emerged—first her hands then her arms then her brown hair still in the big curlers then her face. And that face was no longer compliant. It was in fact highly vexed. “No, no, no, no, Leah!”

  Leah tried hard to hide her patient indulgence but was sure she failed.

  “You didn’t let me get my hands into the sleeves!”

  The gown had puffed lace short sleeves with an elastic hem, designed to sit over the shoulder. In all this fabric, the sleeve holes were about impossible to find.

  Brooke jerked the gown’s bodice below her armpits for dramatic effect. “See!” She planted her hands on her hips in a saucy pose.

  Except for the gown’s color and the curlers in her hair, Brooke looked like a waitress in a colonial tavern, a natural look for the fire now in her eyes. Leah stifled her laugh.

  Brooke sighed. “Can you try again, more slowly please?”

  Leah nodded and raised the gown as Brooke raised her arms.

  Her sister stayed hidden awhile longer this time, sending forth muffled curses as her hands tried to find the sleeve holes. Eventually she succeeded, first her right hand popping out of the white then her left.

  Leah finished pulling the gown over arms and head, then spent several minutes trying to straighten all that satin and lace.

  “They can keep their condoms,” Brooke hissed. “Those dorks couldn’t find their way to home base in this mess even if they had the balls to try.”

  Leah wouldn’t have understood Brooke’s derisive comments, but didn’t have to try. She’d tuned Brooke out and was focused on getting her sister ready. She smoothed and ordered the full skirt’s pleats, first from the front then from the back. She slid the edge of Brooke’s strapless bra just below the line of the lace bodice from behind then pulled the puffy sleeves a little lower on Brooke’s forearms till they sat without bunching. She came back around front and smoothed the satin-backed lace midriff over Brooke’s flat and skinny stomach. It kept wanting to bunch, giving her the look of a small potbelly till Leah tucked a small fold of fabric under the bodice and another fold behind the waist where the gown transitioned to only satin. She stepped back and surveyed the dress. It wasn’t a perfect fit, maybe a size too big in the bust and the torso. Brooke h
ad been impatient in picking it out at the local formalwear shop, called the second one she tried on “good enough” and would only stay long enough to have the hem marked then threw off the dress like it was a sweatshirt and scurried out of the shop with the Leah left to nod an apology to the salesclerk and the tailor.

  Leah met Brooke’s eyes for the first time since getting the gown off its wide hanger and offered an approving nod. The dress looked lovely.

  Brooke answered with a scowl of slump-shouldered resignation, which caused the sleeves to rise up again.

  Leah pulled the sleeves down quickly and in the same motion grabbed Brooke’s hands and led her to the chair in front of her dressing table and gently pushed her to sit down. With Brooke making faces in the mirror, Leah quickly removed the curlers and brushed out Brooke’s hair. Those curlers combined with the natural body of her hair created beautiful flowing curls that shimmered as they cascaded over her tanned shoulders. Leah set the brush down and lightly caressed those curls as she distributed them around her neck and shoulders.

  By then Brooke had stopped making funny faces and said into the mirror, “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  Leah signed into the mirror—I enjoy making you beautiful.

  A smile flashed across Brooke’s face.

  But it didn’t last long as Leah dropped her make-up kit on the dressing table and pulled out her