Twin Sister

To the rest of the world, my sister died on the day of our tenth birthday.

July 6th, 1995

Roughly twenty five years ago, me and my sister were born. I entered this world first, and five minutes later, she came out. Five minutes. That was the only thing that separated us. We looked identical, with the same brown eyes and chestnut hair. Chucky legs and long fingers. But in the years that had yet to come, the five-minute ripple would expand until it became a deep hole with no end.

I was the healthy one, who drank milk, slept, and pooped, hitting every milestones before they were due. My sister cried a lot. She refused to drink my mother's milk and spitted formula out after three sips. She was smaller in size and weaker. Before we were two months old, one day, our father rolled us to the park. There were some raining and wind on our way back, and at night, my sister had a fever. Our mother rushed her to the emergency room, and they stayed there for another day. The details I didn't know, but I knew something changed that day. Because my mother, who even fifteen years after my sister's death, still wouldn't tell me what she learned from the doctor that day.

A secret was being kept. And it was the beginning to an end.

In the next ten years, I grew up healthy as any kid could be, but my sister was bound by illness. At five, she started complaining about a crawling pain under her skin. Mother took her to the doctors, but none could explain where the pain came from nor a way to fix it.

"We have ruled out every physical possibilities. I think it's time to consider that her pain might be psychological," said Dr. Evanston, who had been cracking my sister's mysterious pain for over four months. "We have ran every test there is. I'll refer you to a psychiatrist. Maybe they'll give you some answers."

The psychiatrist, Dr. Lindsey, lived fifty miles away from our house. Despite father's insisting that my sister faked her pain to avoid school or outdoor activities, mother took her to see Dr. Lindsey, who came up with a course of treatment, but that was when my sister began to change. She became increasingly quiet and pale. Sometimes, I caught her staring at a blank wall. Sometimes, she'd make strange "clicking" noise with her tongue and curl up her fingers as if she was gesturing someone or something.

I avoided direct eye contact with her as much as possible. We were in grade school then, and her behaviors freaked everyone out. Even the teachers would get a hard gulp and chills whenever my sister was near.

I didn't know what Dr. Lindsey did, but it couldn't have been good. Me and dad saw it, but mom didn't. She insisted that Dr. Lindsey was the only one who was helping, while the two of us would be so cruel to leave my sister in pain.

I stayed with dad while mom took my sister fifty miles away from home. My sister did stop complaining about her pain, but I saw the way she still scratched her arms sometimes. Her body would twist up at night as if there were bugs under the sheet.

I also caught her staring at the ceiling at night. Sometimes, I woke up in the middle of the night, and she was still awake.

"Are you okay?" I asked her weakly, rubbing my eyes.

"No," she replied softly.

"What's wrong?" I'd then ask. But her answer was either nothing or a shake of her head.

Secrets. I thought. It annoyed me that she wouldn't tell me what was going on.

After a month of seeing Dr. Lindsey, my sister started drawing. It was part of her art therapy, but what she drew concerned me and dad greatly. For one, I thought she was drawing eggs. One egg after another. She'd take the time to add shade and texture, then, she'd also add two eyes and a mouth, but things would go downhill very quickly. She became upset and enraged. She'd color the eggs black until the paper was pierced through by the color and the painting was ruined.

I told dad what I saw. I could see in his face that he was shocked, and then his face would turn worried. He didn't agree with the idea of my sister seeing Dr. Lindsey in the first place, and weird things like that only made it worse. But despite what he really thought about the painting, he told me that perhaps my sister was just having a hard time, and sometimes, when a person didn't like what they saw, they'd attempt to destroy it.

I believed him. 

But I also heard him yelling at mom, accusing her of making my sister's illness worse.

There was a lot of fighting in our house at that point. I was scared and worried, but my sister seemed unaware of what was happening. Shortly after, dad moved out. He asked me to live with him, but mom insisted that I stayed. In my heart, I knew I wanted to live with dad, but for some reason, I also knew I'd stay with mom and my sister anyway.

Seeing someone, who looks exactly likes you, acting nothing like you was the strangest. I couldn't really explain what it was like, being around my sister. It was like seeing my ghost. A half of me that I couldn't shake off. Every time she was in pain, I'd somehow grasp that feeling too, yet I couldn't feel it physically. On some level, I knew what she was going through. I knew what happened, yet I couldn't see.

There was a profound connection and a even more profound disconnection between us. I thought we were supposed to split these pains, but we didn't.

On our tenth birthday, my sister died. Just like the pain that no one could explain, her death was also a mystery. That morning, I saw her rose up from the bed, looking as pale and quiet as always.

"I'm ready," she told me, as she started putting on pants, socks and shoes. I watched her do her hair the way she always did and came sit in my bed.

"Martha, I want to tell you everything. I'm tired of keeping secrets," she said.

"Ok," I said. I knew she was keeping secrets.

I imagined she'd tell me what happened in the emergency room when she first caught a cold or the hours she spends in Dr. Lindsey's office, or who she was talking to, or why she stared at the walls.

"I'm not really here," she whispered. "Never, actually. And I think I'm the only one."

"What do you mean?" I frowned. I got up on the bed and looked at her.

"The pain I had won't go away," she said. "It's only fair—" and she stopped, looking up at the corner of our bedroom as if there was something there.

"Fair—?" I began to feel uneasy. It wasn't like any other day when she talked weird. I was beginning to think she might be really trying to tell me something. I was so close.

"Nothing." She drew her gaze back to me, but she looked passed me to the bedroom door behind. Then I heard it cracking open.

I turned around and saw mom, holding her morning coffee in a red mug. I waved at her with a smile, but before I could say "good morning," I saw her face turn white. It was as if she had frozen. The coffee mug in her hand fell onto the ground and rolled to the corner. I saw her body bounced up strangely as she began rushing to my sister's bunk bed.

"No! My baby!" Mom screamed. Her voice sounded torn and sad. I looked up at my sister—she was standing behind the bedroom door. As I looked at her, she turned away and walked into the darkness of the hallway. Just like what she always do.

I never saw what mom saw, only through her trembling words that I knew that my sister was dead. She bled out from the inside, and the cause was never found.

Like the time when dad and I could see what Dr. Lindsey did made my sister sicker except for mom, the rest of world had decided to ignore her existence.

She still stared at the window sometimes, sleeping across our shared room on her bunk bed. She followed me to school and followed me back. She followed me to my new town and moved into my new house.

I saw in the window reflection when I opened the front door.

She stood behind me in the mirror when I brushed my teeth.

She held a ruined egg painting when I looked at myself in a wedding gown.

I asked her what she meant to tell me on our tenth birthday, and she shook her head.

"There's no need."