Family dynamics: Sisterly love – Part 1
In the fabric of family dynamics, nothing is more knotted and frayed than sisterly love.
Today is Jasmine’s 50th birthday. It will be the party of the year, no expense spared. There will be celebrities and the usual crowd of beautiful, rich or interesting friends. I wonder if Elon Musk will be there. Will it make the society pages? family dynamics
I remember when my sister and I were young, we would ask Mum “what do you want for your birthday?” She would say “One day of peace.” In retrospect, I suppose this is because we were not being peaceful. We fought like all siblings, hitting each other then running away, licking our ice-creams so we didn’t have to share, vying for the front seat, pulling each other’s hair. I went through a face-slapping stage. I remember my mother saying “Family is forever. You only have each other.” family dynamics
For a long time, that was true. Australia and, for a time when I was in first grade, England were different places then. I was the first person of colour that any of the kids or their parents had seen and that seemed to bring out their inner hatred. One place in England, neither the children nor teachers acknowledged me for 6 months. In Sydney, I would hold my sister’s hand as we walked to school, and the kid down the road would come out to shout “lesbos!” That’s “LESbians” – my mother could only say it in italics – but I had no idea what it meant. I just knew it was said in anger and held Jasmine’s hand tighter. I remember a general sense of bewilderment, wondering why he hated us so much. When we played catch and kiss in fourth grade, I remember that none of the boys would chase me, although I once got chased up a tree by a gang of boys with sticks and stones shouting “BLACKIE!”
When my sister went to school, her experience was altogether different. She was beautiful, by anyone’s estimation, and she wouldn’t take shit from anyone. I remember when Jasmine was very small Mum told her not to go near a friend’s dog because he would bite her, so she went up to the dog and bit him. When I was in 6th class I would watch my sister being chased by a swarm of boys in catch and kiss, and – even then – as she would look over her shoulder at them, she realised that she had something other girls didn’t, something that made them chase her. family dynamics
My sister sat in the back row of the bus, in the back row in class. Her math teacher used a projector to illuminate problems on the screen. My sister would sit near the plug and by the time the teacher got to the projector to start the lesson she would switch it off. The teacher would look at the projector, trying to work out why it wasn’t working then go to check the plug that, as she walked towards it, my sister would switch on. The teacher would look at the plug – all okay –then go back to the projector to start the lesson. Again the thing mysteriously stopped working. This went on for a while, weeks, until she got caught. Turns out the teacher knew my parents and there were a number of serious conversations. sisterly love
My sister was an artist, with an artistic temperament. There was brooding diary-writing. Paintings of eviscerated bodies. My father admired their anatomical accuracy; my mother consulted a psychologist.
Mum and Dad would go to work and lock us in the house. My sister told me this is what happened. I have no recollection of it. I never checked the doors. If I wanted to go out with my friends and my parents didn’t allow it, I would shrug and retreat into Wuthering Heights, or Tess of the D’Urbervilles or Pride and Prejudice. sisterly lov
When my sister was sixteen, her boyfriend Gary, the hottest guy in school, climbed up the tree to my sister’s bedroom. I kept lookout. There was the thrill of getting away with something, the fear of getting caught, the romance of climbing up to see Juliet. When my parents asked what we got up to, I covered for her. I was always covering for her. She was always getting caught out in a lie. Her excuses were threadbare, without the requisite amount of detail or thought, the airtight alibi. If you are going to tell a story, tell it convincingly.
I never got caught. When you are a goody two-shoes you escape the scrutiny. My best friend Kay was a cherubic blonde-haired, blue-eyed, girl who charmed my parents. “Yes, Mrs Black in history we learned about – ” We had learned about putting coconut oil over our breasts whilst sun-baking topless. My lies were omissions or plausible short statements – I’m going to Kay’s to study – that I could just manage without a quiver in my voice. I am a terrible liar…Or am I? When I was sixteen my twenty-one year old boyfriend asked my parents for permission to date me. He was “a good Catholic boy” so they said yes and expected we’d get married. Kay and I talked our parents into letting us go dancing in Kings Cross at fourteen until our feet were blistered and then walked with bared feet amongst the bikies and drug-dealers and ladies leaning into cars. I had juvenile epilepsy so was too scared to drink or take drugs in case I lost control of my body. I was too shy around boys to form sentences. With my twenty-one year old boyfriend there wasn’t much talking. family dynamics
Jasmine, meanwhile, was locked in the tower under watch. She had been caught by Neighbourhood Watch, who had seen a man climb into her bedroom, and called my parents. She got caught smoking pot in her bedroom at thirteen. She was told not to go out “wearing that” and would climb out the window and down the tree. And get caught. Again.
My memories are of a constant smell of pot wafting through our hallway whilst my parents were downstairs or working at night. Jasmine would neatly roll cigarette papers around tealeaves and hide them around her bedroom. Mum would find them and confront her and she would scream “It’s JUST TEA!!!!!”
When she was sixteen they would tell her she wasn’t going out and she would say “Yes. I AM!” And she would SLAM! the door behind her and jump into someone’s car or onto the back of their bike and be gone.
My parents would be fighting with her, with each other, about what to do, how to handle this out-of-control teenager. I thought they would get divorced. I remember thinking ‘I wish I was an only child.’ The noise, the arguing, jangled every part of me, made me always on edge. I took on the Sisyphean role of peacemaker from an early age, either covering for Jasmine or trying to make my parents happy with Jasmine, or happy with each other. I was always trying to patch things together, repair, restore order. I was living in a war zone, a teenager trying to negotiate a ceasefire.
Sisterly love is continued here...
Read the letter I wrote to Keanu Reeves here.
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