My Sister

ANNE MASLIN DORST

My sister. 
My rival, my enemy, my competitor, my obstacle.
The stranger I lived with until the time when we no longer lived together, and then my friend. 
My inspiration, my source of strength, my critic, my pride, my ally. 
My only sister. 
I was the oldest in the family. I was the one who was always having to do things for the first time. Go to school-go on a date-go to college-get married-get divorced. I felt lonely, always. I never talked about it to anyone, least of all my sister. My sister was not then of my world. She was slender, she was pretty, she had style, she had boyfriends, she stretched her brain, she got her way. She was also daring. 
Our mother tells us that the first word she spoke was “No.” I don’t know what word I first spoke, but my image of myself in childhood, as I look back on it, is of compliance, amiability, eagerness to please, a “good girl.” The opposite of “No.” 
“No” symbolizes my sister. No to the conventions, No to social requirements, No even to the law. In childhood, that appeared contrary; in adulthood, mostly brave—though sometimes verging on insane, and other times just stubborn. 
The one feeling which floods my memories of living in the same house with my sister is—resentment. I resented her looks, her freedom, her confidence, her getting-away-with-things, her social life, her lively friends, her position in the family hierarchy. Though there was a younger child, our brother, who took on the baby’s status, my sister held on to the baby’s status in another way. She was the younger girl, and in fact was the baby for eight years until our brother arrived. It felt to me that she had the attention, the privileges, while I had only the risks of doing things first, out there by myself. I was wrong, of course. 

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