The Faces of Sisterhood
By Madeline Ileleji
Illustration by “Anisha Marenah”
My little sisters a privileged kid. She doesn’t even know it. I did good to make sure my girl baby grew up with the sun for skin and white teeth for a perfect smile.
And I was a poor kid. Colour faded uniforms, plastic shoes and a sun washed smile. But I was smart in the way God made children born in uncertain times, with uncertain parents, trading pain for pleasure.
Yet here I was, woman grown, a Volkswagen wan gen car for a ride, and ten great shoes. I lined them up like the colour of the winter collection, to remind myself of things I could now quantify standing in my angle side Mirror with my rich money hair, tapered cut, tinted and rolled to Afro curls like the one The Weekend wore. That hair is a roll for pretty black girls with wild and untamed spirits, and a fiesty soul working a wolf heart to provide a meals worth of food and a pair of skinny jeans and t-shirts.
Yet my sister, she does this little cute thing criticize my hair for not being girly enough. And I like her for it. She’s the cute one. Almost completely perfect. I watch her try to brush my hair it’s as though I had a baby at sixteen when my mum had her. Tiny little fingers curled into my hair detangling telling me little pretty jokes of all the thousand ways I need to grow my hair for my wedding day look. She doesn’t know I’m quite uncertain of that. I mean I like love it’s like a miracle sworn on a thousand broken pieces. And marriage is a cute story almost completely enticing. If I have to have children I’ll have to bring them into it, see real close, up close who and what they’d turn out to be in a home governed by imperfect people, hoarding life as parents trying to shape another little human.
My sister imagines worlds like that and I like to think we are perfect in that sense. Me in my Tom boy shorts and shirts, ankle socks and crocs for footwear. Yet still a pretty girl with my rich money hair. And a parent to a little girl with an almost perfect sense of the world around her. And I like her for it. Between my sister and I there is no bias in colour between us. We are two sides of a different coin, one born too early one born too late, gold a crest of the earth. We are all things worth fighting for.
Yet she sees the world as children should. Hopeful, colorful and pleasant in all the right ways. Sometimes she repeats a big word back at me, quite irritating almost all the time. Yet she says it like I did, a word I learned reading books and answering back questions asked of what, who and where. As a sister I think I’m terrible at it. I like the quiet of silence because in my head are all the versions of myself in the multiverse and I’m trying to catch up on their experiences as I formulate them. My sister often asks why I talk to myself or stare at walls or cry in the shower or run in the night. Answers I quite can’t explain to her, but one thing is certain I run so that my heart doesn’t fall off my chest because when the world howls in terrors that come as tokens of life experiences, I gear up and hit the road. One heart beat at a time I fix the pieces of my misfortunes, caution myself about love and all the boys who brought me pain, and eagerly hope that another rejection at work or school won’t tire me apart.
With the numbers we’ve clicked as age differences I shed light with her every night with every affirmation that comes to mind
“I know I am a child of God.
I’m strong.
I’m brave.
I’m loved.
I’m beautiful.
I’m brilliant.”
And each night as she recites it and falls off to sleep as I watch her fade into the night as I say Amen to the prayers she can’t hear, and as I sit there in silence, I’m not completely wrong or entirely right. Piece by piece I puzzle out the strings of our bond, water memories of her candour, half pack her lunch bag for school, pick up her doll and the many different combs she uses, I know for a moment that in the perfect sense of trying, I’m not doing so bad. Because in all her fiery and thousand stories, I get her to bed at 8;30 and there in the silence I rub my skin with shea butter, line my face with bio-oil serum and eye serum, and for a moment I’m a girl again with my grandma oily skin hoping each day that I’m a testament to what beautiful, kind, and brilliant is in the way my sister imagines it that she’d say again and again she’s grateful for me, and wishes to grow up like me when my voice echoes through spaces as she watches me speak and smile, an admiration of the sort that once too I was a girl watching another woman telling myself I’d like to grow up to be her.
And to my sister I’m almost perfect if only I’d have my hair braided or dance instead of play football I’d be perfect for a Barbie match-up. And then I know there was truth we grew up different, she has a sister and I had brothers. The differences so clearly stated but when I watch her ask for socks to pair with her crocs I know my effect isn’t completely lost. Together we both sing “Royals” by Lorde and that’s entirely perfect to me. I’m not a Barbie doll kind of girl but she is. What she doesn’t know is I love like Cinderella and I think stars are the coolest things in the world and “Bridge to Terabithia” is one of my Favorite movies, a souvenir from a boy I once loved who I taught about the “Multiverse Theory.” One day too when my sister is much grown I’d tell her I too exist in different dimensions across multiple universes and for some reason I think I’m the coolest person in the world and all the stars perfectly aligned they ain’t got nothing on me. And sometimes I’m a black hole, and sometimes I’m a constellation. But each day I’m grateful to be my own kind of girl, and gods be blessed indeed I’m beautiful. And I speak people raise their heads to listen, and that is my kind of high.