Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(2)

“Here you are; two spoons.”

The guy hands her the biggest banana split I have ever seen in all my life. We sit there on the curb and eat the whole thing. On the way home she says, “See, I told you I was gonna win.”

~

Looking back, the grownup me knows it most likely wasn’t her name on that piece of paper, but it doesn’t matter. Donna got the prize because she had the tenacity and grit to believe.

Of course this was one of those magical things that happened way back when I still believed her stretch of life would one day be paved with streets of gold.

Shortly after school started that fall, Mama got sick. For three days straight she remained in bed. Daddy made dinner all that week, and then on Friday afternoon he came home early and took her to the doctor. They came home smiling, so I had to assume there was nothing much wrong.

On Saturday afternoon Mama took Donna and me to the Sweet Shoppe for sodas, and we had what she called a woman-to-woman talk.

~

“Doctor Lavine told me and your daddy that we’re going to have a baby,” Mama explains. “So until I get to feeling better, you girls will have to pitch in and help with the household chores.”

Once that’s out in the open, Mama spends the duration of her talk detailing the responsibilities of older sisters. Donna doesn’t buy it, but I puff myself up with a sense of importance. The way Mama makes it sound, I’m practically going to be in charge of the newborn baby. (In retrospect, I believe it was the “in-charge” part that was the charmer.)

Donna is not of the same opinion.

“Can’t you tell the doctor you don’t want the baby?”

“Why would I do a thing like that?”

Donna scrunches her face and frowns.

Thinking Mama might give weight to such a thought and cause me to lose my newly-acquired level of responsibility, I jump in. “I think it’s neat we’re going to have a baby sister.”

“Sister?” Donna echoes. “That’s even worse. Tommy Barnes has a new baby sister, and she cries all the time.”

“All babies cry,” Mama says.

Given that fact Donna continues to argue in favor of no baby or at the very least have it be a boy. “Where’s that baby gonna sleep?” she asks, then quickly adds, “Not in my room, I hope.”

“I’m thinking you’ll move over and share Bette’s room; then I can put the baby in your room,” Mama says.

“Oh, great,” Donna grumbles.

The baby issue is not off to a great start as far as Donna is concerned, and she spends the next six months hoping it’ll be a boy.

When the baby finally arrives the following February it’s a girl. Donna is so disappointed she asks Mama if she can get a dog because she didn’t get a brother. Mama says no, she’ll have to learn to live with a sister.

~

For several months Donna grumbled about the fact that I got a girl baby like I wanted and she couldn’t even have a dog.

“If I can’t have a dog,” she said, “how about a cat?”

The answer was still no.

The following July Donna decided to do something about getting herself a pet. It was generally a sure sign of trouble when Donna took matters into her own hands.

~

When I open the door I all but faint from the smell. There stands Donna with her friend, Alma. They have a skunk locked in a wooden crate. It’s not one of those tame, de-skunked critters. No, this is the real thing. The two of them had gone into the woods, set a trap, and caught a skunk!

“Mama!” I scream. “You’re not going to believe what Donna did!”

“Blabbermouth,” Donna says with a scowl.

Mama gets a whiff of that skunk long before she reaches the door. Standing at the far end of the kitchen, she hollers for me to have both kids strip down to their bare skin out there on the porch. “Then take their clothes down to the incinerator,” she adds.

“Not me,” I say, “I’m not touching that stuff.”

“You’ve got two seconds to get going,” Mama says and waggles a finger in the direction of the garbage room.

Mama puts both kids into a hot tub of soapy water and scrubs until their skin turns red. She does it a half dozen times, but when we go to bed that night Donna still stinks.

“Don’t you know skunks can’t be pets?” I ask.

Donna is still mad at this point, so she rolls over, faces the wall, and doesn’t bother to answer.

~

The year I turned thirteen I made two very important discoveries. I learned that I had no athletic ability whatsoever, but I also figure out I was blessed with a fair bit of business sense. Both of these revelations surfaced the day Donna showed me how to ride a two-wheel bike.

~

A number of small New Jersey towns are tucked behind the cities. They’re places few people have heard of and fewer still have visited. Ridgefield was just such a place. Most kids rode their bike to school. I say most kids because there was a handful of misfits who, like me, didn’t.

Patty was one too. Walking to school meant walking uphill, and Patty didn’t do uphill. She couldn’t. She was so overweight I doubt there was a bicycle with a sturdy enough seat. Her mother drove her to school. I walked.

Walking to school was bad enough, but walking home was more often than not a humiliating event. I usually ended up walking alongside Patty. We were in the same class and we traveled in the same direction; it was unavoidable. Once I lingered behind thinking she’d be long gone when I left, but she was there, waiting.