The Secret Sister

any place or person.
For the first sixteen years of my life, I was deprived of good clothes, decent food, safety and security, permanence and a home to call my own, but I finally lost something more precious than any of those.
I lost my sister, Birdie.

3
My sister, Birdie always hated her name.
“What kind of dumbass name is Birdie?” she’d say. “Why couldn’t they call me Laura or Jacqueline? Or even a classic name like Anna?”
Birdie was my twin.
When we were old enough to understand, Dennis, our dad, told the story of our birth.
Almost thirty years ago on a sweltering summer day, I burst into the world head first, plump and rosy, fists clenched. Birdie slid out like a wrinkled prune twenty-four minutes later.
From day one I looked after her, circling baby arms around my tiny sister in the crib, her pale cheek pasted to mine, our breath mingling in sleep. Birdie was the runt. The scrawny kid with no meat on her bones and a fuzz of black hair that stuck out like a wispy brush from her large head.
“Like a cute baby crow,” Dennis always said, chuckling and pinching Birdie’s cheek. “Just cracked through the shell. That name was a given.”
Dennis was our real dad. An ex-hippie from a commune near Eureka who’d driven across country, dumped his ailing VW van and settled further north. I couldn’t remember anything about our mom except long, black hair and a soft voice that belonged to a wispy figure floating past the bedroom door. She OD’d on heroin when we were toddlers and Dennis tried to hold things together. Straightened himself out and struggled to keep us fed and clothed as well as work his job as an ice road trucker.
But it didn’t last.
Birdie and I were joined by blood, sorrow and loss. Ripped from our home, our family and all we knew about love and belonging. All those years we clung together for protection in the belief that we could never be separated and evil couldn’t touch us if we only had each other. But reality was a dull-edged knife, shearing away the bond between us, until later when we split apart and Birdie drifted away.
I spent long hours trying to figure out how it all happened. Going back over the events that led up to her leaving. Recounting, revising over and over again until I couldn’t distinguish between truth, imagination and drugged-out fantasies. I just knew I had to find her. She was the only family I had. The only one that knew the story of how they, the trusted adults – the people in charge – stripped away every part of our identity until we couldn’t speak about our pain.
I survived it all. Sorted myself out in the end. Guess I was the lucky one. But if I was that smart, I figured I could work out a plan to find my unhappy, unlucky sister.
Up until Birdie and I were eight we lived with Dennis in the white stucco bungalow with the sloping floors. Dennis was always trying to fix the place up. Never could get ahead of the old house that was always shifting and settling when the weather changed. Doors that worked one day were jammed the next and cracks spread like spiderwebs across the ceiling and all the way down the walls.
I have only a few memories of life with Dennis.
One time when I was four, Dennis was slapping white paint on the baseboards, his hair tied back with a red bandana. The sickly paint smell made my head ache. I cried to go outside in the fresh air but the windows were fogged up and the rain slashed across the panes.
I lay face down on the couch, head in my hands, my stomach heavy and sick. I was covering my mouth and nose to escape the chemical stink of oil paint. Then Birdie, dressed in the Snow White cape Dennis bought at the thrift store, flitted across the room carrying a basket of loose Cheerios. Slipping my hand into her sticky one, she pulled me down onto the kitchen floor. Her hair stuck out in a fluffy halo and her eyes shone as she linked hands with mine and leaned forward to brush my cheek with hers.
“My name is Princess Skylark,” she babbled. “A tiny fairy gave me a special name and magic powers.” Then she made whispering noises and stroked her fingers across my eyelids until the pain dissolved away. Her breath was cool and wispy like butterfly wings.
We’d watched the Snow White song from the Disney Singalong video at least a hundred times and Birdie knew it off by heart so she sang it in a silvery, tinkling voice. With a smile and a song. The one where the deer wander out from the forest, the rabbits stop their scampering and all the bluebirds line up on the trees just to hear her sing. Then, when the song was over, she placed a finger on each corner of my sulky mouth and pushed upwards until I smiled. Until I felt better again.
Dennis stopped his painting to watch. Then he put down his brush and swept Birdie up into his arms, smacking her cheek with kisses.
“This girl’s got a big heart. Got happiness in her blood and she wants to share it.”
“What did I get?” I asked.
Dennis put Birdie down.
“You’re the thinker, Anna. Always mulling over every little thing. But together you got the best of both worlds. That’s why you got to stick together. Sunny and Sulky. You’ll always look out for Birdie because she sees the best in everybody. Feels their pain, but she’s got her head in the clouds. And that’s a recipe for sorrow.”
And he was right. From the moment we scampered out into the garden to play on the rusty swing set, I was the one who tested everything out first. Picked up insects, poked around in mud puddles, lifted up beer crates to explore the teeming insect life