The Language of Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page A

woman.”
    * * *
    Hours later, at two in the morning, I climbed in my bathtub with a box of chocolates. I ate them while I soaked. Not the whole box. Half of one tray. I like to eat treats in the bath. Makes for a tasty time, and it sucks away my stress.

3
    At seven in the morning, I heard Ellie in my head. She said, Toni.
    I’d been awake for two hours already. Once I’m awake, I have to get up immediately, have coffee, and make the choice to stay up. I have to make the choice not to hide under the covers. I have to make the choice not to give up on life that day. I learned that the hard way. If it’s not raining, I have coffee on my deck and watch the river, check on my river pets, search the sky for Anonymous, and read the newspaper. Sometimes I’m having coffee in a down jacket, hat, and gloves.
    Toni.
    I called her.
    I knew it was about her wedding.
    We arranged to meet at the end of the week at Ellie’s for Pillow Talk.
    Which means we sisters get together and sew pillows and talk and laugh.
    Now and then there’s a fight. A few things have been thrown: a spool of thread, fabric, a handful of buttons, pillows—for sure nonweaponry-type things.
    No scissors, thankfully.
    * * *
    Sometimes I can hear my sisters, Ellie and Valerie, talking to me in my head. It’s rare, and it only comes in emotionally intense times—when we’re worried, scared, in danger, falling apart, or conversely when something perfect happens to us. All of a sudden, I hear them.
    I do not know their day-to-day lives. I don’t know the minutiae of their thoughts. I don’t know when they’re making love or fighting with someone.
    Some might say that we only think we can hear each other because we’re sisters, and best friends, and in tune with each other, that it’s nothing remarkable. Some might say we’re making it up, or it’s some sort of natural reaction because we know what is going on in each other’s lives. We know the truth.
    â€œThe brothers and sisters of the Sabonis family can hear each other. Gift from God,” my mother says. “It comes from all the way back, from the time of the Romanovs, those spoiled fools, to Lenin, that mass murderer, may he be whipped by the devil each day; to Stalin, a much worse mass murderer, may his body be set on fire in hell; to Germany’s invasion, those sadistic Nazi thugs; to the siege of Leningrad, to the Cold War, we have heard each other.
    â€œWe have called for each other, Antonia. We have begged for help. We have said good-bye as we lay dying, crying as we gave birth. We have shared secrets and joys. It is passed down to all of us. It’s the language of brothers, the language of sisters.”
    My earliest memory of this special language was in Moscow, when I was six and Valerie, called Valeria then, was four. Ellie, Elvira then, was two, and she was asleep in her crib.
    Valeria and I were in the kitchen of our tight, dingy apartment making our mother’s Russian tea cakes with pecans and powdered sugar. Our mother had managed to trade eggs for powdered sugar with a neighbor.
    Our kitchen was small, the walls sometimes damp and weeping, the oven didn’t always work, and the refrigerator made a clanging sound like a ghost’s chains, but my mother was clever with what little she had.
    As I was sifting the flour, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I could feel myself shutting down, getting dark inside, floating. “I’m dying,” I told my mother, my voice weak.
    Valeria, her hands covered in rolled dough, stilled. Her head tilted back and she went pale. She gave a tiny gasp, a choked breath lodging in her throat.
    â€œMother of God, what is it?” our mother said, dropping a bowl, one of only two mixing bowls that we had. It shattered as she reached for Valeria, when she fell straight back, her face growing more sickly, splotchy white by the minute.
    I felt a pull into that blackness. I