Read Online About My Sisters by Debra Ginsberg - Free Book Online

or two. Well! Seemed my witchy ways had freaked them out from the start and, in a 1970s version of The Crucible , Goody Shari and Goody Tracy banished me from the village for good. I was a pariah. None of the girls from Patio Homes ever spoke to me again. Not even when we were all clustered outside in subzero weather, teeth chattering, nostrils freezing together, waiting for the school bus that would take us to our last year of middle school.
    I was crushed.
    And Maya?
    Maya was in fifth grade, reading Agatha Christie and learning how to dance the hustle in her gym class. She’d started taking violin lessons the year before and really loved her new instrument. She did the crossword puzzles in the TV Guide and was partial to jokes of the “Why does the mailman drive a blue truck?” variety. She was not an adoring little sister who wanted to be just like me and my friends. She never could stand those girls and made no effort to hide her disgust.
    â€œWhy do you like them so much?” she asked me once. “They aren’t very nice.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t understand,” I told her. But in my confused adolescent heart, I suspected she understood very well indeed.
    One cool Sunday, shortly after my disastrous summer with the girls, when I was still trying to work out what went wrong, Maya turned to me, and said, “Let’s be Ma’s.”
    It had been less than a year since the Mariannas had gotten together to discuss their adventures but, at that moment, I couldn’t imagine a way to call them back. Had Maya not noticed that everything was now different? I was so dumbfounded that I couldn’t even answer.
    â€œLet’s be rich Ma’s,” Maya added, trying to be helpful. There was nothing for it, I had to tell her.
    â€œI don’t want to,” I said.
    â€œWhy not?” she asked me.
    I looked into my sister’s face and saw the expectation there and all the years of her following my lead. I’d created the game, but she’d followed me into it and made it ours. Now I was going to have to toss it aside like a dress I’d grown out of. The two years and nine months between us stretched out like an ocean. I’d crossed a line and she was still on the other side wanting to play. And it wasn’t really fair, I thought, because there could never be just one Marianna. Once I was gone, it was over. I wished there was a way I could have dragged her over with me. I would have liked nothing more than to have Marianna with me, helping to navigate the rough new landscape where I found myself. If there were anyone who could make sense of the senseless, it was Marianna. But unlike me, Maya was never in a hurry to exit her childhood. She showed absolutely no interest in coming over to my side. I couldn’t take her with me and I couldn’t go back to the place that I’d just vacated. I wanted to be able to play with her and I wanted her to understand why I couldn’t. And neitheroption was a possibility because I was simply not sophisticated enough to explain it to her. Why not, her sea blue eyes were saying, why can’t we play?
    â€œI can’t play Ma’s anymore,” I told her. “I’m too old.”
    If she’d protested, even scoffed, it would have made that moment easier, but Maya didn’t say anything, she just stared at me with a look that pieced hurt, incomprehension, and acceptance into an impossible mosaic in her face.
    â€œSo don’t ask me again,” I said, sounding like the curt and officious big sister I was pretending to be. But my own Marianna was heartbroken. I felt I’d let myself and Maya down at the same time. I felt like I’d cut off an arm. I never gave Maya an explanation for why I stopped playing the game and she never tried to get one out of me. We wouldn’t mention the game again for over twenty years. The issue of the Mariannas themselves, it turned out, was the only thing the