Read Online Let Their Spirits Dance by Stella Pope Duarte - Free Book Online Page B

thick, flesh-colored stockings, even in summer when the temperature goes over a hundred.
    Priscilla says Mom needs a full-time nurse to take care of her. I tell her Mom would never allow anybody to take care of her who isn’t family, but she insists. If I had told her I was getting Mom a nurse, Priscilla would have argued that only family could do the job.
    Priscilla, three years younger than me, is short and slim, with tight knots of muscles up and down her calves. When we were kids, nobody ever looked for us in the same place at the same time. In high school her hair was short and shiny, coiling into two curlicues at her cheeks; mine was down to the middle of my back, with waves of hair I soaked with hairspray so they wouldn’t bunch up at the top of my head. Atoms of space between Priscilla and me were dot-to-dot outlines that connected us with identical profiles, foreheads, and eyebrows that looped over each eye with uneven scatterings of hair we plucked away with tweezers. I always thought Priscilla’s eyes were closer together than mine. We ended up measuring the space between our eyes with a ruler, and the measurements were always the same. Priscilla criticized my height and I laughed at her short legs, telling her models were tall with slim, slick bodies men drooled over. I made the cheerleading squad at Palo Verde in my sopho-more year, and she played varsity tennis, badminton, and softball.
    â€œYou’re Priscilla’s sister. I see the resemblance.” Everyone said so, and behind Priscilla’s back they always said I was the prettiest. After Jesse’s death, the dot-to-dot pictures that connected us got split up. If I moved right, Priscilla moved left, if I visited Mom, Priscilla stayed away. If I stayed away, Priscilla went to see her. We were always passing each other by, and I didn’t know why. “Why can’t you get closer?” Mom asked. “She’s your only sister.” Then I’d try, because I still remembered combing Priscilla’s hair and letting little strands of hair at the end of her ponytail tickle my lips. I remembered evenings we’d sleep with Mom in her bed, one on each arm, watching the pattern of light from veladoras flicker overhead, making rings like halos for saints we named after ourdolls. Sometimes we’d tangle our arms around Mom’s neck, pinching each other to try to make one of us lose our grip. We kept it up until my mother said we would end up choking her to death, then she would push both our arms away.
    There were times Mom insisted I call Priscilla, and finally I would. One of her boyfriends would answer. There was always someone new, and it started a knot growing in my throat. I wanted to yell at her to get some sense into her head and make her stop searching for love. I knew if I yelled at Priscilla over the phone, she would hang up on me like Mom hung up on Tía Katia when they got mad at each other. By that time, Priscilla had her son Angelo and had lost her baby Annette. Losing Annette almost cost Priscilla her mind. The baby was six months old when she died, apparently without cause—crib death, the doctor said. Everything Priscilla had gone through with Jesse’s death came back to her when Annette died. It was as if time had not passed for her, and Jesse had never gone to the war. We buried Annette next to Nana Esther and Jesse. When Priscilla saw Jesse’s grave, she knelt down and hugged the headstone and lay her head on it, as she had laid her head on Jesse’s shoulder at the airport.
    Paul, the youngest of our family, doesn’t have much of an opinion about Mom’s health. He figures we women will take care of everything. A few years ago, he spent time in prison for possession of drugs. Before Jesse died, Paul was this normal kid, loving life, playing pranks on Priscilla and me, growing up safe, Jesse’s little brother, thinking about being like Jesse. When we lost Jesse, it was as