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Description
We share the blueberries Mama left for us, the juice staining our fingers and our lips. We eat them with the solidarity that figure skating partners would give their perfect souls for, and in the ecstasy of our union stained with blues and purples like the hues of the skies just before sunset, we are content. It is 1984 and we are barely able to comprehend anything but each other.

"You need friends," Mama whispers with her venom-like breath and her love belied by her lack of understanding. She does not understand. We have friends. We are friends. The simple harmony and the symmetry that breaks only with the soft marring of birthmarks on my inner thighs is more than enough for us. We do not need "others".

The first "other" Jezzie and I turn away is a cousin, a frail, blonde little thing with eyes as dark as a the juice on our hands. With her dark little eyes she watches us as we sit alone on the window bench, wrapped up in the tissue paper world of the peach blossoms outside the window and in our unity that is as silent as it is perfect.

"Do you want to play dress up?" she asks, and we do not need to say no because she sees it in our eyes. She knows as well as we do; we are all children, and children understand each other. She knows as well as we that there is little left but death for us, and it comes as swift as the tide. There is nothing more than we crave for before it closes us in its craggy hand. This is what true satisfaction looks like. I wonder if she is jealous as she walks away, her party dress billowing like crepe paper.

We eat a thousand more bowls of blueberries before anything comes between us, spend a thousand warm moments in our room beside the radiator, trying to soak up that warmth with our frail little bodies like lizards on a rock. We are frail; twins often are. Our camaraderie is the only thing that keeps us truly warm.

"Why are they called blueberries?" I ask one evening after the yells have died in our throats and our fight has simmered to merely ashes. "They are black, and their juice is purple. There is nothing blue about them."

"Because blackberries are already something else," she replies as we snuggle in in our cave of blankets, heaped up on the floor of the closet to keep the monsters away. 1986; it is the year of cold winters, and there is little we can do to keep warm. Even close to her, my small body shivers with the chill of it. It is as though she has no body heat at all and I get lost in thoughts of vampires and goblins. We are as one in the closet, and the cold doesn't matter.

"You are the only thing that matters to me," Jezzie tells me one snug summer night when we have abandoned our own beds to huddle under the covers of the one in the guest room; the one where monsters can't find us because of the crucifix on the wall. Mama says that monsters can't come near Jesus, and for this protection we are grateful.

"And you to me," I reply in a whisper, listening to the crickets blaring outside the window, their songs mingling with each other to sound like a tiny siren. We make a pact that night; we cut our hands and we press them together, the sting in my palm intensifying as it meets hers. Our blood mingles and I find it unnecessary because I have always felt we share the same blood. We are two candles poured from the same mold, formed of the same wax. This is 1987.

The blood shared makes us stronger, I realize, and after that night I can run farther, faster. I can shimmy up the peach tree without losing my breath, and I can ignore the scratches on my legs and simply laugh in the sun because I am finally, finally growing. Mama says she has never seen me so full of energy. Things are changing, and for a brief moment and I can almost perceive my sister getting farther away. I ignore it.

We harvest the blueberries from the bushes that line the creek and press them into our mouths, coloring ourselves darkly and brilliantly purple so maybe we can hide easier in the shadows of the bracken and frighten passerby. Mama disapproves of the juice on my face but says nothing of Jezzie's and I cannot understand. But we are scraped knees and muddy hands, and I delight in fireflies and can think of little else.

"Jezzie, Jezzie, Jezzie," I whisper one night in a further long, glorious summer beneath the crucifix, and she does not answer. 1989. I cry a little because I cannot comprehend the silence. I stare in the darkness at my palm, at the puckered white ridge where the scar rises eerily like a mountain range on my skin. I press the ridges to my mouth and weep. I cannot understand why I feel so lonely.

My therapist asks how I am feeling, and in clipped tones I tell him the story, running my finger along the scar and thinking of Jezzie. I am alone in that wide office that smells like French polish and old books. My therapist looks tired and he presses my hands sympathetically with his and looks like he wants to cry. His blonde hair is in disarray and his glasses dangle. He looks helpless and not like a grownup, and I want to hug him. I cling to the dark slacks over his legs and his clean shaven face breaks. He does not know what to do with me, and so he simply pats my head and whispers to me stories of aardvarks.

It is finally the summer of 1990 when Mama takes me on that long car ride through the wheat fields, and the dust flies in my hair as her hands grip the wheel, white-knuckled and purposeful. It is our birthday, and I laugh to Jezzie about the way Max's tongue lolls out of his mouth and sprays Papa with strings of putrid saliva, and she is strangely quiet. There are moments during the ride when I swear I am alone in the backseat, but I am reassured when I look over and see Jezzie watching me, silent but holding my hand. Our scars touch.

I busy myself watching sunbaked fields and roads made of dried, knobby mud where snakes like to hide in the cool shadows. We finally reach our destination, and I bound from the car with a sense of oncoming dread as Mama takes my hand and leads me to Jezzie's grave. 1980-1983 are the dates I read, and I do not crumble. I sit and I stare, and I run my fingers along the sun warmed marble where her name and those harrowing dates with only a three year span between them. I am ten years old, but I feel suddenly as though I am one hundred. I do not speak, and I wonder if I will ever speak again. Mama and Papa have a picnic in the grass and Max bounds around, sniffing everything and barking at appropriately interesting finds. There are blueberries in the picnic, and I take them and smash them with my fingers, letting the juice stain my fingers as I cry.

Back in the car, Jezzie is not there, and Max and I sit alone in the backseat. I do not laugh when Max licks Papa's face, and I do not smile when we pass a family of quail rushing into the underbrush. I stare at the dried, sticky juice on my hands and I wish I did not have to cry. The juice is purple, but I wish it was blue. If I were God, I would paint blueberries as blue as the sky on a summer afternoon, and the juice that flowed would be forget-me-not and as opaque as milk. If I held the paintbrush, Jezzie would eat the pale blue fruit beside me and we would sing into the late night in the summer. We would catch fireflies and we would laugh and run, ignoring the thorns in the garden that marred the bottoms of our soft feet and Jezzie would not be in the ground.

"Why do they call them blueberries?" I ask softly, and Mama and Papa exchange a worried glance. "They aren't blue…" Mama and Papa keep looking worried. What I really mean is 'why can't I have my sister?'

But regardless, they have no answers.

Description
We share the blueberries Mama left for us, the juice staining our fingers and our lips. We eat them with the solidarity that figure skating partners would give their perfect souls for, and in the ecstasy of our union stained with blues and purples like the hues of the skies just before sunset, we are content. It is 1984 and we are barely able to comprehend anything but each other.

"You need friends," Mama whispers with her venom-like breath and her love belied by her lack of understanding. She does not understand. We have friends. We are friends. The simple harmony and the symmetry that breaks only with the soft marring of birthmarks on my inner thighs is more than enough for us. We do not need "others".

The first "other" Jezzie and I turn away is a cousin, a frail, blonde little thing with eyes as dark as a the juice on our hands. With her dark little eyes she watches us as we sit alone on the window bench, wrapped up in the tissue paper world of the peach blossoms outside the window and in our unity that is as silent as it is perfect.

"Do you want to play dress up?" she asks, and we do not need to say no because she sees it in our eyes. She knows as well as we do; we are all children, and children understand each other. She knows as well as we that there is little left but death for us, and it comes as swift as the tide. There is nothing more than we crave for before it closes us in its craggy hand. This is what true satisfaction looks like. I wonder if she is jealous as she walks away, her party dress billowing like crepe paper.

We eat a thousand more bowls of blueberries before anything comes between us, spend a thousand warm moments in our room beside the radiator, trying to soak up that warmth with our frail little bodies like lizards on a rock. We are frail; twins often are. Our camaraderie is the only thing that keeps us truly warm.

"Why are they called blueberries?" I ask one evening after the yells have died in our throats and our fight has simmered to merely ashes. "They are black, and their juice is purple. There is nothing blue about them."

"Because blackberries are already something else," she replies as we snuggle in in our cave of blankets, heaped up on the floor of the closet to keep the monsters away. 1986; it is the year of cold winters, and there is little we can do to keep warm. Even close to her, my small body shivers with the chill of it. It is as though she has no body heat at all and I get lost in thoughts of vampires and goblins. We are as one in the closet, and the cold doesn't matter.

"You are the only thing that matters to me," Jezzie tells me one snug summer night when we have abandoned our own beds to huddle under the covers of the one in the guest room; the one where monsters can't find us because of the crucifix on the wall. Mama says that monsters can't come near Jesus, and for this protection we are grateful.

"And you to me," I reply in a whisper, listening to the crickets blaring outside the window, their songs mingling with each other to sound like a tiny siren. We make a pact that night; we cut our hands and we press them together, the sting in my palm intensifying as it meets hers. Our blood mingles and I find it unnecessary because I have always felt we share the same blood. We are two candles poured from the same mold, formed of the same wax. This is 1987.

The blood shared makes us stronger, I realize, and after that night I can run farther, faster. I can shimmy up the peach tree without losing my breath, and I can ignore the scratches on my legs and simply laugh in the sun because I am finally, finally growing. Mama says she has never seen me so full of energy. Things are changing, and for a brief moment and I can almost perceive my sister getting farther away. I ignore it.

We harvest the blueberries from the bushes that line the creek and press them into our mouths, coloring ourselves darkly and brilliantly purple so maybe we can hide easier in the shadows of the bracken and frighten passerby. Mama disapproves of the juice on my face but says nothing of Jezzie's and I cannot understand. But we are scraped knees and muddy hands, and I delight in fireflies and can think of little else.

"Jezzie, Jezzie, Jezzie," I whisper one night in a further long, glorious summer beneath the crucifix, and she does not answer. 1989. I cry a little because I cannot comprehend the silence. I stare in the darkness at my palm, at the puckered white ridge where the scar rises eerily like a mountain range on my skin. I press the ridges to my mouth and weep. I cannot understand why I feel so lonely.

My therapist asks how I am feeling, and in clipped tones I tell him the story, running my finger along the scar and thinking of Jezzie. I am alone in that wide office that smells like French polish and old books. My therapist looks tired and he presses my hands sympathetically with his and looks like he wants to cry. His blonde hair is in disarray and his glasses dangle. He looks helpless and not like a grownup, and I want to hug him. I cling to the dark slacks over his legs and his clean shaven face breaks. He does not know what to do with me, and so he simply pats my head and whispers to me stories of aardvarks.

It is finally the summer of 1990 when Mama takes me on that long car ride through the wheat fields, and the dust flies in my hair as her hands grip the wheel, white-knuckled and purposeful. It is our birthday, and I laugh to Jezzie about the way Max's tongue lolls out of his mouth and sprays Papa with strings of putrid saliva, and she is strangely quiet. There are moments during the ride when I swear I am alone in the backseat, but I am reassured when I look over and see Jezzie watching me, silent but holding my hand. Our scars touch.

I busy myself watching sunbaked fields and roads made of dried, knobby mud where snakes like to hide in the cool shadows. We finally reach our destination, and I bound from the car with a sense of oncoming dread as Mama takes my hand and leads me to Jezzie's grave. 1980-1983 are the dates I read, and I do not crumble. I sit and I stare, and I run my fingers along the sun warmed marble where her name and those harrowing dates with only a three year span between them. I am ten years old, but I feel suddenly as though I am one hundred. I do not speak, and I wonder if I will ever speak again. Mama and Papa have a picnic in the grass and Max bounds around, sniffing everything and barking at appropriately interesting finds. There are blueberries in the picnic, and I take them and smash them with my fingers, letting the juice stain my fingers as I cry.

Back in the car, Jezzie is not there, and Max and I sit alone in the backseat. I do not laugh when Max licks Papa's face, and I do not smile when we pass a family of quail rushing into the underbrush. I stare at the dried, sticky juice on my hands and I wish I did not have to cry. The juice is purple, but I wish it was blue. If I were God, I would paint blueberries as blue as the sky on a summer afternoon, and the juice that flowed would be forget-me-not and as opaque as milk. If I held the paintbrush, Jezzie would eat the pale blue fruit beside me and we would sing into the late night in the summer. We would catch fireflies and we would laugh and run, ignoring the thorns in the garden that marred the bottoms of our soft feet and Jezzie would not be in the ground.

"Why do they call them blueberries?" I ask softly, and Mama and Papa exchange a worried glance. "They aren't blue…" Mama and Papa keep looking worried. What I really mean is 'why can't I have my sister?'

But regardless, they have no answers.