The Five Fights With My Sister

By Kim Ukura

1. The Bitch, ages 7 and 9

My younger sister and I were stuck at home. The threat of drizzles and squabbles saturated the air. We’d been playing together most of the day, but by afternoon it’s hard to entertain yourselves anymore. I started baiting her about a purse she stole from me. Not that I wanted it back. I walked away, but she followed me up and down the stairs, through the kitchen and the living room and the hallway while she yelled that I didn’t even use that purse anyway so why shouldn’t she get to use it.

I walked out the front door and shoved it closed behind me. As I walked away, I noticed our neighbors out playing catch and shooting basketballs. I heard the door open. She screamed “BITCH!!!” then slammed the door and clicked the lock. I heard the basketball bounce down the driveway. I ran for our back door, but she must have guessed my plan and managed to lock that one too. That little bitch.

2. The Slap, ages 10 and 12

We were getting ready for school. I didn’t have my lunch, and I was running late for the bus. She started asking me incessant questions — What are you doing today? What’s for lunch? Can I borrow your scarf? — until I just couldn’t listen anymore. I walked to where she was standing by her backpack, and I slapped her across the face, fingers flat out to get the maximum impact. I got a briefly satisfied feeling when I heard the thwacking noise of my palm hitting her chubby cheek, but that only lasted until the echo left the kitchen and tears filled her big blue eyes. Then there was the guilt. What kind of big sister does that?

3. The Hip, ages 12 and 14

We were at an end of the summer BBQ hosted by family friends. Three months before, my sister managed to break her hip in a freak accident, throwing the entire summer into disarray. Instead of biking or traveling, we’d gone on excruciatingly long family walks — four of us mobile and my sister plodding along on crutches.

But now it was August, the week before I’d be going back to middle school, and she’d be joining me there. With friends around and pools to swim in, I did not need my broken sister ruining the last day of freedom. I spent my time racing for octopus-shaped diving bells and cannonballing off the board while she sat in a lawn chair with the journal she’d been melodramatically scribbling in and refusing to let me read for months. After the sun went down, my mom finally let her put her feet in the water, but by then I’d moved on to ping pong in the garage. She got out of the pool and crutched her way to find me, but I ran away while she balanced under the fluorescent light outside, alone.

4. The Shoes, ages 13 and 15

We were at Payless looking for our annual pair of back-to-school shoes. My mom was worn out from a day of watching me try on seven different nearly identical white dress shirts and a princess-sized pile of jeans, so she took a seat at the end of two aisles and said to model what we found. I couldn’t see my sister on the other side of the shelves, but I could hear her pulling shoes out of boxes with rustling tissue paper. I wandered my aisle until I saw the perfect pair of clean white sneakers with embroidered red cherries and sparkly striped shoelaces. I grabbed them off the shelf, jammed them on my feet, and ran down to show Mom.

I turned the corner at the exact same moment as my sister, who was practically bouncing up and down in the exact same pair of shoes. I was actually OK with this — normally I’d freak out about her copying me, but these shoes were cute and she looked excited. Before I could say anything, Mom announced that since we didn’t go to school together this year, we would never have to be seen together and that having the same pair of shoes would be OK. We shrugged, agreed, and walked up to the line to pay together.

5. The Elevator, ages 18 and 20

We were standing outside an elevator with a group of friends after midnight on a day that had started before 6 a.m. She was hyper and yapping in the same high-pitched tone as a small puppy that she always uses when she’s overly tired, while I just wanted to pass out on my bed. She started asking me about plans for the next day, and I lost it. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” I snarled, in a tone I thought was right in the middle of annoyed and joking.

To her credit, she didn’t lose it until we got back to our hotel room where she screamed at me for making her look like “just Kim’s stupid little sister again.” This was the first time she’d ever yelled about just how hard being that little sister had always been and how difficult I’d made it for her. She went to bed without speaking to me and was up and gone before I awoke the next morning. Our most epic fight devolved into three days of total silence — a Cold War-style showdown despite sharing a hotel room and the same small group of friends.

On our way home Mom separately reminded both of us that this fight would pass because it was the same fight we’ve always had when my sister joins me in a new place. Elementary school, middle school, high school, and college — every first year together we snark at each other, constantly, because I’ve finally figured out what I’m doing while she looks to me for guidance and simultaneously struggles to make her way in a place I’ve already left a mark. But eventually there’s a moment when we realize we don’t have to do that anymore, the fights fade away, and we go back to being best friends. And Mom was right; after a full night’s sleep and a tentative truce over Cheerios and Top Chef, we let this fight go too.

Tags: Cheerios, fight, Payless, shoes, sisters, slap, summer, swimming, Top Chef

Category: Issue 1