The Sister Knot by Terri Apter

Author:Terri Apter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

RESCUING A SISTER

MANY SISTERS, HOWEVER, imagine that they would like the opportunity to offer a life gift to a sister. Pride in protecting a sister was a common reference, and some women recalled elaborate childhood games in which they vied for the role of rescuer. Jessica remembers that she often got into trouble with her parents for trying to enact her protection fantasies. “When we were kids, I set up games where they’d be in trouble; I had to be a firefighter or surgeon or policeman. I made a harness for lowering my baby sister from her bedroom window to the yard. When my mother saw what I was doing she started screaming, ‘What are you doing? Are you trying to kill her?! You’re trying to kill her!’ She was in such a fury that she threw the hairbrush at me and cut my cheek.

“I kept the harness. I found it when I was clearing out my room during college, and I thought, ‘This isn’t bad.’ It followed all the rules about knots and stresses, and the rope was really strong. I was so relieved, because my mother’s reactions slammed those games into the ground. She acted like I was really trying to kill my sister. But when I got out that harness and gave it a good look over, I thought, ‘No, I wasn’t trying to kill Adi. I just really liked the idea of saving her.’ ”

When the dramatic games were brought to a halt, Jessica turned to storytelling. She wove together tales of adventure and danger, with the three sisters as the main actors, but she, invariably, gave herself the role of rescuer. The stories were sometimes written down, and sometimes simply spoken. The plots became more and more elaborate. “It was something I looked forward to, the chance to engage in my private movie theater. I had fantasies of saving my sisters from an earthquake or flood. I worked on the stories at night, before I went to sleep. I went through them in my mind on the long ride to school. Oh, it’s all coming back to me now! The scenarios were cheesy, but they were so lovely! My favorite was dragging my sister just in time from a collapsing gateway.

“I was twelve when that quake hit Pasadena and a woman was killed near UCLA by falling cement. I wanted to be in that situation with my sisters so that I would be able to show how I could save them. The best scene that I made up and then kept playing over in my mind, was when I got this amazed look from my mother, who realized that she’d never properly appreciated me before, but that was really an afterthought. Her admiration was just a perk, though; the main thing was imagining how I’d feel when my strong arm tugged my sisters to safety. Doing something like that would be wonderful. Like having a success so clear I’d never again have to wonder whether I was really worth anything.

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