Bird bones

My sister was like a wildfire. She burned bright, hot, and all-consuming. She engulfed with her energy – the loud laugh reminiscent of wind chimes that you could hear from two rooms away, her restless body that was always moving – the leg shivering against the table, and the fingers that fidgeted with objects, loose threads, her own fingernails. On her sixteenth birthday my parents bought her a fidget ring with a big opal that spun. After that you didn’t see her without it, the barely audible hum as the stone rotated for the millionth time, the right index finger busy spinning, spinning, spinning.

If my sister was a wildfire, I was a log fire. Careful, contained, and always burning within my limits. Growing up, people were surprised to discover we were sisters. Not that we didn’t look alike with our hair the same shade of brown, and skinny, gangly bodies all knobbly kneed and sun-browned from the beach. But my sister was larger than life, and to strangers, next to her I glowed barely brighter than an ember.

“She must keep you busy,” grownups would laugh to my parents, as my sister was off conversing with strangers, climbing to the top of the monkey bars, or doing an impromptu song and dance in the middle of the park. Their eye would glance over me, meekly trailing after my parents, who were hurrying after Alanna.  “She sure does,” they would reply, “her name means peace. I think we got anything but that!”

Was I jealous? Maybe a little. Sometimes. Often next to her, I would feel awkward and shy. I was awkward and shy, but the difference between us made the contrast more apparent. At times it felt like there was only enough space for one of us, and Alanna took up space for at least two. But the occasional times where I was thrust into the spotlight were unnerving and scary, and afterwards I would gladly retreat to the sidelines and feel grateful for my place there.

My parents were supportive, and aware of our contrasting personalities, and made sure I was not overlooked. They spent one-on-one time with each of us, which I was glad for because sometimes being with Alanna and all her energy made my heartbeat too fast. We each got to spend time with a parent apiece, choosing the activity. My sister chose any, and every stimulating activity – amusement parks, arcades, bowling. I did not know how she could stand the noise and the lights. I preferred board games, the movies, and the library. Some of my favourite memories from childhood were afternoons at the library with Dad, sprawled on beanbags and reading our favourite passages out loud to one another.

So, I was content, living in the sidelines, the cosy nurturing atmosphere of the shadows, where things were quiet and peaceful. And my sister made her home in the spotlight, exploring and bursting through the world in a trail of sparklers. As she grew, our lives, as intertwined with hers, were separated into phases of Alanna’s interests. Her first one was Disney princesses, where for at least six months she refused to wear anything that wasn’t a princess dress. Then there was the Spice Girls, then ballet, then a random fascination with Antarctica. I liked the Antarctica one the best, I liked learning facts about the animals, and the pictures of penguins that coloured the walls of our shared bedroom. For a year she begged our parents to go there, and decided she would become an Antarctic explorer. Until we went skiing that year and she realised she hated being cold. Soon after we returned, I found all the penguin pictures in the bin. With her, it was all or nothing.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact time when she stopped eating. It was the year I was in year 9, and she in year 11, but exactly when I couldn’t tell you. That was the year she got into track. I was busy with school – schoolwork, extracurriculars, and friend dramas, the ones that seem world ending at the time but turn out to be inconsequential. I was in my world, and Alanna in hers. That’s how it had been for years, especially once we were in high school. Our worlds overlapped briefly, at dinner times, on family holidays, and the occasional shopping trip with mum. But mostly, we stayed in our own orbits. Alanna had always been into sports, but for some reason that year she quit volleyball and joined track. I never asked why – things with Alanna could change suddenly without any seemingly logical reason. Track evened her out, she would say. And it did. The nights she came home from training, exhausted, we would be existing at the same energy.

“How was the day girls?” Dad would ask, both of us shovelling food into our mouths at an obscenely fast pace. Alanna because of running, and me because I loved food.

Dad liked to joke we would eat him out of house and home one day, and he would happily trade us in for hungry bears. To this I would fake laugh at him with my mouth open and full of food.

“Worse if we were boys” I’d tell him.

Dad would groan. “I’m trapped in a house full of women! Even the dog!” And we would look at Millie, curled up at our feet, looking back at us, ears pulled back.

If it wasn’t a training day, Alanna would be off talking at a million miles, about school, track, the school dance, anything that had happened to her that day, or would be happening soon. I’d listen in, eating and nodding and thinking. If it was a training day, Alanna would talk slower, say less, and I would say more. I should have noticed when this became more frequent. But like I said, I was busy in my own world, and we had not existed in the same orbit for a long time. I was not looking out for evidence against the norm. I had just joined an after-school robotics club, and I relished the opportunity to talk at dinner about it to Dad. He said he was proud of me – he was an electrical engineer.

I guess it happened so slowly, and it was all wrapped up within Alanna track phase that you couldn’t separate one thread from the next. She was doing well at running, and winning medals at track meets. I wasn’t surprised. Whatever Alanna threw herself into, she did it with such a one minded fervour that it always seemed to work out for her in the end. Even for track, which she had only started that year. But while a regular kid would go to practise a few times a week and leave it at that, Alanna of course took a step further, and would be out running every day of the week – rain, or shine. She also started missing some dinners, texting that she was doing extra at training, and she would be back later. And when she was home for dinner, she would eat, but it probably wasn’t all that much considering how much she was running.

Mum got a call one afternoon that Alanna was in hospital. She had collapsed during practise, and they wanted to hold her overnight. We went in to see her, and I was shocked at how she looked in the hospital bed. Pale skin and bird bones. Parallel limbs and sharp edges. Hollowed eyes and empty collarbones. “Hey,” she said, “it’s really nothing. They’re overreacting.” She smiled, and the skin seemed to stretch reluctantly across her cheeks.

 I stayed with her, as mum and dad had a meeting with a doctor, that went on for a whole two episodes of the Simpsons playing from her little box television. We didn’t say much, mostly kept quiet and listened to the jokes that drifted over our heads into outer space. The air felt heavy with the revelation of something that I knew, but didn’t know, that sat like a black cat outside my bedroom in the hallway between my room and Alanna’s. The black cat that walked from the fridge to the bathroom to the new set of scales that appeared one day in our shared bathroom. From the dinner table, to the too many words that came out of my mouth, and the not enough words that came from hers. To the opal ring that she now wore on her index finger because it was too loose for her third finger. Her fragile hand that rested on the white of the hospital bed, close to mine, but also far, with the silence that held the remains of the audible hum of a ring that used to spin, spin, spin, but now sat still, still, still.