My Sister's Closet

My Sister's Closet

Click-whirr. I took secret pictures with the Polaroid camera I had received for making the honor rolI. I didn't take the kind of pictures one typically thinks of when they hear the term secret pictures. I took pictures of myself dressed up in the color pink I had purloined from my sister's closet. I pretended outwardly to hate the color pink though I really liked it. I was the type of kid that went to the complete opposite end of the spectrum when told I had to conform to expected societal norms and live inside of a demographic box that had been constructed for me. Pink and lavender were the preferred colors for girls and dolls, particularly Barbie dolls, were the preferred toys. My parents never made me play with traditional girls' toys growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s but I saw their reluctance through uncomfortable facial expressions or tense body language when I'd choose a softball mitt or soccer ball. I also heard and saw that ideology reinforced all around me. Especially by my sister. She would look at me with open disdain when I would turn on my battery powered toy cars or trucks and kick them over as they bumped across the carpet in her general direction. In retaliation I would line up her Barbie dolls in a row on the railing of the back deck and throw my football from the shadow of the porch overhang to knock them off one by one. My spiral was wobbly at best, so most attempts had to be repeated three or four times, but it was perversely satisfying when an arm or leg went flying away from the torso. I'd gather up the Barbie pieces from the ground afterwards and haphazardly reassemble them. My sister would rage, appropriately accuse me of doll malfeasance, and demand our parents punish me. I would innocently roll a big wheeled truck back and forth across the palm of my hand and look mystified as to how her Barbies had ended up scuffed and grass stained. 

"Maybe you're not as girly and delicate as you think and are just a little too heavy handed with them," I suggested with the appearance of helpfulness but the intent of insincerity. 

I didn't want to be girly and delicate, but I did want to enjoy things girls typically enjoyed, just in moderation instead of being made to feel as if it wereg my predetermined choice.

As I got older, I continued in secret the activities that were considered feminine in the late 80s and early 90s but outwardly adopted what was considered then a more masculine style. I wore football and basketball jerseys over jeans or cargo pants along with flip flops and complimented my outfit with a trucker hat, but would paint my fingernails pink or lavender or sneak into a salon for a pedicure and take a Polaroid. I would remove the fingernail polish and don a pair of socks before my family got home. Bedtime was my favorite time of day when I would put on my pink or lavender pajama set with floral or animal patterns, admire the French tips on my toenails, and page through my photo album. 

I continued to intentionally be the bane of my sister's existence. She tried to avoid bringing people she knew over to the house when she thought I would be there. I actively looked for opportunities to pop up when least expected to embarrass her in front of her friends. One of my proudest moments was when she ran away screaming and hid in the freezer when I showed up at the fast food restaurant where she was working the counter. I was dressed in my full lacrosse outfit including stick, pulled out my mouthguard, dripping with saliva, and laid it on the tray she had slapped in front of me right between the milkshake and an order of slightly over-cooked onion rings. I sat down at a table that gave me a clear view of the kitchen area and watched with interest as her coworkers unsuccessfully tried to lure her out of the freezer. She later blamed me for the mild case of frostbite she sustained to her fingertips. 

My sister obsessed over how her clothes disappeared for a few days (when I borrowed an outfit or two) and then reappeared in the same place she'd been searching for them. 

"I don't understand," she'd say, touching an outfit in disbelief, "I know this wasn't there the last five times I looked." 

"I think it was," I'd disagree just to discombobulate her further, "I've seen it every time I passed by your door. You know how revolting I find your clothing." 

She'd look at me with a combination of suspicion and loathing. I'd smile conspiratorially.

My sister had always fancied herself a big city sort of girl. We had lived in New York with our parents when we were young before moving to the Southeastern Region of the United States. I remember when we first moved, due to the extreme difference between the activities available for children in New York City and its surrounding boroughs and activities available in tiny city where we now lived, I asked our parents if they were intentionally trying to punish us. Mom explained that Dad had received a job transfer so that's how we ended up where we were. It was poor consolation but I eventually settled into the small city routine, sports or after school clubs during the week and the movies or roller skating on the weekends. 

My sister never really accepted our new lifestyle, she just tolerated it, and sneered at us how one day she would be a famous fashion designer and might on occasion send us an outfit or two that one of her famous clients had rejected. 

The day after she turned eighteen, she purchased a plane ticket and got a friend to drive her to the airport. She'd been making arrangements to go back and live with some cousins we had in the borrough of Queens over the past ten years since we'd first moved when she was eight years old.

I didn't feel sad when she left, just a little nonplussed, as if a piece of furniture that had always been in the room had suddenly gone missing. That feeling vanished quickly and without my sister's disapproving influence permeating throughout the house, little by little I let myself be the person I had been hiding but, on my own terms instead of someone else's. 

My parents were pleased, but as usual, they weren't overt about their feelings but slightly smiled instead of slightly frowning with my dress and grooming choices. 

My sister never became the famous fashion designer she had intended to become, she never even made it into design school. Too little studying and too much partying had derailed her career plans.

Twenty years later she had moved back to our small city into my parents home out of necessity. She had little means of support for herself and her five children and had expressed she was tired of, "Just making ends not even meet, but just wave at each other."

I had chosen the nursing profession out of high school, was working as an RN, and had saved up enough money to purchase my own home. I had tasteful pink and lavender accents throughout my home and enjoyed finding new and inexpensive ways to decorate. I also worked the toys and sports equipment from my youth into the decor scheme. In the bedroom I had converted into an entertainment room, I had my big wheeled cars and trucks on one shelf and action figures in another. Two of my old lacrosse sticks were decoration on one side of the room, with the infamous mouthguard positioned between the two crossed sticks. All of my sister's old Barbie dolls she had left behind were decoration on the other side of the room in wooden wall boxes I had made from scrap lumber, then painted, you guessed it, varying shades of pink.

I couldn't find film for the Polaroid camera anymore but I couldn't bear to part with it having been a big part of my journey to self discovery. It had its own wall box of honor near the Barbie collection. My new picture taking equipment consisted of a more modern Canon camera. I took snaps of my entertainment room to add to my photo album collection. 

One weekend evening soon after my sister moved back home I went over to my parents for family dinner and brought my old photo album with pictures I'd saved from childhood and young adulthood when I had hidden my femininity up until the present where I had it on full display, on my own terms, instead of feeling as if it were something forced upon me.

My parents answered the door with a look of mild disapproval. It wasn't directed towards me rather a teenaged girl I presumed was one of the nieces I'd never met who was involved in passionately kissing one of the teenaged neighbor boys. They were seated in the middle of the short stairway that led up to the front door and were too preoccupied with each other to notice me, so I sidled up against the bannister past them and made my way through the entrance.

My sister gasped at my appearance when I stepped into the living room, then was silent for a full thirty seconds not having seen me for two decades. 

"You look…you look…" she couldn't finish the sentence. 

"Like I love pink?" I suggested.

"Yes! When did this happen?" she asked in disbelief as her toddler gnawed on the armrest of the sofa. 

I plopped the photo album onto her lap with a mischievous grin. The toddler paused in mid-gnaw and looked over in our direction with interest. My parents looked mildly disapprovingly at both their grandchild and their moist sofa.

"You might find this hard to believe," I told my sister, "but it started in your clothes closet."