The One Way Mirror

TW: sexual abuse, trauma, maladaptive sexual behaviours

“I know why I am like this you know”.

Max couldn’t raise her eyes to meet Rosie’s, but rather continued to stare at her pillow, as if she wasn’t tethered to her body at all. At least, she wished she wasn’t. The bricks of shame and ego seem far too heavy for her petite frame to continue to lug around anymore. She knows what people think and say. She knows that none of it would worry her if they weren’t right. The way she throws herself into hedonism, no elements of healthy experimentation accompanying her. If anything, the experimentation is long over and Max knows exactly what’s to come. A blissful moment of forgetting the ugly disgrace she is, and a boy to tell her that her external appearance radiates the polar opposite. Can someone really be used or abused if that’s what they want? Max would think to herself. Of course the question of why she desires this form of domination has been put aside, a small bookmark in a chapter she is not ready to open. But tonight, Rosie’s anger reflected the humiliation Max felt about herself, and with it came the answers Max wasn’t ready to hear.

#

The familiar scrape of the old timber windows announces itself, as Rosie lay on a mattress that leaves her toes hanging over the end, baiting villains of childhood tales. Not that she could ever complain and take the queen sized luxury bedding off of her 16-year-old sister. The voice of Rosie’s mother began to resound within her head, “Max is the youngest. She needs to be taken care of. She didn’t have the life we had with your Father, Rose.” Well it’s lucky she didn’t, Rosie always thought to reply, before feeling a deep sympathy for her Mother’s longing for the archetypal, nuclear family, toxicity and all. And yet, the familiar timber scrape can only belong to that of Max’s window across the hall, where, inevitably, she is running off to another midnight escapade. Wearing the uniform of any self-respecting young lady; a small bandeau crop top that pushes her non-existent boobs into small mounds below her neck, black skinny jeans, and her fluffy pink robe, in the off chance their Mother sees her and she can feign innocence, even with a face covered in foundation three shades darker than her skin tone.

It’s not that Rosie wishes to shame the sexual activity of her younger sister. In fact, just last week she had told Lachlan Hortcliffe that she would gladly let the police know he was distributing child pornography after hearing rumours that he had clandestinely filmed Katie Barracks giving him a hand job. Women should be able to explore their historically oppressed sexuality as they please, least of all her own sister.

Rather, it is something about the way Max goes about it. Running off into the night, making her escape so blaringly obvious, she may as well be slapping two cast iron pots together and setting fire to the hallway. She always comes back at 5am with smudged mascara, raccoon eyes, and settles into Rosie’s room, waiting for her wake up in awe of Max’s popular nightlife.

However, it isn’t that she is jealous either. Yes, Max is more conventionally attractive than her, everyone talks about the tan skin, and the almond eyes that she can manipulate in such specific ways to show her interest. The way she dares to do anything and how all the boys in Rosie’s year call her a ‘sprouter’, as if it’s cool to chase pre-pubescent girls, and not indicative of the fact they can’t seem to land anyone their own age. But none of this has ever seemed to worry her. So no, this story is not the old trope of the race between two women, chasing the small wooden bunny of male validation. In fact, Rosie isn’t even sure that’s her cup of tea. The last time she was turned on was watching a scene with Zoe Kravitz, fascinated by the curvatures of her figure and the small freckles detailing her nose.

Then why, one may ask, is Rosie’s fair, freckly skin flushed, knuckles white, clenching the doona around her? It is a question Rosie herself struggles to answer. Perhaps it’s because Rosie cares for Max and her safety. Would Max even understand she is being taken advantage of? Or would she come back bragging about it, another award under her belt. Maybe it’s the way Max recites the tales, a huge drunken smile on her face, as she feigns embarrassment explaining how she forgot to use a condom during her rendez-vous with an 18 year-old rugby player. Or, maybe, it comes back to the time she placed her small hands on her older sister’s knee and asked if she needed any advice for giving head for the first time. Okay, yes, that really got under her skin. But even so, if any of these were the true impetus for Rosie’s rage, she could have quite easily let their Mother know, and the days of favouring the fun, vivacious Maxine would be over. Yet Rosie had no intention to do this, because the real reason was none of these things. The real reason lied in the infuriating transparency of it all. The way Rosie could see Max’s behaviour, not as cool or daring or wild, the way Max’s younger friends viewed it, but as a mere lack of self preservation. Or worse, the male gaze so deeply entrenched in this young woman, that any of her own needs are perfunctorily overlooked. It was the mask of a one-way mirror. One that Rosie could see so clearly through, but Max sat behind, staring back at herself and seeing the projection of everything she has been told to be, and a successful version at that.

Max stumbles in through the back door, realising how little she fusses over whether this wakes her Mother. Perhaps to some degree Max even wants that. Or, is more so curious. Wonders what it would be like to break the bubble of fantasy land that surrounds her Mum, where Rosie is the intelligent one, and Max, with the charisma and harmless bit of cheek that provides a fun edge to any well rounded individual. Rosie likes to claim Max has pulled the wool over their Mother’s eyes, but, on the contrary, Max sees it as a dense woollen blanket she desperately tries to rip through, to tell her Mother she’s struggling, but her Mother refuses to see. Max raises her hand to her forehead acknowledging that these thoughts are far too sombre for her drunken state and will send the night into melodramatic tears. Quickly she grabs a tall glass of water, the remainder of the tequila, and heads down the hall, envisioning her grand entrance into her sister’s room.

“ROOOOSSIIEEE” she sings in a baritone as she swings open the door and allows her gleeful, intoxicated smile to illuminate the faces before her.

Rosie is sitting on the floor with Oscar, their neighbour and Rosie’s childhood best friend.

“Hiya Maxie” says Oscar with the awkward hug as he feigns effort to stand.

“Max be quiet. It’s midnight and Mum has work tomorrow”, Rosie hisses crossly.

Oscar has insomnia and often pops around at unexpected hours throughout the night, relying on Rosie’s kind hearted nature to entertain him until it’s late enough in the morning to go for a walk. It’s how he got his nickname – ‘possum’.

“Hiya Poss, hiya sis” Max retorts.

Max assumes a seat beside the cluedo board on the floor, and stares around the room, slightly bored now that the climax of her greeting is behind them. Perhaps it is this very reason that Oscar’s face becomes somewhat charming. Max finds herself looking at the thin hairs protruding over his upper lip, and feels like she sees him for the first time. Now, his interest in the game is borderline annoying, and Max can feel herself thirst for recognition. She’s seen the way he greets her with eye contact that lingers a fraction too long. She’s never heard him say anything to Rosie, but if anything that makes the attention more special. He isn’t the type to comment on just any attractive girl, there must be an element of individuality to his attraction to her. He’s a challenge, and this inherently adds extra points to his attention. Max takes another few swigs of the bottle and feels the warm, familiar feeling of losing control. The end point that she finds herself in search of anytime she indulges in a mind altering substance. It is never enough to be drunk, stoned, or high. Max needs to lose all conceptualisation of who Max is or what world Max comes from, before even beginning to satiate that insistent little void that niggles away inside her.

“MAX! GET OUT NOW!”.

Max looks up to see Rosie’s furious face standing over her, as she sobers up and realises she’s found a comfortable seat in Oscar’s lap.

Oscar’s stare is burnt into the back of Rosie’s retina. The pained, wide eyes, as he pleaded with Rosie to do something about the incorrigible, nymphomaniac seated between his legs and his pelvis. Rosie feels her face hot and her throat hoarse post the verbal eruption. Her eyes are burning with tears of rage, and her insides are cringing up into a tight aluminium ball, dense and heavy. It is the humiliation and shame of how her younger sister throws herself at any boy, desperate for validation. She doesn’t even want the end result, the sex, the boyfriend, the relationship, she just wants to be told she’s pretty before moving on to the next one. They were both raised as feminists, under a single Mother, learning to become their own well rounded individuals who seek not to rely on the patriarchy, but to uproot it. It oozes hypocrisy into these core beliefs, when her own sister is the very girl people pity and write off as the superficial, pretty, party girl, that peaks in high school. A participant in their own oppression. A sell-out to their shared experiences. So caught in her own thoughts, Rosie fails to notice Oscar’s departure. She does, however, hear small, intermittent sobs coming from the next room. At first the sound is too unfamiliar to distinguish. Max wouldn’t conceive an action so juxtaposed to her fun, bubbly personality. But sure enough, as Rosie opens the door, Max is sat on her bed starring at the pillow in her lap with fresh, glistening tear tracks carved throughout her cheeks.

“I know why I am like this you know”, Max says to her knees. “I can remember what he did to me”.

Suddenly, every sentiment of embarrassment and anger dissipated, as if they had never been there at all. What replaced them was far less preferable. Huge waves of guilt flooded throughout Rosie, and the aluminium ball had shifted up towards her throat, as she tried to choke it back.

“Max, I – ”

Max looked up, and it was this action that stole Rosie’s words. Max no longer wore the mask of the daring, boisterous maverick. Instead her glassy eyes were filled with the fear and shame of a small child trying to understand a trauma that no one ever could. And here this child was, looking to Rosie. Rosie, her older sister who was meant to protect her on those custody trips. A memory buried so deep down, underneath a thick blanket of guilt, that had been too painful to uncover. She wished it had been her instead, but she was too old and too wise for her Father to manipulate, even at age 11. Fun, vivacious Maxine, desperate for the love of her parent, was as malleable as fresh clay. To think for a second that she had been enraged at this poor, young girl, living a fate she was destined to, made the pit of her stomach roll over. Yet with the guilt and anguish, came something new. A force that released the tight ball in her throat and allowed her to sob starring at the small almond eyes before her. For the first time Max was looking straight at her, the mirror had at last become glass in which both sisters could see through.