I hear the soft, quick, pit-pat of Marlowe’s feet coming down the stairs. I always know when it is her sound, even though hers is the quietest of all of us. Sometimes I think to myself that she belongs to the air and not the earth.
I ask Louis if he will give me some time alone with my sister. The love of her heart, Oliver, is coming soon and I am very excited about this but I want to be with her by myself before I have to share her.
Louis says, ‘Okay,’ and he kisses me on the forehead and tells me he will go to the kitchen and help everyone cook dinner. I know this means that he will be tasting all the food and get full in his stomach before the meal is put onto the table.
Marlowe comes around to the side of my bed and takes my hand. She is wearing a blue jumper, the kind of blue that lives inside a jewel and swims deep deep deep. The kind of blue that matches her eyes. She has always been the most beautiful woman I have ever known with her pearl rice skin, marble eyes and long, coffee-coloured hair, and the way she moves quietly, easily… the word is graceful. And when she smiles, her hum spreads out from her gentle heart and fills the room. Even though I love my body and its brokenness, and I think I am also a beautiful woman because I love my eyes and my hair and my skin, I have never glowed as brightly as she does. The sad thing in my heart is that I know my Marlowe will never see herself the way I do.
The grandfather sun has sunk into the ocean, and the night has taken over our day. It is just me and my Marlowe left in the living room. Samantha, Uncle Bĭng Wén and Michael have left us alone.
‘Want to watch the National Geographic channel together?’ she suggests. ‘We could learn something useful. There’s a good program on the melting of ice caps in Alaska and its effect on the natural habitat.’ She likes those two words very much: natural habitat. If I did not feel so tired, I would look them up in a dictionary, but for now I find them a bit boring so I have to shake my head.
‘No, thank you.’ A bit of my hair is loose over my face and she brushes it away. Her palms brush the top of my head in a way that makes my body feel safe and calm. Then I have a bright thought. Beside me on the bedside table is a wedding magazine. I turn the pages and show Marlowe a lovely photo of a woman in a fluffy dress. Her hair is done in a low French braid bun. A very special low French braid bun.
‘Can you do my hair like this?’
She nods and smiles. She has always been good at braiding because this is something that she learned from our mum who used to do her hair every morning before school. I remember when I was old enough to have my hair braided, Mum would ask Marlowe to do it. She stood next to her and watched. If she did something wrong, Mum would tell her, and if she did something right, she would also tell her. Mum did that with a lot of things before she left, showing Marlowe what she needed to know.
She begins to move her fingers through my hair: over and under, over and under.
‘What a nice feeling.’
Warmth comes into my body from her fingertips. I close my eyes and can see the face of Mum smiling with dots on each cheek. These are called dimples. Over and under, over and under… I can hear her voice. That’s it, be gentle, don’t pull too tight.
There is a rhythm Marlowe uses, like the da dum da dum of my heart when it was not broken.
Over and under, over and under.
And the warmth again, all over my body.
Mum, I say in my heart, see how she is taking care of me? See how she is doing all right?
In my mind, it is as if I go through moving photos of Marlowe over the years. The young Marlowe had more energy and spirit. She would buzz around the place like one of her insects. As she got older, the feeling of her changed: like the bark of a tree, her outer skin is now a little rough. I think to myself that she is not like Louis; you cannot tell what she is feeling unless you know her, unless you are like me and can understand what she wants to say but won’t let herself. To a stranger I think she might seem a bit hard to figure out. But she isn’t. She’s quite simple really.