The youngest to do it in the family, I think.”
For the first time since our fight, I exchanged glances with Mariya. We were both younger than eleven, I thought—this year, perhaps, we
would set the record.
Mariya was quick to forget my winter break outburst. If anything,
she grew warmer towards me, returning to the seat beside me on the
school bus, planting a kiss on my head on the blacktop before returning
to her new, whiter, older friends. “That’s my little sister,” she would tell
them, insisting they wave in my direction. Bashfully, I waved back.
At home, Mariya began brushing my hair, plucking away at the
fuzz above my lip with her own fingernails. Sometimes, Mariya took my
mother’s untouched pot of Fair and Lovely—skin bleach, I later discovered—and smoothed it over my face.
“You’ll be so pretty one day, Aisha,” she said, “The prettiest sister
anyone ever had.”
Mariya began helping me with homework, guiding me through
my reading and math even when I didn’t ask for it, didn’t need it. Once in
the morning, when we readied ourselves for school together, she snatched
the toothbrush from my hands and squeezed an inch of toothpaste onto
it for me.
“I’m your big sister,” she said to my protests,