KISS AND MAKE UP

“Kiss and make up,” my mother says as she shoves me towards my sister. Her hand flat on the center of my back is covered with needles. They penetrate my t-shirt like the minuscule spines on an innocent looking cactus. My sister stands across the room, a tiny smirk betraying her triumph. I shout, I snarl, I cry in defeat.

“Why me? It’s not my fault. I hate her!” My mother will not hear my words. She won’t look directly into my face. She won’t see the darkening bruise on the outside of my thigh where my sister jabbed me with her fork at dinner. There are tiny matching spots of darkness down the top of my right arm where she has cruelly pinched me whenever she got a chance in the last two days.

I don’t even try to show my mother these. Each one is painful. But not as painful as the look on my sister’s face as her fingers twist and squeeze. Or my mother’s deliberate ignorance.

“Go on,” my mother waves her hands at us.

My sister takes one step towards me and clutches my bony shoulders in her hands. She bends down and plants a wet kiss on my forehead. It burns. I can feel it etched there in acid, though I don’t know what acid is. She looks over my head and smiles sweetly into my mother’s face.

“Good girls.” My mother has turned and is half way out the door.

My sister ducks her head and catches some of my hair in her teeth. She throws her head back and rips out a few strands. They hang from her mouth like shredded skin from a dragon’s teeth.

And then she grins.