New York or Bust

Hello. I’m back. Hope you missed me.

So, next Tuesday and Wednesday I will be venturing to the culture Mecca that is New York City. Yes, I will be skipping school, but it is not because I have a dire need to refill my shoe closet with Louboutin pumps. Instead, I will be attending the award ceremony for the Scholastic Art and Writing Contest.

To give you a little background on this contest, it is sponsored by Scholastic and receives submissions of, you guessed it, art and writing from teens across the country. This year, Scholastic received 180,000 submissions, and 1,500 were chosen to receive national medals. I won a national medal and am invited to attend the award ceremony at Carnegie Hall. I know, very exciting.

The ceremony is on Tuesday night, and I, my mother, and my grandmother will be taking the train in that morning. Before the ceremony, we will traverse down 5th Avenue , sit by the boats in Central Park, and meander down to Soho for some eclectic shopping. No, that is not an exact schedule; it is instead what I would do were I given a day to do whatever I wanted in NYC. I am not given days like that often.

The next day, on Wednesday, I will get to attend different workshops and Scholastic sponsored tours that I signed up for. The first one is “Fashion Talk” where a panel of people in the industry will sit, talk about fashion, and answer any questions that the teens might have. After the fashion panel and a light lunch (maybe Pinkberry? The best thing ever invented?) I will go on a tour of, wait for it … Teen Vogue! Yes, you heard it here. I, Caitlin, will get to tour the offices of fashion geniuses and (hopefully) the closets brimming with exclusive Chloe and Marc Jacobs and Lanvin and Alexander Wang and McQueen and … OK, I’m obviously very excited.

So that is what I am looking forward to and what is helping me get through basically the last five-day week of school before finals and all that not-so-fun stuff.

Instead of continuing the story that I started in the last post, I decided to post my winning entry to Scholastics. Enjoy!

Sister

When I was five and you were not, I sometimes asked you about being Older. I would sit hugging my Barbies close to my chest that would not grow as you told me about these things called Sex and Love and Hurt. Hurt sounded scary and Sex sounded strange, but Love sounded like the most painful of all. Like a balloon inflating in your chest until your heart has nowhere to go but up. In my Barbie playhouse that was pink and glittery and made you throw up a little every time you came in, you taught me about how five is a nice number and how Older is not.

I grabbed your fingers when my hand couldn’t fit around your calloused palm and pulled you near because I wanted to understand you. I didn’t understand you. I put my heart to your chest and you pulled away because you didn’t like it when people touched you like that. Uncomfortable was the word you used when I wanted to sit on your lap, on your legs that were so much more than mine could ever be. More. You laughed at that. But I wish I were less.

You smelled of something heavy when I came in your room. You blew that heavy into my eyes so that they would tear and I would look away from you. Painful was what you called it when someone looked at you for too long. But I loved to look at you and imagine what it would be like to be beautiful. Beauty was, after all, having enough to hug, but not too much to drown.

Sometimes I felt like you were drowning in yourself. I didn’t know what that meant, how someone could sink so deep inside that only a few pinpricks of light remained. Mom said it was just a phase and you said she was a female dog. I never understood why you called her a female dog. Because she deserves it. I never thought to question that, since you always knew everyone’s secret. You knew about Dad and Emily, and how hard falling apart could be.

After that I wanted to drown with you. I envied the way you could turn it all off and just stare at ceilings. I tried to stare at ceilings, but there were faces up there that always stared back. The ones you can’t ever forgive. I wanted to forgive them, so you called me weak. You yelled weak and stupid across the room until I felt a hole between us. I was scared then, scared when you took my Barbies I hadn’t yet outgrown and watched you cut off their hair. Just like tears falling.

I had to tell. Their hair was on my floor and on your hands that I didn’t want to hold. Mom held me like you never did, and her breath wasn’t cloying as she kissed the holes away. I saw you in the window then, a rock and a lighter in hand, but I forgot that I was supposed to scream. You didn’t look Older then. Instead, I did.

Mom still said it was just a phase. She paced and wrung her hands out until they were steady enough to hold a phone. Soon after I head His car in the driveway, and I knew that you did too. He yelled and pounded, but you never did open the door for Him. Soon they were both screaming, but not at each other. I wish you could have seen how beautiful it was.

Then they left you. I remember how they both left you behind that door. She’ll come out for dinner. You hated dinner, hated the way it made your stomach hurt, made it become distorted. I told Mom that, but she just went downstairs to wash the bathroom and make pasta. I heard the pots falling from the cabinets and wondered if Mom knew your secret too.

I remember you told me the secret that night it was raining and your guard was down. Someone had called you ugly and suddenly your hurt started to leak out your mouth and onto the floor. It’s how I deal, was you excuse when I tried to understand it all. After, I watched your stained fingernails dig into the pillow. I wasn’t sure who was going to explode first. You’re exploding now. I can hear it from outside your door. I want to open it, run inside and calm whatever fire you’ve started, but the door’s locked. I guess its always been locked, I’ve just never tried to open it. 

Mom’s on the phone again and the fire alarm is going off because she forgot about the pasta. You made her forget about the pasta. I want to strangle you because I can hear the way Mom’s voice can’t seem to get the words out. She’s saying words like starving and mental and help, but all I hear is love. I hope you can hear it too. I’ve been screaming it for the past month, but you won’t listen to it. Misunderstood is what you said when I tried to reason with you, but I wanted to understand you. I still want to understand you.

I just want to tell you again how much I love you.