A Tattoo of the Heart

When I was in the fourth grade, I got a tattoo – compliments of my little sister, Gail.

This is not Mickey Mouse on my ankle peeping out of the top of my sock or Cinderella dancing gracefully across my plump little thigh.  It is not a romantic little heart or a pretty pink rose.  My tattoo is the lead point of a No. 2 pencil jammed right into my forearm.   Over the years, the mark has gradually faded from a perfectly round black circle underneath my skin to a nice, gray, weathered look.  Matches my nice, weathered skin very well.

My sister branded me a bully very early on, after experiencing many frustrating episodes at the hands of her big sister.  Most days, I got away with my antics pretty easily.  This particular day, she just plain got lucky.

As a first grader, my sister was very small for her age.  As a fourth grader, I was huge.  She was fair, blond, and quiet with eyes the color of a creamy caramel candy.  I was dark, brunette, and loud with eyes the color of a stick of licorice. We were from the same batch, but we were very different cookies.

“Gail has a boyfriend,” I whispered to my mother one fall morning in 1966 as she pulled our 1964 Dodge Dart over to the curb to let us out at Senatobia Elementary School in our small hometown in Mississippi. 

“I do not!”  Gail cried.  “I hate boys!”

Ah, I got her!  I started singing the song I had written in my evil little mind the night before as Gail lay snoring lightly in the bed next to me in the room that we shared. When kids don’t have Wii’s or PlayStations or Nick at Night, they have very creative minds.  I was forever coming up creative and extravagant schemes to aggravate my siblings.

 “Johnny and Gail were lovers!  Johnny told Gail not to cry, his love for her would never die!” I sang at the top of my voice.

My plan was to sing that little ditty as loudly as possible and then made a run for it.  I would jump out of the car and off I’d go, laughing, leaving my sister behind to huff and puff her way into the elementary school.  I had practiced it in my head the night before.

Little did I know that she had asked my mother to sharpen her pencil that morning, right before we left the house.   We always packed our book satchels the night before and left them by the back door. With three children and one on the way, my mother was as organized as the Dewey Decimal System in making sure homework was done; school clothes were laid out the night before; school supplies packed and ready to go at 7:30 the next morning.  My mom sharpened our pencils with a kitchen knife, much like her father had whittled small pieces of wood with his pocket knife.  Gail had not had time to put her pencil in her pencil case.  So, she was armed and ready when the enemy – that would be me – attacked.

As the first born, riding shotgun was my birthright, so I had my arm on the back of the front seat as I leaned back to allow my little sister a full view of my tonsils as I belted out the malicious tune.

I heard the back door open before I ever felt the burning sting of the sword.  I saw my sister’s white cotton sweater with the Peter Pan collar dash past my window before I saw the pink eraser of her yellow pencil pointing up from my arm. 

My delightful little tune turned into indignant outrage as I realized that she had stabbed me with her freshly sharpened pencil and left it stuck in my arm. 

Our little brother, Andy, who had been sitting peacefully in the backseat waiting for his two big sisters to get out of the car, started crying.  I was screaming, my mama was trying to figure out how to take the pencil out of my arm and my sister, who usually tagged along behind me into school, was running as fast as her little legs could take her into the safety of Miss Crenshaw’s classroom.

Mama, always the comic, looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, “Gail forgot her pencil again.”

Years later when Gail and I, along with our own families, were on vacation in the Smokey Mountains, we sat around the kitchen table of the little cabin for hours and laughed about all the mean things we did to each other as kids.  When we were in our 20’s and early 30’s, both of us were so busy with our lives – she raising a family and I with my career – that we lost some of that “sister connection” that is so special between sisters.  Like two different flowers from the same bouquet, sisters share life-long memories that glue them together no matter how many miles or how much time separates them. Memories, like the strong threads holding together a patchwork quilt, weaved our lives together forever.  Memories of growing up conspirators against our parents, of dealing with little brothers, sharing everything and taking care of each other.  Of counting on, leaning on and telling on each other.  As siblings, we fought relentlessly, but we also took care of each other.  We were bitter enemies and the closest of allies.  I always found the first Easter egg, but I never found my second one until she found her first.   I don’t have a single childhood memory that does not include her. Sisters keep you honest because they, above all others, know your real story.

In a small cabin on the side of a mountain in Gatlinburg, TN in the summer of 1998, with children running everywhere and husbands napping on the sofas, we remembered how much we loved each other.   We left that vacation with promises that we would speak at least weekly and we did.  That was the first time we our families had ever vacationed together and we decided that we would do it again the next summer.  We never again got the chance.

My sister died unexpectedly in the fall of that year. I now know that God gave me a blessed opportunity that summer when I was able to spend that week with my sister. I have missed her every single day since then.  And, though I do not get to talk to her any more, I see her in her two children, who are now amazing young adults.  In her granddaughter, who, uncannily, was born eight years later on November 11, the anniversary of her death.  I see her in my mother’s eyes when she reflects back over the best days of her life, when all four of her children were at home, safe and sound.  I see her in my dreams, where she is always laughing.  And, yes, I see her when I look down at my arm and see the small dark tattoo of revenge that she left me.

It makes me smile every time.