ENOUGH ROPE TO HANG OURSELVES WITH
Creative Non-Fiction – Laura Savoie
I am sixteen, my sister is seven. Seven year olds are annoying. I’m not sure if you know this. Lucky for me my sister is also hilarious and ridiculous, and already my best friend. We decide we want to have a spa night. Mom is watching re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy in her bedroom and Dad is sitting by himself in the quiet of the garage pretending he’s organizing his fishing gear and wondering why his wife won’t get out of bed. Turns out it’s because she’s an unhappy woman, just in general. Go figure.
I put about 40 litres of water in the biggest pot I can find.
“I’m gonna boil this big fucker and then all the steam from the hot water will open up our pores so we can clean them out”. Like I said, I’m sixteen, and at this age my pores really matter to me. Probably because they were constantly clogged up with all the awkwardness of a sixteen year old who spends her Saturdays watching Spongebob Squarepants with her kid sister.
“I don’t have pores you idiot. I’m only seven”
I swing my right fist out to cuff the back of her head but she dodges my swipe and makes a stupid face while she tries to moonwalk around the kitchen. Remember what I said about seven year olds?
“Congratulations shithead. Everybody has pores, they’re like little stinky holes on your face or something and if you don’t clean them out they grow into pimples”. I look for something smelly and sophisticated to add to our steam facial and think about a boy in my Biology class who said I had a fivehead instead of a forehead. Mainly I’m thinking that I actually thought what he said was pretty funny and I wonder if he knows my name.
“Ohh pimples. Okay cool.” She’s flashing finger guns at me, “I don’t wanna be a pizza face”. She strolls over to help me find the perfect thing to add to our cauldron.
My Dad calls me pizza face. I’m guessing this is where my sister picked up the term. He thinks it’s funny, and most of the time it is. But when I’m feeling particularly sixteen, I threaten to burn the house down when anybody says it. Tonight I’m feeling more eighteen, like I know what I’m doing with this big pot of skin loosening soup on the stove. This rare moment of maturity means my sister will live another day. All the spices and herbs in the cupboard are old as sin. The labels are covered in some sort of hellish all-spice mix that’s accumulated on the shelf and walls over years of rustling around and spilling little ashy piles of cinnamon and garlic salt. I settle on a peppermint tea bag and lemon pepper chicken wing seasoning.
My sister looks at me incredulous and starts bellowing loudly, “Chicken wing stuff?”
“Yeah. Lemon is good for brightening your skin tone shitbird.” I can tell she’s not buying it, but I’m not about to let a seven year old with flawless skin one-up me on this stupid spa night.
She shakes her head and cracks a smile, “Jesus Christ”
I throw in a healthy amount of chicken wing stuff and a peppermint tea bag. My Dad opens the door of the garage to ask if there’s chicken cooking. We yell “no” in unison and the door closes. We lay towels on the dining room table, and then put small metal pots on top. The plan is to sit, lean over the steaming metal pot of water, and flip another towel over our heads to keep all the steam concentrated on our stinkiest face pores. My sister saddles up to her pot and wraps a stained Christmas hand towel I found in the closet around her shoulders. She’s wearing her Highschool Musical pyjamas and I am suddenly struck by how little she really is and I contemplate being nicer to her.
“This looks stupid” she smirks.
That bitch.
She lowers her face over the pot and dramatically huffs as she flips the towel over the back of her head so that it falls downward around the pot. Suddenly I hear her sputtering and choking, as she wildly throws her head back, gasping for air. A split second too late I realize that when people do this they probably let the water cool down a little – and then her pot tips.
Her dramatic reeling hooks the frayed edges of the lacy Christmas hand towel on the handle of the pot, and the boiling lemon pepper-peppermint water rushes over the kitchen table and onto her chest, lap, and legs. I am snapped to attention by a high pitched and unfamiliar sound and then I realize it’s my own frenzied screaming.
My sister’s mouth is wrenched open and her eyes are wide but she hasn’t made any sounds yet. I yank her up by her armpits so she’s standing and I quickly reef her soggy pyjamas off. The waterlogged cotton burns my own hands as I start to realize how red her skin is.
I scoop her up under her knees and back and hustle towards the sink. She starts hollering in a sort of laugh-cry-yell symphony. Suddenly I realize our double sink is full of dirty dishes. I start to cry. This feels different than the million other times I’ve hurt my sister, and most of those were on purpose. I gulp when I see the cereal bowls, Hamburger Helper pans, a few cutting boards.
“Holy shit balls!” she yells as I haphazardly arrange her on top of the dishes and the metal sink divider. It used to be that one side was for washing and one side was for rinsing but nobody seems to care anymore. I wrench on the faucet and freezing cold water fires directly at her belly like a laser beam.
Never in my entire life have I ever seen someone look so uncomfortable. Butt naked, back arched, chin to chest, legs sprawled across the counter and into the coffee maker – and all in a sink of dirty dishes. I yank out the spray nozzle my Papa installed for us a few months earlier and start soaking every red bit of skin I can see. I can feel cold water rushing off her chest and onto my feet. She looks down at her own body and back up at me and she looks mortified. As soon as we make eye contact I can feel a little giggle starting in my chest and a tiny smirk creeps onto my face. Before I can help it I have tears running down my face while I hold my gut with one arm and the tiny sink hose with the other. Her crying starts to shift to maniacal laughter. She relaxes a little until the stack of dishes underneath her collapses and bangs loudly.
“HOLY SHIT BALLS!” Her eyes are wider than ever and she’s awkwardly gesturing at her back. With one hand still spraying, I hunch over and realize she’s got a spatula wedged in the crack of her ass. I lose all hope of not peeing my pants. I’m about to reach my hand in the sink to free the spatula when my Dad opens the garage door again.
“So you’re not making chicken?”