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times. People say, 'I told myself this,' or 'This voice inside my head said that.' Plenty
people talk to themselves when they're sad or lonely or generally bummed out. God, I
hear voices too, when I'm dead tired. I swear I do. Other people do too. Does this mean
they're schizo? Do I look schizo to you?
All those people are not me, she says.
Back in her room, Sandy hovers over her plywood dresser drawer. I
smell Autumn through the dried flowers that make a halo around her bedside.
The yellow daffodils from last Sunday have not fared well. All of them are
droopy and bent like sad old people.
Sandy holds up this silver-gray material that is folded into a nearly­
perfect square. I unfold the square and it turns into a sleeveless sundress. It is
unassumingly simple yet gracefully cut. I like it. It's nice, I say. Whose is it?
It's mine. I bought it for five dollars. I think it's real silk.
I check the label. Says 71% rayon and 29% acetate, whatever that is.
Sandy pats the hem of the dress. When I get out I'm going to Jenny
Craig. I'm going to try really hard this time.
I hold up the dress before me in the closet mirror. The length is in good
taste too, I think, not quite a mini but not stingy about showing some legs.
I have a birthmark the size of a nursing mother's nipples on one of my
legs, right where the knee joins the calf. The crimson shade has faded over the
years, but in grade school, it was there, on my calf, like a blotch of fresh red
paint. The more brazen boys would tease, "Why you have a chi-chi on your
leg?" Then this caught fire and by the second grade, I became the "chi-chi girl."
I avoided dresses and never ever wore shorts. When school let out, I
would often sit in the corner of the black playground watching my sister play
tether ball or hand ball. Unlike me, Sandy was athletic and quick with her
hands and legs. I remember this one dress, this royal blue dress she wore all the
time. The fabric was soft, softer than this 71% rayon sundress. It was like touching
the smooth back of a kitten. You could just see the softness even without touch­
ing it, like knowing a kitten feels soft just by looking at it. I want to say it was
made of satin, this dress, but this is probably not true since our parents were
poor.
The great thing was, my sister wasn't trapped in that dress. She moved
in that dress. No, she made that dress move. She made that dress jump with one
smooth stroke of her hand. The tetherball spun out of control like a crazy
yellow planet and her opponent knew, even before the stringed ball went all the
way around the pole that he was history. Sometimes she was so high in the air
her underwear would show a crack. But she never minded this so long as she
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