How We Got Here
By: Zee Khadijah Karim
Tags: Personal Essay, Sisters, Relationships, The Vanishing Half

February 2018

I am writing this to tell you, my sister, that I understand our distance.

We were never, and always, who others wanted us to be. We were thrust upon each other to be a representation of something neither of us could probably name. That thing was, however, marked by so much variance between us. I love you; I mean that, but I do not like you. I do not believe you like me, either. And that is ok.

These contemplations are coming fresh off my reading of The Vanishing Half. It is a story about twin sisters who decide to leave their hometown and venture off for the life of their dreams together. The together-journey disseminates into one withdrawing and setting out for the life she secretly wished for remote from her sister.

Somehow, I believe this is our story as well.

I always wondered how you honestly felt when mommy would tell the story of our first separation from each other. It was one of those stories whose telling seemed to be an indicator of us being sisters who undoubtedly loved each other.

There could be no possible way we didn’t, right? But we know that’s wrong.

As the story goes, Abu had taken me to Madea’s house. You had not agreed to that because I was your baby sister, and no one had asked your permission. In this, I see you: I see your possessive ways, your need for inclusion, and your sense of caring out of duty. I think I was four, and you had not long tip-toed into your sixth year. There was absolutely no way either of us knew your true intentions at that time.

I don’t know where home was during that time. I imagine we were living with mommy’s mother because I sense her presence in my memory. She was a replica of you. Isn’t this what everyone tells you? So, maybe it isn’t her that I sense. Perhaps it’s more of you: always looming. Always there. Haunting. I imagine it was her fancy phone, the one with the pearl base and chipped gold accents, that you picked up to call me.

Everyone has a story of our inseparability. They tell of our hoarding secrets for one another. They called us the evil twins. They sneered at the monsters they had created.

Our union: the representation of loyalty seemed ordained. Those around us led us to this belief, but we were suffocating, and the truth needed to breathe.

In imagining the conversation I had with Allah before I emerged in physical form, I picture a scene of sublime existence for me full of every delicate occurrence I would experience. But most of all, I imagine you: a sister who served as a mirror. I would be the Moon, and you would be the Sun.

So, I came earlier than expected.

When mommy found out she was pregnant with me, only nine months after birthing you, she fainted. A lot shifted at that time, particularly mommy’s ability to nourish us both from her breast. Your breastfeeding window subsequently came to pass. A considerable sacrifice you did not take lightly. I did not know the magnitude of you giving that up. Nor did I know it would eventually send ripples through our lives. Some of those ripples becoming tears, but it seemed even through that we formed a bond that made us an us.

I set out, albeit younger, to be the nourishing factor for you. Where you were weak, I would be secure. When others silenced you, I would be your sounding board. These were our unspoken rules until you became the thing I needed to escape. This revelation hit me the first time you ran away.