#SisterFights – Sittin' Ugly Sistahs

This story is based on my memories of sharing my wisdom with my younger sisters in the 1960s.

When I was seven years old I tried my hand at what would become my future profession. On a late summer afternoon, I smoothed the front of a stiff red and white church dress, brought my tanned bare feet together, repositioned my white plastic headband, and looked my class over from the white brick fireplace hearth that raised me three inches above those I’d be instructing. Kelly, age three, wearing light blue shorts and a sleeveless white cotton crop top sat crosslegged on the living room carpet. She held a Big Chief tablet and a red crayon. Gayle, age five, wore a faded Tweety bird t-shirt with a never-worn navy school uniform skirt and sat erect on a small wooden chair. She tapped her brand new letter-practicing book with a fat pencil and wriggled her toes as she stretched her feet to touch the legs of a red and yellow plastic chalk board that came with my surprise birthday gift that year: a Suzy Smart Deluxe Doll Set!

Suzy Smart, dressed in a white blouse under a red plaid jumper and standing two feet tall, completed the class and sat stiffly in her own red and yellow plastic desk. I smiled down at my class of three and held up a piece of chalk to draw a large capital letter “A” on the chalk board.

“Today we practice our A’s.” I established eye-contact with each student and added, “Y’all gotta draw ten A’s for me. On your mark, get set… go!”

Gayle took to the assignment like a Cajun to hot boudin. Having to use her lap was all that kept her from making uniform A’s. Kelly tried her first A, but the slanted lines were uneven and her letter did not look like the one on the chalk board.

“I’m gonna make little ‘l’s’,” she said and started covering her first page with a letter she liked.

I focused on the obedient ones. “Good job, Gayle,” I said. Suzy gave me her straight-forward stare. “Nice listening, Suzy.”

Then I knelt down next to Kelly. “Your ‘l’s’ are good, good, but we’re doing ‘A’s.’ Here. Let me show you how.” I put my hand over her fist and guided the red crayon through a perfect A formation. “Like this.”

Kelly pushed aside a stray strand from a pigtail and said, “OK,” and continued to drew more l’s.

“You already made like fifty l’s . You need to learn your A’s.”

“No A’s in my name.”

“Good! You know how to spell your name, but I’m teaching ALL the letters today.”

“ ‘A’ is the very first letter,” said Gayle as she completed her tenth “A” and nodded proudly to each of us, including Suzy. She wrapped a long strand of jet black hair behind right her ear and waited for further instructions.

“How many letters?” asked Kelly.

Getting a bit of teacher inspiration, I said, “We should sing the A-B-C song!”

The human students stood up to belt out “A,B,C,D,E,F,G…” Susie listened. As Kelly screamed out the final Z, she grabbed Gayle’s hands, and led her in circles for the “Now I know my ABC’s” part.

The dancing pupils added impromptu hip-shaking for their song’s end.

I was losing control of my class. I erased the “A” and drew a “B” on the chalk board. “Good job, y’all! Now let’s practice the second letter – B.” My sisters then snapped to like tiny soldiers and for some weird reason saluted.

“Ok, class. Sit down now,” I said. Both obeyed, but first Kelly snatched Gayle’s new pencil gave her the red crayon.

“Hey. Give it back,” said Gayle.

“Just let me borrow it.”

“You suppose to ask.”

“Can I use your pencil?”

“Please.”

“Pleeeease.”

“Say pretty please.”

“Pretty please, ya dumb sneeze.”

“She called me ‘dumb,’ Teacher!”

Kelly stuck her tongue out at the snitch. I clapped my hands together. “Class! Y’all gotta listen.” Gayle grabbed her pencil back and bounced the crayon off Kelly’s pert pug nose.

Kelly picked up Gayle’s letter practice book and ran behind me. “I’m agonna rip this up,” she said.

Gayle could not wait for help from an inept teacher. She knocked over both Susie’s and her desk as she rushed after Kelly.

I tried keeping the girls apart as Kelly danced behind me and moved the book in circles around her face.

“Na! Na! Na! You can’t get me,” she chanted right before Gayle got ahold of her right pigtail. The letter book fell, the chalk board collapsed, and Kelly sprang into fight mode. Both girls got fistfuls of hair. For several seconds the hair-pulling tug-of-war was a stalemate. Gayle’s longer arms gave her an advantage, but Kelly’s spicy temper made it a fair fight.

“Stop it! Y’all are wrong, wrong! Stop!” I said as I pushed my way between them.
Kelly was biting her stuck-out tongue to concentrate. Gayle had both of her sister’s pigtails when Kelly dropped her sister’s hair strands. Her smaller stature lacked the force she needed to make Gayle release the pigtails, so Kelly leaned back and kicked her left foot high enough to get her foe right in her tee-heinie. The taller girl let go of the shorter one’s hair and fell to the carpet. She put both hands over the place of pain and let loose the “OWWWWW’s”

“That’s what you get,” said Kelly.

Gayle moaned like a dying opossum.

I sat on Gayle’s chair in defeat. Kelly tapped a line of dots on the fallen chalkboard as her sister made herself into a ball on the floor. I straightened the bow on the Suzy doll’s ponytail and sighed as if I’d dropped the last bite of the last slice of watermelon into a pile of fire ants.

Being used to sister fights and being relieved that I was above this current argument, I went to the den’s plaid couch and looked out our huge picture window. Our dog Lady was taking her mid-morning nap in the shade of our cement patio. I focused past our yard on the rice fields that surrounded our home. The sun winked at me between oak tree branches. With a sigh that reflected on and accepted my big sister wisdom, I decided that teaching was not for me.

My two younger sisters and I grew up down a winding gravel road on the outskirts of a small south Louisiana town in the 1960’s. Spaced out two years apart, we shared our clothes, our secrets, and our hot and spicy tempers. Without nearby neighbors we were each other’s everyday friends, especially in summers. As the oldest, I’d often hold my sisters close and tight before sending them off and away on a long yo-yo string. We were pros at hair-pulling, hitting, and biting, yet we also shared a tight connection and learned how to balance our differences.

Shared Birthday Party (1964) Notice how both Gayle & Kelly’s hands are on the Barbie case.

On a July afternoon in 1964 after some predictable kitten races and boring inside hide-and-seek games with my sisters, I wanted some alone time. So I decided to test our new green hammock that stretched stiffly between two live oak trees on the side of our home. I crawled up in the “lounger” with a paperback between my teeth, but my sixty-three pounds could not make the weaved nylon bend and dip. I was in no way cocooned the way magazine pictures of hammocks told me I should be. I stretched out and put the small round blue accent pillow I’d borrowed from our living room couch under my head. The hammock was as tight as Aunt Fanny who clutched her change purse like a Cajun guarding the last bowl of gumbo. I opened Pippi Longstocking to my bookmarked chapter and told my body to relax.

The sun’s rays peaked behind hundreds of small green oak leaves and gave my book’s pages a dappled look. I repositioned my pillow and held the book above my head long enough to read two pages. Feeling a stitch in my neck, I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the hammock. My ankles extended two inches over the edge, the blue pillow slid down to my lower back, and my weight still failed to create an indentation. My eight year-old self-awareness told me that I looked ridiculous. Then I heard my little sisters’ voices.

“My turn! My turn!” yelled Kelly as she ran toward the hammock wearing a new lime green seersucker two-piece short set. As the baby of the family and with dimples deep as a mother’s love, she grew up thinking all should bow to her charms. Gayle, wearing one of my hand-me-down t-shirts and elastic waisted shorts, followed carrying three library books of different sizes. As the middle girl she fought the unfairness of life with the determination of a seasoned Mardi Gras parade-goer grabbing beads.

“I just got here,” I said pretending that sitting on the unyielding fabric was comfortable. I cleared my throat and wiggled my hips as my round pillow fell to the ground. “I ‘m reading,” I said. With her hands above her head, Kelly pushed the hammock back and forth.

“I got books,” said Gayle as she dropped two books next to my pillow on the ground and held the remaining book over her head. “I have Alice in Wonderland.”

Kelly stopped pushing the hammock to beat the area under my butt with her fists. “Read it! Read it! Read it!” she said. The kid had excellent rhythm for a four-year-old.

I loved reading to my sisters, but I also loved bossing them around. “Pick up the pillow, Gayle. Quit messing with the hammock, Kelly!”

My youngest sister continued pushing the hammock and made me drop my paperback book while my middle sister struggled to join me in my position of power. “Lookit what you did, couillon!” I said to the former and, “I didn’t say you could get up here,” to the latter.

Gayle tossed her hardcover library book up towards me hitting my left cheek and knocking my brand new glasses askew. Kelly’s strength matched her stubbornness, and the hammock moved enough to keep her sister from climbing in. Then Gayle’s sideways hip bump landed Kelly on her skinny bottom and gave my middle sister confidence to believe she could join me in the hammock. She extended her arms and tried clawing her way onto the slick green lounger. Her clear blue eyes framed by black pixie-cut bangs peeked up at me. From her seat in the dirt, Kelly kicked at Gayle’s legs.

To avoid an all-out fight, I decided to give in and help my siblings join me. I pulled Gayle’s right arm hard enough to dislocate her shoulder, but her determination to be first in the hammock kept her from yelling “Owww!” Kelly had scrambled to her feet and went back to moving the hammock back and forth.

“Stupid face!” said Gayle as she settled in next to me and set the library book in her lap and looked down on Kelly. Now with two sisters seated, the baby of our family had trouble rocking the hammock. She stuck out her tongue and bit down to concentrate on annoying us.

“If you stop pushing, you can get up here,” I said and reached out a hand. Kelly smirked and lifted two dusty arms. I succeeded in pulling her about three inches off the ground. “Help me,” I told my hammock companion.

“Poopee!” Gayle said to the sister below us before I grabbed her elastic waist band and Gayle pulled both of Kelly’s shoulders up and over. Our combined weight made the hammock finally relax a bit in the middle. Three small butts settled next to each other. We all gave our attention to the book now in my lap. Kelly leaned her head on my shoulder and Gayle popped the thumb of her right hand into her mouth as I opened the classic story. I straightened my blue cat-eyed glasses, and with a sister to my right and a sister to her left, I ironically began, “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister…”