Sister

I’m sitting on the couch in the living room next to my older sister. We just met. Her name is Anna. We study each other’s fingers, which are skinny and long, with rounded tops. After a pause, we ask each other about food allergies and lactose intolerance. We’ll ask each other about shared feelings, but that’s later. She asks me if I like purses. She tells me that she has a collection. I’m not much of a purse person. She’s not into wide-leg pants.

“John,” my mom says slowly to my dad, her lips starting to twitch. “Maeve set her own hair on fire.”

Kanye West, police brutality, colonization, queerness, gentrification, and awkward taxi cab conversations were just some of the poetic themes shared during this year’s third annual Sister Spit, hosted by Barnard Student Life as part of its MLK Legacy Week. Sister Spit is an event featuring spoken word artists with nondominant identities celebrating activism, equity, and racial justice.

Mostly, I remember the shouting. My house is four stories tall—including the basement—and sprawls out haphazardly across a hill. I’m standing in my bedroom, maybe the living room, maybe the kitchen. It doesn’t really matter. The shouts barrel through doors and hallways and up and down flights of stairs and find me wherever I am.

Two sisters, wearing identical black dresses that their mother bought them, stand around a jammed printer in Barnard’s Office of Career Development, screaming at each other. One sister is frantically trying to unjam the printer while the other is trying to print her own file. Both are headed to the career fair, which is about to start.