Heather Anne

When I was five-years-old, I came home from school with angry, red splotches all over my body. I told my mom I itched, and next thing I knew she was shouting pox! pox! and throwing my sister and me into our toy room with five-days worth of sandwiches. She locked the door behind her as she fled, and it was only by holding a plastic cup to the wall and eavesdropping that I was able to ascertain that I had been pocked by a chicken, and that Jenn was to be sacrificed for my entertainment pleasure. In my benevolence, I kept the truth from my little sister: that she, too, would succumb to the pox. There is an inexplicable bond that comes from being quarantined with another person--a certain beauty in the tension of waiting together to die, or to turn into wildfowl. (It was unclear from the muffled voices what would be the ultimate consequence of this chicken pandemic.)

Luckily, we survived the pox--my sister and me--and we grew up loving and beating on each other. On the good days, we would spend all afternoon on the hammock, reading the same book together; she would laugh and try to tell me what was happening, and I would say, "Slow down! I'm not there yet!" On the bad days, I would toss 2-liters of soda at her head, and we'd patch up the wall before our parents came home from work. One time, after a particularly nasty blow-up, it snowed. Jenn had the flu, so she had to stay inside. I went from angry to obscene, layering up in my snow clothes, asking to borrow her mittens. I went outside to spite her, but once I got outside without her, it was no fun. I played for hours in front of her bedroom window; she'd cracked it open to chat with me. She tossed down accessories, and I built her a snowman.

My sister was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when we were in our early twenties. It's the kind of thing that shoves you into adulthood and kicks you back into childhood in the same breath. After several weeks and several surgeries, she was isolated in a special hospital room to receive radiation. The rule for family members was that you could visit once per day for ten minutes, and you had to put on a special suit. Recklessly, understandably, I forwent the suit the first day I visited her. I stayed longer than ten minutes. I brought her books. I made her giggle. The nurse kicked me out with a warning, "Ten minutes only! And you have to wear the suit!"

"She's my sister," I explained, and marveled that some people don't understand the weight of the word.

Two weeks ago, Jenn and I set out on a road trip to Birmingham. It was our first trip together since UK '05--our first extended outing since my nephew was born. Her plan was to run a half marathon and my plan was to take pictures. Our joint--unstated--plan was to laugh and eat convenience store snacks and sing our Indigo Girls' playlists all the way through. It used to be that she was the harmony to my always-melody, but these days we take turns.

The day of her half-marathon I couldn't help but mollycoddle her: do you have your energy jelly beans, are you hydrated, will you be warm enough? Are you sure? Are you positive? She sat in the car and shivered, more out of nerves than anything else, and half an hour before the race began, she left me and walked toward the starting line. After she was gone, I sat in the car and shivered (nerves, too) and when I couldn't take it anymore I got out and walked toward the race. When the gun went off, 9,000 runners sprinted past. "Whooo!" I yelped when she ran by in a sea of dry-wick fabric. "Yes, yes, you are awesome!"

I followed the course on foot, catching her at some mile-markers, missing her at others. Finally, I went to the finish line to wait. Three hours after she started running, one year after having a baby, three years after beating cancer, twenty years after I built her a snowman, she came down the final stretch. When I saw her I jumped up in the air. "That's my sister!" I shouted. "My sister! My sister!" I ran along beside her and took her picture. I cried.

I think there's a special pride you can feel only if you've climbed into a radioactive hospital bed with a person.

"Jennifer Fitzpatrick, 27, Atlanta, GA." The announcer said.

"Yeah!" I shouted again.

Nearby, a man looked at me, then at my sister, then back at me. My tear-stained cheeks perplexed him. He didn't understand how her victory was my victory--her happiness, my happiness. He was not a sister.

"Does she belong to you?" the man asked

"Nah," I said, shaking my head, sniffling. "Not really." I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I took one last picture. "But we did beat chicken pox together once."