Our Little World

by Karen Winn

This was the way we were, the way we always were: a push and a pull, a rib and a provocation. The distinction was often unclear.

and the edges around us softened, as they always did, even when I was sure they couldn’t.

to be careful about writing things down on paper. “Once you write it, you can’t deny it,”

It was as if I had just borrowed my new life the past few months, like a library book, and now it was time to return it. Like it was overdue, really.

The silence that followed wasn’t silent at all—it was actually quite loud: loud in my head, loud in my body.

Was what I’d said to her the equivalent? Or worse, even? Were we slowly severing the bond of sisterhood with our unforgivable words? Our unforgivable actions?

Why couldn’t she trust me? Why couldn’t she be there for me when I most needed her? I felt forsaken. My whole body came to vibrate, consumed by emotion. Now I wanted her to hurt the way I was hurting, mercury rising on a hot thermometer.

They say time slows down, distorts, in moments of crisis. I would read about this phenomenon as an adult, how a part of the brain called the amygdala becomes more active in emotional situations, laying down new, extra bricks of memory, in addition to the normal sets of memories we create. It’s why pivotal moments are seared within us with all their sensory glory. The more memory bricks your amygdala builds, the longer you believe the event lasted. It’s also why time appears to speed up when you’re older—as a child you are building a brand-new brick house of memories, each one fresh and original, but as an adult your house is already built, and it just occasionally needs some new bricks. You live in your house—the house that memories built—surrounded by and defined by your bricks. Some might say trapped within them, even.

I had made yet another decision I couldn’t take back. One that would forever haunt me. How had I not realized this by now? The impact of small things. Small-very-big things. Each in-the-moment decision leading to the next. Like rungs on a ladder.

I remember feeling like we were both fragments of who we once were. Broken, in the way that the young should never be.

She would be there in a way I can’t perfectly describe. It’s like the feeling that someone else is in the room with you, but it was even more encompassing than that. She was a presence and a memory, with me and in me. She was familiar and natural—a sister.

Everywhere I looked, I saw them: I recognized the way sisters walked together, closer than friends do, their barometer of personal space on a different scale. I noticed sisters at the mall who had the same mannerisms—the same way of tilting their heads, even when their noses looked different, even when their hair or eye color did not match. They sometimes wore the same colored clothes, and I imagined they didn’t plan it.

Back then we were just regular kids, getting through another summer, one day impatiently waiting for the rain to pass, the next sweating under the hot sun. Chalk-smudged fingers and chlorine-tinged swimsuits. Kickball and crushes.