“Born in 55,” my sister’s voice is thin and raspy when I ask her how old she is on her birthday. She doesn’t mention her new nursing home.
In her little wooden rocking chair, tears running down her cheeks, in a sweet soprano she sings “Tammy’s in Love” to our dog, Tammy.
Little is known about Turners Syndrome when she is diagnosed at seventeen, she becomes a medical experiment — her sexuality an enigma to university hospital interns.
When my sister is unresponsive and too weak to resist, staff at her old nursing home send her via ambulance to the hospital emergency room.
Her second week away at college, she cries on the phone. She just can’t get the math, and science class is too hard.
Our mother senses this child is different from her other seven even when the doctor says she is just small, she’ll grow. No one knows she’ll never develop ovaries nor conceive.
At our brother’s wedding I dress her in a little green pinafore and twist satin ribbons into her thick blond braids. She sings and twirls in her fancy clothes.
She takes the city bus downtown every night for her job cleaning office buildings after hours — proud to have a paycheck for twenty-five years.
Her lithe body twists and turns gracefully in gymnastic class with girls her age and twice as tall. They help her and tell her she is cute.
Keeping her own apartment is a point of pride for my sister. Bags of trash in the closet, tomato sauce pasted to the kitchen floor, a burner left on tell us she is not okay.
She isn’t worried about climbing up to the steps on the school bus the first day of kindergarten. She says her best friend, Donny, will help her.
In her new nursing home, she refuses medical procedures unless someone in the family is there to convince her. She curses under her breath — says doctors are quacks.
She wears girls’ size 12 or women’s petite small. Hems and sleeves have to be taken up five to six inches.
She takes the city bus home from work every night except the night the police find her wandering downtown after midnight with no purse and no keys.
She smiles and sings as she practices her tap dance routine in front of the big hall mirror.
Sherri Wright belongs to Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and Key West Poetry Guild. Her work has appeared in Bluebird Word, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet. Kelsay Books published her chapbook “Winter of My Life.” Bay to Ocean Journal nominated “Braiding Sweetgrass With My Daughter” for a Pushcart Prize.
