Marco Fernando Navarro

Sisters 

Ana imagined a dotted line separating the top from the bottom as she traced a finger across her neck. When Sister Catherine advised keeping it “above the neck,” what exactly had she been referring to? She glanced around at her classmates, who were applying and reapplying ChapStick. Some were feeling the points of their incisors with their tongues, while others were biting their nails. Did anyone else think the same thing? They’d discovered earlier that day that cheetahs also had incisors for biting into meat. Ruba blurted out, “Vampires, too!” And they’d laughed, remembering how teeth, no matter what you told yourself, were meant to bite into others. 

“Why the neck?” Cassandra asked. 

The girls turned to their champion. Cassie knew things because she had an older sister, Noelle. Knew them before they occurred, like when Arturo and Ruba kissed, and Ruba felt a stab against her thigh. Cassandra had explained, “That was a hard dick, Ruba. Get used to them.” 

“Because you can end up pregnant?” Cassandra continued. Of course, she’d ask the question none of them could express. 

“Too much, too much.” Sister Catherine finally replied, growing red before turning around to erase the cow-shaped depiction of their privates she had drawn on the board in her scraggly, old-lady handwriting. “Why do they have to do this?” they overheard her mumble to herself. “God forgive us.” 

But then, Sister Cathy-Who-Needs-To-Take-A-Bathy composed herself, directing their attention from the smudged cow head and toward the lists she’d made earlier: things you can do and things you should not do. She’d simplified it into a yes and - no column. The first included things they’d all done, such as touch, kiss, look, and hug, while the second also included touch but also French kissing, heavy petting, and sex, which she put in parentheses.  The two lists, combined with the poorly erased cow, created an incomplete scene. What in the hell was heavy petting? They hadn’t ever seen that verb and adjective used together. “Petting” was something you did to dogs or cats. What was the big deal, Ana wondered? 

“Sister Catherine, why is ‘touch’ on both lists?” Cassandra inquired, fully aware of the answer. “If a touch can be okay, how can it not be okay, too?”

“Because I said so.”

The bell rang and like that, their sex education was over. The gist of the lesson: don’t do it. But if you do, keep it above your neck. And as the girls walked out, Sister Catherine pointed to Jesus in the back of the classroom, who was always looking over their shoulders. Their pastel-colored Jesus, a dirty blonde with pink lips and blue eyes, had his heart split open like a ripe peach, and his fingers touched a circlet of thorns around his heart, insisting they look only there. He looked like a rock star with long hair. But none of them listened to rock. 

“Remember the neck of Jesus, everyone.” Sister Catherine reminded them again as they collected their things for lunch. “The neck of Jesus!”

“So, this is what can happen…” 

Ana looked at her friend from across the cafeteria table. In the afternoon light, she looked older than the rest of them. Ana’s lips shined from the colored gloss of her lip balm. Ruba and Sarah still hadn’t removed the pink and white lanyard keychains dangling from their book bags.  

Cassandra began filling in the blanks. 

“But why would we want to do that, Cassie?” Sarah asked, staring into her tuna fish sandwich.

“Because.” Cassandra explained, “It feels good.” They couldn’t help but look across the cafeteria at the younger girls in plaid skirts that reached to their ankles—and then at their own, hiked-up skirts. The scars on their knees, the zig-zags-of-ripped-apart-and-put-back-together skin, shone brightly. They’d earned them. How carefree those younger girls across the room appeared—no cows, only big keychains, Fritos, and sleepovers. 

“But why?” Ana pressed. 

Flecks of milk-tinged food appeared to fly from every boy’s mouth. It was as if they were eating, chewing, laughing, breathing, and drinking milk all at the same time. Vinny chased Manny. Manny threw salami at Imran. Arturo was beatboxing, again. Santo was trying to beatbox and failing miserably at it. Useless was mid-thought, contemplating the perfect ratio of a full mouth of chocolate milk and a bite of his sandwich. And Wally picked his nose, sensing immediately the eyes on him and quickly hiding his boogers beneath the table. 

“Don’t know yet,” Cassandra replied, annoyed, “I guess one of us is going to have to find out.” A thought flashed across her face before the words caught up with it. Ana was worried that Cassie would ask her to do something with Santo, but Cassandra shot her a glance. “Don’t worry, Ana. Santo’s not really a boyfriend.” Cassandra paused. “He’s a friend without benefits. My sister Noelle says they don’t really count.”

They glanced at each other between sips of chocolate milk. They could read each other’s minds but weren’t quite sure what language they were using. When Cassandra brought up Noelle, their ears and eyes pricked up, anticipating the revelation of something forbidden. They knew Noelle from her short skirts, heels that showed her brightly painted toes, and how when she smiled, someone would run across three lanes of traffic to tell her she was beautiful. They remembered being in the first grade and looking up to Noelle in the eighth grade. Noelle knew things because she was something. 

They looked up to Cassandra’s sister. The girl who drew attention from all angles—her face, her curves, her clear skin, and her body. They didn’t understand how breasts could grow so quickly and bump into everything. Like grapefruits! Caro had once remarked. An ass that couldn’t and wouldn’t be hidden. 

Caro, of course, was the first to say it.

“I want to kiss Noelle more than any of the other boys in our class.” 

The girls laughed. They kind of agreed but couldn’t say it aloud. They were intrigued by the idea that they were supposed to like boys… Why couldn’t they want her? 

“Whatever.” Cassandra knew her sister better than the rest of them. “She’s not all that.”

*

“Sooooo, what was it like…” They asked softly. It had been a few weeks since the cow's head. And just then, Cassandra shared a Polaroid with them: She’s with her sister Noelle, tight black dresses, eyeliner, lipstick, bright lights, smiles. So many teeth you’d think that’s all they were. 

Cassie had been the first to step foot inside of a club—loud music, lights, and cigarette smoke in the air that would linger in her hair for a week. She made them all smell it, whipping hair into their noses. Proof, she said, she’d been out.

“Tell us…” They whined.

“Okay, Okay… So, there were Midori Sours, amaretto sours, whiskey sours… And Long Island Iced Teas if you really want to get fucked up and forget everything.”

The names were exotic—they were the names of wild birds at the zoo. The girls knew what it was like to drink the foam of their father’s Budweisers and Rolling Rocks. Maybe sneak a sip of a screwdriver during Thanksgiving and wince. Or some cheap champagne on New Year's, imagining it was a sour soda of some kind. Definitely some coquito over Christmas, focusing intently on the milkiness and the cinnamon. But a real drink in their hands, one you  held on your own? 

“Like sour powers?” Bibi mentioned the ribbons of candies she’d eat by the mouthful  from the bodega across the street every afternoon

“But like, what do you do?” Caro asked, ignoring Bibi. 

“What do you mean?” The question shocked Cassandra—as if she didn’t quite know herself. “You dance, you get fucked up.” Then she paused. “And you hook up with guys.”

The girls turned; had Ashy Cathy heard? She was folding a napkin on the other side of the cafeteria. She hadn’t. The neatness of the folds was all that mattered to her. 

“Fuck her.”

They shrieked. Sister Cathy of Ash-a-lot turned towards them, readjusting the reading glasses that had slipped down her nose. The doily edge of her collar was stunning in the filtered cafeteria light. She was the most proper, holy thing in that cafeteria; she also looked the part. For a moment, Ana thought she’d caught Sister Cathy’s eye before turning away to stare into Sarah’s almost-finished tuna fish sandwich—she’d forgotten her own lunch on the kitchen counter that morning and was forced to purchase a cafeteria pretzel. 

They thought back to Sister Cathy’s list: touching, heavy petting, and French kissing, and they wanted to ask her, “So what did you do?” But they couldn’t. 

Instead, Caro thought back to the cow head. Ruba looked at the clock and wanted lunch to be over. Bibi also thought about the cow head: it looked more like a dog with floppy ears than a cow. Sarah wanted to tell Sister Catherine everything. Ana didn’t know what to think but couldn’t help but feel guilty about it for some reason.

“Don’t your feet, like, hurt?” Caro asked as she held the Polaroid in her hand, looking at Cassandra’s feet—the heel, the straps, the redness of the skin around it, and her shoes. Gravity and pressure.

“Nope.” 

“But like, how do you get in?” Ana brought them back to the rules—to laws, checks and balances, real social studies shit. “Don’t they know you’re not even thirteen?”

“The shorter the skirt, the brighter the lipstick,” Cassandra paused. “We just hold onto each other tightly and the bouncer lets us in.”

They watched their friend—it was the first thing they’d really learned that day.

“It’s a group thing… and if they say anything, Noelle tests them. It’s all of us or we walk…” 

“And that works?” Sarah asked.

“Always.”

“Do you think if we dressed up we could all get in?” Bibi asked. 

Cassandra, chewing on the plastic rosary around her neck, checked her friends up and down. 

“Only Ana has secret tits like me, so I doubt any of you would be able to club anytime soon.” 

Ruba crossed her arms, as if to say she didn’t want to go anyway. Caro sucked her teeth. Bibi pleaded, “Take me, take me” with her eyes. And Sarah, they never really knew what she thought anyway. 

Sometime during the first month of the seventh grade, they noticed the differences. The boys, slight ones at first, like how their ears, noses, hands, and hair didn’t match their shoulders or their eyes. As if some of them had been made of clay that hadn’t hardened. How Wally was lopsided and how Arturo suddenly began to make sense, even though he was still short. The boys, after they came back from gym class, smelled like leftovers or steam coming off a pot of rice. They couldn’t understand it, and worse, they were drawn to those smells that repulsed them. There was no sense to it either; what Caro smelled was not the same as what Ana smelled and what Cassandra smelled was not the same as what Bibi smelled. And every so often, one of them would smell like a bar of soap. Sweet almost. 

But then, the aggression during dodgeball. Boys aimed at their chests in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a nipple through a sleeve. Or they were always tying their shoelaces, trying to look up skirts from the corners of their eyes. What had been punches in the first and second grades turned into tugs and pulls by the fourth and fifth, and now in the seventh grade, grabs, pinches, squeezes, and begs. No more pleases. Only yeses and noes. 

“Can you imagine what high school will be like?” Ana asked after something happened in the gym, the cafeteria, the bathroom, the hallway, or when Sister Cathy-Might-As-Well-Be-Blind turned her back to them. As each month passed, it appeared that the boys’ hands were becoming magnets. And they were metal. 

In the bathroom mirrors, the girls compared mustaches. The lucky ones with fine hairs they could ignore, the others hoping they had mothers that’d let them bleach, wax, or pluck. The unluckiest ones had mothers who insisted their daughters’ mustaches remain—like their mothers and their mothers’ mothers before them. Collectively, they hated girls who had no facial hair. 

And then there were tits. The boys called Cassandra’s mountains, Caro’s speedbumps, and Bibi’s tiny torpedoes. Why was there so much variation? Tits were all so different—could they even be called one word? The boys didn’t have to deal with any of that. But if nature had given them one thing in common, it was pimples. From a few that could be ignored to large welts that shone red or pink and looked like smears of butter waiting to melt over toast. No one escaped the pimple. 

“So really? You went below the neck?” Bibi asked, dying of curiosity.

Sarah looked away, as if she’d done so, too. Caro and Ana kept their eyes fixed on Cassandra, trying to read her face. Ruba was curious, but she didn’t want to let on for some reason.  

“It was okay, okay,” Cassandra replied, dipping her rubbery pretzel in ketchup. And that was that. And when she was pressed. She just repeated that it was just okay. That she might do it again, but she wasn’t sure. 

*

It started with warmth. Like a campfire almost ready to roast marshmallows in. And then before she knew it, it felt as if she’d peed and had forgotten to wipe. But there was nothing there. The music boomed in her ears and the room felt pitched to one side. The warmth then became something she could feel in her cheeks. She brought a hand to her face to check. She didn’t want anyone to see her touching her face so she made it as if she wanted to laugh and covered her mouth. She was blushing; that much she could tell. 

On the crowded dance floor, that song about taking two to make a thing go right came on. She thought back to Ana’s birthday party the year before and how they’d danced to that song while the boys sat on the couch eating cake. She wanted to ask if anyone else was hot, but as she looked at her sister’s face, she could tell if she asked, Noelle would call her dumb. But then, she felt something different. How could there be any cold in a place filled with so many bodies moving and sweating? A cold droplet ran down her side, ending where she could not say. She wanted to put her hand there, to check and double-check there was something cold amidst the heat coming off her body. But she couldn’t. 

How could she be hot and cold at the same time? She thought about her Timberland boots—how with the wrong socks, during the coldest days, a foot could itch from the heat and yet a toe could still be cold. Maybe warmth wasn’t something that was supposed to make sense?

“She’s in love…” The teasing cut her. She hadn’t been staring at the DJ for that long, had she? She immediately wanted to claw back at her sister’s friends—they weren’t laughing with her, they were laughing at her. But he was smiling at her.

“Hoes…” She muttered under her breath. But she would have screamed it, and no one would’ve heard under the loud music, fast beats, and rhythms that made their bodies move in different directions. That children’s song blended into that song about not being cruel, and then the one about men’s excuses always being paper thin. Noelle and her friends danced harder and harder as the music extended into one continuous song. 

Cassandra sat down to rest. She was younger than everyone else, despite her thighs. Her feet ached. Why were there only ever three options: bare feet, a flat sneaker, and a high heel? She wondered as she looked over at Noelle’s friends dancing on their stilts. And if they were in any pain, they hid it behind the widest smiles in the club. How a foot remained in that shoe was a mystery—maybe Sister Cathy could explain with science? That was when the DJ appeared and grabbed her hand gently, uttering two words: “You’re beautiful.”

She was the one. The way he held her hand. The way he told her she was beautiful. She hadn’t seen any of Noelle’s friends treated that way. And the way he walked her over to that little room, showing her off. How could she not be the one?

Seated again after. Cassandra stared down at her red and swollen toes; she could barely feel them. The ache was a pounding ache, a hot ache. But then a song started and Suzie, one of Noelle’s friends, pulled her to her feet. 

“My toes hurt.” She whined. She would’ve collapsed had Suzie not been holding onto her.

“Toes are indestructible.” Her sister replied, shoving a drink in her face. “Here, so you can stop complaining.”

DJ was back to work, letting her know he’d be busy the rest of the night. But he’d call her soon.

*

Ana stayed after to talk to Sister Catherine. It was a Wednesday, the day of the week when St. Bart’s students got out at 1 PM instead of at 3 PM. Cassandra, noticing that Ana hadn’t put on her jacket, asked if she’d gotten into trouble. Ana replied that she hadn’t, but that she had to talk to Sister Cathy about something. To which, Cassie raised an eyebrow and took a breath, about to say something before deciding to whatever her. She and the rest of the girls would be at the pizzeria across the street. 

Most Wednesdays, Ana dragged her brother Francisco to the pizzeria. If you gave the boy two slices and a Pepsi, he’d sit quietly, picking up the crusts that the girls left behind. She usually sat Francisco across from her so she could keep an eye on him—his stiff, panted-legs every so often rubbing up against an exposed, big-girl thigh. Francisco never forgot those afternoons for as long as he could remember. What boy with access to that much girl ever could? 

Which was why he yelled at Ana when she walked down to his class and told him that they weren’t headed to the pizzeria that afternoon. He’d starved himself in the hopes of two slices and at least six crusts, maybe a pepperoni or two. 

“But why?” Francisco cried. “Why?” He asked again. After which he thought about asking her if he could go without her. 

“Because.” She started. “I have to see Sister Catherine and help her out with something.” 

He didn’t understand. Ana handed him a five-dollar bill, the cost of the school’s afterschool program. Francisco looked at the bill as if it were a death sentence. He knew it meant peanut butter and jelly—the sandwich he hated the most—and leftover lunch milk. The chocolate milk would be gone by then. She’d been put in that five-dollar afterschool program countless times—she knew it meant a classroom, some cookies, and a TV (if you were lucky). She almost felt bad for him but then shooed him along. If he were smart, he’d say he forgot his five-dollar bill and pocket the money. She watched him storm down the hallway. 

“One day he’ll be like the rest of them.” 

When Ana arrived back to her classroom, Sister Catherine was busy arranging her desks.

“I don’t know how you kids do it…” She shook her head at a desk that was facing backward. “Help me line up these desks, dear.” 

During the first week of classes, Ana would stare at the neatly taped crosses Sister Catherine had secured to the floor so students knew where to line up their desks. Make sure your desk lines up with a cross, or else. It was Sister Catherine’s only hard rule at the beginning of the year: the only offense other than a “Jesus Christ!” That bothered her. At first, detentions went out like crazy. But by May, Sister Catherine couldn’t give out enough detentions to make them care. 

“Thank you, Anita,” Sister Catherine replied after they’d arranged a dozen desks. No one except her mother called her Anita.

“You’re welcome, Sister Catherine,” Ana dutifully replied. Smiling. Nodding. 

“So, my dear, what did you want to see me about?” She finally asked.

“I dunno,” Ana started, walking towards the front of the room. She ran a finger across the blackboard; it hadn’t been washed in weeks. If you looked hard enough, you could still see the outline of Sister Catherine’s cow head, along with a faint outline of her two lists. When she looked at her finger afterward, it looked like she’d dipped her finger into a tin of talcum powder. “Stuff,” she finally continued.  

“Oh yes, stuff,” Sister Catherine went on. “There’s always a lot of stuff to talk about, isn’t there?” 

For a moment, Ana didn’t see Sister Catherine’s baggy sweater, her rosary, her silver-white hair, or her curls, which in the right light (and the right shadow) resembled a crown of thorns. Instead, she saw her mother and her sisters sitting around the kitchen table, Francisco underneath the table eating cereal from a box. Too many people at one table. It was a thought that always came to mind when they ate around that tiny kitchen table. Sometimes, her mother told stories about her own parents, her job, about something she’d seen on the subway. Sometimes she’d remind them how hard their father was working to provide for them. 

“What happens below the neck, Sister Catherine?” She finally asked.

Sister Catherine didn’t blush. And instead, walked closer to Ana, stopping by the windows overlooking the front yard. Outside, Ana thought she could hear her friends laughing at her for being so stupid. She thought she heard her brother.

“Well, Ana, things…” 

“But like what?”

“Things, Ana,” she went on, “things you’ll understand when you’re older.” 

“But Cassie said Noelle said—”

“Cassanda’s sister doesn’t know a thing about decency,” Sister Catherine cut her off. She’d known Cassandra’s sister Noelle and had taught her a lifetime ago. 

“But—”

“But nothing, Ana. I’m not going to talk to you about Cassandra or her sister. I’m trying to talk about you.” And she used that tone of voice she often used during religion class, when she wanted you to see her point of view, to believe what she believed. 

Why did it sometimes work?

Ana didn’t know what to say next. She’d dated Santo through the sixth grade, after he’d asked her to the Christmas dance. They’d kissed three times since, for two or three seconds, tops. And her mouth was always closed. They’d never done anything. They couldn’t really. Francisco was always with them. Sometimes, they held hands. But usually, Francisco went for her hand, too, and she chose her brother’s over Santo’s. 

“Why don’t we pray?” Sister Catherine asked. 

And before Ana had a chance to reply, Sister Catherine had already pulled out the textbook-sized crucifix from underneath some folders on her desk. The one she took out during religion class. It was as wide as her brother’s face. Ana always thought she’d hit one of them with it. For a moment, Ana thought she’d have to kiss it. 

“Say an Our Father with me…” Sister Catherine asked in a tone that Ana had never heard. She’d heard a question, but it wasn’t really a question. She could say no and walk right out and things would be okay. 

“Okay, Sister,” she replied instead. 

The two of them began to pray. They closed their eyes. In that beginning quiet, Ana’s mind raced through a collage of images: Cassandra laughing, Cassandra’s high heels, the cow head, and Santo. His dry lips. And then how he kissed her ear once. But only once.

The word Father rang in her ears. Where was he? There was always a pause after Father was uttered in prayer, a second for us to think about him. Her real father was constantly working. Heaven. Sister Catherine prayed slowly. Name. Ana could hear every word. And she heard herself alongside Sister Catherine. And as she opened her eyes, a few words before it was over, she saw Sister’s tense face. As if she too had memories she’d rather forget. When Sister Catherine opened her eyes, they glanced at each other. And then stared at the crucifix between them. They took in Jesus’ skinny body and the tiny cloth that covered his nakedness. And how his hands, his arms, his legs, and his heart—what really mattered—were all below the neck, too.