Summertime with My Sister Vacations spent battling illness. by QUINN GAWRONSKI
M
y sister Taryn and I sat with our cousins in their overgrown Portland backyard, circled around a buzzing fire pit. Smoke rose into the murky black sky, winding through the empty clothes lines and twisting vines overhead. We grilled Polish kielbasa sausages and cradled wine in hand, catching up after years spent apart. Taryn ate two kielbasa with the gluten-free buns we had picked up at the store. It was the most I had seen Taryn eat the entire trip. She excused herself at least three times before announcing exhaustion and retired to our queen mattress. When I was a sophomore in high school, my mom called while I discussed my latest crush with friends. I picked up the phone and hear, “Your sister has lupus.” Hot tears streamed down my cheeks and panic raced through my head. After the diagnosis, I watched her skip breakfast, claiming the lupus medication made her nauseous. When the doctor advised her to avoid gluten, family dinners became tedious operations. Often, she slipped into the basement after meals; I would quietly follow her to press my cheek against the carpet and squint under the door to see if she was kneeling in front of the toilet. For years, I couldn’t taste my mother’s home cooked meals. Instead of enjoying dinner, I calculated if Taryn would finish her food, offer bites to my dad or blame stomach aches for the full plate scraped down the drain. It felt like a shadow followed my sister wherever she went. Since fifth grade, I can recall blurry visions of her suffering. I remember humming light bulbs encased in metal cages when I visited her in the hospital. As I got older, I learned they
illutration by LIVIA JONES
were there so suicidal residents like my sister couldn’t break the lightbulbs and slit their wrists. I remember raw cuts running down my sister’s thighs, her explanation that our cat scratched her. As I got older I learned she had a knack for dissecting razor blades. Even though I’m four years younger than Taryn, I have always been able to read my sister. The suspicion that shrouded me as she slipped out of her camping chair had accumulated over three years. An hour after she pardoned herself from our evening around the fire, I slipped under our comforter. Her thick ebony hair entwined with mine as she restlessly shifted. I lay awake, and
Were people noticing her absence? How many calories did she drink from the wine? For Taryn, this evening was the norm. She shifted in our humid room all night, stomach churning from vomiting and abusing laxatives. When she slipped out of the room to the bathroom for what seemed like the hundredth time that night, she was sure not to wake me. For most of our first trip without our parents, my sister’s memory is blank except for illness and anguish. She thought my mind was cloudless - that I vividly recalled our conversations as we drove through the Columbia River Gorge and plunged into the icy depths at the base of a waterfall in our swimsuits. All I remember is the sick feeling in my stomach when I saw her in a bathing suit; her body transformed into a brittle tomb. At 5 feet 5 inches tall, she weighed 100 pounds. Her once beautiful figure was reduced to a sickly outline in a red bikini. Before my eyes, my sister melted away into a woman I didn’t know. A month after our trip to Portland, I packed heavy suitcases for my first semester of college abroad in Strasbourg. My sister’s furniture was stuffed into a U-Haul for the long drive to Seattle. All she wanted was to cross the country and start fresh. The night before leaving, I sat across from my parents at our wooden kitchen table after dinner. It was a typical night; Taryn had escaped the meal with phony plans or faked nausea. At this point, I had lost track of her list of excuses. My parents spent my adolescent years shielding me from my sister’s wounds. At 17, I realized I was old enough to protect them from another trauma, tragedy or treatment. I was ready to raise the red flag.
Before my eyes, my sister melted away into a woman I didn’t know.
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wracked my mind for the best way to ask a question that tormented me for years. My pulse radiated through my chest. “Do you have an eating disorder?” I said bluntly. She rested in the deep silence for a moment. Then she said no. Her anxiety about that dinner started hours prior, at the grocery store. I wanted spicy pepper jack kielbasa and she refused, versed with the pain the spices would cause when she purged it later. I devoured my dinner and she sat inches away, feeling her body expand after each bite. Purging wasn’t enough for that meal, so she took laxatives. When she sat back down from trips to the bathroom, panic mounted: What if she hadn’t gotten all of the bun out of her stomach?