Contents
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
EARLY NOVEMBER
MID NOVEMBER
LATE NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
JANUARY
JANUARY 21ST
JANUARY 29TH
FEBRUARY
MARCH
Author's Note
Acknowledgements
Sisters
Here
We Are.
And we are living.
Isn’t that amazing?
How we manage
to be
at all.
The End of Summer
Summer’s breath begins to cool.
The ink of night comes earlier and earlier.
And out of the blue
Mom announces that Tippi and I
will no longer be taught at home.
‘In September
you’ll join a class of juniors
and go to school
like everyone else,’ she says.
I don’t make any
ripples.
I listen
and nod
and pull at a loose thread in my shirt
until a button
falls away.
But Tippi doesn’t stay silent.
She detonates:
‘Are you kidding me?
Have you lost your minds?’ she shouts,
then argues with Mom and Dad for hours.
I listen
and nod
and bite at the skin around my fingernails
until they start to
bleed.
Finally Mom rubs her temples, sighs, and gives it to us straight.
‘Donations from well-wishers have dried up
and we simply can’t afford to homeschool you.
You know your dad hasn’t found a job yet
and Grammie’s pension
doesn’t even cover the cable bill.’
‘You girls aren’t cheap,’ Dad adds,
as though all the money spent on us
—the hospital bills and special clothes—
could be saved if we’d both
only
behave a little better.
You see,
Tippi and I are not what you’d call normal—
not what you see every day
or any day
for that matter.
Anyone with a jot of good manners
calls us ‘conjoined’,
though we’ve been dubbed other things, too:
freaks, fiends,
monsters, mutants,
and even a two-headed demon once,
which made me cry so hard
I had puffy eyes for a week.
But there’s no denying our difference.
We are literally joined
at the hip—
united in blood and bone.
And
this
is why
we never went to school.
For years we’ve been cooking up chemistry potions
on the kitchen table
and using our yard for P.E.
But now
there’s no getting out of it;
we are going to school.
Not that we’ll be in a state school
like our sister Dragon,
with kids who pull knives on teachers
and drink Tipp-Ex for breakfast.
No, no, no.
The city won’t fund our homeschooling but
they’ll pay
for a place
at a private school
—Hornbeacon High—
and Hornbeacon is willing to have that one place
count for the two of us.
I guess we’re supposed to feel lucky.
But lucky isn’t really how
I would
ever
describe us.
Everyone
Dragon stretches out on the end of the double bed I share with Tippi,
her bruised feet pointed while she
paints her toenails a deep metallic blue.
‘I don’t know,
you might like it,’ she tells us.
‘Not everyone in the world is an asshole.’
Tippi takes the polish, starts on my right hand and
blows my fingernails
dry.
‘No, you’re right,
not everyone’s an asshole,’
Tippi says.
‘But around us,
they all morph into them.’
A Freak Like Us
Dragon’s real name is Nicola,
but Tippi and I changed it
when she was two,
when
she was fierce and fire-breathing,
stomping around the apartment and
chomping on crayons and toy trains.
Now she’s fourteen and a ballet dancer
she doesn’t stomp anywhere—
she floats.
Lucky for her she’s completely normal.
Although
I do wonder if being our sister
sucks sometimes,
if being our sister
makes her a freak
too.
Ischiopagus Tripus
Although scientists have come up with ways to
categorise conjoined twins,
each and every pair that ever existed
is unique—
the details of all our bodies remain a secret
unless we want to tell.
And people always want to know.
They want to know exactly what we share
down there,
so sometimes we tell them.
Not because it’s their business
but to stop them wondering—it’s all the
wondering
about our bodies that bothers us.
So:
Tippi and I are of the ischiopagus tripus
variety.
We have
two heads,
two hearts,
two sets of lungs and kidneys.
We have four arms as well,
and a pair of fully functioning legs
now that the vestigial leg has been
docked
like a show dog’s tail.
Our intestines begin
apart
then merge.
And below that we are
one.
It probably sounds like a prison sentence,
but we have it better than others
who live with fused heads or hearts,
or only two arms between them.
It really isn’t so bad.
It’s how it’s always been.
It’s all we know.
And actually,
we’re usually
quite happy
together.
Milk Trudge
‘We’re out of milk,’ Grammie says,
brandishing an empty milk carton and
a mug of steaming coffee.
‘Well, go and get some,’ Tippi says.
Grammie wrinkles her nose and pokes Tippi’s side.
‘You know I have a problem with my hip,’ she says,
and I laugh out loud;
Grammie is the
only person on the planet who ever pulls
The Disability Card
with us.
So Tippi and I trudge to the corner store
two blocks away,
which is how we get everywhere:
trudging
and lumbering
along,
my left arm around Tippi’s waist,
my right slung over a crutch—
Tippi mirroring me.
By t
he time we reach the store we are both
breathing hard
and neither of us wants to carry the milk home.
‘She can run her own errands in future,’ Tippi says,
stopping
for
a moment and
leaning on some rusty iron railings.
A woman pushing a stroller passes by,
her mouth
a gaping cavern.
Tippi smiles and says, ‘Hey there!’
then snickers
when this woman with a perfectly formed body
almost topples over in surprise.
Picasso
Dragon spreads a thousand jigsaw pieces
across
the kitchen table.
The picture on the box promises that the mess will turn into a
painting by Picasso
—‘Friendship’—
a surreal arrangement of
limbs
and lines,
of solid blocks of
yellow,
brown, and
blue.
‘I like Picasso,’ I say.
‘He paints the essence of things
and not only what the eye can see.’
Tippi huffs. ‘It looks impossible.’
Dragon turns the pieces
face up.
‘The harder the better,’ she tells us.
‘Otherwise, what’s the point?’
Tippi and I plop ourselves next to her
on an
extra-wide dining chair
as
Dad
shuffles
down
from his bedroom
bleary-eyed and smelling stale.
He watches us
rummaging to find the puzzle’s frame
—the edges
and corners—
then reaches over Dragon’s shoulder
and places in her palm
the top right-hand corner piece.
He sits at the table opposite us
and silently slides bits we’ve been looking for
into line.
‘Great teamwork,’ I say,
beaming at Dad.
He looks at me and winks.
‘I learned from the best,’ he says,
and gets up from the table to search in the refrigerator for a
beer.
The Launch
Mom and Dad prepare Tippi and me
for our first day at school
like they are
launching astronauts
into space.
Every day is packed with appointments.
They arrange for us to see our
therapists, doctors, and dentist.
Then Grammie highlights our hair
and shapes our nails
so we will be ready for our
Great Public Appearance.
‘It’s going to be fabulous!’ Mom says,
pretending we aren’t being
thrown into a ring of lions
without a weapon,
and Dad smiles
crookedly.
Dragon, who’s about to become a freshman,
rolls her eyes
and tugs at the cuff of her cardigan.
‘Oh, come on, Mom,
don’t pretend like it’s going to be easy.’
‘Well, I’m leaving if I hate it,’ Tippi announces,
and Dragon says,
‘I hate school. Can I stay at home?’
Grammie is watching Judge Judy.
‘Why would anyone hate school?’ she caws.
‘Best days of your lives, girls.
You’ll meet your sweethearts there.’
Dad turns away,
Dragon blushes,
and Mom doesn’t speak
because
they all know
that finding love is
something
that will never
happen
for us.
Therapy
‘Tell me what’s going on,’
Dr Murphy says,
and as
so often happens
I sit in silence
for ten whole minutes,
worrying at a button in the brown leather sofa.
I’ve known Dr Murphy
all my life, sixteen and a half years,
which is a long time to know anyone
and to have to think of new things to say.
But the doctors insist we come for regular therapy
to support our mental health,
as though that’s the bit of us that’s broken.
Tippi is wearing headphones and listening to loud
music
so she can’t hear what I’m saying,
so I can
spew all my suppressed feelings into
Dr Murphy’s notebook
without hurting any of Tippi’s.
And I used to rant a lot,
when I was seven or eight,
and Tippi had stolen my doll
or pulled my hair
or eaten my half of a cookie.
But now there’s not much to say
Tippi doesn’t already know,
and the talking seems
a waste of money we don’t have
and of fifty perfectly good minutes.
I yawn.
‘So?’
Dr Murphy says,
her forehead furrowed
as though my problems are her own.
Empathy, of course,
is all part of the service.
I shrug.
‘We’re starting school soon,’ I say.
‘Yes, I heard.
And how do you feel about that?’ she asks.
‘Not sure.’
I look up at the light shade,
at an unspoiled web and a spider gorging
on a fly bigger than itself.
I fold my hands in our lap.
‘Well …’ I say,
‘I suppose I’m afraid the other students will pity me.’
Dr Murphy nods.
She doesn’t tell me
they won’t
or
that it’s going to be fantastic
because lies are not her style.
Instead she says, ‘I’ll be really interested
to hear how it goes, Grace,’
and looking at the wall clock
chirps,
‘See you next time!’
Tippi Talks
We go next door
into Dr Netherhall’s office
where it is my turn to wear the headphones
and Tippi’s turn to tell all.
Which
I think
she actually does.
She talks quickly,
her expression serious,
her voice
sometimes loud enough for me to catch
a stray
word
or two.
I turn the music up,
force it to swallow the sound of her
and then I watch
as
she
crosses her foot over mine,
uncrosses it,
pushes her hair out of her face,
coughs,
bites her lips,
wriggles in our seat,
scratches her forearm,
rubs her nose,
stares at the ceiling,
stares at the door,
all the time
talking
until
finally she taps my knee
and mouths the word
‘Done.’
The Check-up
Mom drives us all the way to the specialist children’s hospital
in Rhode Island
for our quarterly check-up,
to ensure our organs aren’t making plans to pack it in.
And today,
like every other time before,
Dr Derrick parades his
wide-eyed
medical students
and asks if we mind them
watching the exam.
We mind.
Of course we mind.
But Dr Derrick’s stethoscope and white coat
do not permit disagreement
so we shrug
and allow ourselves to be
ogled
by a dozen trainee doctors
with tight mouths
and narrow eyes
who
tilt forward,
ever so slightly
on their toes,
as we lift our shirts.
By the end we are blushing
and only want to
leave.
‘They’re all good?’ Mom asks hopefully
when we’re back in Dr Derrick’s office.
He taps the top of his
desk.
‘Everything clear
as far as I can see,’
he says.
‘But as always,
they have to take it easy,
especially now they’ll
be at school.
Right?’
He points a playful warning finger at us.
‘Right,’ we say,
not planning to
change a thing
about how we live.
Influenza
Two days after our visit to
Dr Derrick
it knocks us down
flat on to our backs
without any warning.
I shiver and shake
and cling to the duvet
popping two white tabs of paracetamol
into my mouth every four hours,
hoping
to keep the chills away.
Tippi is lying next to me
shuddering,
sneezing, coughing,
and making her way through
a second box of Kleenex.
Our sheets are wet with sweat.