One of her earliest memories is of fingers in her hair. Patient, steady, gentle on the snags and snarls of a five-year-old’s head. Even when Debbie was squirming to get up, they never yanked, never pulled, only worked steadily until her hair was twisted away from her eyes so she could better see the mischief she was about to make.
Her sister’s fingers were long and elegant. One day, they would support the weight of a small engagement ring, but that’s years away yet. Today, they split Debbie’s hair right down the middle and plait it in quick tight turns, Debbie’s scalp a tender pink line against her shock of white-blonde hair.
“Viiiiiolet,” Debbie whines. “Can I go?”
“Just about,” her sister says around the pins in her mouth. She folds Debbie’s hair up and tucks the ends in, so her hair is a braided crown. “There. Beautiful.”
Even at five, Debbie knew her lot in life. Nobody ever called her beautiful or elegant, not like they called her older sister. Debbie was clever, quick, cunning, a fox that would one day rule the chicken coop. Her face was squat and toad-ish, her fingernails bitten to the quick and always dirty. The only thing Debbie had going for her was her hair, so similar to her sister’s, a halo of wild light.
“Off you go,” Violet says.
As the youngest of eight children, Debbie was feral with curiosity. She spent her days in the fields and ponds surrounding her parents’ estate, catching critters in glass jars to transport to her herpetarium and collecting bug samples to pin to wax paper and meticulously label, roping one of her older siblings into spelling out D-a-n-a-u-s p-l-e-x-i-p-p-u-s, the Monarch butterfly or S-t-a-g-m-o-m-a-n-t-i-s c-a-r-o-l-i-n-a, the Carolina mantis native to the area. Her room was a sanctuary of local wildlife, a greenhouse, a library. It’s where she learned patience and responsibility, how she practiced her letters and critical thinking.
It was only when Violet stepped in and began to teach her more formalized education that her parents thought to enroll Debbie in school. She was nearly eight by then but could already read Latin and recite the taxonomies of every tree, shrub, and flower in the backyard.
And though she went to school for a few hours every day, Violet took it upon herself to continue tutoring her youngest sister. At first, in Latin, math, and history. Eventually, as Deb got older and Violet began to pursue more romantic interests, in manners and social etiquette.
“I don’t understand,” Deb says at the start of another etiquette lesson, her fingers big and clumsy on the dainty teacups that her sister sips delicately from, “what this has anything to do with me.”
“Because, Deborah, you need to know how to act in polite society.”
“But why? I don’t care about polite society.”
Her sister gives Deb a stern look. “Because how else are you going to marry if you don’t know how to be civilized?”
“This is civilized?” She waves a tiny cup in the air and takes no small pleasure in the concern that flashes across her sister’s face. It wouldn’t be the first teacup Deb has broken.
“It’s what society tells us is civilized,” Violet says, setting Deb’s cup down gently.
“Why should I care what other people think? Especially men.” Deb makes a face.
Her sister’s voice goes low and soft, in warning or in threat. “Because that’s the way the world works. If you want to be respected, if you want to be taken seriously, you must play by its rules.”
Violet was fastidious with the world’s rules.
She studied hard and received top marks all while maintaining her younger sister’s education and looking after her chores. “Such a good girl. I don’t know what I would do without you,” was their mother’s constant refrain as Violet chopped onion or washed up after dinner or folded piles of laundry into tight, tidy squares.
And following the rules took Violet places. She was the first daughter to attend college at Smith College where she studied mathematics and Classical studies. Her professors said she was a marvel, as intelligent as even their brightest male students.
She joined the rotary club and ladled hot soup into the bowls of those hardest hit by the Depression. It pained her to see the desolation, the gaunt faces of men and the haunted looks of mothers who stood in line and held the hands of their children. On one visit home, Violet took up against her parents who claimed to have been hit just as hard, though they still held onto their sizable estate, had bread on the table, and could send four of their children to college. It’s the only time Deb can remember Violet raising her voice to her parents. She had been equally impressed and terrified by it, seeing her amiable sister red-cheeked and quivering with indignation.
Her second semester, Violet joined a sorority and attended fraternity parties with her sisters where they drank punch laced with gin, Violet’s one transgression against the rules. Or at least that’s the only rule breaking she’d admit to Deb when she returned home on breaks and stayed up late whispering with her sister about all she’d seen and learned and experienced.
“There’s this boy,” Violet said over winter break her sophomore year. She hugged a pillow to her chest, her eyes sparkling, her grin dazzled and sloppy as if she’d just had gin-laced punch. “He’s so handsome,” she sighed.
“What does he study?” teenaged-Deb sniffed.
“That’s the best part. Mechanical engineering,” Violet answered. When Deb didn’t say anything, she said “He’s smart, Deborah!”
Nobody, save perhaps for Deb herself, was as smart as her sister. And just because somebody could move some numbers around didn’t mean they could think. Her sister was in mathematics, for crying out loud! What she studied wasn’t just numbers. It was theory, it was sophistication. It was leaps and bounds ahead of the practical brutishness of engineering. The fact that this man fooled her sister so thoroughly didn’t sit right with Deb.
It wouldn’t be long before Deb’s skepticism proved true.
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Engaging. Can't wait to read what is next.