To be a Silhouette in a Blue World

iv. In Which Blood Ruins Everything

The evening is as quiet as the town it echoes through. The sky, blood red, a gentle shadow on the backs of two Filipino girls seated on the front doorstep of their parent's home. One of them is here on a visit from university. The other is just returned from her summer job at a local boxing gym. The both of them deeply uncomfortable in the company of each other.

The wind - a soft whisper through the leaves of a redwood tree in the home's front garden - prods the lighter-skinned of the two sisters, who clasps a can of coke, to break the silence. She says, her voice filled with more poison than her soda; 'I didn't think I'd see you around here again.'

The other sister, takes a drag of her cigarette, before she says; 'College got lonely. I wanted to see my family, again.'

A laugh. Then silence. Before Adriana, the sister who clasps a can of coke, says in a low voice; 'Well they're inside if you want to see them, Mariana.'

'Don't be like that, Adri.'

'Don't call me that. Only people I give a shit about get to call me that,' The whole while Adriana does not meet her sister's gaze, but speaks as if she is faced with every cruelty she suffered at the hands of her elder sibling. Her words bitter and cool. 'Why did you think you could just waltz back here after four years and act like you have amnesia about the reason you left?'

Mariana, with eyes trained on the streetlamp opposite them, says, her voice equally as cool, 'I left for an education.'

'And I'm this way because of genetics.'

Mariana faces her sister, who still does not meet her gaze. 'I didn't make you do what you did, Adri. That was on you. Just like every other shitty thing that ever happened to you.'

She laughs - or cries for help. It's hard to tell. Then Adriana says; 'Sure, Mariana. Come along here and blame me for something that happened because of all the shit you put me through.'

Mariana takes a drag of her cigarette to quell the growing riot within her. Still there is an unrest that runs through her veins; the same unrest that runs through her sister. The two of them made of kinetic energy. Of fire and blood and rage. A decade's worth of hate, bubbling through them like acid in a single moment.

'Do mum and dad even know you're here?' Adriana asks. Her voice quiet while her insides are not.

'No.'

'Then shouldn't you be at some college party with your white friends?' Adriana's voice is empty; but there is pain in her utterance. The words, a switchblade on a wound that will never heal.

The air grows warmer, but there is a coldness deep inside Mariana's bones, even as soft heat brushes against her quiet brown skin. She says; 'Look, Adri -'

'Stop calling me that.'

'-Adriana,' Mariana corrects, her voice filled with tobacco and apology. 'A week ago one of my uni friends, Stacey, found out that her sister had died. She'd gotten real fucked up with opioids or something and died of an overdose. Stacey wouldn't stop crying because of it. Told me it was worse because she hadn't been there for her sister, and now she was gone. It got me thinking about us, and what we used to have - '

'You mean, before you spent the better part of high school pretending I wasn't your sister and telling me how ugly I was, because I was darker than you?'

The air that surrounds the two girls composes itself of shards of glass. A broken mirror. A purest resentment.

Now, it is Adriana who is filled with a riots worth of rage. But unlike her sister, she doesn't have a cigarette to quell it. All she has is a can of coke in her hand that has grown lukewarm, a childhood's worth of broken dreams, and an anger in her fists she cannot let loose. 'You ruined my life Mariana,' she says. This, the bluntest truth she has ever told.

'I didn't ruin -' her sister begins, but Adriana continues.

'I wasn't asking for much. All I wanted was a sister who gave a shit about me. Who had my back when those assholes in your year called me an ape and a nigger just because I was the darkest person at our school. But that was too fucking hard for you wasn't it? Because you blended just right in. Weren't foreign or dirty or any shit like that. You were like them. Just like them.'

Mariana's voice is low and soft, like honey in poison, a lie; 'You over-reacted, Adri.'

Her sister's voice is low and bitter, like the flesh of a dead body, the truth; 'My name is Adriana.'

Nature grows quieter around them. The hollow corners of this town in awe of this declaration. They like Adriana, know of the other names she was given. Nigger. Ape. Dirty. None of these her own, just burdens forced upon her throughout childhood.

Her skin a burden forced upon her throughout childhood.

A weight on her back. A mass of darkness and dirt and loathing against her spine. A cancer, that would kill her if she did not kill it first.

The day she decided to cure herself the bleach, a memory now, had sat under the sink the same way it had for the last fourteen years, barely touched. An invitation if you will. An escape from all this cruelty. Anything, but an over-reaction.

She had bathed in it, only adding some water to the solution so it covered her whole body - in a way that was what both saved her life and destroyed it. The water, though she did not know at the time, an assurance she wouldn't die from shock; the bleach an assurance she wouldn't ever be herself again. A good thing, back then.

Now however, as she looks at her sister for the first time that evening and sees that nothing has changed, she knows it was not a good thing. For so long Adriana had wanted to be Mariana. Mariana who now despite her longer hair and the more refined features, is still a child who cannot take responsibility for her actions.

Not anymore.

Adriana shoves her sister onto the lawn, knocking the cigarette and the can of coke out of both their hands, as years and years of pain courses through her like static electricity. All evening, she has tried to hold it in. But the realisation that nothing has changed coaxes the rage out of her.

She straddles her sister's throat, and punches her right in the face - once, twice, three times. A crack. Perhaps a fractured nose. 'Say you're sorry for what you did,' Adriana whispers her breaths heavy, her hands stained with the blood of her sister.

Her sister, who was in a trance of sorts a moment ago, is now aware of what is happening. She screams. Then attempts to claw at her sister's face, but her sister punches her again, in the mouth - splitting Mariana's lip and Adriana's knuckles. 'You're a piece of shit,' Adriana screams at her sister, tears and anger streaming down her face.

'You're a fucking psycho,' her sister screams back through her swollen mouth, blood spilling from her nose. She claws at her sister again, piercing bleached and tormented skin.

Adriana screams - more out of rage than pain. Her skin, a final defense against feelings, under attack. She beats and beats and beats Mariana, until they are both unrecognisable - her sister's face too swollen to even know it is made of skin.

'Adriana!' Mariana gasps, realising her sister might actually kill her. 'Get off. Please. I'm begging you.'

Adriana doesn't get off. But she does stop. Satisfied with how she has cured her sister of this burden of traditional beauty she has carried her entire life. 'Say you're fucking sorry for what you did to me,' she spits, in a low voice.

A tear rolls down her sister's swollen face, as she chokes out, 'I'm sorry, Adriana. I'm so sorry.'

Adriana is silent, when she lifts herself off her sister's brutalised body and pushes her bruised knuckles into the pockets of the hoodie she wears.

She walks into her parents' home, shutting the door behind her while Mariana remains the aftermath of a terrorist attack on their front lawn. Her blood mingling with the brown of the earth.

And in that moment Mariana realises, this pain she feels now is how Adriana felt throughout the entirety of​ their childhood.