My oldest sister has a dark spot above her lip. It is black against the brown of her skin, and she carries her fear in her eyes. As for my second sister, she carries her fear in her stomach, hunching as she ages, her back curving as if in a storm of thick wind. My sisters were born in our mother’s youth and I in her middle age. Between us there passed many rainy seasons and children who died young, either in the womb, stillborn bloody and blue, or later on, falling from a high branch or lifted by the jaws of something terrible.

I remember, in my earliest youth, gray dust frosted my sisters’ outlines against the stream before we all dipped our hands in and cleaned ourselves, cleaned each other, hair lacing through fingers and toes as we removed the fleas, nettles, filth. Our mother would part the hair at the center of our backs and lick at the dry skin to heal the itch that settled there. We’d shiver on the bank, dampened, and lean against each other for warmth—my small form between the two almost-grown forms of my sisters—until the sun could dry us.

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