Forbidden Sister Read Free

her. People behind me would look annoyed or frightened. Whenever I walked in the city, whether to school or to the store or just to meet friends, I would scan the faces of any young woman who would be about Roxy’s age. I often studied some young woman’s face so hard she flashed anger back at me, and I quickly looked away and sped up.
    One of the first things my parents had taught me about walking the streets of New York was never to make too much eye contact with strangers. I supposed Roxy would be like a complete stranger to me now. I even had trouble recalling the sound of her voice, but I did sneak looks at the pictures of her that Mama had hidden every chance I had.
    I believed that Roxy would be as curious about me as I was about her. Why shouldn’t she be? Although I feared it, it was hard for me to accept that she hated Mama and me because of what Papa had done to her. Despite his stern ways, it was also hard for me to believe she hated him. Maybe it was difficult only because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t even want to think that someone with whom I shared so much DNA could be that bad, that immoral. Or did it mean that somewhere deep inside me there was a strain of evil that would someday rise to the surface, too? How would it show itself? What emotions, lusts, and desires did we share?
    Having an older sister who had become so infamous to my parents naturally made me worry aboutmyself. When I suggested such a thing to Mama once, she looked at me with pain in her eyes. I know the pain was there, because, like me, she didn’t want to believe Roxy was so wicked and sinful or as evil as Papa made her out to be. Then she softened her look and told me to think of Cain and Abel in the Bible. Abel wasn’t evil because Cain was. Abel was good.
    “Besides, we must not believe that evil is stronger than good, Emmie. You’re my perfect daughter, my fille parfaite, n’est-ce pas? ”
    “ Oui, Mama,” I would say whenever she asked me that, but I didn’t believe I was as perfect as Mama or Papa thought I was. Who could be?
    Yes, I kept my room neat, made my bed, helped Mama with house chores, shopped for her, came home when my parents told me I must, never smoked or drank alcohol with my classmates, not even a beer, and refused to try any drugs or pot any classmate offered. Mama believed in letting me drink wine at dinner, even when I was barely ten, and I drank some vodka to celebrate things occasionally, but that was the way she had been brought up in France, and Papa thought it was just fine.
    “The best training ground for most things is your home,” he would tell me. My friends at school, especially the ones who knew how strict my father could be, didn’t know what to make of that. He sounded so lenient, but I knew that his leniency didn’t go any farther than our front door. Sometimes, especially when I left our house, I felt as if I were walking around with an invisible leash and collar around my neck.
    Rules rained down around me everywhere I looked, not just in my home. Our school, which was a private school, didn’t tolerate sexy clothing or any body piercing, not that I wanted to do that. Our teachers even criticized some girls for wearing too much makeup. It was far more serious for my classmates to violate rules than it was for students in a public school, because, unlike in a public school, they wouldn’t simply be suspended. They’d be thrown out, and all of their tuition money would be forfeited. What they did after school the moment they left the property was another thing, however. Buttons were undone, rings were put in noses, and cigarettes came out of hidden places. Students puffed defiantly. Suddenly, their mouths were full of profanity, words they would be afraid even to whisper in the school’s hallways. It was as if all of the pent-up nasty behavior was bursting at the seams. They were far from goody-goodies, so why shouldn’t I wonder if I was, too?
    I probably wouldn’t