A Call and a World Away

A shrill scream rang out through my friend’s house. June sighed, picking herself off the bed and closing the door.

“Little brat,” she scoffed, shuffling back to her bed and flopping on the mattress to her original spot. “She just wants attention.”

I hum my agreement, eyes unwavering from my phone.

Logically, I know Iris is probably busy at college, whether it be going to a class, sitting in a class, leaving a class, doing work from a class, answering her sister’s text message is not high on her list of priorities. But my mind seems to also think that repeatedly opening and closing the messages app will somehow make her respond faster.

“You know, it's not the end of the world if she doesn’t go, right?”

This time, I look up from my screen to face June.

“Yes, I am aware,” I reply tersely before focusing on my screen again.

Another shriek sounds, this time directly outside the door.

“If she screams one more time I will actually strangle her,” June groans.

The doorknob twists and the door cracks open for a tiny head to poke in. “Mom says you have to include me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Shut the door.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“Shut it.”

“I’m gonna tell Mom you didn’t let me play with you.”

“Fine.”

The door snaps shut with a click, followed by the thuds of Aryla’s feet sprinting off to go complain to their mother.

By this time, my eyes have glazed over as I hunch over my phone, waiting.

Yet another howl from Aryla.

“Ok, that’s it,” June scowls before opening her door and stomping out to go yell at her younger sister.

I’m faced with two options at the moment: put down the cell phone instead of obsessing over what my sister might respond with and follow June down the hall or continue sitting in her desk chair making myself anxious with make-believe Iris-answers.

I sigh and get up, my feet padding across the carpet as I make my way to the half-opened door. Sticking my head out the doorway, I see June cursing out Aryla in as many languages she can muster up (like two): English, Mandarin, Chinglish, anything she can remember.

“MOM! SHE’S HITTING ME!” Aryla screeches.

“NO, I’M NOT,” June shouts back. “I swear to god, if I get in trouble for this I’ll actually start hitting you,” she hisses, lowering her voice so only Aryla and I can hear the threat.

“SHE’S SAYING SHE’S GOING TO HIT ME!”

“Shut up,” June grits out before turning away in frustration and storming back up the hall to me. “I hate this place.”

As she trudges past me, I think back to when I was six years old and pissing off my sister.

— — —

Iris and I have a rather large age gap so when I was in first grade my sister was in eighth grade. And at the time I was the favorite child, therefore, I practically got away with everything and, of course, I misused such power. I would bother Iris, make her yell at me, then I would yell that Iris was yelling at me thus my mother should go yell at her so she would stop yelling at me. Then she would get in trouble.

Afterwards, she would ignore me and the rest of my family (rightfully so).

I thought it was hilarious when I was six years old and felt I was better than everyone. But now, these are the moments I think back to when I’m faced with a screen and a singular question with no reply in sight.

— — —

“And worst of all? Somehow I’m going to get in trouble, even though she’s the one screaming her head off, like, would it kill them to just not blame me for once?” June concludes her rant, then looking at me expectantly for an answer.

The answer I have, unfortunately, is extremely lackluster; “Um, yeah, that really does suck.”

“Seriously? That’s all your commentary?” she replies incredulously.

I shrug. The fact remains that while we do have similar experiences, our roles in our respective families differ vastly.

“I mean, what can you do?” I ask, which was also a pretty crappy remark.

June slumps back, clearly unimpressed with the continuation of my lukewarm responses.

A ding! chimes from my phone. I immediately jump in my seat and snatch the device off the desk.

My heart slows and falls as I realize it’s just my mother, telling me she’s on her way to pick me up.

I exhale, slouching into the chair.

June raises an eyebrow (or at least attempts to). “You thought it was Iris.” Not a question, a statement. We have been best friends too long for her to not know, “Who was it?”

“My mother. She’s on her way.”

“Oh, okay.”

— — —

My mother pulls up to June’s house in less than five minutes. Westwick is a small town essentially meaning that there are about seven things you can do here before you run out of activities and are forced to repeat them. The “things” themselves consist of necessities vaguely disguised as a pastimes: “Hey, you wanna go to the CVS and not get anything, cause we’re broke?” (a question posed countless times). Even if we lived on opposite sides of town we would still be less than ten minutes away from each other.

“Bye!”

I look back to see June, waving at me from the front door, Aryla beside her also waving (though significantly more aggressively), while being barely held back by her sister.

I smile back and lift my hand up before my mother honks her horn in impatience. I shuffle over to the car and mentally prepare myself before opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat.

“Did you have fun?” my mother asks after starting the engine and driving away.

I relax, she isn’t mad. “Yeah, it was fine.”

“Did Iris respond yet?”

I pause.

“Uh, no, not yet.”

My mother purses her lips. I’m not dumb enough to ask if Iris replied to her. She’s been particularly avoidant this month and while my mother thinks it's simply because her college life is bustling, I know it’s more than that. Sure, college is difficult, there’s more work, varying classes, etc. (or I presume), but Iris’ words still echo in my mind.

— — —

“I’m going to cut all you off.”

It’s 2022 and we’re in the glorious state of Idaho. It’s raining (as all good dramatic movie scenes happen in) and me, my father, and sister are tramping through the muddy trails. Iris is barely fighting back tears whilst she argues with my father.

I stay silent. It's odd seeing her tearing up. She’s the strong one. She’s the argumentative one. She’s the one who’s supposed to fight back.

“I didn’t even want to go here, I just wanted to stay back in Westwick. It’s my last summer before I go to New York, my last summer before I leave all of my friends. Who knows when I’ll see them after the next two months? Why do you keep dragging me on these stupid trips? You know I didn’t want to go! No one even wants to be here except Mom, not me, not Ivy, not you! Everytime we go on a trip it ends like this, everyone’s just pissed off at each other. I am so sick of you guys. You constantly push me away, you only pay attention to Ivy, you don’t even listen to me! The only time you ever remember me is when you can’t control me. I’m eighteen and you still think I’m a child throwing temper tantrums, you still think you get to control every single aspect of my life! Well, guess what! Your ‘disciplined parenting style’ only got you me! I did everything you told me to and you still aren’t happy! Fine then! You don’t have to talk to me after I finally leave! You can have your only child and your peaceful house once I’m gone! I’m going to cut all of you off!”

The argument has turned more into a one sided vent. Her tears have begun to spill over and the atmosphere has grown tense as her last words hang over us, as if at any moment it will swallow our trio whole.

To any other person, the scene is no different from a minute ago, the birds are still cawing, the rain still pattering, the ground still muddied and mucky, the same three people traipsing against the elements. But different thoughts, futures, possibilities churn in each of the three minds.

— — —

As we enter the house, I head straight to my room. Ever since my sister left and my father died the house has been almost completely silent aside from the appliances and that clock on the living room wall. The silence feels suffocating, a threat overshadowing the household, its presence loud and uncomfortable.

The second I step into my bedroom, I shut the door behind me, as quietly as possible so my mother won’t open it up again. I prefer being in my room because if I’m any room that my mother can walk by she’ll have something to say, but if I’m in my room she won’t really notice unless she has her mind set on lecturing me: out of sight, out of mind.

I check my phone again once I sit down on my bed. No new notifications.

My sister is usually pretty good at responding in a timely manner, but I guess I wouldn’t really know too well. I’ve only had my phone for a little over two years and, truthfully, I’ve probably only texted her around forty-ish times. And when I do, it feels as if I’m reaching out to some minor celebrity, like, Hey this is really random but… and you just have to hope maybe they’ll see it. On top of that, it’s frankly depressing how far I have to scroll down to find Iris’ contact and it’s not like I have a bunch of people I text (I have a grand total of three actual friends) I just never talk to her.

Her lack of response is odd, though. But I suppose if I were going to cut off my family, I would want to do it slowly, lengthening the time between calls and texts, being evasive when the topic of coming back to Westwick was brought up, prolonging stays at college and internships; everything my sister was doing. A thought whispers in the back of my mind, “You know, once she’s out of college she can really cut off contact, after all, she doesn’t really have a reason to go back.” It’s not wrong. It was abundantly clear in the last few years that she was stuck in Westwick; she wanted nothing more than to get out. Iris had always wanted to live in New York (for reasons I’ll never understand) and college was the perfect reason to get as far away from California and go to the East Coast. The only thing bringing her back on school breaks was the potential to meet up with her high school friends.

And when our father died right before she went to college it was the last straw. She was closer to him than the rest of the family and she didn’t argue with him nearly as much as our mother. So what was there for her to really go back to? Even her friends don’t come back often. She hated my mother, this town, this house and she seemed perfectly capable of ignoring the past twenty-one years of her life which included her little sister.

I know I’m acting unreasonable, ultimately, I can’t just expect my sister to just drop everything and talk to me. Iris was always smart and ambitious so it isn’t a surprise that she has numerous opportunities lined up for her and moreover it’s no surprise that she accepted these opportunities, opportunities that would lead her further and further from me. And I’m aware that’s self-centered of me, but as more time passes it feels like I’ll just become a relic in my sister’s story like my mother:

Oh! I didn’t know you had a sister!

Yeah, I don’t talk to her anymore, though, she’s probably in college by now…I’m not sure…

And it’s not a completely unfounded fear, honestly, it seemed like it was already happening.

— — —

Everytime my sister comes back home from college she’ll offer to go out to dinner with me in the absence of our mother. I always say yes, mostly because it’s the one of the few times I get to talk to her in person without our mother breathing down our necks. Even when my sister flies back to Westwick, she’ll never stay at the house. She’ll go to a friend’s house or a rental because in her words “I have a lot of bad memories there [our mother’s house]” and “I can’t live under the same roof as her [my mother] again.” As a result, I don’t actually see her frequently enough to talk to her by just being in the house.

Yet when we do go out for these dinners, our conversations are stilted and awkward. The pauses between vapid topics stretch for too long and form even more barriers that separate me and my sister. The basic questions asked to each other border on humiliating, after all, you’re family, you should know this. But instead she asks: What grade are you in, again? Wait, who’s your science teacher? Remind me, is she your friend?, and I answer Eighth, Miss Allen, Yeah, I still talk to her. And I, too, ask, Where’s your internship at? That’s your roommate, right? Oh, you take Statistics? and she’ll respond D.C., No, but she’s one of my friends, Yup, it’s pretty boring, though.

A significant amount of our exchanges are as stiff as first-day-orientation-icebreakers, and at least with those, you have more in common with the other mildly anxious students in the same age group, with Iris, there’s barely any mutual ground between us. We already seem to live in different worlds now and it doesn’t help that our ages widens the gap between the two. And bridging them together takes more than a trip to a ramen restaurant to relearn rudimentary facts about each other. My world is still very much middle-school (unfortunately), my close friends, reading, doom scrolling on some social media platform at 3 AM, singing, getting good grades (that won’t matter in the long-term), panicking about a test you have next period, eavesdropped rumors, the highs and lows and everything in between. My sister’s on the other hand…I don’t know what it is. I know it’s college, internships, friends, New York, but that’s Iris on a surface level, that’s Iris to an acquaintance, that’s Iris to someone she met a few days ago. That’s Iris to a stranger.

— — —

“Ivy,” my mother hollers from the kitchen. “Dinner is ready!”

I pull myself off the bed. After wrenching open the door and stepping out into the hall to head to the kitchen, I pass by the bathroom. I meet my eyes in the mirror over the sink. I pause, studying myself for a second in vain, before continuing down the hall, and entering the kitchen.

I grab a bowl of the soup my mother made and sit down before picturing myself in the mirror staring at a face that seemed so familiar to me, but didn’t feel like my own.

You look just like your sister!

I knew you looked familiar, you are the spitting image of Iris when she was thirteen!

Ivy, dear, look at this photo, your sister looked so similar to you when she was your age!

Ever since I could remember people always gushed over how “you look so much like your sister.” I knew that every younger sibling had to have gotten that at some point in their life, but as I grew older the constant reminders of how my face appeared to be copy and pasted from my sisters only increased.

With this constant stream of verbal affirmation that I looked like Iris, it started to feel like they forgot I wasn’t Iris.

You don’t act like Iris.

Your sister wouldn’t do this.

Why can’t you be like Iris?

Teachers would tell me on the first day of school they loved my sister, “she was so driven,” “she was so intelligent,” and immediately thought I would be like her. And I tried to be like her. I got good grades and I did all the things she did. But I couldn’t compete with her. I wasn’t dumb, I was still one of the students at the top of my class, but Iris was just smarter and better at all the things I could do. Grades? Better. Projects? Better. Speeches? Better. Everything, better.

And this didn’t stop just at school, my mother would encourage me to take all the classes my sister did. Try the piano, Ivy, she would say, Iris could play it well, it’s in your genes (genes don’t work that way). You can’t even speak Mandarin good like your sister, she knows eight languages, you barely know two, my mother insisted (but when I pointed out that was hypocritical she said “your sister wouldn’t complain, why can’t you be like her”). Yet my mother seemed to hate my sister, she would tell me to be like her one moment then the next she would be kicking down the door and yelling at her over some perceived slight.

Eventually, I just gave up on being my sister.

“So much potential. If only she would put in the effort,” they commented.

I was still at the top of class, but I was Ivy, not Iris.

Except I was still Iris to them. I was still in her shadow. It wasn’t fair she got to be good at everything I’d think to myself. If I could do anything well she could do it better. I dreamed when she would go to college, when I was Ivy, when they would finally tell me “I’m proud of you, Ivy.”

But that’s not how it works. My sister moved away, but she still haunts all of my accomplishments. Physical distance will never make them stop comparing us. It will never stop them from telling me to be more like my sister. The only thing it did was separate us. The only thing it did was leave me behind. Behind in goddamn Westwick.

“Are you sure that’s all you’re going to eat?” my mother asks me.

“Yeah,” I reply, I know she’s asking because she made too much. Again. It’s been over two years, but my mother still makes enough for four.

I rinse off my bowl and load it into the dishwasher, then retreat to my room where I check my phone again. She’s probably asleep.

— — —

My family has always been riddled with arguments. My mother and father would fight. My mother and sister would yell. My father and sister would feud. I always stayed away from them and blocked them out, though it was hard to ignore. When I got berated I couldn’t argue reasonably and stand up for myself, I would just cry and run to my room. I hated how the only thing I could do was just dissolve into tears. I would promise myself that I wouldn’t make my parents angry again and I wouldn’t start bawling. That never lasted long. Why can’t I be smart and not such a baby, even though I pretty much was.

When I think about it now I just grow annoyed at myself. You were six, why did you think you could just construct a flawless argument on the spot? And even if you did, how would that help, getting punished is never a negotiation with your parents.

And then there were the times where my parents would argue about me. I would be sitting in front of them and they would somehow turn my very existence into a row. They would shout I was coddled or the other was being too harsh on me or they favored me too much or that I would grow up selfish, spoiled, and rude.

My sister had called me all of those things many times before. But when my parents would drag me in the fight and start asking me which one of them they preferred or if I thought they were too harsh, Iris would quietly sneak me into her room where we would watch old sitcoms on her ancient laptop whilst our parents screamed at each other outside her door. When my father would keep me in the closet so I would stop sobbing, Iris would unlock the door and take me back to my room when our dad was distracted.

These days, the only person my mother can yell at is me. And my sister is off in her new life at college so there’s no longer someone to watch Seinfeld with when my mother is on a rampage. But I know she’s better off now, so who am I to be envious?

— — —

Ding!

I wake up wildly disoriented. It’s…nine o’clock. So it has to be the weekend, but I thought I had heard an alarm. I don’t have alarms on the weekend, do I?

I rub the blurriness from my eyes, and grab my phone off my nightstand. Instead of an alarm, it's a new message.

I stare blankly at the screen. It’s Iris. June’s remark comes racing back to me: You know, it's not the end of the world if she doesn’t go, right?

It isn’t. But I’m still anxious as I unlock my phone and open up the message.

I read her response: Of course.

I reread my question and her reply as a whole.

Are you coming to the graduation?

Of course.

I smile. Graduating middle school isn’t a huge milestone. But she’ll be there.

— — —

“You know, I’ll always be here to talk,” Iris tells me.

I’ve just graduated and my sister has, once again, offered to take me out for food, this time it’s ice cream.

We’re almost the same height now, so I no longer have to look up to meet her eyes like I had to when I was a little kid.

“I know I don’t talk to mom a lot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to me. I’m always a call away.”

I nod before replying,“I know.”

The End