©Linda Goodman Aug/2018
My baby sister Evelyn and me in our middle teens
I have
always loved my baby sister, Evelyn. She is beautiful inside and out.
When I was six years old, Evelyn
was three. At that age her thick, straight golden hair hung to the middle of
her back. Sometimes our mother would plait Evelyn’s hair, or use rubber bands
to make two pony tails, one on either side of her head.
Evelyn’s eyes were the purest
color of blue. Their color was deep, but there was a silver glint to them, or
so it seemed to me.
Evelyn was a happy, healthy child
who played outdoors all day long when the weather allowed it. As a result, her
skin took on a rosy hue. Sometimes she would get a bit of sunburn on her cute up-turned nose, and it would peel; but even that did not distract from
her beauty.
My best friend Carole also had a baby sister. Her sister’s name was Ann, and she, too, was a beautiful little
girl. She was the same age as Evelyn, but her hair was pearl white, not golden.
Her eyes were emerald green, and she had a bridge of freckles across her cute,
up-turned nose. She spent the summer outdoors wearing nothing but her underpants.
I couldn’t believe her mother let her do
that.
One day, Carol and I were
sitting on the cement steps in front of my apartment building. We were watching
Ann play in the sandbox my daddy had made.
“Don’t you think Ann is
beautiful?” Carol asked me.
“She is very beautiful,” I
assured her. “I think she is the second most beautiful girl in this neighborhood.”
“Second?” Carole was
astounded. “Who do you think is more beautiful than Ann?”
“My baby sister Evelyn, of
course,” I said.
Carole was starting to get
mad. “Take that back!” she yelled. “You
know that Ann is the most beautiful! Look at her! She has pure white hair. Just
like an angel”
“The Bible doesn’t say
what color angel hair is,” I informed her. “Besides, my baby sister has golden
hair. Golden is more beautiful than white.”
“Your baby sister’s hair is not
gold. Her hair is the color of a graham cracker,” Carol insisted.
“That is not true,” I barked
back at her. “Evelyn’s hair is so golden that every six months we take her to
the beauty parlor to get it cut. The beauty parlor gives us $100 every time
they cut Evelyn’s hair, and then they make wigs out of it. Those wigs
sell for $500.”
“So what?” Carol replied. “Your
sister’s nose is always peeling. You can’t even enter a beauty contest if your
nose is peeling.”
‘That’s not true!” I told her.
“I watch the Miss America Contest every year, and over half the contestants
have peeling noses. I already talked to the president of the pageant about it,
and they have already signed my baby sister to be in the pageant in 1968! My
daddy has a contract!”
“You are a liar,” she accused
me. “Nobody makes wigs out of your baby sister’s hair, and you don’t know
anything about the Miss America pageant except that your baby sister isn’t
going to be in it.”
Carole stood up and started to
walk away.
I stood up and hollered loud
enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, “At least my baby sister doesn’t run
around the neighborhood in her underpants all summer!”
Carol turned back to face me.
She shook a fist at me and seemed ready to rumble, but suddenly a big, goofy
smile came across her face. The smile turned into a laugh. She was laughing so
hard she could barely breathe. So were neighbors who had been paying attention
to our argument.
I turned around to we what was
so funny.
There stood my beautiful baby
sister Evelyn…. wearing nothing but her underpants. I started to yell at her,
but I lost control and started laughing along with everyone else.
Evelyn paid no attention to
the laughter. She stepped into the sandbox and started playing with Ann.
“My sister is the smartest girl in the whole neighborhood,” said
Ann.
“That’s not true,” Evelyn
insisted. “My sister is even smarter than her.”
