You Should Let it Shine

Luz had been forming for months, waiting patiently as the rest of the world continued to spin. A symbol of a new bond between new people; one that seemingly came from nowhere. She kicked and squirmed and turned, maybe in excitement for what was to come. By the time I was warned of her arrival – nearly 6 months in – she’d already almost reached the apex of the sky, coloring the sky in warm pink and orange hues.

How does one reconcile having to share the sky?

I’m not sure I know how to be a sister. I’m not sure I even know what that entails. When I was told that, at 18 years old, I’d have to find out, I tried to rack my brain for my qualifications.

I love children, for one, and they seem to like me. I can always count on coaxing out a gummy smile from any baby I see on the subway, and people always tell me I’m good with kids. Growing up, adults would ask my parents for the secret for raising a kid like me, because I was good at speaking to grownups and because I was the first in my class to read chapter books and I was good at math and knew how to make friends with the other kids. I can’t say I disagree that a child could do a lot worse than turning out like me, so maybe my sister’s in good hands.

I suppose I know the basics of how to hold a baby so as to not hurt its neck, and I know to wash my hands before even thinking about touching its palms and tiny fingers. When I was born, my father made sure to mold my cone-shaped head down to normal, so I guess I know to do that too. I know how to talk to toddlers in a way that makes them feel both listened to and not condescended, because there’s nothing worse than being reduced to your cuteness when you’re a kid trying to rant about your very real problems to an adult. I let kids take pictures on my phone, which they love, but know to stand close enough to quickly snatch it away before they go on any social media, because who knows what lives on those sites.

I know that once they are old enough to play games, you let them win; as they get older, you make this fact less obvious, until they are old enough to accept bitter defeat. And if they are sore losers, you tell them that no one likes a sore loser, and then you let them win the next round. I know how to break up vicious kid-fights – what is there to argue about when you’re 7? – and how to be both the cool adult and the one that they don’t walk all over.

I know that when a kid asks you if you’re a boy or a girl, you chuckle and say girl, or if you’re truly feeling risky, you can ask what they think. They’ll say that they can’t tell, and that maybe you’re both? somewhere in between? and you’ll be shocked at how easy it is for kids to understand. You can attempt to explain to them why you dress like a boy, sure, but make sure to stop squarely at It’s just more comfortable, I guess. And god forbid the kid knows the word gay, tip toe around it until they forget the conversation at hand.

I definitely do not know how to change a diaper, nor do I have any interest in learning. I have no idea how hard to hit a baby’s back to burp it, or when to let it sleep versus when to keep it up so you can sleep through the night. How does one secure a swaddle? Or heat up milk so that it keeps her warm without burning her tongue?

What do I do if we’re alone and she won’t stop crying? Or if she asks a question I don’t have the answer to? How do I be the kind of sister that transcends the 18 years separating us; the kind that gets shouted out in Oscar speeches and gets written about for school projects?

How do I share a parent?

I grew up the sole child in rooms full of adults, learning all the right things to say to be called mature. I learned to make jokes that made them all laugh, and basked in all the attention I received. I never had to wait for my turn to play with a toy, or debate what to watch on TV, or negotiate with another bratty kid about what to ask mom for for dinner. I had my space and it was precious to me.

I was almost suffocated by the roles I played in so many adults’ lives: the only daughter, only granddaughter, honorary niece to the women of my church. Young and old alike, it seems even the people who don’t want children of their own have a primal instinct to find the closest child and be someone to them. My village spanned boroughs and cities and states, and I loved the feeling that it was all for me and me only.

In a way, though, I’d shared my father a few times, the first instance being with the nation’s capital itself. He stumbled his way into working on a presidential campaign shortly after my arrival caused both him and my mother to drop out of school, moving back home to New York from middle of nowhere, Vermont. I split the time between my mom and grandma’s apartments while he worked 200-something miles away; the distance we were forced to hold between us was hard to deal with, but knowing he would be home on the weekends with stories and trinkets for first grade me made it worthwhile.

My dad eventually moved back to the city, and as I got older, I got the sense that sharing him was not something reserved for when he lived far away. He and my mother never got along well, and from the bits and pieces I heard, he seemed to have trouble showing up. At the time, I didn’t notice it because he was there for the things I cared about, and he never had much trouble shelling out money to take me on extravagant outings to Madison Square Garden or the movies. If anything, it felt at times that he was better at these things than my mom – of course, I see now that he chose to be there for the fun parts; he was flashy while the harsh reality fell on my mom, a 20-something woman finding her way through life, now with a child to take care of.

The more I paid attention, the more I understood that he might not have been the best at the nitty gritty things. Most times I had to text him multiple times to get a response, and I would see his paragraphs-long spats with my mom about things like tuition and appointments – the things that actually mattered. Still, though, young me saw the fact that he was fun-loving, weighed it with all the times my mom (rightfully) said no to me, and decided his occasional absence was negligible.

I think I was in the fourth grade when he started dating Reneé. She wore her natural hair and wide brimmed glasses and always had her nails done in intricate patterns. Her slight Jamaican accent only came out when saying certain words and she, like my dad, had mastered the art of sarcasm. Apparently they’d known each other since they were teenagers, when they shared the city as Black high schoolers navigating the far-away lands of the Upper West Side and Riverdale, meeting up at Barnes & Noble to discuss the words that had resonated with them that week.

For whatever reason – maybe because I still missed Ashley, my dad’s previous girlfriend whose move to San Francisco caused them to split, or maybe I was just difficult, or felt slighted on behalf of my mom – we did not get along. I resented my dad’s choice to be with her, and when they moved to Flatbush together, I dreaded the days I’d have to not only endure the treacherous commute on the 2 train, but spend time with them. At the time, she felt like one of the few adults that wasn’t married to the idea of being a part of my village unconditionally; it seemed she was ok not begging me to like her (which makes a lot more sense now than it did when I was 9).

As I got older and transitioned to living full-time with my mom – another choice my dad had the luxury of making that my mother did not – I saw and thought about Reneé less and less, a fact that still stings when I think about her today. I can admit to feeling bitter; my dad knew how I felt and still chose to love her. For what felt like the first time, I wasn’t the only star in his sky, and it felt as though she was a meteor, taking his eyes off of me and subsequently making me blend into the dull clouds.

When my dad stood in front of the overflowing sanctuary during my senior year of high school and read the obituary he had written for her, I squirmed and my stomach turned because I felt like a fraud. Who was I to mourn a woman I’d rejected? How dare I sit and cry with her family as if I could understand a fraction of the pain they were feeling? Or solemnly giggle at the bittersweet memories they had of her as if I had any of my own? I went to bed that night praying that it was a dream and that I would get to share him with her again, because he deserved his shooting star more than I needed the shine of being the only one.

Our relationship is much better now. Perhaps it’s because I need him less. I can do things on my own now, so his occasional absence is negligible. I’m okay sharing him with the world because I live in a completely different part of it now, and when I return to New York for the occasional break, I see him and we are able to catch up like nothing has happened. We gossip and laugh like friends, and he still has no problem shelling out funds, which is close to the top of my priority list as a college student.

Somehow, though, sharing him with a sibling seems different. Another little girl will grow up calling my dad hers, and I’ll be 3000 miles away, watching, at least for the first 3 years of her life. She’ll spend every night with him, and he’ll be there to tuck her in. She’ll see him dance in the kitchen, singly sweetly to her mother before giving her a kiss, and she’ll feel proud of being the product of such a rich, vibrant union. She won’t have to play middle man between her parents, texting on behalf of the other as they trade passive aggressive jabs that they think she doesn’t understand. She will be the light of his life, and him hers.

How do I begin to accept that her life will be vastly different from mine, my dad being the tethering force between our worlds? Her mom, Mariana, comes from a big, bustling Brazilian family that loves to dance, upon many other things – how is it possible that my sister is both mine and theirs, especially when I can’t even speak to half of them? And how will she get 40 year old Vinson while I got 20 year old him, and somehow they are the same man, although they could not be more different?

Will she tell me about all the ways living with him is amazing, leaving me to try to mask my jealousy and be happy for her? Will the burden of the things I missed take over decades later and enrage me? Will a small part of me wish that she could have been around earlier and lived with me so she could feel all the things I’ve once felt about him? Will I answer when she asks how life was with dad when I was her age?

Am I supposed to model what it means to be a woman?

I never quite got a how-to manual on how to be me. My digging around in my mom’s closet was always more about the thrill of straining my calves to walk in her tall high heels than it was about any notion of self-discovery, and my older cousins’ makeup looks never stirred envy in me. I never looked to other girls for how to be pretty for boys or tried to morph into the type of women that raised me; in fact, I often found myself looking to the athletes I saw on TV, most of them male, to get a concept of how to carry myself. Even then, they occupied the world in a different way than I desired to.

No one told me how to find clothes that accentuated my curves the least without being ridiculously big or how to keep the straps of my sports bra from peeking out the collar of my shirt or how to keep my pants just low enough to show the branded elastic of my boxers – where do I find boxers?? – but not low enough to be full on sagging. I never got a crash course on how to talk to men about things other than sports, or how to walk around with the assurance of a protector while maintaining the softness that makes strangers relax their shoulders in my presence. I was taught about what it meant to physically grow into a woman, but who was there to tell me what to do when I hate all the things that mark that transition?

Every now and then, I’d catch the eye of a muse I’d subconsciously dedicate the rest of my life to becoming. A woman who straddled both sides of the binary like I did. A butch in the wild.

Even before I could put words to who I was, I knew that these women were who I’d one day become, as if I was looking through a portal right into my own eyes. It felt as though we were united by a force stronger than any magnet could replicate, and like we were the only ones in the rooms we shared. I stared in awe, wondering if they ever thought back to their young “tomboy” days and how they – we – were the lucky ones that never had to grow out of it. Did they notice me, too? Did they turn to each other after I passed by, laughing to each other about how I was definitely a lesbian like they were at my age, using the sports they played as an excuse for their boyish flair? Or did they see my stares and assume I was like the other kids that waited until they passed to ask their parents if they were boys or girls?

Even now, each time I see one of these women, I instantly stand up straighter, praying they’ll look over and see themselves in me. I offer knowing smiles, trying and failing to play it cool – I’m sure they smell my excitement each time. Each time, I study them, and I study them hard. How they dress, how they walk, how they talk. Their crisp short haircuts and their carabiners, the durags and the oversized layers of clothes. I see their calloused hands and smile lines and the way they hold bags and push strollers for their wives and give up seats on the train for other women. I try to mimic the confidence that shines in their eyes in glimmers only few can see.

Is this how my sister will see me? Will she be proud that her sister takes up space in this way, or will she wish she had one whose closet she can raid for dresses? Maybe she’ll sneak around and steal my clothes as she explores who she is, and I’ll be the handbook I never had. Or maybe she’ll find old pictures of my college days and think I was the coolest kid who all the girls wanted, and she’ll show them to me and force me to tell her the comparatively lame truth. Perhaps she’ll brag about me to her friends who don’t quite get it and she’ll explain that having a sister like me is cool because she gets the best parts of having a brother without the ickiness of me being an actual boy. Will she shy away from talking to me about what’s going on with her, or will the bravery of my walking around wearing my identity on my sleeve make her respect me more?

I can almost see it now: a teenaged Luz, unwilling to talk to her parents about her issues, comes to me for advice. Perhaps she asks about a boy she likes, to which we share a glance and laugh, knowing that whatever I’m about to say has no basis in experience. I’d listen in disgust as she describes a boy that she has no business being sad over, and slowly, the more she says it aloud, she realizes how much he sucks. Maybe I text a friend, laughing about 30-something me trying to channel the mind of a boy 18 years my junior, as I tell her that it gets better, a message that no hurt kid wants to hear.

I’d tell her that boys aren’t worth it, especially not at her age, and to focus on school; she’d roll her eyes and tell me I don’t get it, to which I respond with stories of my adolescent love life and its tumult. I think she’d be shocked by the stories I have from friends, and she’ll suddenly feel as if her situation isn’t as bad anymore.

Or maybe she’ll come to me, timid at first, and tell me she has no interest in boys. I imagine she’d sit and try to look me in the eye, picking at the fraying skin of her thumb as our dad does, when she says that she thinks that she might also be a lesbian, to which I jump and scream and embarrass her, reddening her cheeks and coaxing a smile from her. I’d tell her that I have so much to teach her, and I’d tease her by forcing her to do all the stereotypical lesbian things that I did when I was her age. Every time we saw a girl that looked her age, I’d whisper in her ear to tell her to talk to her, to which she looks at me sternly and half-whispers at me to shut up, and we laugh again. I’d ask if she wants to come over to my place to see if she likes any of my clothes, and if she doesn’t, I’d take her shopping. I’d tell her how our dad reacted when I told him who I was, and that she has nothing to worry about.

Who is she?

As I sat in the cold room in Mount Sinai, my mind was surprisingly blank. All I could think about was that this baby was not here this time yesterday. I thought about how she was surprisingly cute for such a young baby, and how hard being born must have been for her to have the bruises on her face that she did.

As she was placed in my impatiently waiting arms, I tried to remember to hold her head, as I’ve always been told. My breaths were short and restrained, as if to not wake her, and a smile crept to my face and didn’t leave. I didn’t think about what she would be like when she became my age, or what she’d ask me when she gained the ability to talk. I didn’t imagine what she’ll want to wear or who she’ll want to be.

At that moment, all I could think about was holding her.

When I think about the fact that I, at 18 years old, have to learn what it means to be a sister, excitement fills my lungs, even if it’s confusing. A new endeavor, a new person to meet over and over again. A new friend, albeit a young one. A cute kid to get cute pictures of, a girl with whom I’m bound to argue and forgive over and over again.

She will be my sunlight, and I can’t wait for her to rise.