Part I

June 1983

"I think I want Laku to be my boyfriend."  Thirteen year old Yolanda Hawthorne spoke, lying flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling, while cradling her right knee at her chest.   The school year was extended because of a teacher strike.    She and her sister Emogene had been in Arkansas for two days now, just one week before July 4th.  Her favorite prairie skirt of blue, pink, and yellow ruffles with a matching top was just way too cute.   And despite the fact at eight years old Helaku Waawaashkeshi, Laku for short, crushed on the younger sister of Emogene, he was a teenager now and his desires grew for more older girls his age with well-defined bodies.  

All the girls wanted him.   And why not?  He was an athletic kid, played all the sports, won tons of trophies as a kid.   But he was in high school already now, and league football was a thing of the past, and still his charm and wit on the field played well off the field.  As kids Yolanda was cute when all he simply wanted was to hold her hand, maybe get a soft kiss from her lips, but puberty hit and like all the other boys life was about T and A.  Yolanda, was late bloomer.   She had breast buds, sure.   But her hips were small and she had the seedlings of an athletic frame.  

"Does he even know you're alive?" Emogene gathered her pink sponge rollers from her overnight bag.   Their mom had sent them ahead to Mellwood while she stayed a few weeks to collect another paycheck to cover her bus ticket and pay the bills which would tie her over until they returned one week after July 4th holiday.

"Sure he does."

"I think you're crazy.   And crushing on Laku is a waste.   He likes older girls, women to be exact.   You're still a baby."

"I'm not a baby, I'm going to high school in the fall, and that's just two months away."

"Grow up?  Laku doesn't want you, stop dreaming!"  The sour lemon Emogene screeched, wrapping pink foam rollers around her flip do.    Yolanda heard the grievance of her sister, but she didn't care.   She couldn't wait to get down to the levy where her Laku and his family lived.  

Yolanda was like every little girl, the baby, annoying it seemed to the slightly older sister Emogene, walking in her shadow.    To Emogene, Yolanda was the plague.  It was typical right?  That is how it is with children eight and ten.   Why?   Emogene's lanky frame developed earlier, she grew like a weed which made the eighteen months that separated her and Yolanda seem more like five years or more.   A fully blossomed pear shape, body like woo!  The boys all wanted her.    And still she hated her sister.    What the hell was wrong with her?

Yolanda the late bloomer really didn't care what her sister was uttering.  She could care less about the things that interested Emogene which was boys, boys, and boys and how she thought her baby sister was a freak.   Tired of being treated like a wart on big sister's ass, Yolanda chose a different high school, her own island to grow without the constant comparisons to Emogene she suffered on a daily basis in junior high.    High school was a whole new dimension, and she was glad to have the chance to spread her wings and not have everything from her hair to the way she dressed critiqued.  In selecting Whitney Prep the rival high school to the entire district, Yolanda discovered her own world in the huge ocean.    But to her it was a blank canvas, where she could paint her own picture, a masterpiece if she wanted-or finger-painting if that fancied her.   It really didn't matter, so long as she didn't have to be around the shrine that erected in honor of her sister-a deity of sort.   

It was your typical sibling rivalry right?  It would die once they both became women, adults, college girls, right?   Yolanda thought it was all over.   They'd appear to grow closer, but only because Yolanda made allowances for the tyrannical older Emogene who could hold an attitude for days.  She was just mean, plain old mean.    Revisiting a few bible scriptures, she heard her momma weep and pray, making Yolanda take notice.   And nothing short of her knee fall before bed when the lights went out did she ask God to not only make her sister Emogene nicer, but to make Laku her husband when they all grew up.    She wasn't completely clueless, though.   She knew the 800 plus miles that separated them most of the year wasn't doing her any favors.   But he hadn't seen her since she was eight years old.   One thing Emogene didn't have that Yolanda had by the handful was an ample bosom.   In a stark contrast, it seemed Emogene peeked at thirteen.   She had pear shape and because of her wide hips it made the smaller breast buds stand out more, as undefined.   Yolanda had a secret weapon-she didn't have to wear padded bras like her older sister.   She filled out a B cup well, and she was still growing.  

"Stupid!"  Fifteen year old Emogene pulled out her hand held mirror, checked the curlers for the right tuft in the rear of her head, while insulting her sister's crush that was bordering psychotic or so she thought.

***

Present, February 2001

"She wants to see you before the surgery, will you see her?"

"I don't know...I mean, I just don't know."  Yolanda Waawaashkeshi held her mother's hand tightly.   Layered in a hospital gown, covered in thin sheets, and a sterile cap covering her head, she didn't want to talk.   This wasn't a social call.   She'd been called, summonsed, and would be berated if she didn't do what her five siblings, mother, and the immensely large extended family decided was the right thing to do.  

Her husband Helaku kissed her lips, taking the bottom fold into his mouth.   His tongue flicked over hers.   Their two girls Chenoa and Cherikha made the trip to Michigan and were staying with Helaku's sister Sakari at the hotel just minutes away from the hospital.    Yolanda was giving her sister a gift, the one thing she likely wouldn't do if circumstances were different.   But she was her sister.    And it didn't matter the transparency of their fragile relationship, it was the right thing to do.   Yolanda wanted for them to be close, but as seemed their bonding was on the back of something that Emogene needed, the life saving kidney transplant.

In the pool of eight siblings all with O positive, Yolanda and Emogene's blood and tissue type was the match.  How did the planets align in such a way that Yolanda and Emogene who everyone called twins because they dressed so much alike, but were more akin to oil and vinegar, shared the same blood type?  

If she saw Emogene before the surgery she'd never go through with it.   The last thing Yolanda wanted was some empty promises and blubbering's of being grateful and indebted.    Emogene always had a way of turning a blessed offering into something that felt like purgatory.   Yolanda didn't want the mushy thank you's.   She didn't care one second about hearing sonnets from her older sister of how they'd be bonded for eternity.   She knew this day would come and it had-where Emogene would have no one to turn to but the baby sister she constantly threw under the bus, while standing firmly, stiletto pierced in the back of, while she scaled the lone ladder to her own success.   Yolanda just wanted her man Laku to be at her side, to get through the painful recovery, and get back to loving the only family she believed she needed.

---

April 1984

"Ugh, why do have to walk like that?"

"Like what?"  Yolanda stared pensively at Emogene, trying to imitate her.   Why did it annoy her in the first place?   Yolanda could swear that her very existence still annoyed her sister, after all of these years.  

"So stiff."

"Whatever."  Yolanda ignored the dig.  

"Everybody thinks you're strange because you don't have a boyfriend."

"You mean I won't date the thugs you and Demi hang out with?  I'd best go down to the county lock up and take a pick than run the gamut of the sloths you think are something so special."   Anyone that was friends of Steven wasn't close to a possibility.

"Whatever, they say you a dike."

"I don't care what they say.   I'm no dike."   Yolanda rolled her eyes.

"Why don't like boys then?"

"I like boys.  I just don't need you fixing me up."

And why would she trust her heart to her sister's labor?   Yolanda loved her sister, they were sisters.   But to place her love life in the hands of a person who'd criticize her one minute and try to fix her up the next, now that would deem her crazy for sure.   Was there something to gain in this benevolence?  And then it wasn't long before she realized that Steven, Emogene's boyfriend was going to be her prom date.   But anyone who knew Emogene knew that she was already sexually active.   Yolanda wasn't running for sainthood, but she wanted her first to be special.   She could pick her own guy and didn't need any one fixing up, especially not the wicked Emogene.

***

Present, February 2001

"I want you to count backwards Mrs. Waawaashkeshi from 100, by fives.   Ready, go." The anesthetist instructed.

"Ninety-five, ninety, eighty-five, eighty, sev..."   She fell under as anticipated, and the kidney transplant was minutes from commencing.  In a few hours Yolanda would be minus one, and her sister could hopefully be well passed daily dialysis.

"Ok, let us begin."  The head surgeon spoke to his team of life savers.

***

Under the anesthetic, the surgery got underway.   It was scheduled to be a five hour minimum if no complications.   Helaku sat in the family waiting room.    His mother-in-law tried to take thirst quenching sip from a bottle of water.   She hadn't slept in days, been praying that her two daughters would be made whole once again, that the rift that torn them apart rendering them strangers would be like the surgery, binding them together throughout all eternity.

Yolanda wasn't buying that mambo jumbo about this being some godly obligation.  She had her own reasons for why she'd be undergoing the pain of the healing, while negotiating two girls five, and three, even though she had the devotion of a loving husband and his close-knit family back in Fayetteville.

"I'm saving her life, shouldn't that be enough Mama?"  Mrs. Beverly Hawthorne heard the youngest of her litter proclaim.    "That other stuff you want, I suggest you work on your other daughter.   I've always put her first.   You want me to die for her too?   She doesn't deserve this sacrifice I'm making.   But I'm doing it anyway.   But don't you dare Momma sit there when you know the things she's done.   She's god awful.   And you let her get away with too much, that's why she thinks everyone owes her now.   Well I don't owe her!  I'm doing it, why...I can't say.   She's my sister.  But don't dare feed me a load of crap about I should be the bigger person.   Why?  Why does everyone else have to be the bigger person when it comes to Emogene?   And what does Emogene do?  Nothing!  You don't ask her to correct herself.   You've been sending her the wrong message since we were kids.  She's ruined."

"You two were so close."  Bev rubbed her temple, a migraine blooming on sight.  

"We were never really close Momma!  I'm a means to her ends; you know that, I know that. "

"God have mercy on you.  How did I give birth to two children who get along like you?"

"Pray for your daughter's heart, because a new kidney won't heal was broken in her.   She thinks the world owes her something.   And if you want to know why, maybe you should dissect yourself.   You've never done anything but ask us to make allowances for her psychosis.   Even trying to screw my husband!"

"I can't believe you and the things you say."  Beverly ranted, shaking her head.   One child in the throes of life and death, and the other was blaming her for way they related to each other."

"She was always so mean to me, and you never once said a mumbling word to correct her.   You let her get away.   But I'll do this.   I'll give her a kidney.   And when the doctors say I can leave, I'm going home to my real family, the one that loves me."  Yolanda cried Helaku watched as he too was a source of her pain.   She said she forgave him.   But the sideways glance conveyed something other than forgiveness.    The memory still made her stomach draw in knots.   Native American's were notoriously known for not being able to hold their alcohol.   Yolanda feared if she hadn't come into the room to get their coats just what sort of ugliness would have been on display before her.  

There was always that underlying rivalry going on beneath the surface.   Often others would take notice and Emogene would camouflage it, always put on the good face for the elders at Pilgrim Road Baptist.   Yolanda was the younger, not by much and yet to their mother, she was simply the child that came after.   Her father often called little Yolanda, "The calm, after the storm."  The storm was Emogene, the sickly baby who had tubes draped in and out of her tiny infant frame.   The same that spent six weeks in the hospital with bronchial pneumonia, who cried incessantly from her crib if someone looked at her.   It seemed the entire family was still handling her like the fragile baby she once was.    And Yolanda was done making allowances for her mother's guilt.   

A sickly child, fragile, she cried immensely, and she'd heard from her older siblings recollections that it wound their dad into a bundle of nerves, daily.   Emogene was a spoiled baby and grew more intolerable with age.  When anger found her, it ravished her.  She could never put it down, and so she carried it for days.   Yolanda was puzzled, wondered at times who was this person and would they ever see past their differences.   But seeing Emogene kissing her husband, hand inside of his pants groping his crotch was the end of any possibility.   The line was drawn from there.   Everyone feared that Emogene would let life's stress, or a bad breakup push her to the point that she'd either try suicide or wind up having a breakdown and never recover.    

Emogene had a great career, a wonderful home, and yet seemed to want to destroy the one thing that Yolanda named and made her own-Laku.  

"She hated me, still does."   Yolanda said.   "But I'm doing this."   Knowing Emogene wouldn't cross the street to spit on her if she were on fire, still she made up her mind to save her sisters life.    

***

October 1999

Yolanda hadn't spoken to her sister Emogene in a few weeks.  

Times had been hard for her and her family.   Helaku's job as an Engineer had him on a layoff for now a year, and he'd tried his hand at house painting, designing greeting cards, and had finally settled with professional carpet cleaning.  They were both making huge financial sacrifices by downsizing, cutting back, and both working supplemental jobs while going to school and caring for two babies, both still in diapers.   Grateful they had decided to wait a few years until they were on solid footing before having children, they'd gone from solid to shaky ground, and the planned pregnancy myth was gone out the window.   Yolanda had made a life for herself in West Memphis, AR although it was the one she expected after graduating from the University of Arkansas.   Laku's career gave her the leniency to take leave from her teaching job so they could start a family, only now the market had shifted and the demand was low.    A part time gig was all she could find, while studying for her Master's.    The winds had shifted and not to their glory.   But they were together, her and Helaku, and on the same page where everything in their lives was concerned.  

Finally she was seated at the computer and was ready to release the block that was keeping her frozen of getting a single thought to paper.   Her phone chimed and she glanced at the caller id.   Sighing, because she didn't have time for this call, but again she hadn't spoken to Emogene in a while.   Family dynamics had her on a stalemate from being the sounding board Em needed to bounce ideas off of.

"Did you have your mail transferred to my address, by any chance?" 

Did she hear her sister correctly?   She thought she heard her ask if she was using her address for mail.   And if she was, this couldn't really be the reason she woke up in the middle of the night with state exams in the morning to answer the call of something so ridiculous and petty.

"I beg your pardon?"  Emogene barely greeted her sister.  Yolanda frowned looking at the clock.   She had an hour to do her homework, draft the outline for her composition, before she'd have to prepare dinner.  "I don't have your address, I lost it."  After a few seconds it was clear to her faculties that the only person crass enough to make a mountain of a mow hill was Emogene Hawthorne.

"Did you change your address or something? I've been getting a flood of mail, like everyday coming to me house..."

"Emogene, do you know what time it is?   Are you feeling alright?   I have a limited amount of time to work with here.   I haven't a clue as to what you're talking about, but if it bothers you so much Em, just throw it away, write ‘return to sender' damn!"

"I am not doing anything!    Why should I be inconvenienced?   I don't have time to sit and write return on every piece of mail.   And you know, I've a got a friend, he works for the post office and he told me...that if you change your address and the mail has no place to go, that it will find an address..."

"What?  Oh gawd, I'm hanging up now!"  Click.

***

Present, February 2001

"Hey...gorgeous!"  Laku rubbed the cheek of his wife with the pad of his thumb, staring lovingly into her warm chestnut brown eyes.   He couldn't believe how brave she was, how self-less.   Her body was perfect, still after two babies, not a stretch mark but now her abdomen was sutured and bandaged.   He'd never seen a woman like her.   He couldn't believe she was his wife, his Yolanda.

"Hi...did everything go okay."  She managed, still groggy from the anesthesia.    He kissed her forehead and then her lips again.

"You did good, very good and they're working on Em now."

"I'm so thirsty..."

"I'll see if I can get you something."  Laku turned to press the ‘call button'.   Yolanda was in recovery and she was looking well enough to be transferred to a private room in few hours.  

"Ok."  Her lids were heavy, but the sight of the man she had loved since they were kids was so worth the struggle of forcing them apart.   She could feel pressure at her side, but the morphine drip was numbing the pain.    Thank heavens for the drugs.  

By the time he returned, a few minutes the nurse aide came behind him and placed a foam cup of crushed ice and plastic spoon at her bedside but Yolanda's struggle to keep awake was futile.  She'd slipped off to sleep.   And Laku smiled at the beauty of her.   He couldn't be less in love with her than the days she gave birth to their daughters Chenoa and Cherikha.