Fiction: Sisters

In the basement of the synagogue, the Schneider sisters discussed the mechanics of a first kiss.

The particular first kiss in question was for Maya, newly eleven. Her twin sisters Shira and Eva, thirteen, brought her to their “secret spot,” a tiny triangular room with an uneven ceiling and an empty built-in bookshelf that once stored siddur. Eva and Shira usually came here with friends during bat mitzvah services, but today, Maya was their accomplice. Their mom’s best friend’s daughter, Shelby, was upstairs in services, bowing her head thoughtfully over her prayer book while the rabbi spoke about this morning’s parsha. People—the rabbi, her sisters—were always telling stories about things that Maya wasn’t there to see herself. It made her feel lonely.

“So,” Eva said, clapping her hands, smoothing her velvet skirt over her knees, “What kind of kiss do you want? Decide fast, before Ben brings his brother down.”

“It’s Jonah?” Maya asked, feeling his name catch in her molars like popcorn. She had agreed to let her sisters orchestrate her first kiss, but it was coming together faster than expected. She hadn’t pictured it in a synagogue, for one, and certainly not with Jonah. Maya pictured Jonah curled over his desk during math class, face so close to the paper that sometimes he got gray pencil smudges on his nose and cheeks.

Then again, Eva and Shira were experts. Each had her first kiss last summer—Eva first, Shira second, thanks to Eva’s quick matchmaking. After each of their respective kisses, Maya sat on the circular rug between the twins’ double beds and listen to them replay every second leading up to the moment.

“He literally tasted like Doritos!” Shira had squealed after hers, and she and Eva collapsed into identical fits of laughter. Something ticklish vibrated inside Maya’s chest as she imagined sucking Doritos dust off of a boy’s lips.

“Hello,” Eva waved, charm bracelet jangling in front of Maya’s face. “Earth to My. What kind of kiss do you want?”

“What do you mean?” Maya’s nose itched from the dust and leftover perfume in the air.

Eva and Shira glanced at each other—quickly, but enough to remind Maya they were older, they were twins, they knew things she would never understand.

“Like, we can make it a good one,” said Shira. “We can make it like Eva’s.”

Eva had been lucky—she had her first kiss on the Ferris Wheel at the summer carnival. It was a dreamy location, even if the kiss itself hadn’t been picture-perfect. Right before the seat dipped into descent, right before your stomach has that weird moment of flying into your ribs, Andrew Feldman leaned over and kissed Eva right on the mouth. She counted to five and it was over. They pulled away, back to their sides of the rocking seat, and he asked, “What the hell is this sticky stuff on my face, Eva? Did you like, cum on me?”

Maya had been too nervous to ask what that meant, but knew that Andrew had it all wrong by Eva’s response, which she glowed in retelling: “I was like, ‘No you moron, cum doesn’t smell like strawberry peach. It’s lip gloss, oh my god.’” In the basement, Maya rubbed her lips together, thinking of what would impress her sisters.

“But there’s no Ferris Wheel or anything fun at temple,” Maya said. Her voice neared the edge of a whine.

“Well, we can make it better than mine,” Shira said, rolling her eyes, whose first was the result of a frantic scramble to get kissed before the end of the summer and stay in sync with Eva. A pool party, a dash behind the garage, Eva dragging David Emerson by the forearm, his mouth full of Cool Ranch Doritos. According to Shira, she shoved his shoulders back after barely three seconds, and yelled, “Oh my god, David, brush much?”

Neither of these stories seemed particularly romantic to Maya, but she didn’t want to give up this chance to join her sisters on the other side of the invisible line—where you went after you’d been kissed or gotten your period or sucked on the end of your uncle’s discarded cigar.

“There are like—ways you can direct it,” Eva explained.

“God-willing he can listen to directions,” said Shira, who said god-willing all the time now, imitating their mother.

It was February, and the poorly insulated synagogue left the room damp and chilly. Maya tucked her arms into the body of her cardigan, leaving the sleeves empty. She twisted her torso back and forth, the empty fabric rotating and flapping like limp ceiling fan blades. Shira laughed and Eva gave her a look that said, this is serious.

“Stop being weird, Maya,” Eva said, and Shira crossed her arms in agreement. Maya stopped. Instead, she picked at the crusted snow stains on her shoe, imagined driving her nail into Shira’s arm until tiny little c’s were carved into her skin.

“I’m not being weird,” Maya said. “You guys are being weird.”

“Maybe you’re not, like, mature enough for this,” Eva said.

When Maya was six she had felt sick that her sisters had lost teeth and she hadn’t. She bared her smile in the mirror, and at the first sign of her front tooth pulling away from her gum, she had tugged and tugged, blood running down her wrist until she felt the soft pop and it was in her hand. The tiny, white bone. Warm, salty blood filling her cheeks. She had loved that feeling, and had pulled out two more teeth soon after, well before they were ready. She had initiated herself.

“I’m mature,” Maya said, sliding her arms back into her sleeves and folding her hands in her lap. “Keep giving me ideas.” She wanted to stay in the cocoon with her sisters for minutes longer, to play their game and be their doll. But she also wanted to impress them, to surpass them, to have a first kiss they couldn’t later take credit for as their own.

“You could have him kind of dip you back like we saw in Dirty Dancing that one time,” Eva said. “You can be lying on the couch over there and he could, like, Sleeping Beauty-style wake you up. Or like, pick you up and spin you around. They always do that.”

“I don’t want to be on that gross couch,” Maya said, frowning at Eva’s lazy idea. The orange loveseat sagged in the middle and smelled like Manischewitz, which Eva and Shira had of course already tasted on one of their covert trips to the basement. “It was like grape juice and Tylenol,” Shira told Maya afterward.

“Honestly,” said Shira now, “You’re so lucky. I wish someone had helped me get a better first.”

“Yeah,” said Eva. “You’re lucky. We’re like your kiss counselors.”

Outside the door, they heard low, muffled voices. Boys’ voices.

“Oh god, they’re here!” Eva turned giddy and grabbed Shira’s arm. “Okay, My, we’re going to leave you in here to think about it and then we’re going to send in Ben’s little brother, Jonah. You know him, it’s totally fine—”

“Here,” Shira said, pulling marshmallow-flavored lip balm out of her pocket and putting it in Maya’s hand. “God-willing you brushed your teeth this morning.”

“Ugh, that’s my favorite flavor.” Eva pulled Maya up onto her feet and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “It’s going to be so fun. Just tell him to do whatever you want to do! Make it fast, though, we have to be back upstairs in like, five minutes.” Maya tucked her hair behind her ears, hoped Jonah wouldn’t notice that they weren’t pierced yet. “Ready?” Eva grinned.

After Maya and her sisters went to bed, their parents watched TV. Some nights, when she couldn’t sleep, she sat on the at the top of the stairs, overlooking the living room. Lots of police and firemen and doctors, all showing up at the exact right time. The romances were nothing like the movies she watched with her sisters on Saturday nights—the women her parents watched were pushed against walls, thrown onto countertops. Their passion left a mark, like the ache of a pulled tooth. Her sisters, as far as she knew, had never seen this kind of kiss.

A little knock on the door, more laughter. Shoved inside was Jonah, looking uncomfortable in a dark blue suit and Spongebob tie. His brother waved, and Maya’s sisters darted out and closed the door. Jonah readjusted his yarmulke on top of his unbrushed hair and waved. “This is so stupid,” he said.

“Sure,” Maya said. “So stupid.”

“My brother said he’ll kill me if I don’t kiss you, though,” Jonah stepped an inch closer. Maya remembered learning how to swim. Jumping into the deep end, ears filling with water, and that first gulp of air as her head found the surface.

“Okay,” said Maya. “Same. My sisters said I can tell you how to do it.”

“Okay.”

Every week at Sunday school, Maya sat in a classroom with ten other kids and listened to the teacher explain that week’s parsha. Every story seemed the same to Maya—there were instructions from God, and people either followed them well or disobeyed. When people disobeyed, God was angry, but Maya was secretly impressed. They refused to be bossed around. And even if God turned them into salt or sent them into the desert or rained frogs from the sky, Maya imagined that they would probably disobey again. There’s power in rebellion. Maya closed her right eye, trying to make Jonah’s face take on a new shape, trying to forget the pencil marks. If this were TV, Jonah would be taller.

“Have you ever watched, like, a grownup show with your parents?” Maya asked.

Jonah’s eyes got wide behind his glasses. “No,” he said, touching his yarmulke. “Not really.”

“Okay well, I think our kiss should be—” she searched—“dramatic. Like, look.” She crossed behind Jonah and stood with her back to the door, the only open wall space she could find. He turned around and she gestured for him to come closer.

“You can—um, if you put your hands here on my shoulders—” She listened for her sisters on the other side of the door and thought about Eva’s advice: Tell him to do whatever you want. She remembered the show her parents were watching last week, how the door swung open and the woman looked hungry and exhausted and alive and how the tall man slammed her against the wall and kissed her so hard it seemed like he might swallow her face. Jonah’s nose was slightly below her own, but that didn’t matter. She could still make a mark. Another self-initiation, another shock to push her past the line.

He touched her shoulders lightly, hovering.

“Come on, Jonah, take it seriously,” she said, bold with the chance to be in charge. She moved his hands down until she felt his fingers digging into the back of her shoulders.

“And then you kind of just shove me into the door and kiss me.”

“Shove you?” Jonah asked.

“Yeah like—push me.”

Jonah looked like he had eaten bad fish sticks. He closed his eyes and moved towards Maya, lips chapped, and she closed her eyes, too. The lightest touch on her mouth, and she felt her cheeks prickle—her stomach tight with frustration and anticipation. She opened her eyes, she was staring straight at a cluster of freckles at the center of Jonah’s forehead.

“No,” she said. “Like this.” Jonah stepped back. Maya rearranged their bodies so one of Jonah’s hands was on her collarbone and the other on her upper arm. Then, Maya leaned her head forward and, quickly, flung herself backwards into the door. There was a thud and Jonah jumped. “That’s what real passionate people do. It has to be harder. Or I’ll tell your brother you were too scared.”

Jonah’s eyebrows narrowed, he adjusted his yarmulke once more and moved his feet slightly wider apart.

Jonah backed up a few steps and then came for her quickly, her nose smushed against his. They were kissing, Maya realized, mouths closed, but connected. Jonah pushed Maya’s body back into the wall with a softer thud and she resisted just a little so that he’d keep pushing, and when their lips parted, she reached her face forward so that he’d push her again, and she thought: I did it, this is mine.

They found a rhythm and rocked back and forth, mouths together like magnets, lips squeezed shut.

Bang

She pictured the women on TV, hair pulled, breathless. She pictured Doritos dust falling like snow. She smelled marshmallows.

Bang

Then: “Oh my god, what is happening in there? Open the door?” Her sisters, on the other side, suddenly back in the secret room. Jonah backed away quickly, tripping on a rough spot of carpet when his older brother shoved his shoulder. Jonah and Maya stared at each other, Jonah terrified and wide-eyed but Maya calm, wiping her mouth with her sleeve, though Jonah’s lips had been dry.

Jonah checked his yarmulke, again. Maya felt the bump forming where hers would sit, if she could wear one.

The Schneider sisters were back in the sanctuary right as Shelby stepped up for her speech. They shuffled into the row next to their mother, the twins flanking Maya on either side. She could feel each sister looking at her, looking at each other.

The rabbi was speaking about the importance of order, of how God wanted things built just so. He invited Shelby to come give her interpretation of that week’s parsha, Tetzaveh. In a matching pale pink blazer and skirt, she stepped up to the bimah. An hour ago, Maya might have watched her intently, picturing when she’d finally have her turn. But now, Maya’s eyes wandered around the sanctuary.

She knew she wouldn’t relive the kiss with her sisters. Maybe the noise scared them, Maya thought, enough that when they returned home that afternoon, the girls would head to their room and leave Maya in the kitchen. She would get the silent treatment for veering too far off their script. Shira wouldn’t ask for the lip balm back, because it had given Maya a power and independence it hadn’t granted Shira. And because, Maya realized as her sisters sat stone-faced watching Shelby, they hadn’t thought she would do it. They assumed she would get scared and need them, and beg to be let out. They wanted to bring her to the edge and then rescue her, force her behind the line for a few more years while they continued to accumulate experiences that they would keep just out of her reach.

Maya tried not to smile, but couldn’t help it. And up at the bimah, a young girl became a woman..

Samantha Zabell is a writer living in Brooklyn, currently at work on a story collection. Her fiction has been published in Funicular Magazine and has received honorable mention for the CRAFT 2023 Short Fiction Prize.