I’m beautiful in my white gown. I know the stares, and the smiles. It doesn’t take a genius to see beneath the masks of men to what they can’t help but think, both with their rational brain, and the crasser version. Who cam blame me for strutting about a peacock under the attention, a white peacock with chiffon feathers?

“Helen?”

Tarry appears beside me in her pink, modest dress, without the stares and the smiles, plus a little frown. I lean down to her level, reaching out to offer the hand I know she wants to take, but is too proud to ask for. She clasps it to her like a lifeline.

“Helen, I’m tired,” she whines, and it’s little wonder. She’s been up since six, insisting on helping the cook with dinner.

“I know you are, Tarry,” I say soothingly, taking her other hand and giving a delicate impersonation of a caring smile. I’m a good sister, really, I am. When Helen falls asleep in the car, I’m the shoulder for her to lay her head on. When she’s bouncing up and down with some story or another, I listen, nodding in all the right places. Really, I am a good sister.

But I feel like a princess for the first time in a very long while, without the world around my shoulders, but pearls around my neck. It’s been too long since I’ve been allowed this, this unashamed pride that draws the men like bees to flower. Mother always said true beauty isn’t anything to do with symmetry; true beauty, the type that attracts people, is simply a lack of doubts. And I love feeling beautiful.

“Please, can we leave?” Tarry asks again, and my little bubble of perfect contentment bursts. I look longingly around at the gathered suits, the well-cut figures that make me all but salivate, but in the end it’s no choice at all.

“Of course we can,” I assure her. She’s only 12, after all. At 17, I suppose I’m rather more of a night owl than she.


There’s an antechamber off the main ballroom, pattered in white fleur-de-lis and cream stripes that cut down to a smooth wood floor. A few scattered couches and futons beckon us, and I settle onto the nearest mound of cushions, brushing the chiffon ripples of my dress to either side to allow Tarry to join me. A minute later and she’s snoring contentedly, her head in my lap, hand still in mine. My leg will be asleep in another second, but I don’t dare rouse her. Not now. She’s tired, and nervous, and all the bravery and energy she usually gives off like an infectious disease has faded in the face of a real challenge.
Someday, perhaps, she’ll learn to internalize that bravery instead of simply coating herself with it, but not today. Today, she’ll fall asleep in my lap and I’ll re-live what it felt like to be beautiful, knowing when the morning comes I’ll return to the doves picking at the ground. We call Tarry our bird of paradise, with her irresistible smile and whirling beads and petticoats. She calls me the raven. Easily overlooked, easily dismissed. Tarry is all exterior, raging and laughing and fighting. I am everything introverted, my laughter a giggle, my smiles ironic grins. You’d think she’d thrive here, under all the attention, but that is the problem with Tarry; she has yet to challenge her own doubt.

I always wonder how it is that the same parents, the same household, the same books and same dresses, created two such different people. And I wonder why it is I still let her collapse on top of me with a fond smile, one hand ensconced in hers, the other around her back, protecting her.

I gave up beauty for her. I gave up my one night to strut and smile, but that’s all right. A mother would do the same for her child, and I suppose that’s the point.

Older sisters have both younger siblings and daughters. When she cries, Tarry doesn’t run to mother, she runs to me. When she’s scowling and scared, she cries out at me, and expects an answer.
I feel her breathing through the rumpled chiffon of my dress, and I let my head fall back against the couch’s armrest. Tarry lets out a great huff of air, then re-settles herself, squeezing my hand all the time.

Someday, she’ll be helping me out of these parties, helping me catch my breath. Someday she will be the beautiful one in a peacock’s white gowns, glorying in self-indulgence. But not today. Today she’ll sit with me, her snores dampening my dress that I kept such careful care of until now, her fingers creasing the material of my gown in way I can’t really be bothered to care about. Mothers would sacrifice their lives for their children.

We older sisters are well known to make our own sacrifices for our daughters.