Haylee always blamed our mother for everything that happened to us and everything terrible that we had done to each other—or I should say, everything terrible that she had done to me. Many times as we were growing up, she would tell me to my face that whatever hurtful thing she had done wasn't her fault. It was because our mother wouldn't let her be her own person. I suppose I should have been a little grateful. At least she was recognizing that whatever it was she had done was wrong.
Don't misunderstand me. It wasn't that she was suffering the needle-prick pains of conscience. In fact, I now believe my twin sister might never have felt any despite the agonized look she could put on and take off like a mask. We were not a religious family. Mother never warned either of us that God was watching. She was watching, and she thought that was enough. I knew in my heart that Haylee was just trying to escape her own responsibility by blaming Mother for things she did herself. No one could shed their guilt like a snake sheds its skin as well as my identical twin. And afterward, she could look as innocent as a rabbit that had just devoured most of the vegetable garden. But that sweetness could turn into a flash of lightning rage when only I was looking at her, even when we were just babies. One time when we were eleven and our mother wasn’t home and couldn’t hear her, Haylee stood in front of me with her arms tight against her sides, her fingers curled like claws. She stamped her foot and screamed, “I am not you! I’ll never be you! And you will never be me! Whatever you like, I will hate. If I have to, I’ll scar my face just to be different. Or,” she added, thinking more about it, “I’ll attack you when you’re sleeping and I’ll scar yours.” The cruelty in her eyes stunned me so much I was speechless. She truly sounded as if she hated me enough to do just what she had said. Her threat kept me up nights, and it set the foundation for nightmares in which she would slink beside my bed with a razor between her fingers. To this day, I am certain she did stand by my bed, hovering over me and battling with the urge to act out her vicious promise. To drive home her point this particular time, she seized the photo of us at our tenth birthday party, the party held in our backyard, where Mother had Daddy arrange for a party tent and had dressed us in identical pink chiffon dresses with pink saddle shoes. Haylee tore the picture into a dozen pieces, which she flushed down the toilet, screaming “Good riddance! If I never hear the word twin again, that will be too soon!” She stood there fuming. I could almost see steam coming out of her ears. My heart was pounding because in our house, saying something like that was like a nun declaring she never wanted to hear the word Jesus. If I had any doubt that Haylee could get into a great rage without thinking of the consequences, her tearing up our picture should have convinced me, for how would we explain it not being there in our room, prominently displayed on our dresser? She knew I could never tell Mother what she had done. And she could never blame it on me. It was an unwritten rule, or rather, a rule Mother had carved into our very souls: we must never blame each other for anything, for that was like blaming ourselves.