Suds and Sisters

My sister Daisy won’t stop laughing. The sound bounces off the fence, off the house, off the sky, a wild cackle that makes the neighbor’s dog start barking. She’s got mud in her hair, mud streaked across her cheeks, a long brown drip running from her chin down her neck and disappearing between her breasts. She looks like a swamp creature. A beautiful, ridiculous swamp creature.

I’m not much better. The garden hose lies on the grass between us, a green snake with a brass head, water trickling from its nozzle. The afternoon sun is brutal, a wet blanket of heat that makes the mud on my skin feel like a second layer of clothing, heavy and tight. We spent the last hour digging up the bed by the back fence, the one Mom swore she’d plant roses in three summers ago. We didn’t find roses. We found clay so thick and red it stained our fingers, a colony of earthworms, and a rusted trowel that might have belonged to the previous owners. We found a reason to be outside, together, doing something stupid.

“You first,” Daisy says, finally catching her breath. She wipes a muddy hand across her forehead, smearing more dirt into her hairline. “You look like you’re about to bake into a brick.”

“Look who’s talking. You’ve got a whole ecosystem living in your bra.”

She laughs again, softer this time. Then she picks up the hose. The water pressure shifts, a gurgle, a hiss, and a cold jet hits me square in the chest.

I gasp. The shock of it, the sudden cold against the hot mud, sends a jolt through my whole body. The water sluices over my skin, turning the dirt into rivers that run down my stomach, my legs, pooling at my feet. I look down. The mud is stripping away, revealing the pale skin beneath, the bright pink of my hibiscus bikini top.

“You’re dead,” I say, but I’m already smiling.

I grab the hose from her. She shrieks, spins, and I spray her back, watching the mud dissolve and run in brown rivulets down her spine. She’s wearing the same bikini as me, the one we bought on a whim at a gas station in Florida last spring break. Yellow and pink flowers, cheap elastic, the kind of thing that would fall apart in a washing machine. But on her, it looks like something from a magazine. It always does.

She turns around, water streaming down her face. “Fair enough.”

I drop the hose. The water soaks into the grass, a spreading dark patch. We stand there, dripping, panting. The air smells like wet earth and grass and something metallic, the smell of the hose water itself. A honeybee drones past, drunk on the heat.

Daisy picks up the bar of soap from where she left it on the patio step. It’s a cheap yellow block, the kind that smells like lemon and promises nothing. She holds it up. “We should do this right.”

“We’re already wet.”

“Not just wet. Clean.” She gestures at me with the soap. “You can’t reach your own back. And I can’t reach mine.”

She’s right. Of course she’s right. That’s the thing about Daisy. She’s always right about the practical stuff, the small logistics of living. She remembers to buy milk. She knows when the car needs an oil change. She plans. I fly. We’ve been this way since we were kids, her the steady hand on the wheel, me the one leaning out the window.

I step closer. The grass squishes under my bare feet. She lathers the soap between her palms, working up a thick white foam. Then she reaches out and places her hands on my shoulders.

Her touch is warm. Warmer than the water, warmer than the air. She spreads the soap across my collarbone, down my arms, her fingers firm and sure. I close my eyes. The sun is red through my eyelids. The sound of her breathing, the scrape of her palms against my wet skin.

“Turn,” she says.

I turn. Her hands find my back. She starts at my shoulders, working the soap in circles, digging into the knots I didn’t know I had. I let out a breath I’ve been holding for weeks. Months, maybe. Her thumbs press into the muscles on either side of my spine, and I feel something loosen, something I’ve been carrying like a stone in my chest.

“You’re tense,” she says.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re a knot wrapped in a person.”

I don’t answer. Her hands slide lower, over my ribs, the small of my back. The soap makes everything slick, her touch almost slippery, but she’s careful. She’s always careful with me. She knows where the bruises are, even when I don’t show them.

She rinses me with the hose. A gentle stream this time, running from my neck down my spine, washing away the soap and the last of the mud. I shiver. The water is cold again, but it feels good. It feels like a reset.

Then I take the soap.

She faces me, arms at her sides. The water has washed most of the mud off her, but there’s still a streak along her jaw, a dark smudge on her hip. I lather my hands. I start with her face, cupping her chin, rubbing the soap gently across her cheekbones, her nose, her forehead. She closes her eyes. Her lashes are dark and wet, clumped together. She looks younger like this. She looks like the girl who used to let me braid her hair on the bus, who held my hand during thunderstorms, who told me it would be okay when I failed my driver’s test and cried in the parking lot.

I work the soap down her neck, over her shoulders. Her skin is soft. Softer than mine. She’s always been the soft one, the one who moisturizes, who sleeps with a silk pillowcase. I’m the one who forgets to eat lunch and picks at hangnails.

My hands move lower. Over the curve of her breasts, the elastic edge of her bikini top. I don’t linger. I wash her ribs, her stomach, the dip of her waist. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t pull away. She just stands there, letting me, trusting me.

I kneel. I wash her legs, her knees, her shins, her feet. She lifts one foot, then the other, balancing on the wet grass. The mud has settled in the cracks of her toes, and I work it out with my thumb, patient, thorough.

When I stand up, she opens her eyes. They’re the same color as mine. Gray-blue, like winter sky. People used to mix us up when we were younger, before we grew into our own faces. Same hair, same nose, same sharp chin. But her eyes are softer. They always have been.

She picks up the hose. “Your turn.”

She rinses me. The water is cold and perfect. I close my eyes again. I let it wash over me. I let her wash over me.

When she’s done, she drops the hose. It hisses on the grass. We stand there, dripping, clean, the mud pooling at our feet in a brown puddle. The sun is lower now, the shadows longer. The neighbor’s dog has stopped barking.

“Thanks,” I say.

She shrugs. “That’s what sisters are for.”

She’s wrong. That’s not what most sisters are for. Most sisters fight over clothes and boyfriends and who gets the last piece of cake. Most sisters grow apart, build lives in different cities, send birthday texts that feel like obligations. But not us. We’ve been holding each other together since Dad left, since Mom started drinking, since every other door in our lives slammed shut. We’re not just sisters. We’re the only two people who survived the same wreck.

I look at her, standing there in her cheap bikini, wet hair plastered to her skull, a single drop of water hanging from her chin. She’s beautiful. She’s a mess. She’s mine.

And I know, in the way you know things you can’t prove, that this summer will change everything. That something is coming. That the quiet between us won’t stay quiet for long.

But for now, she picks up the hose and sprays me one more time, laughing that wild laugh, and I let her. I let the water hit my face. I let the cold shock me awake.

Because I’m not ready for what comes next.

And neither is she.