The Girls by Shawn Nocher

One is sensitive, the other wild. Efforts are made to toughen up the sensitive one and calm the wild one. They are both girls and so they are both too much of whatever it is they are.

On the outside, they are identical twins. The sensitive one born first, and this surprises everyone, seeing as the wild one is always pushing and shoving her way to the front. When the guests come through the gate, the mother swoops the gifts from their hands so that the wild one  doesn’t rip into them.

They enter under an arch of pastel balloons. The patio ripples with streamers and paper tablecloths, a banner that says Happy 4^th Birthday! The table is spread with brightly sugared foods. Only those closest can tell one girl from the other, but if she’s crying—she’s the sensitive one. And if she’s climbing the rose trellis, she is surely the wild one.

The grandmother is especially bothered by the sensitive one, fears she will spend her youth gathering perceived slights—glistening slivers of pain—and embedding them in the most tender folds of her flesh. The grandmother always hugs this one with an extra pat to the back, reminding her to buck up and get on with it. The mother is perpetually frustrated by the wild one, certain she will charge out in front of a barreling truck or chase a rabid racoon in the yard like the one that showed up last summer, begging to be let into the house and then dying a wretched death at the kitchen door. The girls had collapsed in tears at the sight of it, the one in fear and the other in pity, but no one can recall which girl felt what as the father led them away and the mother called Animal Control. The mother cannot take her eyes off this one. No Siree.

The girls are pink-faced redheads, and while there is no difference between them in their coloring, one of the aunts insists that one is ruddy and the other fair. Eventually, watching the ruddy one filling the bird bath with tiny handfuls of pea stone, flinging the rejected stones to the patio with no worries as to their trajectory, the other aunts agree.

The wild one runs to greet her grandfather, knowing he will swoop her in his arms, open and beckoning (and this is something she cannot live without, the feeling of swinging through the air, knowing that he could toss her off into the clouds, but knowing also that he won’t, that she is locked and safe in his powerful hands). Running to him, she trips over her uncle’s foot so that he stumbles and calls her a little asshole in a grumbly voice. This, she knows, is not a good thing to call someone. But her grandfather catches her in his fabulous hands and swings her fast out of the way of the uncle’s words so that they land instead on her sister who is terribly sad that she didn’t get to the grandfather first and instead watches her twin fly in a circle around the man that this girl loves in a strangely deep and desperate way right now. She will wait her turn to be swung through the sky. She will be patient while her sister squeals through the air. She will not let her uncle’s mean words or her grandfather’s already filled arms spoil this day. She will beat down the lump forming in her chest and rising like a small animal to her throat.

Everyone watches the grandfather plop the one to the ground and pluck up the other, swing her to the heavens. He wears both girls on his hips as he walks under the arch of balloons, one kicking her heels like she might send him into a gallop and the other with a tiny hand to his face, turning it, asking him to look her in the eyes.

The guests have much to say to one another while they keep watch. There is a staccato rhythm to the way their father breaks from the grown-up conversation.

Settle down.

What’s wrong now?

Don’t touch that.

This is too much.

Get a hold of yourself.

Your uncle didn’t mean what he said.

Their mother tells them that they are so lucky to have a spring birthday. Everyone loves a spring party. The wild one shouts that, yes, she is the luckiest girl in the world, and the sensitive one thinks of all the sad children born on winter days.

The girls have crashed from their sugar high and lie sprawled in their party dresses like brightly colored kites sifted to the ground. The grownups have had too much to drink.

The mother’s best friend worries about drugs, given how impulsive the wild one is. You’ll have to watch that one like a hawk. The oldest cousin, a girl with a history of her own, tells them they don’t know what they’re talking about. The worrying grandmother fears the sensitive one will hand over her heart too quickly, seeing as it is such a burden.

The uncle walks past the girls, sees the way they have discarded themselves in the lawn. The wild one tells the uncle she thinks his shoes are funny. He says she has a lot of opinions—for a girl.

Have they tried Yoga? CBD oil? Meditation? Therapy? It’s never too early to start therapy.

She never listens, she hears everything, too reckless, too timid, she’s a fragile flower, a bull in a China shop.

The girls are on their backs, their fingers touching at the tips. One another’s looking glass. They see their grandfather on the edge of the patio and he winks at them. Two winks—one for each of them.

 We are too much, their tapping fingers whisper to one another, and their mirrored hearts pound them to the ground.

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SHAWN NOCHER — Shawn is the author of numerous short stories that have appeared or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Electric Literature, Moon City Review, Atticus Review, and The Forge, among others. She is the author of two novels, A Hand to Hold in Deep Water and The Precious Jules (Blackstone Publishing 2021, 2022) and teaches in the Masters Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. 

Art by KATIE CONRAD — Katie is an LA based illustrator. By day she creates art for graphic tees, by night she enjoys drawing anything with a narrative (book covers, character sketches, board game art, etc). When not doing art, she mostly watches bad horror movies and is occasionally talked into watching an actually good one. Her portfolio can be viewed at kconrad.myportfolio.com. As for social media, you can find her at instagram.com/see_katie_c, but be prepared for a lot of insufferable cat pics.