Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani Page A

for her from then on. She wasn’t alone in this: I had the bump in my nose filed and the bones on the bridge straightened while we were in high school. I gave the surgeon Cara’s senior portrait to show how I wanted it.
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    Starting in sixth grade, Cara was the prettier one. Yes, we were twins: we looked alike, but Cara had the kind of attractive sass that helped her pull off her imperfections.
    I was bony, big-nosed, bucktoothed, and pimply. I had legs long enough that the boys called me frog, and my bulging, dark-circled, terrified eyes confirmed that the boys were right.
    Cara’s nose was the perfect ski jump; her slender wrists were ringed with friendship bracelets. She’d filled her bra at eleven, stolen her first kiss at twelve, and in sixth grade she was voted Queen of the Dance—an honor akin to prom queen for the prepubescent nominees. On the sixth-grade dance floor my sister had the right moves and the attention of all of the boys. I stood on the sidelines, manning the punch bowl and handing out ballots for the sixth-grade presidential election, my name in bold letters at the top of the list of candidates.
    When Cara won her crown, I helped her pin it into her hair. The gymnasium had been transformed into a disco, complete with a glittery turning ball. I was careful to set the tiara straight on her head and arrange it just so. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. “I’m proud of you,” I yelled over the booming music.
    “What?” she mouthed and pointed to a blasting speaker. “I can’t hear you.”
    I pushed her out onto the dance floor to meet her king.
    She was always ahead of me: born, lived, died.

 
    Chapter 8
    One weekend when I was in high school, I woke at noon to find my mother—who stands no taller than five feet two inches and weighs no more than 105 pounds—in the backyard wielding a chain saw, slaying a tree. Her long black hair fell away from her slender face at the nape of her neck and curled in a shiny S all the way to her waist. She blasted through the tree’s bark, a hacksaw dangling from her belt. Wood chips flew at her arms and face, fell at her feet, or were caught in the web of her mane. “Timber!” she shouted to the neighborhood. The tree snapped loudly against the earth. Tools and machinery were scattered around the lawn. Her smile was wide enough to be visible beneath her paper face mask.
    Mom spent years learning how to build furniture and refinish floors and coffee tables. The grass was hers to mow. She cleared the snow-covered driveway with a push plow. Earning a living could be easily done: she took two jobs. Cara and I pitched in, but Mom took on the brunt of the housework. And she endeavored to be upbeat, as if to say, “Look how easy it is. It’s okay that your father is no good and your stepfather left us.”
    When Mike left, Mom had yet to finish her degree program in laboratory technology at Coastal Carolina Community College, so for that summer we rented a modest house just off the base. She traded in her long hours as a waitress at the Officers’ Club at Camp Lejeune for longer hours hunched over science equipment: pipettes, syringes, circular petri dishes with shiny bloodred bottoms. She brought her schoolwork home. Petri dishes sat stacked like candies in our refrigerator beside the butter and milk. She’d swab our sore throats and incubate the bacteria, in steamy showers and on top of warm radiators.
    It didn’t take her long to find a position in Albany after graduation, and her new degree brought a better life for us.
    Mom tried to be both mother and father. We celebrated our mother on Father’s Day. We dutifully gave her drills and screws, barbeque grills and tanks of fuel—and overlooked the enormous pain of our father’s absence. If we expressed to Mom the sadness of our loss, she was hurt. She took our sorrow as slight.
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    Cara and I both had teachers in high school who took notice of our abilities in English and