As I recall, the big intersection in my life's
road
appeared on a Saturday evening somewhere in the eleven o'clock hour. It had to have been a Saturday because I distinctly remember reading a volume of Robert Frost poetry while sitting on my cushioned chair made larger by the small living room in the apartment my sister and I shared.
Reading through the great works of the English language was the luxury I allowed myself on my one day off every week. From Monday through Friday, I was Mr. Axlerod at a high school in the city where we lived: those evening filled with the work I could never seem to complete during the day. Sunday was the day I prepared lesson plans. That left Saturday as my personal-time day. Back in those days, I had been teaching English Literature and English and working as an assistant coach of the boys' basketball team for over five years. I wound up at this inner-city locale after committing to teach there in exchange of having Uncle Sam pay-off all my student loan debt. My
tour of duty
(as many of us in the program called it) had ended a year before, but I decided to stay on. My sister's job at that time had been my deciding factor.
At the time, Sunny was twenty-six and I was twenty-eight. Sunny is not my sister's actual name; it's just what I call her. The name on her birth certificate is "Sonnet" if you can believe that. When new acquaintances hear my sister's name, they often say, "How elegant!" or "How beautiful!" Her name is indeed both those attributes. It's also a complete accident.
Up until the day of her birth, everyone — and I mean
everyone
— was sure my mother was carrying my baby brother whose name was to be Jason. Willem Axlerod and Jason Solange — that's how it was going to be, because, you see, my parents weren't married and they agreed their first child would carry my dad's surname and kid number two would bear our mom's. Before my sister was born, my father got
fixed
and immediately after my sister was born our mom got her tubes tied so there would be no chance of any children beyond the two of us.
By-the-way, our parents
still
aren't married. They are currently in Europe. I may have that wrong. They could be in China at the moment and will be going to Europe in a few weeks. I'm not exactly certain. It always has been difficult keeping track of them. It was even harder to be their children getting dragged around the globe. They're both professional musicians. Between them, they are accomplished in about fifteen different instruments. The one word which best describes our parents is
bohemian
. If you look the word up, you may just see their faces staring back at you! But, that's enough about them for the moment; back to the day of my sister's birth...
So, after eighteen hours of labor, out pops this kid who most assuredly did
not
have a penis. Now, my parents — being the totally anal people they are — had picked out a girl's name just in case. Not that they bothered to tell the staff at Martin Luther Hospital on the south-west side of Berlin. Instead, my dad — in his typically droll way — said...
"Well, Astrid" (yes, our mother's name is Astrid) "we could name her Sonnet. That way, I could still say, 'Come here, Sonny!'"
The next day, there on the rolling baby bassinet was a label with the name "Solange, Sonnet" on the outside. And the German hospital staff being, well...
Germans
... insisted they had recorded the name correctly and furthermore, that if my parents wanted it changed it was a headache's worth of red tape. Apparently, our folks looked at each other, shrugged, and said no more about the matter. Frankly, I think my sister dodged a huge bullet that day: the female name my folks had picked out for her was Alice. Now, before any of you
Alices
out there gets upset, let me say two things: the first is Alice is a great name; the second is my sister is no Alice. I'm just saying...
And just to give you a more complete picture of our upbringing, I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. My sister and I both carry dual citizenships, though I'm not sure how the American government feels about that. But, I digress... The picture I want to paint for you is one of a family of four constantly on the move. Needless to say, we were home-schooled when in transition and enrolled when we weren't. By the time I went off to university, I was fluent in Danish, French, German, and Spanish. English was a different story, which is one reason why I ended up majoring in English Literature. Sunny was fluent in all the ones I mentioned, but also in Russian (I still haven't figured out how she managed to find the time to learn that one). She took
her
college degree in graphic design.
And that last bit of data was the big reason why I was sitting in my comfy chair reading Frost while listening for the tel-tale sound of my sister's steps on the stairs leading up to our second-floor flat. Sunny was two years into a stint at a second or third tier ad agency in our city on the East Coast of the United States. That job was responsible for her late-night trudge home: she had been babysitting for two of her co-workers while they went out clubbing with their spouses.
This was the second time my sister had agreed to do that for her friends. Frankly, I was surprised she had agreed to the first request let alone to a return engagement. For as long as I have known her, Sunny has been ambivalent about children in general and babies in particular. I guess you might say for her it was a matter of trust. She explained it to me the first time by saying...
"Will, we've never been in one place long enough for me to form friendships of any kind let alone with people who have children. Babysitting is one way we can measure the depth of trust in these relationships."
I let her answer stand even though I knew it to be pretty thin. Sunny was right about one thing, though: until recently, she hasn't been very good at forming friendships. Case in point: she's never had a boyfriend — unless you count me. I'm obviously a boy and I
am
her best friend, so I guess I fit the criteria. It's the brother aspect that's a bit dodgy.
So, I sat there until I heard the pneumatic door at the front entrance screech shut. Then it was my sister's shuffling steps on the stairway. Finally, I heard a key in the lock as Sunny slipped back the deadbolt and turned the doorknob. Our apartment door swung open. She had her head down and gave me a half-wave to indicate she had seen me. The door was shut and all the locks engaged. She took off her windbreaker and hung it on the coat tree next to our postage stamp-sized closet. Her backpack with her laptop and other things she had already hung over one of our two kitchen chairs. Her flats she peeled off with her toes and left them where they landed. Now stocking-footed, she patted over to me in her flowered, knee-length skirt and sat her five foot three inch frame on my legs.
My sister Sonnet may be twenty-six but she looks no older than seventeen. (It's also about how heavy she feels.) She began to rub her left hand over my hairy chest being that I was clad only in my boxers, put her right arm behind me with that hand at the back of my head, and finally her head on my right shoulder. I thought I was ready for what she was about to say. I wasn't.
"I need something from you tonight, Will."
"What's that?"
Sunny didn't answer my question. Instead, she just sighed and began to kiss my right ear and twirl my chest hairs. If I had been a cat, I would have been purring at this point. After a few moments she grabbed my book.
"You're reading Frost again? Why?"
"The next section in my English class is on American poetry. I'm just getting prepared."
"On a Saturday?" Sonnet asked; giving the book back to me.
"So, I'm multitasking," I replied; taking it. "You're not the only one in this apartment who can do more than one thing at a time you know."
"Hmmm..."
"Okay, Sonnet, what's up with you? This is the second time you've babysat and the second time you've come back from babysitting in
space cadet
mode!"
"I've been doing a lot of thinking... and after I got the kids to go to sleep this evening, I did some research on my computer, too."
