What We Need Here is a Penetrating Investigation

Yesterday, I revealed one of my sister the ex-mayor's wife's least-endearing habits. She took a fake-beatin' and kept on cheatin'. She framed me again and again with cries of nonexistent physical attack. It was my own fault. Fool me once, shame on Sis. Fool me twice...and a hundred times more, shame on gullible trusting Val.

This behavior started shortly after we moved into our new childhood home. That was 7th grade for me, and 5th grade for Sis. Which makes us 12 and 10. Sis was a freckledy scrappy spitfire compared to me. She got the wire handle of the flyswatter more often when we were younger. She had a routine where Mom would grab her by the upper arm and spin in a circle chasing her churning legs just below the shorts line, while Sis ran like Secretariat, with one hand held behind her back to shield her legs, red hair streaming in the wind.

Our new split-level house had a floor plan with a door that opened into the foyer, living room on the right. You could go straight and enter the kitchen, turn right, enter the dining room, turn right again, and you were back in the living room. A big circle. So when Mom was cooking at her harvest gold stove top, we were on the other side of the wall in the living room. We didn't spend much time there. Mom stopped short of the plastic furniture covers. But the living room was the sitting room. Where Mom sat with the Jehovah's Witnesses for hours at a time, unable to turn them away.

When Sis and I grew bored with watching TV in the wood-paneled family room downstairs, we gravitated to the kitchen to see what was for supper. Sis would step into the dining room and motion for me to follow. "C'mere. I've got a secret." She mouthed that behind Mom's back. And I fell for it every time. A SECRET! Sis was going to tell me a secret!

The secret was that she had a dastardly plan to get me in trouble. Because she could. The minute we got into the living room, and I leaned over to hear the secret, Sis clapped her hands together and hollered, "OW! She SLAPPED me!" I had not ever read a Junie B. Jones book at that time, but after reading them with my own kids, I know what the author was talking about when she said that Junie's teacher, Mrs., clapped her loud hands.

Let the record show that Val was no angel. But neither was she a sister-pummeler. Still, Val was the one punished for the imaginary transgression. EVERY time. Sis's secret was: Val was about to get in trouble.

Val was not one to plot revenge. I'm sure that the incident about to unfold was a complete accident. Of course it was. Stuff happens.

Val and Sis shared a bathroom. It was upstairs at the front of the house, between our two bedrooms. There were no fancy doors like the Brady Bunch bathroom, where you could enter from your separate bedrooms. Nope. Just a door from the hall. On the left was a pink bathtub, then a pink tile half-wall with black trim tiles at the top, and a pink toilet in its own alcove. On the right was an accordion-doored closet, with four shelves for sheets and towels and blankets. Then a white counter with pink double sinks, and a mirror spanning the length of the counter. Any area not covered by pink tile or a wooden accordion door was adorned with white wallpaper sporting a fuzzy red fleur de lis pattern. Yes. It was a grand '70s bathroom. They don't make 'em like that anymore. In fact, the two stepdaughters of my cousin who bought Mom's house forbade him from changing anything about it during the remodel. Everything old is new again. Girls like what girls like.

It so happens that one certain day, Val and Sis were both in the bathroom at the same time, combing hair and brushing teeth. Sis decided that it was a fine time to clean out her ear canal with a bobby pin. Folks did that back then, you know. None of that fancy Q-Tip stuff. That was for babies. Not tweenagers.

An argument developed, in that way one does between sisters. Perhaps about getting off my side of the counter! Or about Sis hollering, "JOAN OF ARC CHILI BEANS?" accompanied by several loud thumps from the kitchen at a time on Saturday morning whe Val was trying to sleep in. Or maybe about Sis taking umbrage at Val's comment that she really shouldn't wear her silver sandals, what with her having boy toes and all.

Anyhoo...some jostling occurred. A bit of a scuffle. And by the time it was over, Sis had a drop or two of blood seeping from her ear. Only a little bit of blood, really. Hardly enough to even call it blood, though it was very red, and seemingly upsetting to Sis when she saw it in the mirror. It's not like she went deaf or anything. I'm sure eardrums grow back from perforation. I can't really say if that silly ear incident happened before or after the SECRETS. We're not a chicken and an egg, you know. We're sisters. Stuff happens. I certainly don't want to ask Sis for the pertinent details.

Maybe I AM a chicken...