“No.”
It was Easter. We were six. And my sister had a plan that I definitely didn’t like.
She had been grounded for the past five weeks. At school, the teacher had been called out of the classroom for one reason or another and had left the kindergarten class unsupervised. Many of the other little boys and girls had started talking or playing. I had been reading ahead. And my sister….
Well, she had used the craft scissors meant for construction paper to try to cut her hair as short as mine. After six years with barely a haircut except to trim the split ends, her hair had reached past her waist, and she had hated having long hair. However, the local barber had always followed Mother’s wishes, of course, so Alexandra never got to have hair as short as mine.
Until that day.
Her remaining hair had been trimmed to match mine, maybe even a little shorter since mine had had a few weeks of growing since the last haircut. For a brother and sister pair of twins, we were nearly as identical as possible, and at that tender age, there weren’t very many obvious distinguishing features besides clothing.
Well, she was usually more eager to play outside than I, so her skin was maybe a touch more tan and her remaining blonde hair a shade lighter than mine, but since I was required to play—well, spend time—outdoors, I wasn’t as fair-skinned as I could have been. So, my short-haired twin sister could very well have passed as my twin brother.
It was still very early in the morning, long before Mother would be trying to wake us up and get us ready for the sunrise service at church. After church would be the Easter egg hunt and then a very early holiday dinner at Grandma’s.
Even though it was early, my sister was already fully dressed—in my Easter clothes of dark blue pants with sharp creases; crisp white, button-down shirt; and the tie I didn’t want to wear because ties reminded me of leashes. She even had on my shiny new shoes that pinched my feet because they were only supposed to be worn for Sundays and special occasions, so they had never been “broken in.”
“Please!” She pointed to the pile of clothing she had laid across the foot of my bed. It was what she was supposed to wear. A very fancy white-and-pink Easter dress with a matching bonnet, shawl, tights, and her brand new pair of Easter shoes. They were the strange sort of dress shoes that girls are supposed to wear, with a strap across the top of the foot and a strap like a little belt around the leg above the ankle. They didn’t cover the whole foot like regular shoes do, leaving the part between the strap and the part that covered the toes uncovered. The shoes even had a little bit of an elevated heel on them—nothing like what the ladies at church wore and nothing like even the teachers at school wore. The heels were short and thick, maybe only half an inch of extra height. The shoes were white, with a pink bow on top of the toes and a pink heart-shaped buckle on the ankle belt part. They looked very uncomfortable.
“No!
“Please, Lexy!” We didn’t use those nicknames much, yet, and never where other people could hear them. It was inconvenient that our names were so close, and both Alexander and Alexandra were too long to say all the time. I had started calling her “Lex” since she wanted that, so she started calling me “Lexy” since “Alex” could have been either of us. She usually got her way.
“Pleeeeeeease,” she continued, going into a near-whine that showed just how desperate she really was. “If I don’t wear that dress, I’ll be grounded for all summer and maybe for all first grade, too. Mother’s still really mad about my haircut. I don’t want to be grounded. She doesn’t let me do anything except play in the yard and there’s no one to play with since you just sit and read! So you owe me!”
“Wait, how do I owe you?” I sat up in bed, slightly outraged, and pushed the GI Joe bedding down. I didn’t really like GI Joe and would have rather had plain green bedding, but it had been the only one with green that Mother would let me choose. Not even triangles, squares, and other shapes were good enough.
“Um, well, if you do it, then I will owe you,” she hastily began, then continued with a bit of stammer as she grasped for an idea of what she’d owe. “I’ll… I’ll… Um, I’ll eat your lima beans for the rest of the year.”
“You like slimy beans, Lex. That’s not owing.”
She shook her head, “Nuh-uh. But I know how to eat them without tasting them. One in the mouth, sip of milk and swallow, next one in the mouth, sip of milk and swallow. Or if you’re getting ready to swallow potatoes or meat, put a bean or two in and swallow them too. No taste!” She looked me in the eye, “I told you my secret, so now you owe me.”
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“That’s not how it works. And the answer is still no.”
“Um. Umm…. How about…. What if...? I can…. I know! I’ll let you have the desserts in my school lunches for the rest of the year!”
I frowned, and knuckled some sleep out of my eyes. “Kindergarten is almost over, that’s not much.”
“All of first grade, too!”
“Even the applesauce?” Grandma made applesauce from apples grown in her own yard, so we had homemade applesauce year-round and it was good, not like the metal-tasting stuff served at school from big cans that should have been called cansauce instead. Applesauce was my sister’s second favorite after orange jello with pineapple pieces.
“Y-yes. Even the applesauce. Pleeeease, Lexy? If we don’t hurry up, Mother will wake up and then we’ll get in trouble!”
I sighed and got out of bed. “You really owe me for this. More than just lima beans and dessert, okay?”
“Okay! Thanks, you’re the best brother ever!” She actually hugged me. She normally wasn’t very demonstrative, so it was another very big clue on just how much she really didn’t want to wear that dress.
I didn’t want to wear it either, but I guess she didn’t want it more than I didn’t want it. Something like that. It was going to be a very, very long day, and it was only.... I looked over to the clock on the wall. Big hand on 4, little hand on 3—too early!
I padded over to the closet and she stopped me. “You don’t need anything there. I brung everything you need.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me back to the pile of clothing on the bed. Rummaging around in it, which was more than just the dress, tights, shoes, and bonnet—it included some things I really didn’t have a word for—she pulled out a pair of her underwear. It wasn’t that much different from boy’s underwear. The shape was the same even if it didn’t have the weird flap on the front. The material was thinner and the top had a little bit of a ruffle to it. And it had a bunny rabbit pattern.
The green bedding I had wanted had been grass green with bunny rabbits. She planned on everything.
With another sigh, I took it, turned around, and said, “You turn around too while I get out of my pajamas!”
Basic preparations complete, I sat on the edge of the bed and struggled with the tights. “These are harder than socks,” I complained.
My sister nodded. “Girls’ clothing is too complicated. I hate it! But you do it like this,” she helped me. “You have to be careful to not let it twist so the back stays in the back on both legs.”
Tights pulled up, a bit like very tight pants with built-in socks, I stood at the edge of the bed while my twin gave me the next piece of weird clothing. It looked like a tank-top undershirt, but the material was thin and shimmered sort of like the tights did, but a bit differently. It was smooth and the shoulder straps were very thin, stretchy, and had little buckles where they connected up front. The undershirt also had a small pink bow a little below the collar in the front, and the neck opening had a little bit of a ruffle that matched her underpants.
That went on next and I found that while it looked like an undershirt, it was longer—almost a dress itself. “It’s so the dress moves ‘properly’ and doesn’t rub on the skin,” she explained.
After that was something like layers and layers of white skirts all sewn together. They crinkled and made a lot of noise when she helped me put them on. They buttoned in the back and were a little bit tight, probably so they wouldn’t slip around much even though the undershirt-thing was a slippery material. “To give the dress shape,” she explained. “They’re horrible.”
“You’re not making me feel any better about this,” I grumbled.
Fortunately, we were nearly done. The dress was next, and unlike a proper shirt, it buttoned up the back. No wonder she expected that Mother would have helped her get dressed in it. How does anyone do buttons on their back? My twin helped me, of course, and then helped to arrange the dress properly over all those layers of crinkly skirts. I felt like I was wearing a bell!
Shoes, shawl, bonnet, little white gloves with pink ribbons around the wrists. When we stood side by side and looked in the mirror, even I had a hard time seeing who was who. If I had only seen it as a picture, not as in the mirror, I would have thought the twin in the dress was my sister.
Noises were starting to come from downstairs, so we (reluctantly in my case) went downstairs. When my mother saw that we were already dressed, she patted Alexandra on the head, mussing up her short hair a little. “You helped your sister with her dress? You’re such a considerate brother, Alexander.”
It was working. She had called my twin with my name, thinking that the kid in the pants, button-down shirt, and tie was a boy. And….
… and thus thinking that the kid—me—in the dress and all the hoopla was a girl. I wasn’t a man yet, but oh my manly pride!
Mother then placed a hand on my shoulder, “And thank you, Alexandra, for not making a fuss about the dress. It wouldn’t be good to make a fuss on Jesus’ important day. If you’re good all day, you can stop being grounded tomorrow.”
My twin shot me a significant look. My mother continued speaking, “Well, since everyone’s ready, let’s get going to church. Remember, breakfast will be at church after the service. And stop frowning, Alexandra. This is Jesus’ special day; you don’t want Him to think you’re not happy He rose from the dead, do you?”
Frowning and looking sullen, on the other hand, would be exactly what my sister would be doing if she had been in this get-up, so no one would think anything was wrong about me frowning and being sullen.
Besides, if Jesus really loved the little children, like the song says, then He wouldn’t make them wear clothes they didn’t want to wear just to make Him happy. If He didn’t love us in jeans and no dresses—for boys or girls—then maybe He wasn’t as good as they said He was.
And that’s how I spent a whole day wearing my sister’s Easter dress. Fortunately, it was the last year my mother had insisted on an Easter dress, so it didn’t turn into a yearly thing. But the family Easter photo was hanging on a wall in the living room with every other family photo until we had moved out.
As far as I know, no one ever figured out our deception, but my sister had to spend the rest of the year pretending that lima beans were her favorite vegetable, asking for bigger helpings after she was caught eating mine a few months later.