One

IN my family, we used the word we all the time. Most of the time we meant the five of us, the children. We hated this TV show, loved that one. We adored cutthroat card games and fast chess, but pretended to hate team sports. We were going to the beach.

Which was not to say we didn't form in-groups and out-groups among ourselves. But the power of we was stronger than anything we did to each other, especially when we were united against a common enemy. Often enough, the force we supported each other against was right in the house with us.

Even that could shift. When we were talking to strangers, we widened to include everybody who lived in our mansion with the pool, the guest house, and the fruit tree orchard in Bosquecito, a rich enclave just south of Santa Tekla, Southern California: we meant us kids, plus Mama, Daddy, Great-Uncle Tobias and Great-Aunt Hermina.

We went to Los Angeles twice a year, once between Christmas and New Year's, and the other time at Midsummer, to parties where even more of our family lived: Mama's parents and aunts and uncles, her brothers and sisters, and so many cousins, removed or not, that we couldn't remember all their names.

We didn't tell outsiders what we were really like. We learned that particular brand of separation from the rest of the world before we could speak.

As for the other kind of separation, differentiating oneself as an individual, I hardly knew I was a separate person from my brothers and sisters until I was around seven, and I didn't believe it until later, when I found out just how separate I was.

I was twelve when my older sister Opal went through transition.

At sixteen, Opal was almost as pretty as Mama, with the same full lips, high cheekbones, and wide violet eyes. She had nice hair, too: long, wavy, and brown with gold streaks.

The rest of us were darker, both in looks and temperament.

Jasper, fourteen, teased Opal because she acted timid. She never dared a dare or took the lead in follow-the-leader. She didn't like walking to the beach with us because the tunnel under the freeway was full of broken glass and spooky echoes. She couldn't stand to get dirt under her fingernails. Caterpillars gave her nightmares, and snakes made her run the other way.

As for me, Gypsum, the middle sister, I didn't take the lead, but I didn't back down from much. I could run almost as fast and hit almost as hard as Jasper, and harder than Opal. Flint and Beryl, the younger kids, weren't threats yet; they were still just bothers. Jasper and I had age, size, and strength on them, so we ignored them when we could. Flint had started to follow me and Jasper around, even though I beat him up. On the other hand, Beryl looked up to Opal, which annoyed me.

I remembered how Opal used to hug me when I was little, and comb my hair, help me dress, rock with me in the big rocking chair in Mama and Daddy's room and sing to me, but that was when I was three and she was seven. It lasted until I was seven and she was eleven. Then I grew out of it.

Opal was a girl, and Jasper was a boy. I sure didn't want to turn into what Opal was. I didn't want to be her doll, either.

Transition was something every kid in our family went through if they were lucky.

Watching Opal go through it scared me. She had chills and fever and then chills again over the course of three days. She moaned and talked to people who weren't visible.

Mama did most of the nursing. Daddy, the one who usually cared for us when we were sick if Opal didn't, was an outsider, not a member of Mama's family; he had no experience with this special kind of sickness.

I helped take care of Opal. I kept her covered with blankets instead of letting her shiver them off. I sat by her and gave her water when she would take it. I held her hand when she moaned and cried. Watching her eyes burn with fever in the dim light, I was scared. I didn't want her to die.

The power came on Opal at midnight of the third day. I was asleep by her bed. I woke to find her hand gripping mine, and when I looked at her she smiled and blew me a kiss. I felt it melt into my cheek like sunlight.

After that, she was okay.

Her settling-in period was mild compared to some Great-Uncle Tobias told us about. He was the family historian and our teacher in all the family things we couldn't learn at school.

Opal only had little spurts and glories as she and her gift adjusted to each other, not the pyrotechnics and major risks and accidents some people had.

Copyright © 2002 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman