Chapter 11 "Girls will be Girls"

The sisters would look back on the apartment renovation days with thankfulness for the time it gave them to spend together. Gathered in May’s pink air-conditioned room, with the aroma of fresh paint and the worker’s cigarettes, the sisters jammed out to Kelly Clarkson’s, “Since You’ve been Gone” and “Just Walk Away”. Their toes gently tapped the new, clean, white tiles as their arms whirled in the cool air. Or the other days spent in Red’s fluorescent yellow room, reading the masterpieces of C.S. Lewis, and watching Sense and Sensibility and other classics—all the while knowing the workmen busily painted the kitchen the same green of Easter grass and McCain’s room the lightest shade of blue.

There was much time to relax and catch up on sleep those first days in their apartment. The surplus of down time was apparent the day May and Red decided to choreograph a dance to TLC’s, “Scrubs” song. They briskly waved their index fingers right to left in front of their hearts, as they sang “I don’t want no” and pretended to mop (hence “scrub”) the floor as they symbolically rejected all the scrubs of the world. If the walls had eyes, surely they would have been amused by the dancing and laughter their space contained.

May flashed back to the weeks before she had left. She sincerely missed her sweet friend, Jenn D., as she remembered fondly the jam out sessions in, Altty (her recently sold, red Nissan Altima). She wondered if Jenn D. was flapping her arms, as if she were a bird, to Bette Middler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” somewhere amidst the orange groves of Florida. She missed deep conversation and lighthearted singing while passing the fake microphone back and forth with Jenn D. in Altty. She paused for a moment and lifted up whispers of thanks to the Father for her benevolent, selfless, sister in the states and for entertaining memories that were not forgotten.

As the mist of May’s sweet memories with Jenn D. began to dissipate, naturally she felt it necessary to serenade McCaine and Red with Bette Middler’s, “The Rose”. The sisters laughed and recorded May’s entirely out of tune and off beat solo. They hoped to send it to Jane, who they always thought of during the soon to be common, “girls will be girls”, moments.