Violet Toussaint

Stinkerbell

I can still remember my older sister’s eleventh birthday party. She and her little preteen friends sitting smushed together in a circle on the bench seats of my grandma’s barely functioning jacuzzi. Now, this was in the middle of my notable Tinkerbell phase, so I was hopping in circles in the center of the tub like a fairy rearing to send my five-year-old self into one of these girls’ laps. I don’t know whether it was because it was her birthday or because she was my sister, but I kept leaping into only her lap.