My Beautiful Sister

Reza hadn't been home in over a decade; the reasons were long and complicated, but the letter that arrived on the Tuesday before last had pulled her back into a world of suffocating judgment and abuse. Beads of sweat would magically appear on her brow, and her breath would quicken as she was instantly jolted back into a world she had so desperately fought to escape. She knew this correspondence could only mean one thing, and she was terrified of the reality waiting for her upon opening it. She couldn't. At least not yet.

Reza lived in the light of the night; she came alive when the sun's warmth grew cold and the day creatures the world called the nine to fivers went to bed. She was 5'10 with an athletic build and bright blue eyes that looked as if a rave party stick had just been shaken alive, just like her younger sister. She was beautiful. Her hair would vacillate between mood swings and anti-popular trends. One month it would be a mohawk, the next, it would be shaved, and on occasion, she would indulge her natural dark chocolate curls (sometimes died blue or fire red). Reza was a club kid, well, not so much a kid anymore but a creature of having survived the streets at a young age who learned to take care of herself. She'd sold almost anything she could to survive; drugs, herself, printer toner, star maps, her drawings, you name it. There was never any self-shame or guilt about what she did to survive; she was practical that way. It was a job, a means to an end. She needed to eat, and she needed a place to stay where she felt safe. Whatever the world threw at her, Reza did what she had to do to survive it.

It was only in the very early morning hours of the day, just before the sun was about to break the horizon, that the quiet got loud. The kind of quiet you hear in your ears. The kind of quiet that refuses to let one escape from their past. Reza sat in bed wide awake with her face illuminated by the red neon light flashing outside her window. It was the memories of home, unspeakable acts of abuse, and the guilt of leaving her sister behind that refused to let her sleep.

Aza was Reza's younger sister by five years. Aza (pronounced Ah-zah) was born with Osteogenesis imperfecta, otherwise known as brittle bone disease. By the time Aza was five, she had broken one hundred and seventy-eight bones and had been in the hospital for most of her life, prompting their parents to refer to the hospital bills as their second mortgage.

Aza was an old soul, as most kids suffering from life-altering diseases are. They seem to have a pearl of wisdom in the way most people never obtain. Living in fear of daily mortality tends to do that; it clarifies what's important in life.

Reza would visit her sister two to three times a week for years. They would laugh, tell jokes, press the panic button to freak out the nurses, but mostly they would read. Stories were their escape. It was a way for the two of them to go on adventures together without anyone else around. Dr. Suess and Tolkien were Reza's favorites, while Aza preferred Winnie the Pooh and The Secret of NIMH. Aza didn't understand Tolkien so much, and she never fully grasped what exactly a hobbit was, but she loved how much Reza enjoyed them. It was clear that they were both drawn to light and dark stories. Reza would draw cartoon caricatures of the characters they would read about, and those friends would be plastered all over her sister's hospital room. "They keep me company when everyone is gone. It's in the night when they come alive, you know," she'd say.

Reza had a talent that you could see progressing over the walls. She didn't give much thought to drawing; she did it because it made her sister happy. That seemed to change after the summer Reza turned fourteen. Aza would always ask why she didn't come as often, and her sister would make up an excuse that they both knew was a lie. Aza didn't need to know details to know her sister was struggling; she could tell her sister was changing.

Reza was born Azer, and it was around her fourteenth birthday that she could no longer live in a body not meant for her, but this story is not about that. Or the lengths her parents went to to make sure a boy born a boy was going to stay a boy, and if she wanted to be a girl, she would be treated as a girl, in every way imaginable, and in some cultures, girls get married off at fourteen. And she was.

Aza would hold Reza's hand and say, "you know what I wish I were? A bird. I wish I were a bird so I could fly through the clouds letting moisture tickle my feathers. Free, to soar high above the earth where I can breathe and let the wind carry me as far as it blows. No hospitals, no poking, no prodding, just me, alone, and maybe you too." She would say with a mischievous smile, "we could go hunting for mice together." As often as this or multiple variations of this conversation would happen, it never mattered what kind of bird she was. What mattered was that it was a bird that flew at night. Aza wanted to fly at night in the light of the moon when the world was quiet, and the friends on her walls came alive - and the twinkly lights. She would say, "I don't care as long as I can see the sparkly lights at night. I just wanna feel free and not confined in a bed anymore." "Maybe a bat?" Reza would ask. "A bat? Like a vampire?" Then Aza would go into outstanding detail about how bats are adorable and eat berries and insects but that they're blind, and she didn't want to be blind. She wanted to see everything. "I don't know, maybe a barn owl. When I come back, I think I'd like to come back as an Owl, like Hedwig, I could deliver mail and live at Hogwarts." They would smile at that and hold hands as the nurse would come in to check on her vitals.

Reza sat on her bed with the red neon sign still flashing through the window. She stared at the letter in her hand as the morning began to wipe the sleep from the world's eyes. The nine to fivers were about to start their day at the same time Reza ended hers.

She knew the news of the letter without opening it, which is why it took her so long to prepare herself for the simple act of unsealing an envelope. She was ready, tired but wide awake; she opened the letter.

Even knowing couldn't prepare her for the moment. Catching her breath, she pressed the letter to her chest and exhaled, and it seemed to deflate her entire body before closing the curtains and heading into the bathroom to take a shower.

As she turned on the light, a dark purple glow from the blacklight installed in the ceiling flickered alive as she let her towel fall to the floor. On her back was a tattoo that spanned shoulder to shoulder - a barn owl with wings in flight and metallic blue eyes as magnificent as the sparkling waters of the Maldives. She had it done in ultraviolet ink so it would come alive in the light of the night. Like the ring of Sauron, all over her body, tattoos came alive under the blacklight. Aza was written on her collar bone, an ivy of roses that burned a bright fire red weaved its way around her waist leading up to the feet of her owl in flight. Nicodemus from the Secret of NIMN adorned her thigh, eyes burning bright in the bathroom light as he stood on a mountain of skulls that fell to the top of her foot. There were hundreds of tattoos, but it was the blue eyes of the owl that pulled the most attention.

On the end table next to her bed lay the letter - a picture of a barn owl Reza had drawn many years ago that used to adorn her sister's hospital wall. Underneath it in her sister's handwriting - I've got my wings now too so we can fly together. I'll see you in the light of the moon, my beautiful sister.

That night as Reza went downstairs to work, she opened the door to her vestibule, unlocked the rolling chain gate covering her store's window, and turned on the neon light that flickered red - Night Owl Tattoo with the same picture of an owl that was on her sister's letter.

Another day gone, and another night had wakened itself alive. But as Reza stood on the other side of the street looking at her store, she smiled and looked up, and for a minute, thought she saw a bird split the moon in two.