“He is a liar, and I don’t want to hear anything you have to say!” Rita shouted in her face when she opened the door and found her standing there.
Reminding herself of her mission, Miriam took a deep breath and counted to ten before responding to Rita’s unnecessary outburst. “He lied, yes, but that doesn’t make him a liar.”
She closed the door silently. She was tired and needed to get back to the children and let the babysitter get back to her life, but her baby sister needed her, even though she didn’t think so.
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“Whose side are you on anyway? Did you come here to paint him in a good light?”
Miriam wished Rita would stop pacing so they could have a direct conversation. Following her movements around the room was giving her a headache. “Can we please talk? Sometimes, to get the full picture of a situation, you need all the pieces. Please?”
“If you are here to give some opinion or share what David explained, I don’t want to hear it,” Rita responded.
Her adamance was not surprising; Miriam came prepared.
“I just want to tell you a story Mum once told me.”
As expected, Rita stilled. As she turned slowly to face her, Miriam knew the battle was over. Rita was barely a year old when their mother died, and the only thing she knew about her were the pictures and the stories Miriam and their late dad had told her. She looked for anything that she could use to paint a clearer picture of the mother she didn’t remember but loved deeply.
As Miriam sat down on the couch and patted the empty space, inviting Rita to join her, she tried not to wrinkle her nose. Her sister was many things, but a decorator was not one of them. From the green couch, the purple center table—who paints a table purple?—to the yellow lamp at the other end, everywhere she looked, Miriam saw some dash of ugliness inviting her to grimace. Fighting off the urge, she focused once again on the reason she was here.
She didn’t know many things, but she knew that David and Rita were meant to be together. He was probably the only man who could allow Rita to be herself without getting threatened or confused about himself. And she wasn’t about to allow her sister to throw away something this good.
As Rita sat, she looked deeply into her eyes and smiled, allowing all the love she had for her to shine through. From the day she was brought back from the hospital, after her birth, Miriam had been Rita’s defender and pillar, and the 10 years between them didn’t help change the situation.
When their mother died, the roles became more pronounced, and when their father turned to alcohol for comfort, the deal was sealed. When Rita became a teenager and was trying to deal with their father’s death, she tried to fight the situation all she could, but it was already written in stone. Rita was her baby sister, and she was her defender, pillar, and everything she needed her to be. Right now, she needed her to be her voice of reason. Even if it meant she had to lie about a story their mother never told.
“I was having a hard time understanding something important to me at that time, can’t remember what now, but I remember the story,” Miriam began. “Three blind men were taken to a circus, and they heard the excited screams of the spectators and got excited too. However, they wished they could see what made others excited. So, to make them happier, one of the performers invited them to touch one of the performing elephants, after which they would describe what they discovered.
“The first blind man was put in front of the elephant. He felt the trunk and said it was a thick, moving rope. He concluded that the rope must move in a way that makes the spectators excited. The second blind man was put by the side of the elephant and said it was a high wall. He concluded that there must be something special about the wall that makes people excited. The last blind man was put behind the elephant. Touching the tail, he disagreed with the first blind man. The rope was not thick but thin, with some fluff at the end.
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“On the way back from the circus, they argued vehemently about what they had felt. It didn’t matter that they were all wrong because they all had just one piece of information about the elephant.”
The room stayed quiet after Miriam finished the story, with the only sound being the squeaking fan.
“Yes, David lied,” Miriam continued after a while, “but if you don’t get the whole information, you can’t paint the true picture. Promise me you’d at least talk to him?”
Rita nodded.
“Thank you,” Miriam said with a sigh of relief before getting to her feet. “I need to hurry back to the kids. You know I love you, right?”
Rita nodded again, leaning in for the hug Miriam offered.
She waited for a few seconds after Miriam left, to be sure she wasn’t coming back, before allowing the tears to flow down her face. She smiled wistfully as she sat down, deep in thought.
She learned years ago that Miriam brought up their mum whenever she didn’t know what else to do to get through to her. So, while Rita knew she lied, she also knew it was a sign of desperation.
She would rather listen to a lie about their mum and some story about an elephant than allow her sister to worry about her.
Come tomorrow, she would speak to David and find out the full picture of the elephant now in her apartment.
Standing in as a defendant is the best. She has tried to defend Rita to her last level.
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