As a bi-weekly surprise for Mom I mopped and waxed the floor. In the middle of mopping, Susan got up from the sofa during a commercial break and went to the kitchen, making footprints on my clean floor.

Hmmm.

Halfway through the waxing, she got up again. I watched her walk across the sofa, climb over the stairway, and stretch for the nearest chair. She couldn’t reach it. Two little feet touched the floor.

“Get outside until I’m done waxing and polishing,” I commanded.

A half hour later it began sprinkling. Susan wanted to come in.

“Wait until I finish polishing,” I yelled through the locked door.

1965 – Like Cinderella, I was surrounded by happy animals.

The rain picked up and Susan chose to annoy me by knocking on the glass door, demanding to be let inside.

I was sixteen and she was seven; not an even match. I buffed the last linoleum tile and walked to the door with my eyes shut and arms outstretched.

“Where are you, I can’t see,” I shouted. “I can’t find the handle.”

“Let me in, I’m getting all wet,” she screamed.

I blindly fumbled around. “I’m trying, I can’t find the doorknob.”

I think I teased her for too long and made her mad, because she pulled her fist back and punched it through one of the glass panes.

I let her in. There was no running blood, but her knuckles were red and scratched.

“Look what you did,” I yelled. “You could have sliced a vein and killed yourself.”

Three sisters (circa 1969)
Susan, me, Paula

In a strange twist of fate, and quite unfairly, Susan’s expected doom became my destiny.

Around seven years later, Susan locked Paula outside and pretended to be blind. Same door, almost the same result; Paula used her forehead instead of her fist.