Reproduction was an amazing thing. Take Elenora and Gertrude for instance, two sisters born of the same mother, but, complete opposites. Elenora wore her dark brown hair, almost black, short, often with a ribbon across her scalp, thin and white, to hold down the damned curls which almost always escaped out at the bottom in a nest-like tangle She perferred simplicity in her dress, not accessories, just dress with a simple pattern, like stripes, and, with muted colors, garments which belied her need for constant attention. She did wear bracelets, one on each arm, high above her wrists, a habit she had picked up after attempting to read the Greek translations in her father's library, but only getting as far as the illustration plates in the leather bound books. She bought them from a jeweler, Mr. Goldberg, one of the fewish New York jews who had lived in their town, who had a shop down on Main Street, and who had said that they had come from Greece by way of a Greecian immigrant, that he could not verify the story, but that he was told by this Greecian immigrant that they were antiquities of the ancient kind, (like there was any kind of other), obtained near a Greek temple of Diana, the Huntress Goddess. And when she wore them, she felt like the disciple of the Goddess Diana, empowered, emboldened, often chastised by her mother by her brash comments, times when she commented about how shameful it was that the boy next door walked outside with only his undershirt untucked and a pair of pants, and no shoes. When she wore the bracelets, she was imbued with divinity and strength and did not need a man. Certainly, the men in town had no need for her. She had this tendency to keep her head down, so that her thick eyebrows shaded her brown eyes, and made her face seem more rounded, her nose much shorter and thinner than it really was. It was until she had reviewed those illustrated plates in the tomes in her father's library, seen the hairt men and women with dark curly hair and thick eyebrows, whose bodies were thicker, more athletic, muscular, did she feel more at ease with her own body image. She had placed herself within a framework of being, and, being placed there adopted everything that was that was the frameword, to the simple stylized lines found on the pictured urns, to the facial expressions of the figures contained thereon. One work she had managed to read, being that the words were not so difficult, and there was so little of it to read was the works of Sappho, though she missed the point of the words entirely, did not understand their context because she had skipped over the long, exasperating explanation by the academic in the front of the book. Instead, she embued the words with her own meaning, finding bits of her own life to fill in the experience gap that existed between her and the woman who existed all those years ago who wrote the words. One evening, her father caught reading the words, sternly took the book from her in a terribly angry way, as if she had violated some sacred family secret, like finding her birthday presents before her atual birthday or getting into her mother's jewelry box. But the experience made her interest in the book all the more powerful, seductive, and Sappho called to her often, inciting in her a scandalous lust to have the book in her hands, to read its pages, to unfold it, and delve deep into it. And she often felt dirty afterwards as if she had done something to bring shame not only to her self but her family as well. Her father seemed to know that she was continuing to revisit this text, attempted to subvert her romance with it by moving the tome other hidden places around the house, but Elenora always seemed to know where it was hidden, as if it called to her from the desk drawer, behind the book shelf. Funny enough, Elenora's mother never commented on the affair, seemingly blissfully unaware of the whole sinful matter. If Elenora frustrated her father, her sister Gertrude was the apple of her father's eye. Were as Elenora's skin was dark and a bit patchy, Gertrude's was porceline with faint blushes of rose in all the right places, like on the cheeks. And whereas Elenora's hair was wild and untamed, Gertrude's light brown hair had a tightness to it, controlled, placed just so. Gertrude was not given to smile as much of Elenora. Her mother associated this with Gertrude's sisters devilish grin, which seemed to hide devilish intentions, something that Gertrude attempted to eschew as much as possible. Instead, she always seemed to have a look of longing on her face, a visage of looking far into the distance, waiting for something to come along, whatever it was. Elenora thought her sister looked a lot like the image of one of the women in illustrated on the plates in her father's books, a woman whose hair was pinned up upon her head, much like how her sister wore it, a rounded base with a small ball of hair on the top, with a delicate face, thin eyebrows, and that same longing look, as if she had been passed over for something, as if, once born, had lost control of her life. The woman's name, according to the plate was Helen and she live in a place called Troy. Apparently, Helen had been quite a beauty, if the subtitles to the plates and the titles to the chapters were any indications, for she had started a war among nations. Gertrude had not started any wars between any nations, but her beauty had given the local boys something to fight about, for they would come hang out on the front lawn of the two story wooden house she and her sister lived in with their mother and father, and rough housed each other in various feats of strength. Sometimes the competitions would get so intense that they crossed the line of the playful and into the realm of the serious, where blows would be exchanged, perhaps black eyes would be dolled out. Elenora recalled on more than one occasion when her father had to go out on the front lawn to split two tomcats swinging wildly at each other while her mother desperately called their parents. At such times, Elenora would sit at the window at the front of the house watching the battle engage while her sister unaffected by such displays would go to her room to take up some past time or another. While Elenora was a fan of simple dress, found elegance in plain style, her sister perferred the ornate. Gertrude always accessorized, almost gaudily, using the flowers from her mother's flower garden outside to accentuate her looks. A large pink rose bloom was often placed on her dress in between her bosom, which she believed was not ample enough, looked too much like the flat chested flappers she was horrified by. She often carried in her hands other flowers which she grasped on to when she visited others. A tactile person, she would incessantly rub the stem of the flowers, rub the petals of the flowers, in a nervousness. The effect of it all was to give one the impression that she was impermanant, that like the flowers that she wore in her hair and bosom and held in her hand, that she would eventually wilt and die away once Spring and Summer faded into Fall and Winter. Despite being so different, the sisters loved each other dearly, loved each other for the other's quirks. Whereas the angelic Gertrude was always trying to dissuade Elenora from participating in mischievousness in attempt to save her soul, or at least, to give her the opportunity to attract a man who might come to find her suitable enough to marry, if not to love, Elenora was constantly probing Gertrude for her devilishness, because Elenora was vain enough to believe that all persons had devilish side, a side of their personalty which, damned be the right thing, wanted, desired, craved exploiting life. And this battle was fought on a daily basis. Elenora would wake up in the morning, telling her sister that they would be going to the river to go wading in the water with the neighborhood boys, and Gertrude would say that they should stay in and work on their needlepoint or point out that their mother had been working rather hard on putting together the cakes for the church bake sale and probably needed a break and that they should do the cooking for the family tomight. This was a competition that was encouraged by their father who felt like the influence that the sisters had on each other, the little tussles over societal ground, the prim and proper versus the adventurous and outgoing made each them a better person. When little spats erupted between the sisters, as he was wont to call them, their father left them to their ends, even when their mother who detested any dischord in her peaceful home pleaded and begged for him to get involved, appealed to his sense of decorem in the neighborhoo. What would the neighbors think about the couterwauling of the two girls? If he didn't set an end to this feud between them, they would drift away from each other and eventually from the family. Elanora would freed from her sister's reuctance would escape into the city to become a working girl, a fashion model, an actress in the movies, find refuge in the city of sin where the evils of an urban lifestyle lie, where her devilish side would turn her in to a hedonist. And Gertrude, who without Elenora, would not venture outside but find refuge in their home, take root their such that she would never find a man to marry, and she would become an old maid despite her beauty Their father was not inclined to accept his wife's dim view of the situation. For their father saw them as two large planetary objects, large and bright in their own accord, with a strong gravitional pull on each other, each exerting their force on the other, so strong a force, that they can not slip from the other's grip. And so it was that the little spats were had with periods of silence between the two of them, when the home was tense and uneasy, but then Gertrude, who had a tendency to see the foolishness of such silly disputes, about whether they were going to the social held at the local community center or the church, or whether they were going to stay in, were petty in light of the fact that they were sisters, and she would approach Elenora and apologize for being such a recluse and for her shyness, recounting the many virtues of her sister, repeating over and over again how lost she would be without her. And in her own way, Elenora would also express the same, maybe not saying it out loud but by petting her sister's rosy cheeks, the ones she jealously coveted, and then kiss her on her forehead. And so long as there was nothing which exerted a greater influence than each other, than the two sisters would always be there for one another. Their father had seen the future, foretold that the sisters would find two men who loved them for their own idiosyncracies, who would understand that nothing could come between these two sisters, their love for each other stronger than all outside factors, would accept living next door to their in-laws. They would grow old together, their children growing up together, in this same small town that they now lived. But it should be noted, their father was not a diviner, could not read the stars, and little did he know what influences were out there. However, he would soon find out.
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