Marylou DiPietro

Here we are, the five of us, dressed in our best outfits for another family portrait. Even though the photo is in black and white, I can see the colors of every piece of clothing we were wearing that day.

My sister (only thirteen months older) and I are wearing our navy blue and white checked Easter suits and white blouses with Peter Pan collars -- my bangs pinned back distinguishing me from her (when people asked if we were twins, I’d say, “How could we be twins, my head is bigger than hers?”). Looking back, I wonder what else, if anything, distinguished us from each other. Did I even know where I ended, and she began? Back then no one told us who we were or where we came from or even if it was us staring out from the picture, we had no choice but to pose for.

Towering above us our oldest sister stands statuesque with a look way beyond her years. Her wavey brown, shoulder-length hair held back behind her ears with a thin white head band. Even though she is only nine or ten, her red and white polka-a-dot blouse with its three-quarter length sleeves and Nero collar slopes into a barely visible bump -- her shoulders slightly arched, as if trying to protect the just hatched birds poking their beaks against the inside of her big-girl’s blouse. We knew even then she was our real mother, our protector, the appointed one.

Front and center is the only boy; my baby brother -- the pride and joy of our entire extended family. He is the one who will carry out the family name. He stands at ease in a white cotton button-down shirt and red suspenders and a black clip-on bowtie. His hair is short (a summer cut) and he’s smiling impishly at the camera. No one seems to have noticed the day he was born I disappeared.

On the other side of my brother is the baby of the family – the one who is no longer with us. I try to bring her into focus -- her deep-set eyes, her dark, thick, shoulder length hair curling under evenly at the ends. A strikingly beautiful child with hope in her eyes and a kind of innocence I do not remember. She’s wearing the sweetest pinafore dress over a blue blouse with puff sleeves and a bow tied in the back and a little purple pansy sewn on just below her left shoulder. I remember she was wearing that same dress the day my father held her in his arms with unspeakable love in his eyes, while my mother begrudgingly snapped a different picture.