Chapter One

1


Every morning, my twin sister, Bahia, brought me breakfast in bed. “Up and at ’em,” she’d call out as she opened the door to my room. “You’re going to swell up like a wad of dough.” She’d place the tray on a low table at the foot of the bed, open the window, and come back to pull my toes. Her brusque, authoritative movements contrasted sharply with the sweetness of her voice. Since she was my elder, if only by a few minutes, she treated me like a child and failed to notice that I’d grown up.

She was a frail young woman, a bit of a fussbudget, a real stickler for order and hygiene. When I was little, she was the one who dressed me before we went to school. Since we weren’t in the same class, I wouldn’t see her again until recess. In the schoolyard, she’d observe me from a distance, and woe to me if I did anything that might “shame the family.” Later, when I was a sickly teenager and the first few scattered hairs began to appear on my pimply face, she took personal charge of keeping my adolescent crisis in check, scolding me whenever I raised my voice in front of my other sisters or spurned a meal. Although I wasn’t a difficult boy, she found my methods of negotiating puberty boorish and unacceptable. On a few occasions, my mother lost patience with her and put her in her place; Bahia would keep quiet for a week or two, and then I’d do something wrong and she’d pounce.

I never rebelled against her attempts to control me, however excessive. On the contrary, they amused me—most of the time anyway.

“You’ll wear your white pants and your c