Returning to the Womb

Briana Deane

     “Where's your other half?” the girls in my class used to ask, as they'd run past me at recess.
      “She's coming,” I'd respond, annoyed at the way they referred to my identical twin sister. My classmates would shrug and continue up the hill to the playground, and I'd watch the sashes of their blue tunics flapping behind them as they ran toward the monkey bars. My own sash was very still as I continued to stand at the edge of the playground, waiting for Brittany. She always came a little after me. (Five minutes when it came to our birth— at least seven at recess).

     When we enrolled in the all-girl Kindergarten, they had decided to put Brittany and I in different classes. Our parents had tried to comfort us by pointing out that our classrooms were right next door to each other. We were just a wall apart; there was even a dividing door that connected the two rooms. I had a love/hate relationship with that door. I knew I only had to open it, and Brittany would be right there on the other side. But only the teachers were allowed to open it, so most of the time it just divided me from her. I used to wonder whether the teacher would stop me if I opened it myself. I figured she probably would, and then forbid me to ever open it again. So I decided to hold off until I really needed to, even though I didn't like how recess was the only part of the day I got to see Brittany. They stuck with the decision to separate us though; it was to prepare us for a life of individuality— a start to our journey as individual women. Which I find funny, looking back now as I prepare to graduate college— the school we chose to attend together— a Womens College. Not a semester has gone by in which we haven't scheduled every class together.
Looking back I can still recall the relief I felt as Brittany's class would finally parade out to the playground in a double-file line of blue tunics. (It’s the same relief I feel now when I spot her in the crowded college cafeteria). From a distance, they looked a lot alike, but I always spotted Brittany immediately. In fact, I used that when people would mix Brittany and I up, and then blame it on us dressing alike. “Everyone at our school dresses alike,” I would say. “And I still know which one's Brittany.”  In fact dressing alike only made us stand out; in a sea of blue tunics, we were the twins. Our sameness made us different.
Brittany would see me too, squinting in the sun toward where I stood waiting, and the two of us would run off together toward the swings. “They called me your other half again,” I'd tell her and we'd laugh.
We never talked much though as we pumped our way to the treetops; we just liked to make sure our swings were going in the same direction before daydreaming. Up-- I wondered what I could write about in my weekly journal. Down— the Sunday cookout at my grandparents’ house or gymnastics class? Up. I was content in my own thoughts as long as she was next to me with her own thoughts. Right beside me. Together rhythmically, like the simultaneous heartbeats the doctor heard the day he told my mother she was having twins, like the way we breathe in unison as we lay together asleep. To this day, I believe my sleep habits have much to do with my being a twin— which makes sense I guess; most people come into this world having slept alone for nine months.

      When it's time to sleep, I am absolutely oblivious to her presence, and starkly aware of her absence. I only notice when she's not there. Apparently its always been like that. When Brittany and I were a year old our parents bought us each our own crib; every night they would place each of us in one before going to bed themselves. But in the morning, they'd find us together in one crib. “They could barely even walk,” our parents still exclaim when they tell the story to extended family. “How did they climb in and out of their cribs?” Concerned for our safety they eventually gave up trying to separate us at night.
Our preference for sleeping together continued. I used to have a recurring dream that a man was coming to kidnap Brittany. I knew he was on his way to get her. I frantically told everyone, but no one would listen. I'd always wake up just before the kidnapper got her— just in time to see her wake up in a panic from the recurring dream she always had— the one where the kidnapper was coming for me. Running to our parents' room was always a joint decision. We either both stayed or both went.

     When we were eight our parents took us to a furniture store and told us it was time to pick out new beds. We followed the sales guy around as he showed us bed after bed. At first I didn't get why the guy kept throwing the word `twin' into every other sentence. Neither did Brittany. Every time he'd say it, we'd look up at him, thinking he was addressing us in the way singletons do sometimes, when they have given up altogether on getting our names right. But he was never looking at us when he said it.

      I soon realized `twin' was a type of bed. I then picked up on something else. The beds all seemed to fall under one of three categories: King, Queen, or Twin. I grabbed Brittany's arm excitedly. “A twin is the same thing as a Jack!” I told her. (Our grandmother had recently taught us cards). I beamed. Brittany looked disappointed. I knew it was because she wanted us to be named after the queen. Our parents wanted us to get bunk beds. I refused. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep unless Brittany was right beside me. We finally settled on a trundle bed— one where the lower level could pop up so that it was right next to the higher one.
My inability to sleep without Brittany affected Kindergarten naptime— the first time in my life in which I was supposed to sleep without her in the room. There was no point in trying. It always just ended up with me laying there in the dark, while the rest of my classmates slept. As far as I was concerned, naptime was a waste of time. Except for one thing: Every afternoon after recess (just before nap-time) Mrs. Fishburg would pick one girl to sleep in the bathtub. It wasn't a working bathtub of course, just an empty basin of pillows on the left side of the classroom. I always hoped I would get it— I wouldn't be sleeping in it, but I figured it would be more fun to lay awake in that, than on a two-inch mat rolled out on the floor. Brittany's class didn't have a bathtub; but she always hoped to be the `wand-lady'— the girl who got to go around the classroom at the end of naptime, tapping every girl on the shoulder with a pink and purple wand.

     When the teachers blew the whistles, signaling the end of recess, Brittany and I would slow our swings to a stop and whisper to each other to try and get the bathtub or be the wand-lady.

     Inside, my class would gather in a circle on the floor, waiting for Ms. Fishburg to hand out the red mats, marked with our individual names. If you didn't get your mat, it was because you had been picked to sleep in the bathtub. I put everything I had into sending the teacher a telepathic message: Pick Me. Pleease, Please Pick Me. It never worked. I'd sulk off into a corner with my mat, glancing in envy over my shoulder toward the lucky girl settling into her bathtub of cushions.

     But by the time I had `set up' and plopped down on my stomach, my attention re-focused completely; the afternoon was a lost cause for me, but there was still a chance Brittany would get to be the wand-lady. I'd stare intently at the door that divided her from me. I knew she, too, was wide-awake, and that she was lying as still as possible over there, hoping to be picked. She deserved to be the wand-lady, I'd reason to myself. Out of all the girls in her class, she would be the best one. Besides, she didn't need a wand lady to wake her up; she didn't sleep during naptime. I wasn't there. Therefore she should get to be the one to wake everyone else up.

     “Head down, Briana; that's the rule.” I would suddenly be aware of Mrs. Fishburg standing over me with a frown. I'd sigh and put my head down flat on the mat; there was nothing left to do but wait-out nap time listening to the drum of my classmates' breathing.

     I'll never forget my first sleep-over by myself. I was 10. A girl close to our own age had moved into the neighborhood. She was having a sleep-over birthday party and picked Brittany and I to be two of the six she was allowed to invite. But Brittany got sick the night before the party. I didn't want to go by myself, but my mom insisted I would have fun anyway, and that the birthday girl would appreciate at least one of us coming to her party. So I went. I was fine through cake and presents. I only got nervous around bedtime. But when it finally came time for everyone to put on pajamas, it seemed like it would be ok.

     All six of us girls stretched out next to one another on a large pull-out-couch bed in the basement. I was on the very left side of the bed. I actually managed to fall asleep sometime during the second movie— though I woke up in the middle of the night as usual. That's when the panic set in. All of the other girls were asleep and Brittany wasn't there for me to talk to. She was laying awake by herself all the way down the street. I must have lay there for an hour at least, wishing I could just sleep like a normal person, and wondering if I would ever get back to sleep before morning. At one point I shifted on my left side. As I did so, I saw a face— sticking out from underneath my bed. It was a guy. I knew it was the kidnapper from my dream, coming to take Brittany. Except she wasn't there. But then I realized it was the guy from Brittany's dream who had come to take me. I screamed louder than I ever will again, violently kicking the other girls awake. They woke-up screaming too of course. By then though, the birthday girl's 14-year old brother had climbed out from underneath the bed and went quietly upstairs.

     None of us could sleep after that of course— though the other girls assumed it was just a `big-brother' joke, that he had came down in the middle of the night to scare his little sister and her friends. But the thing is, I know I was laying awake for at least an hour before I saw him under there, that I would have heard him come down if he had come down after I woke up, that he had lay underneath my bed for at least an hour, while I too had lay awake wishing I was with my twin.

     This year is the first year I don't share a bedroom with Brittany. Just before the start of junior year, we decided we each needed our own singles, with our own space. I've noticed I've started checking under my bed a lot, convinced a kidnapper is under there, waiting to take advantage of my separation from my sister. I can't sleep sometimes. But once in a while at night, when I feel strange laying there alone, I hear Britt gently open the door, and crawl into the twin bed with me.

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