Ayanna paused. It was complicated. She wanted to believe and knew that was the most important thing, at least to her. There was an embarrassing fantasy Ayanna liked to indulge in of going through the door, charting different paths, finding incredible plants, and stumbling upon a group of the dead and leading them back home.

“Go again,” Olivia said. She said these words slowly, deliberately.

“I don’t think Mom likes me as a person,” Ayanna said. “Maybe it’s because I picked Dad, but I think it was really fucked up they let us pick at all.” Ayanna’s heart was beating faster as she said it. She tried to sound mature as she continued. “Everything about me, she tries to change or diminish.”

It wasn’t that she said this aloud to have Olivia refute it, but in her sister’s silence and the way she reached out and gently squeezed her arm, there was a confirmation. Ayanna felt that Olivia was intrinsically likable, both because Ayanna loved her sister too much to be objective and because Olivia was a person who liked to be kind. There was a part of her soul that enjoyed nourishing others. Olivia was the girl who didn’t mind listening to other people’s complaints, who people would sometimes chat with when she worked at her church’s soup kitchen, and who seemed to already know what to do to make babies smile big and laugh when she was in their presence. But Ayanna also felt that their mom liked Olivia because she was comfortably obedient. There were no whys or nopes, no doesn’t sound rights from Olivia. Even when their mom said wild things about other women or abortions or seemed to be leaning toward a kind of ashy-black moderateness—Why does everything have to be about race? was a recent go-to with her—Olivia would just let her go on. Ayanna couldn’t handle the idea that half her genes were from someone who could be so ignorant, who seemed predisposed at times to never think about other people and their situations, but to comfortably judge.

But still, Ayanna could feel her eyes warming with tears, and was embarrassed that a small part of her wanted Olivia to interrupt. It would’ve been so reassuring to be told she wasn’t seeing things right.