Octavia believed she would inherit the bracelet, as the oldest. Even though she and my grandmother fought constantly, bitter disputes that would last for months, even when they lived in the same house, not made any easier by my traveling salesman grandfather’s long absences. My father said that my mother’s earliest memories are of silence. A wall of it as my grandmother and aunt faced off at each other, refusing to speak for weeks upon weeks, my mother desperate only to hear something other than her own thoughts.

Of course, little Isabella became the favorite, the child cherished over Octavia, who my grandmother would say wistfully, “looked too Jewish,” “had the hips of a battleship and the nose of a parrot.” And through intuition or a studied practice—I would never know which—my mother shone brighter and brighter in her mother’s eyes, their bond so extraordinary that people would marvel at them in the street. Strangers would stop them and confess to them, with tears in their eyes, how much they wished they had had that kind of relationship with their mother.

Octavia, shuttered out, resentment brewing like poison, was both envious and protective of my mother, her baby sister. And though the two would never be friends, they came together for my grandmother’s death, working together to arrange the funeral, the shiva, dabbing each other’s tears and sitting with each other to swap stories, laughing at memories of a mother they had vastly different opinions about.

Until the will was read. And Octavia, who had been wearing the bracelet since she slipped it off my grandmother’s wrist moments after her death, was forced to slip it off herself. But not before a fight so brutal the lawyer considered calling the police. Rumor has it that his firm, situated in an office building, got complaints for weeks about the noise that had occurred. The shrieking, glass shattering, murderous screams, and repetitive uses of cunt. Apparently my mother had scratches along her neck and bite marks on her wrist that wouldn’t go away for weeks.

But in the end, my mother got the bracelet, as she was legally meant to.

My mother and Octavia eventually reconciled, mostly because my mom loved being an aunt to Georgia, Octavia’s only daughter. Of course, there was always an iciness between the sisters, pursed lips, scowls, pointed quips at family gatherings that everyone would titter at nervously. Nothing like what happened in the lawyer’s office happened again.