Fake Siblings and Grilled Grapefruit

This Christmas David and I sat down to dinner with his parents, both retired school teachers. I glanced across the room to his mother’s elaborate collection of Babushka dolls she’s collected on frequent trips abroad. We dug into our grilled grapefruit, a food I have only had at their house, and his father told me about his upcoming trip to Ghana.

From ages 5-9 David and I spent Sundays together at church, learning Bible stories and sneaking downstairs to play the piano. He was a bit persnickety, a bit spoiled, and not my favorite playmate. His family switched churches later and I didn't see him until 12 years later when we climbed onto a plane bound for Havana.

My Spanish was passable but I’d speak too softly, and would be left communicating with cab drivers and hosts in a rudimentary sign language. It wasn't until David and I became friends that I was able to connect. David's vocabulary was vast but his accent poor, his words coming out in flat midwestern tones. I, in contrast, am an excellent mimic but have no patience for languages. With my flawless accent and David's knowledge of verb conjugation, we combined into a veritable dynamic duo, a top notch exchange student. And with our fair complexions and matching Caribbean sun-bleached hair people often mistook us for siblings.

We spent our evenings out, drinking Cuban beer, of which there are two varieties--Cristal a pale ale that tastes like Bud Light and Bucanero, which is darker. We'd often spend the evening at what we called "The New Year's Bar," a bar in Havana that had tinsel and "Happy New Year" banners up in June. We made friends with the bartender and chatted about Havana, Miami, and other topics we knew the words for.

As I sampled the grilled salmon David's father had made I said, “David is lucky to have inherited your adventurous spirit, your love of travel.”

At this David's mother, who looks very much like my own, laughed and began to tell me about a trip they took to Denmark's Legoland amusement park when David was ten. After a week of Danish cuisine--cabbage, barley, potatoes and beetroot—-they came upon a hot dog stand. David took hold of his mother’s sleeve and dragged her to the stand in the middle of a crowded city square. When the vendor handed him a bright red sausage the size of an index finger he chucked it to the ground and screamed, “Can’t these people even make a decent hot dog?!”

I smiled and tussled what is left of David’s hair. Despite all our time drinking together, we've never ended up in bed together, and neither of us has the desire to do so. There is a magnetism that pulls us together, but it is not sexual. When I visited him at college he told me he was thinking of introducing me to friends as his sister, and since then he's called me his "fake sister." David is an only child who loves the notion of siblinghood and now that I've lost my only sibling the feeling is mutual.