My sisters and I don’t usually share grudges but this one we passed between us like a spoon for tasting. The day Delilah Chan appeared in our kitchen, we had been drinking echinacea tea by a timid fire, and the breeze was glazed with garlic from the restaurant below. She had arrived the same way as the rest, having wandered down our dim road and stepped through the space of a missing cobblestone. Do not ask us how such passage works—Edinburgh has folded on itself many times over, paving progress and plague, aging towns from Old to New. As it was, we had not received a woman—or girl, her face shone like an apple—in eons. Delilah had landed square on the hearth and, as she stood, dusted her jeans off in two firm swats. Her eyes glimmered like dark coins. She hailed from Singapore. She was studying art at the university. She was incredibly honored to meet us.
Men are our usual fare. The clumsy clueless, stinking of piss or ale—these we promptly send back into the night. We let the beautiful insomniacs—undeterred by half-sensible explanations, their curiosity having never led to peril—linger while we take silent bets on when their intentions might shatter like burnt sugar. It’s always about what their hearts are cracking to hear. Their assumptions about what knowledge we hold: of their potential or their pleasure. As if even mortal women don’t wield both. The last of these, not too long ago, had been a bespectacled reed of a man, who deserves no further name. Reed was a barista trying to make it as an actor, with not enough of the ease or gravitas to succeed as either.
Your desires outpace your mettle, we said.
“Maybe you’re right,” he moped. We shared a look amongst ourselves, then my two sisters steered his narrow shoulders into the bedroom. My knitting needles clacked while their bodies chimed. I stopped to massage my thumb. It hadn’t ached like this in a long time. I heard from them afterward that he had, as predicted, cried as he finished in a pale moonbeam.
“But you’re not really sisters—you can’t be.”
Why not?
“You look completely different. And you’re too far apart in age.”
Delilah’s lack of manners should’ve been a sign, but we had become more forgiving in our latest iteration. She spoke proudly of how she’d found us through a footnote in the pages of an archival book on the library’s top floor. Her aura was anxious, which she explained in fragments. Her final year art show was coming up. The gallery owner who’d shown interest in her online portfolio wasn’t replying. Her parents wanted her to move home. She’d been rejected from several fellowships. A machine had stolen her card details. The banks still didn’t understand her lack of a middle name.
“I was wondering if you could—of course you can, I mean if you would—tell me something about what’s meant for me,” she finally ventured. She unfolded a list of places she had worked at and pushed it across the table along with a thick portfolio case. Artist types had changed a lot. My youngest sister—always excitable—opened the case with a slim-wristed flourish. My middle sister’s arms stayed crossed, but her eyebrows rose. Delilah’s chin-length bangs hung like heavy velvet, and her balm-slick lips fidgeted in the wings.
Sketches like we’d not seen before. Smears of waxen pigment in deep shades: Aegean, wine, umber, scarab. Soft-edged forms carved into gray space with charcoal. Bold strokes that etched a story confident of being heard. Urgent shapes that reminded us of bygone markings, what these days would arrogantly be called “primitive” but were in truth, primal. The words tumbled from our mouths.
Victory hereafter.
After our proclamation, Delilah had fallen on my sisters in a quicksilver embrace. She muttered time-traversing plans—confessional, conspiratorial—about how the prize could move her to London, then to New York: city of her dreams. We had not experienced this tenor of touch in so long: arm hair like goose-down, the smell of cotton, jasmine, and a wet musk I couldn’t place. I could see why my sisters were shocked into reciprocating, why they stroked her crown. Delilah hurried over to my side of the table, but I declined to be touched.
This is unprecedented.
As are many things in our lifetimes.
She said it would only be once a month.
But consider the danger.
Of what?
An unkind sketch?
A door left open.
We were discussing Delilah, who had asked us for what she called “office hours.” She spoke of inspiration: her flatmate murmuring Norwegian prayers; matriarchs of Dutch domiciles rendered in glowing oils; the Lady of Shalott left in peace at her web; us, preaching in the northern fog. She wanted time not just to draw us from life but to be present in our “energy.” While impolite in some ways, she was deeply reverent in another. Part of me found her ridiculous, but I could not lie; I did want to know her. Then, a surprise agenda from the youngest.
There’s also another one I’d like to see again, if we’re allowing this retention of memory; of access.
Who?
No, please.
Just for a bit, I promise. The moon creates a pull.
Fine. But, if—
Then act as you wish.
There were happy days that made us wonder how we spent so many years without the hum of daytime company. Delilah told us dear stories across the kitchen floor while Reed cooked a post-exertion meal for himself and my youngest sister with enough for all of us. He was getting quite good at it—his latest culinary achievement had been a crabmeat soufflé. Our favorite Delilah subject was her sweet Freya, the child of first-generation Chinese immigrants in Oslo, on a fated fine arts scholarship that brought them together in a studio, and then a basement flat they tended together. She showed us pictures of Freya’s work: tapestries of Norwegian wool, made on a modern loom, full of peonies and pastel snow. Delilah spoke of these in a cloaked tone that made the corners of my mouth twitch as I worked on my knitting. The only thing Delilah said she didn’t like about Freya was the boyfriend. He was Malaysian. Studying economics.
“I’m honest,” Delilah said. “Call it chaotic, but every few weeks, I tell her to leave him. Him and his weird habit of arguing with women online. He doesn’t come to any of our group shows either. And I know he’s the reason she stopped wearing miniskirts. Short, slimy man.”
“He sounds like the worst,” Reed shouted over the sound of frying onions. My youngest sister was sitting on the counter facing him. Reed was stealing kisses as the chicken browned, not noticing that she kept wiping flecks of hot oil off her thigh.
And you, Delilah. Anyone you’re interested in?
Reed’s hand slipped as he served his pomegranate salad and Delilah caught the teetering orb of her wine glass before it spilled.
“No—men aren’t muses. I’m more preoccupied waiting to hear about the mid-semester prizes this week . . . ” My middle sister jumped on this, asking how Delilah’s critique had gone and affirming how hard she knew the art students worked. I could almost see her lactating.
Reed and I were discussing the charm of the young Jordanian grocer down the road when Delilah shrieked.
Did you win?
She shook her head. My middle sister, peering at Delilah’s phone, followed suit.
Do you know the winner?
A terse nod.“Freya.”
For her luminous material exploration of displacement.
We didn’t see Delilah for a while after that, but we heard from Reed that she had thrown herself into remaking her larger pieces, barely leaving the studio except to shower. Reed knew, because one of her show highlights now involved him: a performance piece of edible abstract expressionism that would be filmed and eaten by a fasted student. Reed was in charge of turning every ingredient into the right texture.
He delivered these sporadic updates before disappearing into my youngest sister’s bedroom. Which, whenever I eavesdropped these days, seemed full of sharp, unhappy noises.
Delilah’s hair was lilac when we next saw her. She was so used to landing on our hearth by now that her feet barely made noise upon contact. The girl stank softly of unwashed scalp.
What’s wrong?
“Just wanted to see you. I’m so tired of this show—wish I’d never chosen art. Well, no. But what’s the point of working like this, when I could just marry an old, important gallery owner.” Distracted by herself, Delilah pinched an edge of dry skin on her lip and peeled it off. The jagged patch floated to the ground. I watched a red bead form before she curled it into her mouth. “Where are the others?”
It was just me at home; my sisters were weaving through a Canongate rave. They had an active pastime of imparting unsolicited advice in sticky corners, ripening partygoers’ nights with questions. I shrugged and rose to make Delilah a cup of tea.
How is Freya taking the stress?
“Frey’s fine—the art faculty magazine just did a spotlight on her for that prize she won. Which, honestly, seems like unfair hype-generation for her final show, but whatever. Everyone loves a culture-confused Asian. Look here.” Delilah showed me the two-page spread on her phone. In her headshot, Freya looked proud, but her eyes were sagging underneath the light make-up.
She looks tired. Has she left the boy?
“Oh, no. But I’ve recently realized she probably shouldn’t. He’s not that bad.”
Why the change of heart?
“I think I just wasn’t totally aware of their dynamic. He came to the studio the other day and made some good points about her work—about the Chinese inscription she’s using. Her grammar was wrong. It’s good that at least one of them can speak the language.”
Can you?
“I mean, not fluently but decent. I understood her mistake when he pointed it out. Anyway, her concept needs to be airtight since, you know, textiles. It needs to balance the arts-and-craftiness.” I watched Delilah sip while tapping her screen, unashamed. My fingers twitched with the urge to knit.
Moments later, my sisters came home. The youngest was in tears. We gathered to swaddle her in a blanket; rub her back; pat her hand; wait for her to speak. Reed had been at their final party stop. He and my youngest sister had had a heated conversation, then draped their arms around each other and gone on a walk up to the Edinburgh Castle. They’d faced the twinkling houses from the parapet and decided to break up. Grief turned to hunger. Mid-thrust, back braced against the weathered stone, my sister had said to stop. Stop, stop. But Reed had continued rocking forward, again and again. At this last part, Delilah pulled her hand away. She saw me watching and reached out once more. Her face was as unreadable as a night sea.
I brought flowers—a bouquet big enough to hide the fact that we hadn’t received an invitation to the show’s opening. My sisters were tugging at my sleeve, tittering with excitement to see the pieces we’d only heard about. We spotted Delilah’s space from halfway through the hall; it was right at the back, the largest. She had outdone herself. Mulberry paper laden with charcoal and crayon sketches of Edinburgh by moonlight hung from the ceiling on fishing line like flags. They draped in a gentle crescent at half the room’s height and faced inward: a suspended nave; its shadows framed the floor mural below; of light dancing on the canal, rendered entirely in edible material. Mostly odorless, having been prepared fresh, to be performed and recorded that night. My middle sister bit her lip. I watched my younger sister’s features shift. Before she could react, I placed a hand on her chest. Wait. It was about to begin. The lights dimmed, and a disembodied voice asked for silence while filming was in session.
Delilah appeared in a spotlight. Her hair was black again, piled high on her head. If she saw us at the crowd’s edge, she did not give it away. She was barefoot, in a cropped white T-shirt and cargo pants. Her exposed midriff was concave and flecked with moles. She walked around the mural’s rim in clipped, exact steps that smeared the—squid ink , I think—borders. Then, like a heron, she dove into its magenta middle, pushing off from her forearms with surprising strength, lifting her chin to the audience with pureed beetroot coating her lips. She continued in this choreographed mania, eating and smearing the image. A group of professors covered their mouths; one clutched their lapels; another made scratches in a notebook.
I pulled away from the spectators, which by now included the entire hall, leaving all other booths empty. Freya’s had escaped my notice, despite having been in view of Delilah’s the whole time. Upon entering it, I felt my vision shift. Where Delilah’s palette had dealt in shadow tones and lowlights, Freya’s was full of uplifted celadon greens and blush pinks—even her whites were softened into bisque. Her display was much less immediately impressive. But also less overwhelming. Her wool tapestries were draped artfully over canvases, as if to recreate her working studio. Some exposed canvases depicted loose-brushed scenes: snowscapes of her walk to school in Norway; a vignette of her parents studying an English textbook by lamplight. Only one of Edinburgh—a view of the Scott Monument with fat-chested birds sleeping on its spires. I stroked a tapestry tassel and realized I didn’t see any with an inscription.
I returned to the gaping throng, hooked my sisters out by their elbows and led them toward the exit. As the ceiling shook with applause, I turned back and saw Delilah watching us leave as she thanked her collaborators. She nodded graciously in our direction, as if our presence served as proof of peace. Reed had had the sense to not attend, but he didn’t have to fly home over summer—he could wait.
Eight weeks after the degree show, I’d picked up a copy of the school magazine. Delilah Chan had been awarded the McNeill Whistler Prize for £30,000 and been scouted online by a gallery with a presence in Shanghai, New York, and London. She had thanked her parents back home in Singapore, a doctor and a lawyer, for always letting her be herself, and vowed to be a force for equal representation in the art world.
My sisters know what I am like; what I do not like. They do not call me an agent of chaos. Order is not a crone’s game. I finished my knitting—it was a bigger piece than I’d expected, a square of spreading knots and slashes like sap from a stabbed trunk. It was a pattern I’d anticipated but still reveled in. In the peek of morning, I left my sisters asleep by the fire, calm as fed pups.
I took the long way around the front of our building. I stopped to smell the tamarind lilt of the restaurant’s famous fishhead curry, stirred by a girl with gold earrings. My arm was a handle for a grandmother in a headscarf to board her bus. She gave me a marigold from her bundle and waved. The cold whistled along my bare neck.
I looked up at the plaque of our close on its arch, where only the second half of the name had been changed to something more modern: Dun-bar. The low garden within the dead end was lit at a slant as the sun peered around walls that bound the space. How different the horizon of its previously eponymous hill, how far away from the loch’s mirror. How much smaller, but no less cruel, the purview of everyday characters who trust and fail each other. I did not regret our decision to be soft. There is no defeat in curiosity just as there is no triumph in denial. Regardless, one must act. A boundary, in itself, is not violent. A strong feeling to set one neither fair nor foul, just true. I walked between the flower beds in sweeping steps like a peahen in heat, watching for my toe to catch an edge. This would be it. I laid out a spackling knife, a small pot of mixed cement, and a stout, square stone. I prepared the incantation.
We have been called unreasoning as a three, but the sentiment is aimed at me. Those we seek, those who have sought—most mistake the divine in our feminine for what my sisters possess. Flaxen tendrils, engorged breasts, sweet innocence, robust sense. One flies unseen when hair is shorn and skin puckers, when desire dissolves in life’s acid and a caretaking eye turns cold. But that is where clarity blooms. Where the sight lies. It is the learned, hungry folk who like to think of psychic power as an arrow that arcs forward, because that is how they imagine their will. They do not recognize it as intuition, which sounds too domestic. They cannot grasp that its nature is imprecise; a birdcall into the lived past, reverberating through trees that grow in cycles, one rising where the other falls.
When I returned, my sisters told me they had shared a dream, one of banging from the wall behind the mantel that shook plaster from old cracks. I promised nothing was amiss. They joined me in the biggest armchair and their warm faces thawed my chilled, sunken cheeks. I removed the needles and showed them my latest handiwork: the blanket was large enough to cover us, and we linked arms beneath its thick colors.
It was a beautiful day.
It was a beautiful day, but wet with thin rain.
Delilah walked.
Delilah sauntered.
Delilah was anxious to explain herself.
Delilah was relieved to have been already forgiven.
Delilah was confused—the ground had become whole.
Delilah was indignant—the ground had changed.
Delilah understood. She wept.
Delilah stamped in a rage until her smooth-soled shoe shot out from under her. She fell.
Delilah picked herself up and turned away from what never belonged to her.
Delilah’s neck lay at an odd angle.
An ending can fork when the storyteller loses interest. We heard her fret no more.