Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 223: Puerto Rico

You guys,

I pushed my empty yellow Yeti underneath the filtered water dispenser and nothing came out—it only rumbled. Who finishes the water and doesn’t replace it? I thought, then switched out the large empty blue jug with a full one and filled up my water bottle. 

I had vacationed with my family and I had vacationed with Sam’s family but never all of us together. Sam and I got married in Puerto Rico five years ago and we brought everyone together for a reunion-anniversary celebration. 

One afternoon my mother-in-law bent down to inspect a scattering of tiny black rubber bands on the floor by the couch. “What is this?” she asked. 

My youngest sister, Jess, sat on the couch. I asked her. She said our other sister had been using them as hair ties. Stephanie sat just outside the sliding glass doors. I asked her. She said they were Jess’s. I came back in the house and told Jess. Meanwhile, my MIL picked up all the black rubber bands and placed them in a pile on the coffee table. They remained there until the following day when I said something like, “Can someone get these out of here?” and Stephanie finally collected them, muttered something about Jess, and put them in her room.  

It was a hot week with temperatures in the high 80s. I was thirsty again. I pushed my empty yellow Yeti underneath the filtered water dispenser and nothing came out. Again. I replaced the water jug. Again. 

One morning my parents made breakfast for everyone and laid out the spread on the kitchen table. A half-finished puzzle my older sister started the night before took up half the table. 

“We need to move this,” I said. 

Jess sat at the table and glanced up at me. “Alexis is going to be pissed,” she said. 

“I don’t care,” I said. “We’re having breakfast.” 

“We can eat outside,” she responded. 

My mother-in-law and I tried to slide the puzzle off the table. It was an uneven wooden table and we didn’t have anything big enough to get the entire puzzle off in one swoop. It broke in places. It took ten minutes between five people to clumsily transport it to the big table outside. 

By the time I finished moving the puzzle I was thirsty. I pushed my empty yellow Yeti underneath the filtered water dispenser and nothing came out. I replaced the water jug. When everyone gathered later for happy hour I stood up. 

“If you finish the water please replace it, and if you don’t know how to replace it, please ask someone for help,” I said, though it may have sounded more like, “Excuse me everyone, please don’t be fucking assholes, thank you.” 

That night we sat around the big couches and played a game called Think ‘n Sync. The water dispenser was blinking yellow at someone. What did it mean?? It meant it was running low, I told them. Jess said, “By the way, when you said earlier that the water jug was empty Dad and I checked. It was three quarters of the way full.” 

“I wasn’t saying it was empty then,” I said, though it may have sounded more like, “Why are you such a fucking asshole?!” 

Sam took a break from the game. He was thirsty. He pushed his navy Yeti underneath the filtered water dispenser and nothing came out. Alexis and Stephanie, who sat next to the dispenser, both insisted they meant to tell us. My brother-in-law finished the water but he didn’t know how to change it. Sam and I were having our turn in the game so they couldn’t tell us. They were going to tell us. They swore. 

To change the water jug, you peel off the top of the full jug. You pull out the cord from the empty jug and put it in the full one. Then you push it back underneath. My brother-in-law and three sisters, it seemed, could not figure this out. 

I wonder what would happen if I said to my sisters—directly and kindly—exactly what I thought? What would happen if I didn’t skirt around what I really wanted to say? I could have led a tutorial of how to change the water dispenser in a light-hearted way during happy hour. I could have simply asked Stephanie to please get those rubber bands out of the living room. I could have said to Jess, “Hey, can you help me move this puzzle outside? I want to make space so some of us can eat inside.” 

Instead I am forever reacting as if I’m 14 years old and one of them has just stained a shirt I did not give them permission to borrow. I am stuck in a cycle of sister animosity. And until I finally get the guts to take action and break the cycle, I will just have to write about it. 

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Until next week,

Charlie