She says I drive too fast.
My sister, Mary, and I got our first tattoos on our fifth sister trip. At the time, she was eleven years old and I was sixteen.
I suppose it might not have been precisely the fifth sister trip, but that’s a fair enough, nicely rounded estimate. We began our sister trip tradition when she became able to leave our parents at the airport without crying. From then on, roughly once a year, our parents packed us up and sent us off, passports in hand, to be met on the other side by first and distant cousins, aunts, and uncles who live in any number of countries. (My family is freakishly large and diverse. I have cousins who are Italian the way I am an American, others who are Dutch, etc.)
Regardless of exactly what number it was, this particular trip to Egypt was a turning point for us. Our sister trip tradition has continued consistently through number 21-ish and I remain five years older, but I am no longer chief caretaker and adventure leader while abroad (or at home for that matter). Mary very capably holds those titles now and our first tattoos are permanent reminders of why Mary must often save us both from myself.
Until our role reversal, I took very seriously my duty to make any and all decisions on behalf of both of us. I also found (created?) plenty of opportunities to push us both a bit outside our comfort zone. This largely meant that I committed Mary to doing moderately reckless things she did not want to do. Things that her younger but far better developed judgment advised against. When I went too far and the tables turned, every suggestion I made became subject to Mary’s scrutiny for safety and hazards of all types. I could not circumvent her review by proceeding on my own without her, though I tried.
On this particular sister trip, however, I was still Sister-In-Charge. I was also hell-bent on coming back from Egypt at the end of the summer with a tattoo.
For centuries, members of the Coptic Orthodox church have tattooed a small black cross on the inside of their right wrist as a demonstration of solidarity and commitment to the community. These tattoos are not only permitted in this otherwise ultra conservative church (and therefore my household), but they are celebrated as a blessing. Most members of the congregation have one, and those who do not are likely too scared of needles (my father). Children as young as two years old, and in Egypt’s hyper-religious villages newly baptized babies of just 40 days, are tattooed to display their parents’ adherence to the faith, their promise to raise a good and genuine Copt from his first days as one.
The tattoo itself has any number of parroted significances. Some say that the experience of receiving the tattoo mimics the pain Jesus endured when he was nailed to the cross. Others say that the tattoo is a form of self-branding to distinguish Copts from the predominantly Muslim population around them. Many agree that the tattoo is meant to serve as a guide. It should remind the tattooee to act with God, do what Jesus would do, choose the right thing. A visible conscious.
While I was always appreciative of the religious significance of the cross, if I’m being honest, I badly wanted a tattoo and knew that this was my one and only option. At least until my 18th birthday. So, I decided Mary and I would do it. We would go home with the quintessential mark of our sister trip to Egypt.
As she often did, Mary resisted. To my best recollection, our conversation was as follows:
Mary: I don’t think we should do this, Monica.
Monica: We’re doing it.
Mary: But it won’t be clean. We’re in Egypt.
Monica: They won’t take us somewhere dirty, Mary. Of course, it’ll be clean.
Mary: But this is Egypt, Monica. Even the hospitals aren’t necessarily clean.
Monica: Do you want to go home and be the only one of your friends with a tattoo or not?
Mary: Not if it’s going to kill me.
Monica: Well, you can back out if you’re too scared, but I’m going to do it and you are going to regret not doing it with me.
With that, I won. I was then as I am now, impulsive and obstinate in my impulses. Mary was then as she is now, unable to surrender me to peril alone.
My mother’s sister and her husband were gracious hosts to us in those days. They were also very religious and were delighted by my sudden request to visit a desert monastery, the supreme ecclesiastical excursion. If a visit to the churches of Old Cairo is an orchestra seat at a Taylor Swift concert, a visit to a desert monastery is a private living room Beyoncé concert, complete with Jay-Z duets and Blue Ivy backup dancing. Overjoyed to hear that Mary and I intended to get our cross tattoos on the trip, they made arrangements to go the very next day.
By late morning, our two or three hour ride outside the dusty village ended and we stepped out of the car and into the silent hum of the Sahara. The only breeze came from our own breath.
There were dozens of cars abandoned in no discernible pattern around us. The people parked their cars in the sand the very same way they dug their candles in the sand of the small prayer shrines at the church entrance. Some stood tall and shone, fresh with hope of God’s grace, and others old and thick with the melting heat of His patience. Each one stood for some lonely reason, each one evidence that someone else’s faith brought them to this place to pray and be answered and they couldn’t all be wrong.
All of the women in the parking lot were modestly dressed, most in long skirts that fell away from their hips and airy blouses with sleeves to the elbows or beyond and others in pleated slacks with inseams that touched even when they walked. Many crouched under headscarves, so as to enter the monastery’s grounds preparedly obliged to St. Paul’s instruction in I Corinthians 11:5 from the very first step. All of the men in the parking lot looked indifferent.
The monastery was hidden behind a great wall and the wide double door entrance in the center gave none of it away. Visitors entered the grounds into a silence that came from far below the surface, miles deeper than Sahara’s own silence could reach. While people talked and laughed, argued and commiserated, the space was so vast and so empty, the sounds had no where to be. Some people drank hot tea together on white plastic lawn chairs. No steam rose from their glasses.
Mary and I were dressed respectfully, just enough to be appropriately invisible. My aunt looked just like the other women, and her husband and two sons looked like the other men. We toured the gardens and visited the churches, we kissed relics and stepped barefoot in the holy parts. I regret being too preoccupied with my true motivation to commit much more of the visit to memory.
There was a makeshift tent to the left of the monastery’s gates. Before we piled back into the car, my cousins, who were tattooed long ago, directed us towards it.
I sat down on a milk crate and put my right arm down on the small table in front of me, wrist up. The table could have been two or three more milk crates placed side-by-side and covered with cardboard. Mary stood behind me, still begging me not to go through with it. I ignored her. My aunt and her husband made small talk with the tattooist. I caught bits and pieces and derived that we would be paying slightly more than the regular fee, but only for the guarantee of a clean needle. The grand total was around $4 for both of us. Once that was settled, the man sat down on another milk crate in front of me. His hands were black in places and gloveless.
He pulled a small plastic box out of his pocket and strummed through its contents. He plucked a needle out, announced it was brand new, and put it into the small tattoo machine. I looked away.
It hurt and I asked him to stop twice. Both times he told me to take a deep breath and before I exhaled completely, the needle buzzed through my skin again. Then, it was over. I hadn’t looked yet when he balled up some cotton and taped it to my wrist.
It was Mary’s turn. She was terrified. She sat down and asked me to hold her left hand. She laid her right arm in exactly the same place I laid mine. The man did not change the needle. He dipped it in ink and, as he approached Mary’s wrist, she pulled away. He warned her that he’d have to hold her in place a bit more forcefully. She started to cry and the tattoo machine bobbed.
Just then, a soft white mass flew into the tent and struck Mary in the center of her back, forcing her to prostrate towards the man and monastery. It was not the Holy Spirit. It was a soccer ball. A few feet behind us, a group of boys of an age somewhere between Mary’s age and mine played a game they may have believed was the World Cup. Two of them retrieved the ball that hit Mary by kicking it around the tent first.
The east pointing arm of Mary’s cross tattoo looked like a heartline. It was ruined. The man did the best he could to finish it, and taped her up with a shrug of his shoulders.
Needless to say, Mary was angry with me. She was right that getting a tattoo in the middle of the desert was not just dangerous, it was an overall terrible idea. I was wrong.
It seems that from that day forward, Mary became my unfailing emergency brake, human caution tape. I welcome her criticisms and agitated prohibitions. I need them. I don’t always relent to her satisfaction, but I would forgo breathing before I cause her another regrettable scar.
“Monica, what you are doing is wrong,” she says slowly. She has said this to me when I thought her watchful eye was dead asleep. She has said this to me in the second before I realize she is right and in the second after. She has said this to me in my own home, in her home, in my parents’ home, and in places where there are no homes for miles and miles. I hear her say it when she isn’t around.
As it turns out, I’ve had a conscious for longer than I’ve had my first tattoo. My conscious is visible and audible. She has her own name, her own address, her own husband, dog, car, job and heartbeat. I have no fear that she’ll ever fail me. After all, she has a small cross tattoo on the inside of her right wrist to help remind her to act with God, do what Jesus would do, choose the right thing—for the both of us.