19; splitting the sisters

During the snow storm, it came to mind that this was the first time that Birdie and Cole had ever been apart.  I am pretty sure that they had spent every other night together for their whole entire lives.  I understand that Birdie identifies herself through her sister, but if it is really her and Cole’s first time apart, ever, it seems understandable that she would be longing for her sister.
Something that I should have seen coming was the fact that Cole and Birdie were split up.  I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, but this seems like a logical, obvious choice to keep the book flowing.  I am not sure why Deck chose to go to Brazil, and why Carmen went with them.  I know she is Deck’s girlfriend but doesn’t she have a life outside of that?  Like maybe what she did before she met Deck?  Doesn’t she have a family or something?  I want to know more about her background.  And why does she have to be such a meaner to Birdie?  It is her boyfriend’s daughter, and she should be nicer than that.  This quote really stuck out to me:
“Others before has made me see the differences between my sister and myself–the textures of our hair, the tints of our skin, the shapes of our features.  But Carmen was the one to make me feel that those things somehow mattered.  To make me feel that the differences were deeper than skin.” (91)  This quote

I feel like there is so much more to write about.  Redbone on the playground? Gross. He is such a skeezeball.  And the fact that Sandy is taking Birdie to Maine, or wherever, and giving her a new name and deciding that they are going to be Jewish?  I feel badly that these girls were born into a family where they are just picked up and dragged wherever.

I have also taken note of the similies that Danzy Senna uses throughout the book.  Whatever the opposite of, “far and few between” is, that is what it’s like.  There are so many similies that paint such great pictures.  I really like how the author used this literary element to tellt the story and to make things clear.  The following are a few of my favorite examples:

“The cars parked around them were emerging from under their casts of snow, and their bodies peeked out like bright hard candies.” (88)

“…and a small splotch of a birthmark flowering like a coffee stain on her left cheek.” (89)
- sidenote: isn’t a mustache, a mustache?  How is there such thing as a feminine mustache?  I know it’s fainter and all; technically, it’s still a ‘stache.

“I came toward her, tentatively.  She smelled strongly of Chanel No. 5, and her eyes looked like two bluish-gray jellyfish floating in her head.” (104)

“…and drawers hanging open, clothes spilling out of them like intestines.” (125)

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