What was important wasn't how it began but how it ended: in a stalemate.

My sister and I stood toe to toe in the cold rainy dark, swinging and pounding wildly at each other in senseless rage, slipping up and down the muddy slope in the front yard beyond the porch, beyond our parents and baby sisters inside the house, beyond our usual mild rivalry. This was something new and brutal, and we meant every bit of it.

My hands, like hers, were encased in the hot padding of the boxing gloves we'd just been given for Christmas. Dressed in pajamas and hiking boots, fresh from some trivial argument in our bedroom, we were as angry as we had ever been at one another and had come into the yard to settle things, Western-style: let's take this outside. Our parents had watched in amused silence from the couch while we'd pulled on our boots and strapped on the shiny brown gloves in the living room, biting at laces, stomping and panting impatiently like horses.

I punched toward her in the damp air and connected with her ribs. She gasped and staggered. Out of nowhere flashed her fist in response, crashing against my shoulder. I nearly fell in the ooze at my feet, windmilling my arms while I slid downhill past the bare apple tree. No speech, just grunts. Terrible pushing effort like the running we do in dreams, jaw jutting, I will get there. Or I will hurt her a lot.

What was important wasn't how it began but how it ended: in a stalemate.

My sister and I stood toe to toe in the cold rainy dark, swinging and pounding wildly at each other in senseless rage, slipping up and down the muddy slope in the front yard beyond the porch, beyond our parents and baby sisters inside the house, beyond our usual mild rivalry. This was something new and brutal, and we meant every bit of it.

My hands, like hers, were encased in the hot padding of the boxing gloves we'd just been given for Christmas. Dressed in pajamas and hiking boots, fresh from some trivial argument in our bedroom, we were as angry as we had ever been at one another and had come into the yard to settle things, Western-style: let's take this outside. Our parents had watched in amused silence from the couch while we'd pulled on our boots and strapped on the shiny brown gloves in the living room, biting at laces, stomping and panting impatiently like horses.

I punched toward her in the damp air and connected with her ribs. She gasped and staggered. Out of nowhere flashed her fist in response, crashing against my shoulder. I nearly fell in the ooze at my feet, windmilling my arms while I slid downhill past the bare apple tree. No speech, just grunts. Terrible pushing effort like the running we do in dreams, jaw jutting, I will get there. Or I will hurt her a lot.

I thrust myself back up the hill, laboring to lift mud-encrusted boots. Pushed my fist at her again, into the soft part of her stomach between ribs and hips. Heard her exhale sharply again and took a tingly pleasure in it, interrupted when her glove swung up and under, a neat jab to my solar plexus that sent me to my knees. Head up. I will never breathe again. No stars in the clouded sky, just my animal groans filling the air. A breath, finally, white in the dark, and a bout of giddy laughter burst from my lips. Suddenly it was funny, us leaping and flapping in the mud like two puppets. And she laughed too, both of us bent at the waist, our big round fists pounding our knees, tears in our eyes. We hugged messily in the dark, two girls covered with mud and sweat: a perfect match.

***

That boxing match marked the moment when my sister and I became one another's mirror image: the same height, the same weight, even arm's-length, even stride. I imagine that had we not started laughing we might have fought on all night, blow for blow and breath for breath. She was twelve and I was seventeen, and for us it was a rare moment of parallel, the familial equivalent of an eclipse. All our differences were momentarily canceled out: her round face and straight dark hair to my angles and curls, her reserve to my chattiness. Vanished were her athletic prowess and her messiness, my bookish tidiness. All that was left was the fight, a perfect physical struggle that ended in an impasse.

Within a year she would spring past me in height, and a little grin would linger at the corners of her mouth whenever she looked down to meet my eyes from her new vantage point. Relying on my waning big-sister authority, I would continue bossing and bullying her until at last she threw it off like a coat that no longer fit. By the time we were both in our twenties we had found new ways to be opposites—grad school versus bartending, Iowa City versus New Orleans—but they didn't seem to matter much anymore. Underneath those surface differences, a deep friendship had taken shape. As it turns out, boxing gloves aside, we're a pretty good match after all.