Sister love

Ebony, Sept, 1989 by Roxanne Brown

SISTER LOVE

NO matter what the relationship between sisters -- as close-knit as a sorority of two, or as tumultuous as a tropical storm -- they maintain a unique way of sharing and caring.

"The sister bond is often greater than that with a friend or a brother, because brothers are reared differently," says Dr. Harriette McAdoo, professor of research at the Howard University School of Social Work. Dr. McAdoo, who has one sister, explains that even when sisters donht get along well as children they often find themselves getting closer as adults.

Debbie Allen, vivacious dancer and executive producer of NBC television's A Different World, has said that she and sister Phylicia Rashad--mom, wife and lawyer on The Cosby Show--had their share of growing pains but haver certainly mellowed now. "I used to get on Phylicia's nerves when I was a little girl," says Ms. Allen. "It was worse than that," recalls her older sister. "Whenever she came around me, I got into trouble," says Ms. Rashad.

The two are close in age (Rashad is now 40 and Allen is 38) and may have been in competition, which is often the case when you have just two siblings or two of the same sex, says Dr. Dennis E. Chestnut, president of the Association of Black Psychologists. He says the overall family composition has the greatest effect on the relationship sisters develop. "In larger familes, bonding takes place in clusters," he explains.

Closeness, according to many groups of sisters, is something their parents instilled in them when they were quite young. "My mother's indoctrination of us was 'you two are the only two that you're going to have, so look out for each other,'" says Leonia Lloyd of Detroit, explaining the relationship she and her twin sister Leona share. They also share a law practice and an entertainment management firm called Double L Management.

Many sisters possess the same or similar talents and wind up in the same profession, but they don't always work together. Being sisters in business together is an advantage over other business partners, the Lloyds say. "I'll bring something up, then she will bring something to that idea that I may not have even thought about," Leona says. "Then we'll kind of hash out the positives and negatives until we come to an ultimate conclusion that is best." Leonia continues: "Even when she disagrees, she'll state if [her opinion] and explain whye. Now when you have people who are not related, you get strong differences of opinion -- people who have to take a stand and all that type of thing."

Vivian Stringer, award-winning women's basketball coach at the University of Iowa, frequently tells visitors a story that demonstrates how inseparable sisters often are. The oldest of six siblings, Coach Stringer, her husband Bill and their three children moved from Philadelphia to Iowa City in 1983 after she accepted the university position. She soon confronted one horrible reality--she was unaccustomed bo being so far away from her sisters. So, she kept talking to two of her three sisters about moving to Iowa, and eventually they did move--husbands and all. Did Madeline Williams and Richelle Davis have a hard time convincing their husbands to move to Iowa? "Well, they know that we're close," says Mrs. Stringer. "Even our children are being brought up to look out for one another andto consider [their cousins] the next closest people they're involved with."

Not all sisters get along so admirably all of the time. Being a good sister takes work, and is something June Pointer says she and her sisters have learned to be better at over the years. "Oh, God, we've had fights. We've had drag down, kicking fights," recalls the youngest of The Pointer Sisters. "It's just hard because [being sisters] you hold in a lot of stuff. You don't want to outshine; you don't want to upstage, and then you don't want to get too far back in the background, either."

Competitiveness and jealousy are traits that have vanished as she and her sisters have matured, June says. As a group, the Pointers have also learned to accept the fact that each sister has the right to go solo. First Bonnie, then June and Anita, and now Ruth is working on a solo career. "After being together professionally for more than 10 years now, we have a tendency to talk about things more, to let each other know what's happening in individual careers and individual lives," June says.

One of the best ways to get through the ups and downs that sisters experience is by laughing about it all in the end. Sisters just naturally collect a whole repertoire of funny stories, but not many can top one that happened to the gospel-singing Clark Sisters. "We were in Chicago about to perform," remembers Jacky Clark Chisholm, the oldest. "I told Karen to take her halfslip off because if she didn't it was going to come down; it was too big for her. We had done the whole show, were doing our last song and Karen was shouting like she does on Hallelujah. When she jumped her last time, the slip came down to the floor; her heel caught it and brought it up, and she grabbed it and slung it over on the organ. We were just too through," she says with a laugh.