Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Inspired by the scrapbook, Sidda journals her childhood memories of the Ya-Yas. She focuses on the long summer days she spent with the women and all their 16 children, who were known as the Petites Ya-Yas. They swam and lounged at Spring Creek while the husbands worked. Sidda remembers how the Ya-Yas were always laughing together, often for hours, and how she would come out of the water to hear their laughter. Sidda often felt jealous of the attention and love her mother gave her sister-friends because Sidda received much less of it. Vivi would sometimes play a game with the children in which she would have one of them pretend to drown so she could practice her rescue technique. Sidda writes that when Vivi chose her for this game, Sidda reveled in the preciousness of being the focus of her mother’s attention, if even for a moment. She recalls Vivi’s body as it was in those days, and she feels sad that she is no longer familiar with it. As a young child, Vivi was Sidda’s world, and she believed that words like “vivify” and “vivacious” were named after her mother.

Sidda also recalls the other Ya-Yas: Caro, her godmother, inspired Sidda to dress like a Bohemian and write poetry; Teensy was beautiful and would do stripteases when she became tipsy.