The Silent Twins: A true story of love and hate, dreams and desolation, genius and destruction, by Marjorie Wallace (HC, 1986, $2)
Almost all identical twins become independent of each other. The Gibbons sisters, June and Jennifer, tragically never could. They were born with speech impediments, and would only talk to each other and their dolls. Gradually they spoke less and less, seemingly able to communicate with each other using only gestures. For awhile they were thought only to be shy, but eventually teachers realized their problem was something much, much worse, even if no one quite knew what it was. The twins' first connection with the world was through their writing. They had been given diaries, and wow, did they write. They wrote poems, short stories and novels. By this time they were entering adolescence, would experiment with drugs, alcohol, sex and criminal behaviors. After being arrested, they would stay in "remand" for months, be tried, and sentenced to a psych. hospital for 14 years. There they would be put on anti-psychotics and separated. By the time they "conformed" to the staff's expectations, their creative spark was gone.
Marjorie Wallace had reported the Gibbon's trial. After becoming interested in them, she interviewed their parents and was shown bags and bags of their writing. Over a three year period she would meet them, and gain their trust, using their writing as the key.
Wallace wrote, "June and Jennifer emerge, through these diaries, as two human beings who love and hate each other with such intensity that they can neither live together nor apart. Like twin stars, they are caught in the gravitational field between them, doomed to spin round each other for ever. If they come too close or drift apart, both are destroyed. So the girls devised games and strategies and rules to maintain this equilibrium."
June Gibbons is still alive. Jennifer died suddenly the day they were discharged from the hospital. According to Wallace, they were certain in order for one to live, the other had to die. How strange that Jennifer would die when she did, not from any drug, but from sudden heart inflammation.
This is one creepy story! You can find this book on the new non-fiction table, avail. 2/22. (event. in biography)
