MY TWIN SISTER ERIKA

Red-ribbon-lnge is dominated by her identical twin blue-ribbon Erika, and her desire to replace Erika as ""best friend"" of a snippy gift named Magda is so fierce that she even sacrifices Frieda, her doll with real human hair. Later, she is ""so hurt"" when a joint project is labeled ""Erika's Secret House."" And when, after a birthday party reconciliation, Erika dies suddenly--""last night the angels came. . . I know, I heard their wings""--Inge's first thought is ""not so much of loneliness as of importance."" First Inge slips into bed beside the body to see if ""Erika still looks like me"" and then marches off to claim Magda as her very best friend at last. Inge's reaction is probably a healthy one under the circumstances, and certainly a lot more interesting than the conventional guilt that comes later. It isn't so much Inge's jealousy as the pressed-flower prose and Mother's slushy protectiveness that makes one's flesh crawl. Bathetic.