What Happened to My Sister

  “Where’s that yellow legal pad I had over by the phone? Oh, there it is.” I clear a space on the table to make my lists. “Okay. Let’s figure out where we stand. I’ve got practically nothing left in my checking account. Well. I have a little over three thousand, but that has to cover this month’s health insurance and food and clothing—Cricket’s growing like a weed. Where’s the calculator?”

  “Honor …” Mother tries to interrupt me.

  “My unemployment ran out and now they say I’m able-bodied so it should be easy for me to find a job. Like I haven’t been applying for jobs all along! Like they didn’t get the memo that the country’s in an economic crisis. Can you believe that? I told you about that, right? The woman said it should be easy for me to get a job. Through her bulletproof window. Without even looking up. She sat there sifting through a stack of unrelated paperwork with her stupid desk fan blowing streamers right and left like she had everything else important to do but talk to me. Unbelievable.”

  “Honey, wait just a second,” Mother says.

  “I will say this, though: the glass at the unemployment window is bulletproof for reasons I now understand.”

  “Shhhh. Now hush up and listen for a minute. You’re being just like your daughter with the flood of words words words. I’ll figure something out, Honor. I will. This is not your concern.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, “you want to be thrown out on the street. I didn’t realize that.”

  Okay, I do regret saying this but before I can say so, Mother tries to leap to her feet, only she’s forgotten (a) she is too huge to do any sort of leaping, and (b) she is sitting at the kitchen table so her knees hit the table and the Big Chair scrapes away and Mother yelps and grabs the edge … just in the nick of time. She rights herself, pulls the chair closer, and settles back down (humbled but not wanting to show it), exhaling from the exertion before starting in on me.

  “If you keep condescending to me with that tone like I’m a baby, I swear to Charles Chaplin in Heaven I’ll march out of here right this minute,” Mom hisses and waggles her finger at me.

  “Okay okay okay,” I say, surrendering. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be mean, it’s just that I can’t wrap my head around this.”

  “Well, you don’t need to wrap your head around it because it is not your business,” Mother says. “I am the head of this household and I said I’d take care of it and I will. That’s that.”

  “But you haven’t taken care of it! Sorry, I’m not being nasty I’m just saying. Let me talk with Eddie. Maybe he can think of a way to help buy us some more time here.”

  “You leave Edsil out of this, please,” she says, rushing to his defense because of my agitated sigh, which she thinks I’m making because of Eddie.

  “I wasn’t saying anything bad about him! But while we’re on the subject, Mother, why are you always taking his side? That’s what I’d like to know. You’re always pleading his case.”

  “Shhhhh! Keep your voice down,” she says.

  “Fine,” I say, barely at a whisper, “but will you please tell me why you’re always sticking up for him? I’m your flesh and blood. You should be taking my side.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, put a sock in it and come over here and help me out of this chair,” she says. “I am so sick and tired of this nonsense.”

  “Wow,” I say, positioning myself behind her as she heaves herself to standing then waddles over to the counter by the sink.

  I would have bet a million dollars that put a sock in it would be something my mother would never say even if her life depended on it. The surprises just keep on coming today.

  “You can look as startled as you want but you really do need to put a sock in it. You’re drawing battle lines that are unnecessary and just plain silly,” she says. “There. I said it. I have kept my mouth shut this whole time but I can’t stand it any longer, Honor. That man is the father of your child—he loves her just as much as you do—”

  “I know, I know!” I say, holding up my hand to shush her. “I told you I didn’t say anything bad. I just asked why you’re always protecting him, that’s all.”

  “You talk about ‘taking sides’ and I’m sick of it,” she says. “You have a problem with the way he grieved for Caroline? That’s on you, not him. Men don’t mourn the way women do and that’s just a fact. So you’re going to have to get over it and move on, you hear me? Let’s change the subject. What’s the story with that child—Cricket’s new friend. What’s her family name? Do we know them?”

  The fact of the matter is, she’s right. Intellectually I know she’s right: men and women do grieve differently. But she wasn’t the one crying in the face of Eddie’s stony silence the day he announced he was cutting short his bereavement leave and going back to work. She wasn’t reduced to begging—begging her husband to open up, to go with her to the Grief Group, to show some kind, any kind of emotion. She didn’t lie in bed next to her husband in the dark feeling for his hand to hold under the sheets only to have it recoil and readjust, along with the rest of his body, further away to the outer edge of the bed. Yes, men and women grieve differently. But not because they want to. The chasm between Ed and me became a gulf by the time the second notices on the medical bills started coming in. By the third and final notices, we were mere objects moving around under the same roof. The soul-crushing pain of losing Caroline coupled with Ed’s emotional shutdown might have been surmountable if the financial strain hadn’t completely worn us down. We went from shards to sea glass. But lately. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Eddie. A lot.

  “Hel-lo?” Mother is waving her hand in front of my face.

  “What?” I shake off a memory of Eddie laughing, speeding Caroline up and down the hospital corridor in a wheelchair, the blur of them whooshing by, ignoring my halfhearted attempt to get them to stop horsing around. Faster, Dad, faster, Caroline would squeal in delight.

  “Cricket’s friend? Upstairs? Your daughter’s playing with her right now? Where is she from? Who’s her family?”

  “Oh, my goodness, that’s right,” I say, remembering the other problem facing us today. When will this damn day end?

  “You’ve got to help me figure out what to do about this child,” I say. “I think we’ve got a big problem on our hands.”

  “Why? What’s the story?” she asks.

  “You’ll see,” I tell her.

  I go to the base of the kitchen stairs and holler up for the girls, and just like that, just hearing myself call out the word girls again, makes everything else—the looming foreclosure, my marital mess, Cricket’s loneliness—all of it melts away when I call for the girls to come down. God, I miss Caroline.

  One more time, Dad! Faster!

  I miss her so much my heart hurts.

  “Cricket? Girls? Y’all come down here!” I holler again, just because it feels good.

  Thunder of footsteps overhead and Cricket bounds into the kitchen breathless with an excitement I haven’t seen in her face in a long time.

  “Mom! Grandma! Listen to this: She’s never seen a computer before. Or an iPod. For real. She didn’t even know what one was!”

  “I didn’t know what an iPod did until you showed me,” Mother says, smiling at her then back at me. “Come give Grandma a kiss hello, sugar. How was summer school today?”

  “Hey, Grandma.” Cricket breezes over to kiss my mother on the cheek. “No no—it’s not that she didn’t know what an iPod did, she didn’t know what an iPod was! She’s, like, from another planet or something!”

  “Where is she now, honey?” I ask.

  “In my room. Oh, and she loves the stars on the ceiling—she’d never seen those before either! It was so cute—she said it looked like a magic land when I showed her how they glow in the dark. I want her to sleep over, Mom, can Carrie sleep over please please? ’Kay, I’m going back up.”

  “Wait a sec, Cricket. How’s she feeling now? Is she feeling okay? Has she said anything about her family???
?

  “Was she sick?” Mother asks.

  “Grandma, it was so nasty—she totally barfed in the car. But she’s fine now.”

  “That reminds me, I need to finish cleaning that up. Poor thing had an upset stomach in the car on the way home—I think it’s from eating as fast as she did,” I say. “Cricket, honey, go get Carrie and bring her down to introduce her to your grandma. Y’all hightailed it upstairs so fast you never brought her in here.”

  “Oh, and Grandma, she doesn’t know who Charlie Chaplin was,” Cricket says, popping open a Hi-C, “so I told her you’d explain everything. Do we have any more of those Swedish Fish? I’m going back up.”

  She takes the stairs two at a time. There is no slowing that girl down one bit, and for once I’m glad to see it.

  I make sure I hear Cricket’s footsteps overhead before I start whispering to Mom.

  “It’s the spookiest thing you have ever seen,” I say. “The universe works in mysterious ways. And before you go saying I’m getting carried away with psychic mumbo jumbo or whatever it is you accuse me of, just meet her and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  “I have no idea what you’re telling me right now,” Mother says. “Are we still talking about Cricket’s friend?”

  “Shhh,” I say. “It’ll all make sense when they come downstairs. Just please keep an open mind, will you?”

  “How can I keep an open mind when I don’t even know what it is you’re talking about?”

  “You will, you will. Just promise me you’ll keep an open mind and you’ll help me with this,” I say.

  “Honey, I’d help you with anything, you know that. I can’t believe you’d even say that. Sheesh.”

  “Do we have stuff for nachos?” I ask, opening cabinets to hunt for tortilla chips.

  Cricket barrels back in, Carrie trailing close behind as if on a leash.

  “There’s cheese in the drawer in the fridge.” Mother is directing me when they come into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Cricket says. “Carrie, this is my grandma.”

  “Oh, good.” I’m relieved to see a better version of Carrie. “You look like you’re getting your color back, that’s good. Carrie, come on over here and meet Cricket’s grandmother Miss Chaplin.”

  “Oh my good Lord in Heaven.” Mom’s voice catches when she sees little Carrie. “Look at you. If I didn’t know better I’d say someone upstairs was playing a pretty sick joke on us.”

  “Ma’am?” Carrie says, looking confused.

  “What did I tell you?” I turn to Mom. “Can you believe it?”

  “Your name is Carrie?” Mom asks. “As in Caroline?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Caroline.” Mom reaches out to shake Carrie’s fragile-looking hand. “Honor, I can’t believe y’all met today of all days.”

  I check my watch. The tiny number in the date box says six. Damn, now it’s stuck at 11:43. I really need a new watch. I don’t know why I bother even putting this one on.

  “What do you mean?” I ask her. I shake my wrist like a dummy, as if the correct date will appear like a Magic 8 Ball. “My watch says it’s the sixth.”

  “You mean to tell me you don’t know what today is?” Mother asks me, looking incredulous.

  I glance at Cricket, who’s silent and as sheepish as I’ve ever seen her.

  “Why, it’s August eighth, honey,” Mother says, wide-eyed and somber.

  If a great big giant came in and threw a heavy winter blanket over Mother, Cricket, and me, you’d have about the same hollow silence that chokes us right now.

  “What’s August eighth?” Carrie practically whispers the question.

  I stand frozen mid-movement, unable to speak while a familiar wrenching ache sinks so deep it’s in my marrow.

  “August eighth is the day my sister died,” Cricket says in a quiet voice, watching me carefully.

  How could I have believed a watch I know to be broken? What kind of a mother doesn’t realize it’s the anniversary of her daughter’s death?

  “It was three years ago today she left us, bless her heart,” Mother is saying, though her voice now sounds far away.

  I gulp for air and somehow make it from the refrigerator to a chair at the kitchen table, though I can’t feel my legs moving.

  “I thought today was the sixth,” I whisper to nobody. “All day long I’ve thought today was the sixth. My watch says it’s the sixth.”

  “I know, honey,” Mother says, reaching across the table to gently stroke my hand, which somehow feels like it belongs to someone else. I look down at it. Maybe it’s the hand of a mother who knows the correct date. A mother who knows it’s the three-year anniversary of her firstborn child’s death.

  Over by the sink, a worried Carrie wrings her hands and in a pleading voice says, “Y’all can call me something else. I never really liked my name anyway. I won’t ever use it again, I swear. We can name me something else and then you won’t be sad and I can come over again. I’m real good at remembering names so I won’t forget my new one, I swear. Please.”

  Mother’s chair scrapes the floor when she pushes back from the table.

  “Cricket, could you help your old grandma up from the chair please,” she says, figuring I’m in no shape to do it.

  Faster, Dad! Push me faster!

  This is just the sort of calamity I’ve tried to avoid. Being surprised by sadness is like getting sucker punched in the gut. It takes all the air out of you, and for a brief moment you think you just might die from the pain. In all my disaster preparedness I somehow overlooked the fact that we’re still recovering from a disaster of the worst kind.

  I look up to see my mother enveloping little Carrie in a hug.

  “Oh, honey pie, aren’t you just the sweetest thing,” she’s murmuring, stroking Carrie’s messy hair. “You have an exquisite name and we are being so rude talking about this whole coincidence in front of you like we are. Come sit down and have something to eat. Cricket, get the chips out of the cabinet, will you, honey? Now, Carrie. Tell me a little about yourself, sweetness. Where are your people from?”

  I can’t crumble. Not now, at least. I’ve got to pull it together for Cricket. And Carrie. Oh, Jesus, Carrie.

  I try to screw my face into a smile, but from Cricket’s frown I can see I’m not fooling anyone. Eddie. I’ll call Eddie. Just thinking about him right now makes me want to cry for some reason.

  “I’ve got to take Carrie back,” I say. “I’m sure her mother’s worried sick.”

  “Oh no she ain’t, I mean, she’s not,” Carrie says. “She’s not worried sick.”

  “Okay, well, maybe a little while longer,” I say.

  “You were about to say where you live, honey,” Mother says to Carrie.

  They talk for I don’t know how long, and I’m grateful for it. While I am truly pleased to see Cricket’s coping better, part of me is a little shocked that she can so easily push aside her grief over her sister, pressing me like she is now, to take her and Carrie somewhere tomorrow (the mall? the library?) even. I make a show of considering it so I can buy a little more time with my thoughts.

  Faster, faster, Dad!

  Cricket would have loved those wheelchair joyrides Ed always took Caroline on during those last days but we curtailed her visits to the hospital because we thought it might be too scarring. We agreed she was too young to be hanging out with dying cancer patients all the time, even if her sister was one of them. We wanted to protect her childhood, such as it was. How were we to know it’d do far more harm to her by keeping her away? We didn’t know how adept Cricket was at putting on a happy face to keep us from worrying about her. We never said as much but I think we both figured we’d make up our lost time with her after … when … Oh, Jesus, we just thought we would make it all up to Cricket someday. How could we have known Cricket was silently suffering just as much as her sister, maybe even more?

  Her teacher was the first to point it out. Cric
ket withdrew into herself and was no longer participating in class, which, up until her sister got sick, she had done on a regular basis. Ed and I sat in numb silence in those too-small chairs, Ed’s knees practically up at his chin, staring at Miss Jensen as she ticked off the changes she’d noticed in our daughter. I nodded yes when she referenced Cricket’s obsessive nail biting (“and then there’s the issue of her fingernails, but I’m sure you’re already working on that with her …”) and nearly lost it when I got home and noticed—for the first time—Cricket’s nubby nails chewed off below the quick, dried blood where she had bitten off her cuticles, ripping the skin from some fingers all the way up to the joint.

  The truth was that neither of us had noticed anything amiss with Cricket. We were too focused on Caroline and chemo and bone marrow drives to see anything else. Miss Jensen asked about Cricket’s sleep, noting she often appeared exhausted at school, and sure enough, when we asked Cricket about it, she broke down and sobbed that she’d been having nightmares and hadn’t slept all the way through the night in months. We’re her parents—how had we missed all that?