I go back to my earliest and most vivid memory of my sister. Daddy has died and Mom is packing up our old house for the move to Tennessee. I’m sitting on the porch steps, my face buried in my hands, crying. Mom has told me to sit down and stay out of the way. I’ve been sitting there and crying forever when Bree comes over and gives me a tissue. “What’s the problem, Sissy?”
“I miss Daddy,” I say.
She looks sad. “I miss him too.”
“What if Daddy comes home and we’re gone?” I obviously haven’t gotten the death angle straight in my head. “What if he can’t find us?”
“He’s not coming home.”
“But why? Did I do something wrong?”
“Don’t you remember the funeral, Sissy?” I nod. “The man in the box was Daddy.”
The man in the box hadn’t looked a thing like my father to me. My daddy smiled a lot. The man in the box never moved. “I only looked once,” I confess. I remember shutting my eyes tight right after Mom led me to the casket and told me to tell Daddy goodbye.
“Remember how we rode in the big car to the cemetery? Remember how they buried the box in the hole in the ground?”
“But the pastor said Daddy was sleeping.” I hear the pastor’s words exactly…my daddy was “asleep and will one day rise up.” I remind Bree what the pastor said. “So what if he wakes up and wants to come home, and when he gets here, we’re gone?”
Bree puts her arm around my shoulders. “The preacher didn’t mean it that way.”
“Then why did he say it?”
“It’s just his way of talking about Daddy being in heaven.”
“So Daddy’s not coming back?” I cry some more. Bree is almost nine, so I take her word for it, but I just can’t wrap my mind around never seeing our dad again.
She thinks for a minute. “I have an idea. Go get a piece of paper, and I’ll write down Grandma’s address, and you can put it in our mailbox. That way, he’ll know where to come and find us.”
I run into the house, find a piece of scrap paper and take it to Bree. I watch her carefully write numbers and letters on it. She hands it to me. “There you go.”
I grab it, fold it, dash to the curbside mailbox and tuck it inside. I feel so much better knowing we’ve left Daddy a message. I skip back to the porch and hug Bree hard.
Bree unwinds my arms from her neck. “You know, Sissy, don’t get your hopes up. I don’t believe people are allowed to check out of heaven once they get there.”
I remember her words all these years later. By the time we have settled in with Grandma in Tennessee and I’ve started first grade, I’ve stopped expecting Dad to show up. People don’t return from the dead. Not then. Not now.
The next time I see my sister, Dr. Kendrow is leaning over her bed. She smiles at me as I come into the cubicle. “Hello, Susanna. Remember me?”
“You’re the baby’s doctor.”
“I will be once she’s born,” she says. “Is your mother with you?”
“She stopped in the cafeteria to get coffee, but I didn’t want to wait.”
Dr. Kendrow pulls the earpieces of her stethoscope from her ears. “I was listening to the baby’s heartbeat.”
“I thought that machine kept tabs on the baby’s heart.” I point to a machine with wires that snake under the bedcovers. I know the wires are attached to Bree’s abdomen.
“It does, but I listen anyway. Would you like to hear the baby’s heart?”
“Well…sure. Can I?”
She places the stethoscope’s earpieces in my ears and the flat part against Bree’s taut skin. “It’s a whooshing sound. Listen closely.”
I have to concentrate hard, but then I hear it—a soft swishing sound, slight and rapid. It makes me smile. Then I worry. “Is it supposed to beat so fast?”
“Oh yes. Babies’ heartbeats are much faster than ours. It’s a strong one too. I like what I’m hearing.”
“Is she ready to be born?” The idea makes my heart beat faster.
“Not yet. Another six weeks or so. Babies gain a lot of their birth weight in their last month. And her lungs aren’t fully developed either. We don’t want her to have breathing issues.”
Issues. The word sounds odd. How can a newborn baby have issues? “I know about the layer of cells in the lungs that get a baby ready to breathe air.” I hand back the stethoscope and Dr. Kendrow tucks it into her lab coat’s pocket.
“You do? How so?”
“I have a book. It was Bree’s. It tells all about how babies develop inside the mother. I…um…like following along.”
“Good for you. I was pretty curious myself when I was younger. I drove my parents crazy asking why all the time.” She studies me for a minute. “Does your book tell you that a baby can hear in the womb?”
“Bree read that to me, and that’s when I started playing my flute for her baby. I’m in the school band, and I like playing. I was going to play for her every day. But…but then…” I don’t finish my thought.
“If you want to bring your flute and play for her here in the hospital, you can,” Dr. Kendrow says.
“Really?”
“I’ll clear it with the nurses out there.” She gestures toward the outer room. “You can talk to the baby too, Susanna. So can your mother. Get her used to your voices. Babies can and will respond to familiar voices.”
“Like how?”
“They wiggle around inside the womb, or quiet down at the sound of voices they recognize.”
“My book says that they have hair and that they can blink by week thirty-four. Is that true?”
“All true.”
“I guess babies are pretty smart, even before they’re born.”
Dr. Kendrow grins at me. “This is a lucky little baby to have an aunt as caring as you.”
That makes me self-conscious. “I can’t wait to hold her.”
“Just another month or so and you will be holding her, if—”
“If what?”
“If she can stay put,” the doctor finishes, a look on her face that tells me she wishes she hadn’t added the if to her sentence. “Her best chance for a healthy beginning is staying in your sister’s womb until it’s time to be born.”
“How will you know when it’s time?”
“Tests. We do plenty of tests, you know. And sometimes labor just starts.”
I start to ask, And what if she doesn’t stay in Bree’s womb? But then I decide that sometimes it’s best not to ask too many questions. I don’t want one more thing to worry about either. Just then Mom comes into the cubicle, and she and Dr. Kendrow talk. I tune them out and instead watch as dual green squiggly lines shoot up and down on the screens of the machines beside Bree’s bed—both reflections of human heartbeats, mother’s and daughter’s.
The very next time I come to visit, I bring my flute. I wedge a chair between the machines, lean close to Bree’s abdomen and play softly, hoping the baby can hear it. It’s weird, sitting in a cubicle playing for an audience of one who can’t see me and doesn’t even know me. The nurses at the desk peek in several times. One of them, Cynthia, asks, “Can we make requests?”
“Sure. If I know the music, I’ll play it.”
She suggests a few Christmas carols, comes over and straightens Bree’s covers. “May I say something to you, Susanna?” I lower my flute. “All of us nurses think you’re a pretty special girl.”
“Me?”
“Not many kids your age would spend so much time up here voluntarily.”
“But we’re sisters.”
Cynthia nods. “Some of our patients have big families, but not all of them can handle knowing that their loved one is never going to be the way he or she used to be. It’s hard to accept that someone you love will spend a lifetime as a quadriplegic.”
I wish Bree could be a quadriplegic; at least then she’d be alive. But I also know she would have hated that kind of life. “It’s not fair,” I say.
“Life’s never fair,” Cynthia
says. “Still, it’s what we have to work with, isn’t it?” She leaves the cubicle. I pick up my flute and play “What Child Is This?”, a song she has requested. It’s about Mary holding a sleeping baby Jesus on her lap while angels sing—something Bree will never get to do.
The signs and symbols of Christmas are everywhere. Lightposts in downtown Duncanville have been dressed up with fake holly and big red bows. The store windows are lit with blinking colored lights and splashed with glitter. The large fir tree in the courthouse square is decorated with king-sized ornaments and an ocean of lights. At school, the official bulletin board has been trimmed with cutouts of Santa’s elves and long strings draped with holiday cards.
In the middle of the hospital lobby, there’s a tree decorated with paper angel tags that show the names of children and elderly people who are especially needy. People are urged to take an angel and help give that person a happier Christmas or Chanukah. In the intensive care unit, cutouts of turkeys and pilgrims have been replaced with ones of wreaths, menorahs and gift packages. A tiny artificial tree is perched on the corner of the central desk and hung with ornaments made from medical supplies—latex gloves, empty injection barrels, a surgical mask, empty test tubes and pill bottles.
Christmas is everywhere. Except at our house. Mom asks me, “Do you mind if we don’t decorate this year?”
We have an old artificial tree that’s hard to assemble, but I do it every year. Then Mom and I throw on some lights, ornaments and tinsel. Last year I tried squirting on artificial snow, but the stuff gave me an allergy attack. “I’ll go to Melody’s if I want to look at a tree,” I tell Mom, disappointed. She looks relieved.
I place a few candy dishes around the living room and fill them with Christmas candy from Wal-Mart. I also put my pots of Christmas cactuses on a red velvet placemat on the coffee table. Amazingly, the plants are still alive, and full of buds. I’m feeling pretty good about my efforts, but when Stu and Melody drop by, Stu says, “Whoa! No Christmas this year? I’m Jewish and we decorate more than this.”
“Mom’s not in the mood,” I say, my feelings hurt. “And where is it written that we have to decorate for Christmas anyway? Who cares?”
Melody asks, “Where will you stack your presents?”
Doesn’t she get it? Mom and I aren’t doing Christmas this year.
“I know.” Melody doesn’t wait for me to answer. “You can put them in front of the fireplace. On the brick. That would be pretty.”
“Won’t Santa trip over them when he comes down the chimney?” Stu jokes. “Do you want Santa to sue you?”
“The fat boy’s on his own,” I snap back.
“We can help you decorate if you want,” Melody offers.
“What part of ‘not this year’ do you two not understand?”
They glance at each other; then Stu sends me a sidelong look. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like a critique. I was just trying to make you smile.”
Not much amuses me these days, but I shrug, implying that I’m okay and all’s forgiven.
“I brought a DVD to watch,” Melody says, changing the subject. She scoops a thin box from her purse. “A holiday comedy,” she says. “Want to watch it with us?”
“Sure,” I lie. I’m feeling contrite about getting angry at them. “I’ll get some popcorn going.”
Stu reaches into a sack he’s carried inside. “Popcorn and sodas are on me. This is a full-service cinema experience. You get to sit. We know the way to your microwave.”
They head for the kitchen and I settle on the sofa, my feelings in flux. They’re trying to make us a threesome again, as tight and carefree as we were in the old days. Except that everything is different now. Not just with what has happened to Bree, but for what’s happening between the three of us. My feelings for Stu have not gone away like I’d hoped. And my friendship with Melody isn’t the same anymore either. I feel caught in some mysterious current that’s moving me along a stream I can’t control. I’m a leaf adrift on a winter current that will not let me go.
The holiday break and our final concert are only days away. The band is in the auditorium and in the middle of a huge dress rehearsal with the elementary kids from first through fifth grades. The kids are all talking at once and teachers are trying to restore order when Melody nudges me and asks, “Isn’t that your mother in the back?”
Sure enough, Mom is hurrying down a side aisle toward the stage. I go cold. She never comes to school to see me unless…I set my flute on my chair and rush down the steps of the stage to meet her. I almost trip over a pack of second graders being herded into place. “What’s wrong?” I see by her expression that something is wrong.
“Get your things. The hospital called. Ready or not, Bree’s baby is coming.”
“What happened?” I ask once we’re in the car. My whole body is shaking.
“Dr. Kendrow called and said the baby’s heartbeat was slowing and so they were taking Bree up to Maternity for an immediate C-section.”
I rapidly count the number of weeks until January fourteenth, Bree’s estimated due date. There are six. “B-but it’s too soon.”
“The doctors know what they’re doing. They have to do what’s best for the baby.” The bulging joints of Mom’s arthritic hands look clenched and pale on the steering wheel, like the bones might poke through her skin.
“The baby was doing just fine yesterday,” I say. “What went wrong?” I ask the question in spite of seeing that Mom is losing patience with me. I don’t know why I ask dumb questions when I’m scared, but I do.
“Be quiet, Sissy,” Mom says. “I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already told you.”
We arrive at the hospital and go straight to the maternity floor, only to be told that Dr. Kendrow wants us to wait for her inside a tiny cubicle off one of the hallways. “How’s the baby?” Mom asks.
The nurse says, “She’s been taken to Neonatal ICU.”
“But is she too premature?”
“The doctor will be here any minute,” the nurse says sympathetically.
Minutes later, Dr. Kendrow shows up and drags a chair close to me and Mom. The doctor is wearing green scrubs and a surgical hat. By now I feel sick to my stomach and I’m hoping I don’t throw up. She says quickly, “The baby is fine. We have her in an oxygen mask and a special incubator in ICU. I’m thinking she’s about thirty-four, maybe thirty-five weeks old. That’s good. She’s seventeen and a half inches long, four and three-quarters pounds.”
Mom asks, “And her lungs?”
“She’ll need a little help breathing for a while.”
“Can we see her?” I blurt out.
“In a minute,” Dr. Kendrow says. I can tell she has something else on her mind that she wants to tell us.
Mom asks, “What happened? Why was the baby in trouble?”
The doctor takes her time answering. “Briana came down with a sudden and fast-moving infection and we thought it best to get the baby out quickly.”
“And my daughter?”
“Briana’s heart stopped about noon and we could no longer sustain her on life support.”
A hammer hits my chest. Tears fill my eyes. My sister has been dead all along, but now the machines are gone and with them our illusion of life.
Mom bows her head. “I—I…”
Dr. Kendrow reaches out and clasps Mom’s hands, clenched together in her lap. “I’m so very sorry. I wish things could have gone differently.” Dr. Kendrow still doesn’t move. I can’t believe there’s anything left for her to say, but there is. “Before I take you in to see the baby, I thought you might like some time alone with your daughter. She’s in the delivery room.”
Mom nods, reaches over and takes my hand. “You coming, Sissy?”
My throat is clogged. I stand up on wobbly legs. An hour ago, I was playing my flute; now I’m telling Bree goodbye forever.
We follow Dr. Kendrow through doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The surg
ical room is small, with all kinds of equipment and big silver overhead lights that are turned off and no longer shining on the table below them. The room is icy cold, and my teeth chatter. Bree lies on the table, covered by clean sheets pulled up to her neck. Holding hands, Mom and I walk over, look down on Bree’s pretty face. She looks serene, her skin smooth as glass.
Her arms and legs make straight lines beneath the sheet, no longer drawing up as when she was on life support. I wonder if Nicole has come down and straightened them out, then realize that someone else has probably done this.
“Hello, honey.” Mom touches my sister’s cheek.
I want to touch her too, but I don’t. I tell myself there’s no difference between this version of Bree and the one who has lain up in the Neuro unit, but I press my palms against my thighs, unable to reach out and do it.
“Take all the time you want.” Dr. Kendrow’s voice startles me. I’ve forgotten she’s with us.
Mom’s crying hard now. I cry more quietly. We’ll take good care of your baby, I pledge to my sister in my heart.
“What happens to Bree now?” Mom asks.
“Call the mortuary. They’ll help you handle every detail.”
It strikes me like a blow that now we must face Bree’s funeral and bury her in Duncanville, next to Grandma, in the old cemetery on the hill. Once, when we were younger and were driving past it, Stu pointed at the headstones sprinkled over the green grass and said, “People are dying to get in there!” And Melody and I laughed. Laughed! I glance at Mom.
“I’ve made some arrangements already,” she says softly. This shocks me. When? I think. The words never reach my mouth. I am mute. Dumbstruck. Mom turns to me. “I bought her a pale pink casket with white satin lining. Do you think she’ll like that?”
She speaks as if Bree might veto the choice. The picture in my head of my sister in a casket is chilling. Bree…pretty in pink.
Mom strokes Bree’s arm down the length of the top sheet. “I love you, little girl.” She steps backward and so do I. I don’t think I can stand there one more minute without screaming. “We’re ready to leave,” Mom says.