Sister of Mine

CHAPTER 1-2

You little minx. I hugged her back, nodding. Saying nothing, but nodding, which is not the same. But I did. I do still. Even after it all.

Our mother noticed they were missing, of course, and with a directness that shocked me, accused our father of selling them. We could hear them clearly, their voices rising up and out the windows. Hattie and I, in the backyard, froze. We locked eyes. See? I was saying with mine. You never should have taken them. But I didn’t tell her to return them. I didn’t slip them back into her jewellery box, or even tattle on Hattie myself.

Days passed. The fighting continued. It morphed into other things. Years of resentment and fear and embarrassment bubbled up, our mother’s voice breaking. And still: the earrings sparkled in my mind but stayed hidden in my drawer. Hattie and I remained silent, creeping about with our secret, avoiding our parents. We saw a suitcase in the hall. Our father told us he had to go away for a while. And then, in the morning, he was gone.

Weeks passed, then months. I knew that he wasn’t coming back. Then our neighbours and his business associates began to drop by the house, my mother serving them coffee in the living room, her hands shaking the cups in the saucers. They left angrily, the front door rattling like a jaw snapping shut.

‘You did this, Hattie. He left because of you,’ I told her one afternoon.

She looked confused, not quite up to the task of pinning it back on me. She hung her head and her eyes welled. I turned away to not to have to see that.

By the fall of that year, the seasons changed for us. The town, which had seemed like an open, sunny place until then, turned its back, and we were shivering in the shade. Our house, once a hub of activity and laughter, stood alone, a cage. The fathers of friends no longer ruffled our heads, but ignored us completely. No one came around, kids or adults. No more neighbourhood girls to hold up the other end of the skipping rope for double Dutch. We just took turns skipping alone.

‘Your dad’s a crook!’ one boy shouted, launching a string of spit at us as he raced past us on his bike. We went inside the house, leaving our skipping rope on the sidewalk.

The phone, on the other hand, was the conduit of people’s private furies. It rang often and we came to associate its jarring rattle with our mother’s whispered apologies. And then, eventually, she told us not to answer it, and it rang and rang and rang.

Our mother got a job at Simpsons , the small local department store. I would see her sometimes, walking towards the house in her uniform, a cigarette in her hand, her face tired and worried, but by the time she opened the door, she had reverted to her old self: sunny and bright, making jokes and hugging us fiercely, asking how we were.

I was often left in charge of Hattie. I learned how to boil water for hot dogs and pull them out with a fork. I barely spoke to her. She was confused and sad, and tried to fill my silence with her chatter. She told me boldly, one day, that she wanted to be called Red. The name, our father’s nickname, sent a shiver through me, and I lashed out, shoving her to the ground.

‘Never,’ I snarled.

I called her Harry instead, until I tired of it, running my hand down her thick red hair, and yanking it hard when I reached the bottom, like ringing a bell. I hated her hair, so like his. My own wiry and thick black mop, my soot to her fire, my long straight nose and the gap in my teeth conspired as elements to make me striking, if not beautiful. Black Irish. That was what our grandmother muttered, brushing my coarse hair in those early years. Black Irish, she said, as though it were a curse, a kind of black magic. There was a ginger majority in the family, our grandmother included, her hair fading from wild red to silver. Our father’s mother, like so many others, had forgotten us when he left. Eventually the phone went silent. The three of us on our own to fight for ourselves, amongst ourselves. Our shouts and laughter and tears bouncing off the walls of our stalwart house, becoming an echo chamber and a mausoleum of memories.

A Sunday in July, a year since our father had disappeared. A year of gossip and teasing, a year of making our world smaller.

Outside, the sun shone while we, in our itchy wool dresses, were condemned to the inner sanctum of the church basement. From the limbo of the tiny chairs in the Sunday school room, I could smell burned coffee and cigarette smoke, with an undertone of paste and manila envelopes. Anima Christi.

Hattie was called to endure the punishment of doing chores for God and Mrs Walker, as we often were on Sundays. A kind of agreed-upon penance that the Grayson girls deserved. She’d been hauled off almost as soon as we’d shuffled into the room. Mrs Walker, that strict madam of ministry, that call girl of Catholicism, saw in our small family a host of sins. She prayed for, and preyed on, Hattie in particular. There was something in Hattie’s soft innocence, her hair colour, that infuriated the Sunday school matron, and Hattie often spent Sundays cleaning baseboards with a toothbrush or scrubbing the diaper bucket from the nursery, gagging into her black velvet Polly Flinders shoulders. I waited, numbly, with the other children, for Mrs Walker to return. I knew I should bail Hattie out, but too often I thrilled in seeing her punished. But still, I could hardly concentrate when she was gone. She was a magnet to me and I to her; I hated that I couldn’t help but love her, hated that this love made me feel obligated to protect her. Sometimes wishing I was an only child.

Time stretched out on this morning, and the other kids began to goof off, joking and whispering, but ignoring me. I kept an eye on the door, wondering where my sister was now. There was a scrape of feet and the creak of pews from above us in the sanctuary, the muted chorus of parents and grandparents coming through the floorboards. I looked out the half-window, which afforded a glimpse of the parking-lot asphalt. Time ticked by. Hattie wasn’t usually gone this long. I was uneasy.

I looked out the doorway again and pushed out my chair. ‘Where are you going?’ snapped one of the older girls who was left in charge. ‘You aren’t allowed to leave without asking me.’

I ignored her and left the room.

I kept walking, down the hallway towards the storage room that doubled as Mrs Walker’s office. Ran my finger along the cold concrete brick wall that was painted a glossy white. In the groove, my finger going up and across, through a maze. I heard a whap whap as I approached the room. Mrs Walker sometimes had Hattie bang out the blackboard brushes, which was something I actually loved doing. Whap whap whap. That sound, and now a whimper coming to my ears as well. What a baby. My patent leather Mary Janes were digging into my heels. Whap whap whap. Harder and louder. I rounded the corner to the storage room, the smells of dust and craft paint and old costumes rolling over me.

I saw Mrs Walker, hunched over, her coarse black hair, streaked with wiry white, hanging in her eyes. And Hattie, palms up, her face red and wet.

‘Penny!’ she squeaked.

Mrs Walker turned, a wooden yardstick in her hands. There was a strand of hair stuck to her lip.

‘What are you doing here, Penelope?’

‘I – I –’ Hattie’s hands were swollen and bright pink. Mrs Walker was out of breath.

‘Your sister, if that is what you’re here for, defiled the belongings of this church. And of God.’

‘What do you mean?’

She wiped her hair from her face and threw down her yardstick. Grabbed a children’s Bible from the table beside her, its bronze cover starting to tear, the name Harriet Grayson printed in crooked child’s writing on a piece of masking tape curling from the front cover. Mrs Walker opened it to the first page, where there were two circles drawn in pencil, little dots in their centres, and a triangle below.

‘This.’ She shoved it under my nose, and I looked at the drawing.

Hattie, sniffling, said in a whisper, ‘It’s a face.’

I could see how she meant it to be a face, but to the trained eye of a curious kid like me, and apparently a grown-up like Mrs Walker with an eye for judgement, it was a n***d lady.

Mrs Walker scoffed. ‘It’s a sick depiction of a woman’s nude body, and it will not be tolerated.’ She took back the Bible and muttered, smoothing her skirt, ‘Least of all by a little minx who has clearly learned a host of habits from her father.’ Hattie hung her head, knowing that this must be some kind of insult.

I lifted my chin up and said, ‘I did it.’

Hattie looked at me, confused, her red hands at her side, palms still facing out.

Mrs Walker regarded me carefully. ‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It’s true. I did it. And it is a face, that part is true.’ I added that as an extra touch. Every lie needs an ounce of truth. ‘And leave our dad out of it.’

‘Harriet, get back to the Sunday school room so I can have a word with your sister.’

‘Yes, Mrs Walker.’ Hattie’s lip trembled, her teary eyes finding mine. I nodded, and her little shoes clip-clopped out of the room.

Once back in the Sunday school room, I refused to look at Hattie, who scooted her chair right next to mine. I smiled when another child picked on her. I could only go so far in love.

But later we compared hands. I liked how mine felt, and liked even more the feeling I’d had marching back to face all the other kids, my head high as the brave sister. I had stood in my sister’s stead. Protected her, but also stole the spotlight, painful though it was. Hattie and our Sunday school classmates had stared at me with wonder, and it felt good. At home, we held icy cold cans of Coke in our hands and did not tell Mum, who made us cinnamon buns after church like she always did.

‘Anything interesting happen in Sunday school today?’ Mum wiped down the counter and ran the dishcloth under the tap. Hattie looked to me, her eyes wide. I shook my head sharply.

‘We learned about Abraham and Isaac,’ I said, taking a bite.

‘Hmm. I always found that story disturbing. Strange choice for children.’

‘Mrs Walker says it’s about sacrifice,’ Hattie piped up. I rolled my eyes.

Mum smiled at Hattie. ‘Well, sure. Isaac was the sacrifice.’

‘But he didn’t do it,’ I said, meaning Abraham. ‘He just almost did it. Maybe he was never going to do it at all.’

‘Maybe,’ said Mum, filling the kettle. ‘But sometimes it’s the thought that counts.’ She took a deep breath that signified a subject change, and sat at the table with us, pulling her cigarettes out of her apron and lighting one. ‘So! What are your plans for today? It’s a gorgeous day out there.’

‘I want to go swimming!’

‘That might be fun, Hattie. Penny, do you think you could take Hattie to the pool?’

‘I guess.’

‘Did you have other ideas?’ Eyebrows raised, Mum smoothed my hair down with a smile.

‘I dunno. I wanted to ride my bike.’

‘Well, you two can ride your bikes there.’

Hattie grinned at me, and I dampened it with a blank face until she looked away.

‘Can’t I just stay home with you, Mum?’

‘No, honey. I’ve got lots of tidying up to do. Laundry and other exciting things far too fun for kids. I’ll take a walk over later and watch how your dives are coming along, though, okay?’ She squeezed my reddened hand, shooting pain up my arm, and I loved her.

Later, at the pool. Hattie puffed out her cheeks and sank her head beneath the water, her hair like red seaweed waving around in slow motion. She gestured and bugged out her eyes and mimed a tea party, begging me to join. I pretended not to understand her, pretended I didn’t want to play, even if part of me did. Took to the ladder and walked proudly to the low diving board. My skin goosebumped, my hair matted in a black clump, I climbed the silver steps, looking for Mum. She was there, in a lounger, a long flowered dress hitched up to her knees, talking to another mom, smiling gamely and nodding her head. I caught her eye and she waved enthusiastically, dropping her cigarette in a puddle beside her chair. She threw up her hands and laughed at herself. The other mother stared, unmoved. I walked across the pebbly diving board; the whole pool seemed to freeze. Mum clasped her hands together and nodded. You can do it, she mouthed. I almost lost my nerve. I waited. The kid behind me muttered under her breath. I put my toes on the edge of the board and felt a shiver. Hattie was climbing out of the pool in front of Mum. Her eyes moved to Hattie. I took one bounce, and jumped, making as big a splash as possible.

That night, Hattie climbed into my bed and we carefully pressed our hands against each other, fingers to the sky, and I remembered why I loved her. How I couldn’t help it, just like no one else could. She smelled like fresh soap with an undercurrent of chlorine, her post-bath, wet hair soaking my pillow. She looked at our matching hands.

‘Like we are praying,’ Hattie whispered, and her innocence chafed against my newly hardened heart, and still softened it.

That year and those after, we prayed. For our father to return. For everything to go back to the way it was before. And later, for friends, for boys, and boobs. But then everything changed again, and prayers didn’t work where fists and flames did. Prayers got lost when we whispered them up into the air, they got caught in the branches of the maple tree in front of our house. I’ve spent the past few years trying to shake them free, hoping that one of them will flutter upwards and be read by the wind.