W
HEN
L
YNN RETURNED
from the hospital a couple of days later, my mother insisted that she was basically fine. Apparently, Lynn’s anemia was “acting up” and she just needed more liver.
Every day I sat by her bed and fed her rice and liver. I always saved a little liver for Sam, so he wouldn’t get anemic too. Then, after I fed Lynn, I would give her her iron pills. When she was being obstinate, I had to force the pills down her throat and hold her mouth closed until she swallowed. Once she tried to bite me.
Sam and I were supposed to sleep in the
living room until Lynn got better. My parents had bought me a little cot. I worried that Lynn was lonely by herself in the bedroom, but when I peeked into her diary, I read this:
I feel bad that the kids have to sleep in the living room, but it’s really nice to have my own bedroom. I like the privacy a lot.
I didn’t think of myself as one of “the kids.” But I guess that was how Lynn still thought of me.
After I fed Lynn, I got my pajamas from the closet, said good night, and left the room. Later that night I opened my eyes and saw her sitting on the floor next to my cot.
“What is it?” I said.
“Amber dropped me.”
“Dropped you, like as a friend?”
“Uh-huh. I don’t really care. She was phony.”
I could have told Lynn that a long time ago! For a moment I got a funny feeling that I was the older sister and Lynn was just a little girl.
Lynn stood up. “Well, good night,” she said.
“Good night.”
She didn’t move; she just stood there. The motel light from down the street cast a vague flashing shadow on her face. I could see she had been crying.
“Good night,” she said again.
“Good night!”
The next day after summer school I ran into Amber walking with her friends. Lynn was sick in bed that day. Amber said to me, “
What
is that you’re wearing?”
I was wearing a polka-dot dress Mrs. Muramoto had made for me. As usual, I thought I was quite a fashion plate! But these girls started laughing at me. They were all wearing pedal pushers.
“You’re a phony!” I said.
“You’re a heathen!” she said.
I didn’t know what a heathen was, but I said, “You’re a heathen too!”
“Then you admit you’re a heathen!” she said.
I thought about Lynn lying sick in bed and pushed Amber’s shoulder. She pushed me
back. I balled my right hand in a fist and punched her. She moved her face, so I barely hit her. She didn’t seem hurt at all, but I thought for a moment I had broken my hand. What a hard face that mean girl had! Then a passerby rushed over and made us all go home.
That night I felt an incredible anger toward those girls. I thought I hated them. I had never hated anyone before. It felt awful.
I told my parents that Amber had dropped Lynn. I wished I hadn’t, because I saw how it hurt them. Then I was glad I had, because after I told them, they talked for a long time in the kitchen, and afterward they announced that we were going to the bank to take out a loan.
“I thought you didn’t want to borrow money from the bank!” I said.
“We want to get your sister’s house,” said my mother.
That night Lynn was more cheerful than she’d been in a long time. Awhile ago we’d stopped hiding our money in the bathroom. Now we hid it in the closet. Every so often we counted the change out and placed it in paper rolls Lynn picked up from the bank. Then
every few months Lynn would go to the bank to exchange the rolls for bills. Sometimes I went with her. I didn’t like the bank. I didn’t see why a bunch of strangers got to keep everybody’s money in vaults. If a robber came to our apartment, I would hit him over the head with a lamp. So I didn’t need a bank, personally.
We had saved a hundred dollars. Sammy still got treats because he was just a little boy, but Lynn and I hadn’t bought candy in a long time.
The night before we went to the bank with our parents to apply for a loan, Lynnie, Sammy, and I handed them a pink envelope with our money in it. Our note just said,
From Lynn, Katie, and Sam.
We had put Sammy’s name on it too because we were a threesome.
When our parents saw all the money we had saved, our mother started to cry and hugged Lynn and then started to sob and said over and over, “I love you so much, Lynn.” She sobbed so hard, she ran from the kitchen, and in a moment we heard her bedroom door slam. Our father kissed us all and then went into the bedroom to talk to our mother. The
money was supposed to make them happy, so we felt a little weird.
Lynn felt good enough to wash dishes while Sammy and I tried to do headstands against the refrigerator.
The next day when I got home from school, I stayed in my school clothes and accompanied our parents, Lynn, and Sam to the bank. Sam was wearing a button-up shirt that was a little small for him. Lynn felt good again that day. We pulled a bunch of chairs around the loan officer’s desk and sat mesmerized as he asked our parents for some papers that they’d already filled out. As he looked them over sometimes he frowned and sometimes he nodded with satisfaction. I counted seven nods of satisfaction and only three frowns. He stood up to shake hands with my parents. “We’ll be in touch,” he said.
Two weeks later the bank approved the loan, and the very same day we took Lynn out to look at houses. She found one the first day. She picked out a sky blue one, because she said that when I was a little girl, I had told her I wanted our first house to be sky blue. We
moved in not long after.
It was a small house, a lot like our apartment except for two extra rooms: a small dining room and a small alcove off the living room. There was even the same small motel not far away, its sign blinking all night. We just lived on the other side of the motel now. But it felt far away from our old apartment.
The first things out of our uncle’s truck were our desks. Lynn and I were going to put our desks in the alcove. Our father and uncle walked into the empty house carrying Lynn’s desk.
“Where should we put it?” said our father.
Lynn looked at me. “Which side do you want?”
“You choose first.”
We both knew which was the good side: the side facing the big magnolia in the next yard.
“You can choose,” said Lynn.
“Anytime, girls,” said Uncle Katsuhisa.
“I’ll take that side,” I said, pointing to the bad side.
“You’re just saying that,” said Lynn.
“I don’t mind standing here all day, girls,”
said Uncle. He was pretty tired, since he and my father had just finished loading all the stuff into the truck a few minutes earlier. He and my father set down the desk, and Uncle said we’d flip a coin.
He threw a quarter into the air, somehow caught it behind his back, and slapped it on his forearm. Lynn and I looked at each other.
“Tails,” said Lynn.
Uncle glanced at the quarter and quickly put it into his pocket. He said, “Lynn’s got tails, and it was heads.”
I said, “I’ll take the side that faces toward our old apartment. That way, I can see where we used to live.”
So Lynnie got first choice even if she didn’t want it.
She was radiant as she watched our father and uncle carry boxes into our new house. Actually, I thought of it as Lynnie’s house. I held Sammy while she stood in the living room excitedly watching all the commotion. Lynnie loved commotion.
My father and uncle had painted the week before, so as we lay in our bedroom that night
we could smell the paint. I took in big breaths so I would never forget how fun it was to live in our own new house and sleep in our own newly painted bedroom with my sister and brother.
I’d heard our mother tell our father that this was just a “beginner house” and that someday we would own a “better” house in a “better” neighborhood, but I could not imagine a better house than this one. We had a grass yard in front and in back, and at night raccoons, possums, and skunks walked through the backyard just as if they lived there.
My sister got better every day, and I heard my mother telling my father that she thought the house itself was making Lynn better. I agreed. It was as if the house were healing Lynn. That made me love the house even more than I would have anyway.
A few days later Lynn, Sammy, and I planned a picnic to celebrate how good she felt. We hadn’t gone on a picnic since she’d first made friends with Amber. My parents were a little worried about her going out, but they were also excited that she felt so well. It
was as if she’d never been sick.
On the day of the picnic she shook me awake at dawn. “Dad left a whole dollar!” she said. I opened my eyes. Dad had told us he would leave us money to get food for our picnic.
“Shall we buy doughnuts, then?” I said.
“Maybe we want doughnuts. Maybe not.”
“I wish the store had the kind with jelly inside.”
“I wish that too!” She was excited. She used to love picnics before Amber came along. “I can’t decide. We might want Popsicles.”
Pleasure flushed my face. I hadn’t thought of Popsicles! It felt nice to think about treats again, after all that time saving for a house.
Sam said, “I’ve wet the bed.” That brought us back down to earth. I had to clean up after Sam while Lynn made us breakfast: what we called brown eggs, made by scrambling eggs with
shoyu
and sugar. It was my favorite breakfast.
After we ate, we made rice balls to take with us. We talked it over and decided to use part of our money for root beer and the rest
for doughnuts.
We rode our bicycles—Sam rode with me on mine. It was a lovely late-summer day. I loved the days at the end of summer. Each day before the regular school year started became more and more precious.
The wind blew hard. Decaying magnolia petals drifted on the streets as we rode. We headed south toward Mr. Lyndon’s mansion—white with white pillars. We liked to see his house. My father always said it was his dream house. It was even in a book at the library, about Georgia mansions from the pre–Civil War days. When Lynn and I were rich, we would make Mr. Lyndon an offer he couldn’t refuse and buy that house for my father. That would be one of the seven houses we’d get our parents. Over the years we’d gone for a couple of picnics on Mr. Lyndon’s sprawling unfenced property. His property was kind of a local tourist attraction—he’d even offered tours at one time.
Lynn called back from her bicycle, “Mr. Lyndon inherited everything he owns!” I knew that, of course, because the grown-ups
always mentioned it. I think they wanted to remind themselves that he had never earned his way like they did.
We stopped at the edge of one of his fields and left our bicycles in the grass.
Grass and trees stretched before us. I looked doubtfully at Lynn. Would she get tired? But she was jubilant with energy. It seemed we walked forever, but Lynn’s enthusiasm never flagged. Every so often I studied Sam for signs of fatigue. But all I saw was satisfaction. Other times Sam glanced at me, to make sure everything was okay. Each time he glanced at me, I smiled furtively at him. It was our secret that I was his special favorite.
A field is a magical place. I could imagine what the past held: cows grazing, a Civil War battle, maybe dinosaurs. The tall grass tended toward blue green and waved in the wind the way I imagined weeds would wave in the sea. I loved that beautiful blue-green color.
After awhile there was nothing behind us and nothing before us except more field and a grove of trees. Lynn stopped.
“Here’s the spot,” she announced.
We spread out the blanket and lay on our stomachs, with our heads near the edge so we could look into the grass. I said, “We’re on a raft in the middle of the sea!” Sam looked a bit apprehensive; Lynn ignored me. She drew an imaginary square as she bit into a rice ball.
“Let’s see how much we can see in the square. I’ll go first. I see an ant.”
“I see grass,” I said.
“That’s what I was going to say,” said Sam. He sighed. I could tell he was getting tired of being the young one and losing every game except when we felt sorry for him and let him win.
“I see that tiny piece of quartz.”
“Snail poop,” I said.
“Liar,” she said. “I see a caterpillar! I just noticed!”
And so on, square after square, until Lynn yawned and I knew the game was over. Sam sat a few yards away eating rice and doughnuts. What a beautiful day! What a perfect time for a nap. I lay on my back and closed my eyes. The wind tickled my face. I dreamed I was a mermaid, the fastest mermaid in the ocean. I
was at the Mermaid Olympics. Thousands of fish-people watched at the Undersea Olympic Stadium. They were cheering. But in the midst of all the cheering someone was screaming. I had to swim to help. A little boy . . .
Lynn was already plowing toward a grove of trees. Sam shouted over and over, “Waaaaaaaa! Waaaaaaaa!” in a voice that I didn’t recognize at first as his. But even before I recognized it, it was pulling me toward it. I wished I didn’t run faster than Lynn, so I wouldn’t have to arrive first. But since she’d become a teenager, her legs had grown long and gawky. I passed her and ran toward the screaming.
Someone had set a trap in the field, the metal kind that bites an animal until the animal is forced to chew off its own leg. The teeth dug through Sam’s skin, making a circle of red on his thin ankle. For some reason his face was red, as if someone were squeezing his neck. He looked at me pleadingly. “Help me,” he said. For a second I thought his foot was cut off.
I felt dizzy and started to say, “I don’t know what to do.” But instead, I knelt down to
remove the trap. I couldn’t pull the teeth apart. I wished I could just run away and let Lynn take care of it. Then I saw how to open it: by pushing down the tabs on the sides of the trap. I pushed them as hard as I could. “Move your foot; I can’t hold it!” I cried out. Sammy pulled his foot out, and I let go of the trap, which snapped shut. My brother stared at his leg and let out a wail.
“We’re going to take you to the doctor,” I said. “He’ll sew you up and make you better.”
“Sew me up with a needle?” He wailed even more.
Lynn arrived, and I felt relieved that I was no longer in charge. I carried Sam piggyback to the blanket while Lynn directed me. “Watch out, that part’s hilly.” Or, “Careful, you’re shaking him.” It seemed to take forever, and I got exhausted. We decided to use the blanket as a gurney and head back home. Lynn took the back end. I was glad she was in back because I didn’t want to look at my brother’s ankle. It made me dizzy. I walked backward but kept my head turned so I could see where I was going. After just a minute I could hear
Lynn panting.