Sister (9 page)

 

My mother had arranged for me to take a temporary leave from school. The agreement was that she would collect my assignments once a week and I would mail them back to my teachers, keeping up with my classes independently. I did this fairly regularly at first, then rarely, then finally not at all. Once, I did turn in a paper called “Volcanoes” for my sophomore science class. After a brief factual introduction cribbed from the
World Book Encyclopedia
, I wrote pages of vivid prose about a girl who had the magical powers of Jesus and lived inside Mount Vesuvius, untouched by the heat or the fumes. My midsemester report card showed a neat row of F's, which reminded me of merry little flags. I forgot how to write in cursive, a memory lapse that would prove permanent. My textbooks mildewed in my bedroom closet; mice nibbled the covers to lace.

My grandmother cared for me matter-of-factly, without pity but also without the slightest trace of impatience or scorn. Nights, when she listened to me say my prayers, she always asked me to name one thing—no matter how small—for which I was grateful. At first, my head filled with cotton, the
shushing
noise I heard whenever I was asked to think, to speak my mind, to do anything that called attention to myself. But gradually I could think of things to say.
The way Jakey sleeps at the foot of my bed. The recording of the “Moonlight” Sonata you played for me this morning. The mourning doves in the tree outside the window
. And after she'd gone:
You, Grandma. You
. Everything in my grandmother's house was predictable, calm, safe. Sometimes I'd wake up in the cold sweat of a nightmare, but as soon as I opened my eyes, the memory was blanched by the glow of the Jesus night-light she had plugged into the socket by the door.
Let My Light Guide You
glowed in gold across the front of Jesus' robe, and some nights I thought I could feel that Jesus was really there in the room, watching over me so I could go back to sleep. Warm at my feet, Jakey thumped his tail and sighed; I pulled the covers up to my chin.
Let My Light Guide You
. I was used to Mass on Sundays, prayers before meals and bedtime, but I'd
never lived with God in the constant, quiet way my grandmother did. She didn't pray for me to get well; she prayed that God's will be done. “Offer everything up to God,” she said, “and pray for those less fortunate than you.” She gave me a German prayer book that had been Elise's when she was my age, and I'd lie in bed sounding out the strange words, translating as much as I could. This pleased her, and she wrote out the English so that I could compare the two. Soon I could quote them in both languages, and I memorized several of the Psalms from her German Bible as well.

When I first began to wake up again, to come back into myself, I took long baths, singing to myself while I waited for the old claw-footed tub to fill. The water pressure was poor at the top of my grandmother's house, and if she was doing the dishes downstairs, there was plenty of time to run through my repertoire of Christmas carols and hymns. I began to notice the deepness of my voice, the flicker of my pulse in my temples when I sang, the pattern the sunlight made as it splashed through the lace hanging modestly over the window, and because I had been able to notice nothing for so long, everything seemed precious to me, blessed. I liked to sing, which surprised me, because I'd never really taken conscious pleasure in doing so before. When I told my grandmother, she nodded mysteriously. She gave me a gold ring with a pink glass stone that had once belonged to Elise. To my surprise, it fit my finger perfectly. I did not take it off.

Every Wednesday afternoon, my grandmother and the other Ladies of the Altar met at the church to do the weekly cleaning. Just before Thanksgiving, I went with her for the first time. The women had decided to clean the Stations of the Cross, which hung from the walls fifteen feet above the pews. Their fear of heights made me fearless, tireless. I stood at the top of the ten-foot ladder, wiping the faces of the apostles with warm, soapy water, coaxing dust from the creases of their plaster gowns, from their weary shoulders and delicate toes, washing away the faint gritty layer of
the past year of prayer. Afterward, we relaxed with coffee and cake in the windowless room in the basement where the cleaning supplies were kept. While we'd been busy upstairs, Auntie Thil had stayed back to prepare the food, and now she fixed my coffee, thick with sugar and cream. She was a big, soft woman, with fingertips swollen from constant nail-biting. Her face held the look of someone who was ready either to laugh or to burst into tears.

“Look at the roses,” she said, gently touching my cheeks. And that night, preparing to take my bath, I saw in the mirror that my eyes were clear. The dark circles that had ringed them for months had faded, the nervous tuck of my lips smoothed away. I got into the water and soaped my breasts and stomach without feeling disgusted with my body. It was simply that, a body, and if it wasn't as attractive as my mother said, it certainly wasn't as ugly as I'd thought. I lay in the tub until the water chilled me blue, joy rushing over and over me. I sang myself the lullabies my mother use to sing me, my voice growing more and more confident until it echoed off the floor tiles, the tall windows, the smooth plaster ceiling.

The next day, I got up at six-thirty and made breakfast for my grandmother, shredding the bacon into the scrambled eggs the way she liked it. Over our second cups of coffee, she stared into my face as if she were searching for the heaviness that had been there. “Today I visit Mrs. Heidelow,” she said, and understanding this was an invitation, I said I'd come along. Mrs. Heidelow was not expected to live until Christmas. A member of the Ladies of the Altar visited every morning, so her daughter could take time away to shop, to fill prescriptions, to light a candle at the church, to grieve.

My grandmother and I bundled up in our coats, and before we left the house, she handed me a colorful scarf that was identical to her own. I tied it firmly over my head the way she did, jammed my hands deep into my pockets, and together we began the icy walk to the other side of town. The sun was up now, tinting the
snowy streets a pale, hopeful rose. My nostrils pinched together and stuck; I sniffed hard, smelling the cedar trees that stood beside each home. Light spilled from behind the drawn shades of tiny bedroom windows. We walked with our shoulders touching, stepping out into the street when the sidewalks disappeared, pressing close to the curb when a car drove by. Passing the crossroads, we reached the abandoned fox ranch that had given Fox Ranch Road its name. As children, Sam and I had wandered among the rusty cages, inhaling the peculiar smell that seeped from beneath them. It was easy to imagine that the ghosts of the murdered foxes still lived here, and I was glad when the ranch was behind us, the sun firmly above the horizon, and our stiff boots scuffing up the long driveway that led to Mrs. Heidelow's house.

Her daughter let us in, leading us through the house to Mrs. Heidelow's room, where she served us coffee before she left. We sat on folding chairs as Mrs. Heidelow drifted in and out of a medicated sleep. The tiny black-and-white TV buzzed on the dresser, the commercials too bright, too cheery. I watched Mrs. Heidelow's eyelids flutter; she was awake, but the effort of opening her eyes exhausted her. Still, when she spoke, it was to ask about me. Was I feeling any better? Was my grandmother taking good care of me?

“Yes,” I said. “I'm feeling good again.”

“How she sings!” my grandmother said. “Every night in the bathroom, it's just like Elise has come home to me.”

I twisted Elise's ring. It was the first time I'd realized my grandmother could hear me, had been listening to me all along, but I was not embarrassed. And this was what made living here so different than living in Horton, where my father was always quick to laugh, to make you wish you hadn't sung, hadn't spoken.

“What do you sing?” Mrs. Heidelow asked, and, again, I understood the unspoken invitation. I sang “Stille Nacht,” the first verse of “O Tannenbaum.”

“Do you know the other verses?” my grandmother asked,
and then she and Mrs. Heidelow taught me, the old German words rolling easily from their tongues. Walking home, I knew my grandmother was proud of me by the way she clutched my arm, tightening her grip when we reached icy spots, allowing me to assist her. I began accompanying my grandmother on all her visits to the sick, the lonely, those who were specially chosen and loved by God. I waited the long rows of tables at the monthly church supper, while she and the other women cooked in the kitchen. Afterward, standing up beside the sweltering heat of the ovens, we ate crushed pies, a scorched roast, a pudding that hadn't quite set. Evenings, I learned to quilt, and soon I carried my own sewing basket when we met in groups of fifteen or twenty to make a “weekend quilt” for the missionaries to give to cold children far away. Wednesdays, I went with my grandmother to Devotions and, afterward, to the rectory, to visit Father Van Dan and the nuns, Sister Mary Andrew and Sister Mary Gabriel, who served us homemade pretzels, cookies, or chocolate cake decorated with perfect hickory nut meats they'd coaxed from the tough, pale shells. Father Van Dan, surrounded by women, was not uncomfortable the way a regular man like my father would have been, and the women spoke of the same things they spoke of when alone: farming and weather, religion and politics, children, sickness, money.

Thanksgiving came, and my mother asked me to spend the day in Horton—my father really wanted Thanksgiving at home, just the four of us, as a family—but I begged to stay in Oneisha and, at last, my mother relented. I was never far from my grandmother's side. Friday nights, Auntie Thil drove us, along with my cousins, to the Knights of Columbus hall in Ooston, and there we played bingo, mingling with the men, who wore their funny hats so proudly, smoking cigars that turned the air the color of dust, occasionally leaving their wives to slip outside for “a little something Joe forgot”—booze someone had in a brown paper bag. Uncle Olaf was already there, sitting with his pals at their usual
table, and whenever he won something he'd carry it to Auntie Thil and present it with a flourish. The smaller prizes were made by hand: yarn-covered hangers, knitted booties, stained-glass Christmas decorations, a pound of divinity; but the prizes we crossed our fingers for were crisp twenty-dollar bills. We marked our cards with pieces of corn, gritting our teeth, holding our breath for that B-69 or 1-19 that would launch us into the air, shrieking
Bingo!

Saturdays, we'd take Jakey next door to visit Auntie Thil's Little Buster. The dogs chased each other around the pond in the backyard, while Auntie Thil and my grandmother played cards in the kitchen and discussed Uncle Olaf's drinking. My cousins and I went into the den, where Monica watched TV, and Harv and I talked about God. If God was both perfect and able to do anything, could He make a mistake? Why did He make suffering? Harv was a year older than me, and I saw my brother in his face, only here that sullen roundness had become stretched and angular, filled with purpose. Harv had a vocation; I was curious and envious and awed. He was still an altar boy, and because he
liked
to be, not because he
had
to be. He helped out with church bake sales, and he often went to Mass during the week. He was able to shrug away his father's teasing. He answered to another Father now.

“You guys are so weird,” Monica said. “You sound like a couple of monks.” She pointed her chin at me. “No wonder you cracked up.”

“Don't mind her,” Harv said. “She's jealous.”

“You bet I'm jealous,” Monica said. “I'd do anything to get out of school.” She lay back on the couch, fanning her fingers in a practiced way to check the polish. I rolled my eyes at Harv; he struck a pose, rippling his fingers. “Dahling,” he said, “do my nails have that pahrfect sheen?”

“Oh, dahling, yes, I believe they do.”

We collapsed on each other, laughing.

“You guys are weird,” Monica said again.

 

I didn't miss my mother as much as I'd thought I would, not even after she started going to Mass at Saint John's with my father and Sam. It was, she said, the only way to make certain they actually went, and though she still came out to Oneisha on Sunday afternoons, she didn't stay very long. When my grandmother pressed her, my mother admitted that she was afraid to leave Sam unsupervised. She'd caught him hitchhiking by the highway one Saturday, grounded him, and caught him at it again the next day.

“I thought he was spending time with Gordon,” my grandmother said.

“They're not getting along so well,” my mother said. We were playing cards at the kitchen table; she shuffled and reshuffled the deck. “What does Gordon expect? On the one hand, he encourages Sam to defy me. Then he turns around and complains when Sam doesn't respect
his
authority.”

“What do
you
expect?” my grandmother said. “You defy your husband.”

“Mom,” my mother said. “It isn't the fifties anymore.”

“Show me,” my grandmother said, “where the Bible says God's law should change with the times.”

I couldn't believe Sam had been hitchhiking. Getting into a car with a stranger didn't seem like something my shy brother would do. Yet Sam wasn't exactly shy anymore;
indifferent
, perhaps, was a better word. The few times I talked with him on the phone, he didn't have much to say beyond “yeah” and “no” and “I don't know.” His voice was changing rapidly now, and I realized that soon it would be as deep as my father's. “Why won't you come visit on Sundays?” I asked.

“Don't know,” he said. “Don't feel like it.”

“We could set up the dominoes like we used to,” I said, remembering the elaborate mazes we'd made in the living room only a year before, one of us keeping an eye on Jakey so he wouldn't knock them down with his tail. But Sam only made a scornful sound with his tongue. “That's for kids,” he said. “You wanna talk to Dad?”