An-Ya and Her Diary (16 page)
Read An-Ya and Her Diary Online
Authors: Diane René Christian
I was the only one wearing jeans.
Daddy said—
I love all of you and am so happy to be surrounded by you tonight. I can’t believe how lucky I am. We are here to have our family party and to celebrate that I have received incredible new work contracts. I truly hope this means that we won’t have to worry about money again for a long time.
Daddy looked like he was becoming king. I wasn’t sure about anything that was happening. I knew that Daddy was happy, so I tried to be happy for him. He asked us all to raise our glasses and I raised mine.
Daddy said—
To us! To our family!
After that we were all tapping our fancy glasses against everyone else’s glasses. Daddy and Wanna were drinking their wine and tapping their glasses against each other over and over again.
Then Wanna started to play music.
Dear Penny,
The party continued in the living room. There was a warm fire. Wanna’s music was all around us.
The music was soft and slow.
Daddy and Wanna were dancing together, and they were very close. I thought that they were going to start kissing.
If they started to kiss, then I was going to go to my room right way.
Ellie looked up at me and said—
We dance now, An-Ya?
I looked down at Ellie and saw that she wanted me to do the dancing with her. Her arms reached out to me.
She wrapped her arms around my waist, and I placed my hands on her shoulders.
Ellie pressed her head into my belly and she tried her best to dance. But her shoes were slipping around on the wood floor and she couldn’t move around without sliding.
She said—
An-Ya, new shoes slippery!
I looked down at Ellie’s face. She was worried. I told her that it was ok.
I put my hands on Ellie’s head and ran my fingers through her black hair. It was hair that I was once so jealous of, but now my hair was almost as long as Ellie’s.
I said—
Ellie, you are a good dancer.
Her black eyes looked into my black eyes, and she smiled and said—
I good, but my shoes are not as good as me.
Dear Penny,
I don’t know what to write. It is too terrible to write anything. I am at the hospital and I don’t know how to write what has happened.
Ellie fell down.
After the party, Ellie and I said goodnight to Daddy and Wanna.
I grabbed you off of the living room book shelf, where I left you before the party.
Ellie ran up the stairs ahead of me. She was excited to get her pajamas on because Wanna promised to read her a bedtime story.
But she didn’t make it all the way up the stairs before she slipped and fell all the way down.
I saw it happen. I saw her falling. But there wasn’t anything that I could do to stop it.
She fell all the way to the bottom and landed at my feet.
Her fancy slippery shoes slipped on the wood stairs, and she fell backwards.
Ellie’s head banged into the wood stair corners as she rolled down.
I didn’t do anything. I watched it all happen, but I didn’t do anything. It was so fast and I stood completely still. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. I held onto you and watched her tumble toward me without doing anything.
Ellie landed in front of my feet and she didn’t make any noise. She looked like a black haired doll with closed eyes. Blood started running out of her nose.
Ellie might die. We are at a hospital, and I can’t stop thinking about how it should be me with blood running out of my nose instead of Ellie. Ellie would have moved. She would have saved me somehow.
Dear Penny,
I am still at the hospital. Sitka is here now. Her parents came to try to help Ellie. When Sitka saw me, she ran to me and hugged me for a long time. We didn’t say anything to each other, but there wasn’t anything to say that would make it better.
Wanna and Daddy keep coming in, then leaving the waiting room to talk with the doctors and nurses.
Everyone is silent when they are in this room. Nobody is telling me what is happening to Ellie.
The hospital waiting room has brown walls and blue chairs. There is a plastic green plant in the corner. Sitka is curled up on a chair and is watching a small TV that is hanging from the ceiling.
I am sitting on the floor in a corner and writing to you. I want to get out of here, but I don’t want to leave here without Ellie.
Dear Penny,
I must have fallen asleep. How did I fall asleep? Daddy woke me up and I was still in the waiting room. The TV hanging from the ceiling was turned off, and Sitka was asleep in a blue chair.
Daddy told me that we were going home, and I said—
No
.
Daddy whispered to me that Ellie was having an operation to help her brain get better. Ellie’s brain was bruised and there was some bleeding inside that the doctors were trying to stop.
Daddy told me that we needed to go home and get some rest. There wasn’t anything that we could do at the hospital to help. We needed to go feed Angel Bones and let her go to the bathroom. He said we would come back after we rested and the operation was finished. I said—
No. I can’t leave.
Daddy put his arms around me and lifted me up and told me that we were leaving. Daddy said Wanna was staying at the hospital, but I didn’t know where Wanna was.
It felt wrong to leave, but Daddy looked like someone very different than the I knew a few hours ago at the party. The look in his eyes filled me with fear.
I pointed to Sitka and said—
What about her? Why does Sitka get to stay?
Daddy told me to wake up Sitka, and he left the room for a few minutes.
Sitka was hard to wake up. I talked into her ear and kept telling her—
Sitka! Wake up
!
When she finally woke up, she didn’t seem confused. It was like she was used to sleeping in that blue chair.
Daddy came back to the waiting room and said that Sitka was coming with us.
We are home now, and Sitka and Angel Bones are sleeping in my bed. I can’t sleep. I want to stay awake until Daddy tells me that we can go to the hospital and bring Ellie home.
I am still awake and waiting.
Dear Penny,
I am still awake. I don’t know how to sleep when doctors are cutting Ellie’s head open. Plus, Sitka keeps kicking her legs over mine.
I can feel that Ellie and Wanna aren’t here. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say the house feels emptier and colder. I have never slept in this house without Wanna and Ellie. Wanna’s robe is wrapped tight around me, but I can’t get warm enough.
Dear Penny,
Daddy came into my room when the morning sun started to come through the window. I said—
Can we go get Ellie now?
He told me that it might be many days before we could bring Ellie home. He rubbed his eyes and pushed his hair out of his face and tucked the longer pieces behind his ears. Daddy didn’t look well. He looked pale and red patches covered the skin on his neck.
I let Sitka sleep and took Angel Bones outside to go to the bathroom and came back in and filled her food bowl. Even Angel Bones seemed to know that something was wrong. She always wags her tail when I give her food, but her tail didn’t move at all this morning.
Sitka was awake when I came back to my room. She asked me if there was any news about Ellie, and I said—
I don’t know. I was too afraid to ask.
We got dressed. Sitka borrowed some of my clothes. The only thing that fit her was a yellow dress with long sleeves that I never wore. Everything else was too small. Sitka looked good in the dress and I told her to keep it.
Sitka looked at herself in my bedroom mirror and agreed that she looked nice in my dress. She kept looking in the mirror but said to me—
Do you remember when we first met and I told you that I was named Sitka because my mom gave birth to me under a Sitka tree?
I nodded my head but I didn’t understand why she was talking about that now.
She said—
It wasn’t true. I just tell people that. I was born in a hospital. My mom just likes the name Sitka.
I didn’t say anything because Daddy came into my room. He asked us to get something quick to eat and that we would go in a few minutes. Sitka was going to her house because her parents were home now and they were resting after helping with Ellie’s surgery.
Dear Penny,
We dropped Sitka off. She hugged me again and whispered in my ear that she would be praying for Ellie all day. I am not sure how the praying thing works, but it can’t hurt, I guess.
I whispered back to Sitka—
I didn’t mean to hurt you.
Sitka didn’t answer me, but hugged me tighter, then got out and closed the car door.
I am back in the waiting room and sitting on the floor in the corner again.
There is a man and a woman on the other side of the room. They are sitting in the blue chairs, and they are crying. I have no idea what happened to them.
I still can’t believe that this is all real because it doesn’t seem real at all.
Daddy left me here to go check and see when we would be able to see Ellie. I haven’t seen Wanna yet.
Why do you think Sitka made up that story about being born under a tree?
Dear Penny,
I am still waiting for Daddy to come back. I tried watching the TV attached to the ceiling, but it was a show about cooking, and I kept thinking about Ellie and Wanna together laughing in our kitchen.
The night that Ellie fell down the stairs feels like a dream that I can’t forget.
Wanna and Daddy must have heard Ellie fall because right after Ellie stopped moving, they were both there next to us.
I remember hearing screaming, but it wasn’t me screaming. It must have been Wanna.
I remember someone saying—
Don’t move her. Don’t move her. No! Don’t move her!
Is she breathing? Can you hear her heart beating?
Then there was more screaming, but it was a quieter scream.
Daddy turned to me and said—
Go call 911 right now. Now. Go.
I don’t remember picking up the phone or dialing.
Wanna taught me so many safety rules when I first came here, and calling 911 was one of them. She also taught me stop, drop, and roll for a fire. There was a stranger danger lesson for not getting myself stolen. I learned about how not to swallow and get poisoned by cleaning liquids. Wanna told me not to put plastic bags over my head because I might not be able to breathe. Not that I wanted to cover my head in plastic bags, but she told me anyhow.
I never imagined that I would need to use anything that she taught me.
But I did somehow call 911 and a woman answered and asked me—
What was my emergency?
I told her my sister fell down the stairs.
The woman asked me a lot of questions like—
Is my sister talking? Is she breathing? Is she bleeding? Is she moving? Is her heart beating? Who is there with you?
It was so many questions that I can’t remember them all. I do remember the 911 woman saying—
Tell your parents not to move her. Help is on the way. I am here for you. Sweetheart, stay on the phone with me until the ambulance arrives. Look out the window, and you will see the ambulance lights coming very soon.
Then the 911 woman said—
Sweetheart, are you still there?
I answered—
I see the lights.
Then I hung up.
Dear Penny,
Daddy came to get me in the waiting room. He said we could go in and see Ellie for a few minutes, but that she was sleeping and we wouldn’t stay long. I want to see Ellie, but I am afraid about what she will look like.
Dear Penny,
Ellie is in a hospital room and attached to a lot of machines that beep.
She was sleeping on a bed that is much bigger than she is.
She was wearing a purple dress with pink elephants that the hospital gave her. She had a tube stuck in her mouth that Daddy said was filling her lungs with air. Her head looked like it was wrapped in white fabric. I couldn’t see any of Ellie’s black hair.
Wanna was sitting next to Ellie’s bed and singing to her. She was still wearing the black dress with peach flowers that she wore to our family party. Either the dress looked like it got bigger, or Wanna shrunk inside of the dress. She was pale like Daddy. It took a minute for Wanna to notice that I was there in the room.
When she saw me, she stopped singing to Ellie and turned toward me. She said my name and wrapped her arms around my neck.
I put my arms around Wanna’s waist. She kissed my head all over as if she was making sure that my head wasn’t broken too.
The way that Wanna held me reminded me of the night that I found out about Wanna’s car accident. It reminded me that underneath Wanna’s black flower dress was her upside down T shaped scar.
I asked Wanna if I could talk to Ellie or did I need to wait for her to wake up?
Wanna said that I could talk to Ellie but to use a quiet voice.
I let go of Wanna and went to Ellie. There were so many machines and needles connected to her little arms. I didn’t know if it would hurt her to touch her.
Ellie’s cheeks looked bigger, and her eyes and lips were puffy.
I decided to lean over her small body and whisper into her ear.
I said—
Ellie, don’t be scared. You will be better soon. When you come home, we will teach Angel Bones a new trick. Fingers crossed, ok?
I never noticed how long Ellie’s eyelashes were before. Her swollen eyes were closed, but her eyelashes moved a tiny bit.