Pieces of My Sister's Life (29 page)

“You’re going to have to talk to me eventually, Kerry. This can’t go on forever.”

I wouldn’t turn to him. I wouldn’t. I shook my head, still facing the wall, feeling a shell all around me, hard as stone but precarious as dynamite. I couldn’t let him touch it or I would explode. And if I exploded, I knew I’d have to take everyone with me.

“Mom and Dad are asking questions,” he said. “Lots of questions and I don’t know what to say. And Eve, you can see it in her face, it’s like everything’s fallen in on itself. I don’t know why she came to me that night, I don’t think she even knows. We were all in this awful frame of mind, we weren’t ourselves, you know that. So we have to just talk this out, the three of us. You have to.”

I steeled my shoulders. Talk it out? What the hell was wrong with him?

Justin stepped towards me and touched the back of my head. I flinched away. But inside under everything I felt the burn of his touch, deep red like longing, bright red like anger, hot red like blood.

“It was only one time,” he whispered. “That one time, twenty minutes, one mistake.”

I was shivering, I was so chilled and sweaty and hot and cold at once, and his words were echoing, swelling inside my head. I knew what could happen in twenty minutes.

“I love you, Kerry, you’re a part of me. One mistake can’t take that away.”

In twenty minutes a boy could make love to a girl, and a girl could mix a pot of poison on a stove.

“And maybe it was the world’s worst-ever mistake because it was with Eve, God, I know. If I could do anything to take it back, I swear I would.”

In twenty minutes, that girl could pronounce a live man dead, a pronouncement that would make that man die for real.

“But the fact is that I can’t take it back. It happened but it’s over. I hate myself for hurting you, but all I can do now is swear it won’t ever happen again.”

I whirled around in a sudden panic. “You son of a bitch!”

“Kerry—”

“With my sister! You goddamned liar, tell me the truth for once. How long were you after Eve? Did you go to her when she was still with Brad?”

“No, Kerry, of course not! I don’t know what she told Brad or why, maybe to make him jealous or because she wanted it to be true. I have no idea whatever went on in that head of hers, but I swear it was all lies.”

“You swear? You swear!” I screwed my face into a sneer. “I don’t care anymore, Justin, can I tell you something? You know there was water in his lungs? Mr. Maclean had water in his lungs, which means I killed him. But the truth is I don’t give a damn. I killed him and I could kill Eve, too. Kill you both without blinking!”

I swiped my arm at him, then ran, his hand grazing my back as I sped on burning legs, down and out and to the street. I was thinking, almost hoping, he’d run after me, grab me like he had that first day we’d kissed. And if he did grab me, I didn’t know what I would do. I would let him, I would hit him, I would kill him.

But he let me go, a fact that mocked me. He let me go, of course he did because I wasn’t Eve. I could never be Eve. Fireworks. It was true, that power Eve had even in childhood. Two twins, identical except that one had always known how to draw the smiles, the attention, while the other clung and watched and tried to absorb. Eve knew our roles, fostered them. There was no reason for Justin to choose me.

I stopped at LoraLee’s, knowing I couldn’t go inside, because what could I tell her? And what could she possibly say that would make anything any better? But still I stood for a long while watching her door.

What I could do, I could live here, sleep here on the porch beneath the clanking chimes, enfolded by the chokecherries and geraniums. And in time I’d be able to snip Justin and Eve out of the fabric of my thoughts, snip out my mother, the despair that must’ve been behind my father’s death, the existence of a certain Tupperware container. All gone, all these holes and I’d be like something moth-eaten, fragile like lace, but bleached clean. I sat on the porch step and lay back to look up at the rotting rafters.

The door opened behind me. “Kerry, chile.”

I startled forward, then jumped to my feet.

“I’s jus’ thinkin’ ’bout you.” She smiled so I could see the pink holes where two of her teeth used to be. “Lookit them tomato we done, the new flowers. We be havin tomato samwiches ’fore you know it.”

“LoraLee…” I whispered.

She watched me for a minute, eyes probing, then nodded sharply. “Look like you needs some tea.”

I followed her to the kitchen, sat at the table while she went outside for water. I had no idea what I wanted to say to her, what I could say. I watched her back as she lit the woodstove, wishing she could read my eyes, and also afraid that she would.

She sat across from me and leaned back in her chair, her hands folded over her stomach. Her whole posture seemed to say
Go on, then.

“Can I try on your ring?” I asked.

LoraLee raised her eyebrows and handed it to me. It was wide enough to slide over my thumb. I twisted it, feeling its worn, wooden smoothness like a kiss against my skin.
How could you let him leave?
I wanted to ask. Instead I spoke the other question behind it all. “What do you do when you don’t know what you’re doing?”

If she was surprised by the question, she didn’t show it. She tapped one finger on the table, pondering. Finally she nodded. “God give you everything you needs to make any decision,” she said. “You jus’ listen to what He tell you.”

“He’s not talking,” I said, then handed back the ring, watching the spire of steam that rose from the teakettle.

LoraLee stood and pulled two mugs from the shelf. “You got His voice inside you, if you jus’ listens hard enough.”

“Remember back when you said you don’t believe in heaven because you don’t believe in hell?” My words were fast, desperate. “What about the devil then? If you believe in God, don’t you have to believe in the devil?”

“The devil voice is man’s voice,” she said, setting a mug in front of me. “A distraction voice.”

I waited for her to explain, but she just sat back in her chair and blew on her tea. I thought I knew what she was saying anyway. The devil had always been there in me, just waiting, a voice I’d only heard before in snatches on frigid, moody winter days.

“Like this. When I’s around your age, I almos’ lef ’ school and start to work like my momma done all her life, scrubbin’ other mans’ floors. But there a woman, Mabel, who work the kitchen, and when I tell her my plan she brew me a cup-a ginger tea.”

I looked down at my tea, letting the mug burn my fingers, holding tight even when they screamed with pain.

“She say, ‘Lookit your momma with her chap hand and redstain eye, and ask yourself if this what meant for you.’ Then when I drunk her tea she read the leaf I lef ’ behin’, tell me that’s not my future. She say you’s gonna finish your school and go north, live somewheres with ocean on all side.” LoraLee nodded. “And mebbe she don’t really know a thing ’bout tea leaf, mebbe she jus’ tryin’ to set me straight, but it felt right to me, so I done what she say. I finish school and set on my way up north. I follow where my feets lead me, and soon as I find this place I knowed I’s home. Notion of workin’ on hands and knees, that were my devil, and whether she knowed it or not, Mabel was my voice from God. She brung me here and also she make me want to study tea.”

I looked down at my red-burned hands.
You don’t know the devil’s voice,
I wanted to tell her.
I killed a man, I’ll kill my sister, I may kill myself. That’s the devil.

“So the moral is, you allus got His voice inside and outside too. You let it in and it learn you everything you needs to know.” She smiled at me, then widened her eyes. “You burn your hand? My Lord, chile, what you done?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing.”

“I’ll git you some aloe.” She jumped up and strode to the windowsill, split off a leaf and smoothed the oil onto my fingers.

I pulled away. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

I shook my head. “Go on like this, live alone with no family, no one really close to you.”

“I got my own self. That’s enough for me.” She nodded slowly. “You got peoples who give the worl’ for you.”

I stared down at my aloe-slicked hands. “I thought I had my father, but now I realize I never did, not the most important parts. And Eve…”

“You has Eve. You has Eve the most.”

A barking laugh caught in my throat. “You don’t know. You don’t know her, and now I realize I never did either. I saw the mask of her, the part that looked like me, but it was such a lie.”

“Not a lie. She love you, Kerry, you has to believe it. She jus’ confused, she need somethin’ and she don’t know where to look.”

“How could she? How could they?” My voice broke and I waited for her to ask, and if she did what would I say? So much was crammed inside me it no longer fit. I’d start talking and then wouldn’t be able to stop.

But she didn’t ask, just watched me with narrowed eyes. “Sometime it’s the peoples you love the best that you hurt most. S’like a reflex, you hit out without meanin’ to, but when the hit’s done you ’spect it to be over. You don’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“You don’t know. They think they can twist me and kick me and it doesn’t matter. They think I’m nothing, just a Kerry doll who wears a smile and waits for a chance to be kicked again but I’m not! I won’t!”

She reached for me and I let her hold me, wanting to sob but there were no tears left, nothing left in me but the knowing. Drained empty of tears and them and me, nothing left inside but black.

That night I woke sometime near midnight, and even before I opened my eyes I could feel Eve beside me, watching. I peeked between my lashes.

She was kneeling by the bed, face slack, tears streaming down her cheeks. She cried silently, without trembling or pulling in breath; it might have been varnish glistening against her skin.

I suddenly remembered a day we’d made a pact with tears in our eyes, our pinkies locked in promise. If one of us died, we vowed the other would follow so we’d be together in heaven. Because we were nothing without each other. Because surviving would be a betrayal.

I opened my eyes and made myself screw my face into a mask of disgust. “What?”

She rocked back as if slapped. I glared at her and then turned away but Eve gripped at my sleeve. “I have to tell you.”

“Don’t even try.”

“Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ve just been trying to think of some reason, some way it could mean something, some way to make it better. But there isn’t, and now I don’t know who to go to.”

“Why don’t you go to hell.”

“No, Kerry, you have to let me tell you. There’s something worse than this, worse than all of it.”

I laughed, high-pitched and dry. “Worse than killing the man you stole away from his wife? Worse than pushing him off the side of Daddy’s boat and watching him suck in water?”

Eve watched me, shook her head. “The thing is…the thing is, you got your period two weeks back.”

The words punched terror through me. Because I understood immediately.

We’d first gotten our period five years ago, within the same week, and after that we’d been completely in sync, sometimes a day or two early or late in our cycle, but always early or late together. I watched the dull glow of fear on her face. And I knew.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

The word hung in the air like something palpable, something round and fleshy I could press between my palms. “No,” I said.

“I took all the tests, three kinds of tests, and they all came out. They came out.”

Oh God. There was a heat building up inside me, raw and sore. And part of me wanted to curl up with her, maybe crawl with her under her bed until the whole world disappeared. The other part wanted to shake her, shake it out of her. Instead I spat back. “Well what the hell did you think would happen?”

Her face was swollen and pleading, and I wanted to be there, be her sister, but it was too much. I dug my nails into my palms. “What’re you gonna do now, hunh, Eve? Now you tossed the baby’s father into the ocean, what’re you going to tell it when it grows up?”

Eve’s face stiffened. She looked away and wiped at her tears with the palms of both hands. She stayed still for a moment before looking back at me. “Justin’s the father.”

Her voice was so smooth, so calm, but the words that she spoke made no sense at all. The room was swirling, air rushing past my ears. I smiled and imagined she’d said something else, maybe
Justin’s no bother,
or
Justin is hotter
.

“It’s his, Kerry. It couldn’t be anyone else. Me and Ryan, we always used a condom.”

“You’re such a bitch,” I said matter-of-factly, like I was complimenting her hair. “I get it, you know. I get what you’re doing. Yeah, you think, I’ll pretend I’m pregnant so it’s the last straw in ending things once and for all between them, and then I’ll have a nice fake miscarriage and go back to screwing every guy who wants me.”

“Shut up!” She was crying, her words cut sharp by sobs. “I’m pregnant, Kerry, and Justin’s the father. And I’m not telling him, not yet until I know for sure what I’m going to do. But I’ve felt it all this time inside me, I could tell from the beginning, from the minute after we made love—”

“You bitch!” I swiped my hand at her, and she cried out and jumped away.

“Maybe I
will
have this baby!” she said. “Maybe I’ll have it and I’ll marry Justin, and there’s not a goddamned thing you’d ever be able to do about it!”

She ran into the hall and I listened to her footsteps raining down the stairs.

She’d been wearing an old flannel nightgown, ivory with faded roses, which now reached only mid-calf and had a tear at the hem. For some reason I went to the dresser and pulled out the matching nightgown I hadn’t worn for years. I held it as I reached under my bed for the shoebox holding all my pictures, felt for the bloodroot-stained Tupperware hidden underneath. And for some reason it made me laugh. I laughed and laughed, a silent shaking, maybe because I was just plain tired of tears.

It wasn’t me. It wasn’t. It was something hot and boiling deep like lava.