What Happened to My Sister Read online

  She’s tapping away again. It’s a real marvel, like my teacher used to say when Maisey Wells bent her thumb all the way back to show she was double-jointed.

  “Can you find out answers to anything on that thing?” I ask her.

  “Anything in the world,” she says.

  Even though I cain’t think what a computer would have about her, I hear myself ask, “Can you look up my momma?”

  Cricket looks over at me and says, “I can find out anything about anybody you want.”

  Mrs. Ford’s voice reaches us from somewhere down below:

  “Girls! Y’all come down here a second, will you?”

  “When I come back up I’ll Google her, m’kay?”

  “Girls?” Mrs. Ford hollers again.

  “Let me go see what she wants,” Cricket sighs. “I’ll be right back.”

  When Cricket leaves the room she takes all the air with her. I look around and for a split second I think I’d like to press a letter button or two on her computer but I don’t dare because that’d be a recipe for disaster. Before we left home, before we sold near ever-thing we owned, before her stitches were snipped out even, Momma said if I told people both her husbands had died it’d be a recipe for disaster, but if you ask me, Richard not being dead would be the real disaster.

  There are some things that are blurry in my brain and some that are crystal clear. Even though I try my hardest for them to get fuzzy, the minutes before Richard died are shiny and sharp when they cut into my thoughts.

  It was a Tuesday. I had eaten supper over at Orla Mae’s house that night and skipped home with extra biscuits I snuck into my pockets for Emma because Momma was having one of her not-coming-out-of-the-bedroom spells again and Richard was disappearing for days at a time so food was scarce. When I opened the door to the house the first thing I noticed was the mess—a chair knocked onto its side, broken glass crunching underfoot, the lamp laying on the ground without its shade, throwing weird light that made me think I’d walked into the wrong place. I can still hear my own voice calling out for Momma and Emma, but it was real quiet and my stomach twisted up with worry. When I crossed the living room I heard a groan and there, crumpled up against the wall with the peeling flowered wallpaper the people before us had left behind and Richard never got around to sanding off like he said he was gonna on the day we moved in, there was my momma, blood spreading out from her head like a spilled coffee cup. One of her arms bent like it’d been pulled out of the socket. Her housedress pulled up almost to her underpants.

  I crouched down and whispered “Momma?” while I tried to keep my tears from falling straight into her bloody mouth and wondered if I could touch her.

  She moved her head slightly, so the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut could fix on me. Her lips—I remember watching them moving over her teeth like they weren’t her lips at all.

  “Git,” she said, softer than a whisper, “out.” She took in another breath but it wasn’t deep—it looked like it hurt her to breathe.

  “Now,” she whispered, closing her eye back up.

  I shook my head no.

  “Momma, where’s Emma?” I choked on the name.

  “Hurry” was all she said.

  Then I knew why.

  Richard’s voice reached me first, and even though it was slurred, I could just make out his words. Not that they made much sense to me. He hadn’t heard me come in.

  “Trying to provide for my family, such as it is,” he hollered on his way back into the living room through the swinging saloon doors that separated it from the kitchen. I froze, still hunched over Momma, knowing it was too late to hide from him. “That’s whut I’m tryin’ to do.”

  He paused in the doorway and gulped some more beer and before I could talk myself out of it I sprang up like a jack-in-the-box and made a run—past him!—for the kitchen so I could get outside quick once I found out the one thing I wanted to know. Now that I think on it, I was almost as brave as Emma always was, trying to make an escape like that.

  “Whut the hell …?” He batted his arm at the blur of me running past but thank the Lord he had the beer in him ’cause his grip wasn’t too tight when he caught hold of my shirt. I didn’t even have to bite him that hard to get him to let me go.

  “Piece of shit,” he said when I pulled free and whirled around to face him.

  “Where’s Emma?” I asked. I like to think I said it like a cowboy would, all demanding and scary, but really I begged.

  I can still see the corners of his mouth curl up on either side of the bottle he was pulling beer from. He swallowed hard but didn’t answer me. Then he crossed the broken-up room to his ratty old armchair which was the only thing left standing and settled back, crossing his legs in the man way, with one heel resting across his other knee.

  “Please? Where is she, huh?”

  “Don’t you ‘huh’ me,” he said, uncurling his first finger to point at me.

  “Tell me where Emma is,” I said. Where I got the courage to talk to Richard like that I still don’t know.

  I remember running upstairs, calling out for my sister while Richard laughed from his stupid chair below, hollering for me there was no need lookin’ for her. I remember how pleased he looked when I came back down empty-handed, like he was proved right.

  “I told you,” Richard said. “She ain’t here.”

  Emma was so real to me then. Of all the things I remember, the sound of my blood rushing through my body, pulsing against my eardrums, stays with me most. I busted through the back screen door into the dark night.

  Next thing I was racing through the woods, tearing past the saplings and scrub brush, over moss heaps, leaping like a deer over roots and pine branches to Mr. Wilson’s house on the other side of the thicket. My heart beats out of my chest just thinking about how fast I went that night, praying to God the whole time for Momma to live long enough for me to get help, promising to be good if He’d just keep her alive a few more minutes.

  Please, Lord, let me get to Mr. Wilson’s. Please let me get Momma help before he kills her altogether, I prayed.

  I tripped on rocks I’d forgotten about, got scratched by every tree branch known to man, and twice I fell but I didn’t feel any of it. When Mr. Wilson’s house came into view I hollered for him.

  But Mr. Wilson wasn’t home.

  No one else lived as close so I had to turn back to check on Momma. And to find Emma. I near to threw up with the panic of worry over Em but then I caught sight of Mr. Wilson’s gun shed and it all went away. I knew what I had to do.

  I cain’t believe I found the gun in the dark with only a sliver of moonlight to go by but I did. By that time Mr. Wilson’d taught me how to shoot targets like cans or bottles, how to brace myself against the power of the gunshot, and how to hold steady so I could hit a moving target. He showed me how to take it all apart and clean it carefully so it could last a lifetime. By that night I knew every inch of that gun by heart. In the dark I popped open the chamber and used my fingers, feeling first one, then two, three, four, five open holes then, finally, finding the bullet loaded into the sixth hole so I wouldn’t have to hunt for ammunition. I remember being so happy about that. About not having to find the right bullets, on top of ever-thing else.

  I didn’t have time to spare so I took my chances and instead of cutting back through the woods and risking falling with a loaded gun, I ran fast as I could along the side of the blacktop road. I figured I’d hit the ground and flatten myself to it if a car happened by but I had the road to myself so I made it back home quicker than I would’ve if I’d have gone through the dark thicket. Before going in I peeked in the front window—Richard wasn’t in his chair no more. I took a deep breath. At the foot of the front porch stairs I took hold of the gun with two hands, pointing it at the ground like I knew to do, and locked my elbows. I remember counting the steps, knowing I couldn’t look down at them, I had to keep my eyes on where my target might be. I held the screen door open with my foot and, once
inside, felt it at my back then easing closed as I moved in. My eyes swept across the broken glass and china to where Momma was still laying. Her head turned toward me and once I was sure she was still alive I became another person, someone you might could see in a movie.

  I heard him popping open another beer, the ruffled-edge metal top clattering on the kitchen counter, the aaaah he made after swallowing his first sip, then the sound of the bottle setting down on the table. That’s when I kicked the swinging doors open and leveled the gun straight at him.

  I can still see his face absorbing what the gun was telling him. His shock twisting into surprise then pain before he folded into himself and slid to the kitchen floor.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Honor

  There’s a stillness in the house. That should’ve been my first clue. Not that I needed one, what with the eviction notice on the front door. You know something isn’t quite right when you find one of those. Normally when we come in the door I call hey and Mother will holler back I’m in the den! or I’m in the kitchen! but today, nothing. I find her sitting motionless at the kitchen table.

  “Mom? What’s all that on the front door? We’re not going to end up on the street, are we? Ha ha.”

  My mother has a habit of fiddling with whatever is closest at hand when she’s upset, and right now it’s the Lucy and Ricky salt and pepper shakers she keeps on either side of the paper napkin holder in the middle of the kitchen table.

  “That was a joke, by the way,” I say, pouring myself some Crystal Light iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge then settling into the chair across the table from her. “You want some tea, Mom? Seriously, though, what’s that notice about?”

  Lucy and Ricky dressed as Charlie Chaplin. Salt and pepper shakers. They’re shaped so that they fit together: Ricky’s elbow is bent to play a tiny drum in the spot where Lucy’s bust would have been. Along the bottom of each one BABALOO is spelled out in mariachis. She slides them in and out this way and that, then slides them together again. Like a little boy tinkering with toy soldiers. Mom’s looking like she can’t hear but her hearing is fine—she’s stalling. Which means two things.

  One, there’s more to the story.

  Two, it will be worse than I think.

  “Mom? Why aren’t you saying anything?” I ask her.

  I would dearly love to shake her silly, but of course I don’t.

  Good Lord, now she’s crying—crying. This is Bad with a capital B.

  “Mom, whatever it is we can fix it,” I say. I stand up and hurry over to rub her back between her shoulder blades just the way she likes it.

  “If you get mad I don’t know what I’ll do,” Mom says in between sobs.

  “I won’t be mad at you, Mom. But you’ve got to explain what this is so I can help you. What’s going on?”

  She takes out a napkin and blows her nose. Her cheeks press against her lower eyelids, so when she cries her eyes practically swell shut.

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?” I ask her again. While I wait for her to answer, I scan the eviction notice. “I’m not going to be mad, but you know what this is here in my hand? It’s an eviction notice, Mom. Oh my Lord! I’m reading through it and it says right here the house is being foreclosed on. Repossessed. Huh? They use both terms. It says: ‘The bank will take possession’ blah blah blah … lots of fine print. This is so weird because there’s no mortgage—you own the house outright. I don’t get it. There must be some mistake, right?”

  “I honestly didn’t think it would come to this,” Mother says, sniffing and balling up the used napkin. “You know how much I love this house, how much it means to me—to all of us. I never thought it would come to this. We’re looked up to all over town, for goodness’ sake. We’re the Chaplins.”

  The only thing I can do is wait. For the shoe to drop.

  “Just … just tell me what happened,” I say.

  Then just like that her tears stop. As quickly as they started.

  “No,” she says, straightening up and trying to put her shoulders back. “No. Come to think of it, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll call Bud Milner in the morning, have him take a look at what we can do legally, but nothing good’s going to come from talking about it now”—she lowers her voice and tips her head up to the ceiling—“especially with Cricket just upstairs.”

  “Oh my Lord in Heaven,” I say.

  She’s avoiding my eyes. She’s concentrating hard on the balled-up napkin she still has in her hand. Wait a second. Now she’s back to fiddling with those dang salt and pepper shakers. She’s studiously avoiding my eyes. I know what this is …

  “Please tell me this is not what I think it is,” I say.

  “Now hang on there a second,” she says, pausing with her game of dancing Lucy and Ricky around as if she is seven years old to glance up in case I’m bluffing. “Before you go jumping to conclusions just hang on there.”

  “Oh my good Lord in Heaven, it is what I think it is.”

  “Shhhh! Hush. Honor, now don’t you be taking on the weight of the world,” she whispers. “It’s not what you think.”

  Lucy-as-Charlie tips over and salt fans out from her bowler hat.

  “So you’re telling me it’s not Hunter,” I lower my voice to ask her.

  “Shhhhh. Stop it,” she hisses.

  My younger brother, Hunter, is the black sheep and he relishes every minute of it. He lives in Nevada, hot-wires Camaros, blows all his money on slots in Vegas, calls and says he’s broke, yet somehow always finds enough cash to keep up the cocaine habit he swears he doesn’t have. Hunter’s the kind of guy who probably nurses a host of sexually transmitted diseases. The kind of guy who makes a beer run with your money and pockets the change. This makes perfect sense. Mother is blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to Hunter. I wouldn’t put it past her to send him the remainder of the money my daddy left her when he died plus her Social Security checks—all he’d have had to do was tell her he was in trouble, and she’d do anything to help him.

  “Okay fine, but just tell me this.” I scrape my chair over so now it’s next to hers at the kitchen table, and I whisper, “Is it Hunter? Mom, did you take out a new mortgage to give money to Hunter?”

  She hand-sweeps the salt off the table and picks Lucy up, tipping her side to side.

  And now I know. It is indeed my brother who has pretty much bankrupted our mother, sending us all into the street. I take a deep cleansing breath and remind myself you catch more flies with honey.

  “Well, did you call him yet? Have you told my dear brother about this eviction notice?”

  Mom gets a faraway look in her eye and says, “No I haven’t told Hunter and I don’t plan to.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s got enough to worry about,” she says, “and I don’t want him worrying over me. I don’t want you telling him, you hear me? Do not tell Hunter. Poor boy is struggling worse than me—we should really be focusing on him now.”

  I now know what Oprah means by aha moment because I do believe I’m having one now. Suddenly it all makes sense. I lower my head into my hands and take another deep breath. I open my mouth and just before words come out a tiny voice inside me says Walk away. Don’t get sucked in. Let it go. Walk away. Of course I won’t walk away—I wish I could but it’s my family we’re talking about so walking away isn’t an option. But still.

  “Mom? How much have you been sending Hunter? Look at me.”

  “He’s my son and I don’t have to check with you on how to raise my boy,” she says.

  “Look, Mom, just tell me so I can know what I’m dealing with here. How much have you sent him?”

  “I don’t know and it’s none of your business anyway. Stop meddling.”

  “So he’s back on coke now,” I say, trying to control my temper. “You’ve been paying for his drug habit, Mom, you know that? You have. That or his goddamn, sorry, his gosh-darn gambling problem.”

  “People were after him, Honor! Scary pe
ople! With guns! I would have done the same for you, missy, and you know it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. “Sure they were. Because he’s a gambling addict, Mom. He probably owes a dozen people money. And he knows he can manipulate you into giving him whatever he needs.”

  “He does not manipulate me and I don’t want to hear you going on about your brother. If I want to send my son money I will, simple as that.”

  “Okay okay okay,” I say. After all this time I know which battles to fight and this is a losing one if I’ve ever seen it. “Fine. But no more of that now, all right? You need every red cent that comes in to you and then some. I’ve just got to think about the then some part of the equation.”

  Ticking down an invisible list of ways to make fast money isn’t much help. Short of winning American Idol or becoming a prostitute, I’ve got exactly zero prospects. Then again, hookers make a lot of money. The high-end ones, I mean. Those escorts make a killing I bet. I would never in a million years become an escort, but it’s something. A Plan B. A Doomsday Plan.

  I may be a mess, but at least I didn’t bleed my mother dry when Eddie and I were facing our financial crisis a couple of years ago. We dealt with it like adults, unlike some people. Yes, it was a terrible blow to have to sell the house, but what else were we going to do to get out from under the suffocating mountain of unpaid medical bills we were left with after Caroline died? And yes, it was depressing to realize that every last cent we made off the sale went toward erasing our debt, but in life you’ve got to make sacrifices, not that Hunter would know anything about those. Cricket and I first moved into a tiny, cheap two-bedroom condo in a development so new the saplings were still sitting in their burlaped root-balls, unplanted and already wilting the day we got there. It was a short-term lease affordable only because the developer was an old friend of Ed’s from grade school. He gave us a “friends and family” discount until we could figure out our next move. I’ll say this for him, Ed wouldn’t even hear about taking the deal for himself. Instead he bunked at the station house for a while and finally ended up renting a halfway decent one-bedroom apartment in a soot-colored building not far from the “sad” section of town that was his beat. Once our lease ran out Cricket and I moved in with Mother, which, again, wouldn’t have been my first choice in life but I can look myself in the mirror at night knowing I took care of my responsibilities without putting my mother in the poorhouse. Hunter? The only mirror he’s looking into has white powdered lines on it. So, once again, I’ve got to be the responsible one. I’ve got to take care of business. Just like Elvis. TCB. He had that painted on one of the walls in Graceland: TCB for “taking care of business.”