Ain't No Sunshine (12 page)

How was I going to tell her?  I didn't know if I could say it out loud. I finally just blurted it out.

"You're my sister!"

"What are you talking about?  That's impossible." She let go of me and scooted away.

"My father is your father.  He had an affair with your mother.  We're half brother and sister."

She stared at me with her mouth agape, as if trying to process the information. She finally stood and turned away. I followed suit and tried to put my hand on her shoulder. She brushed it away.

"I'm sorry, Ruthie. I didn't want to tell you. I thought I could move on without you knowing, but seeing you -"

Suddenly, she turned around and slapped me again. "How dare you?" she said. "I am
not
that man's child." She started to storm away.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to me. "It's the truth."

"You're pathetic, Stephen. Just admit you're too scared. Admit you don't love me enough. I hate you!" She struggled loose and ran away.

How could she think I didn't love her? That hurt worse than the slap. Maybe it was better if she hated me. Maybe that would make it easier for me to move on and forget her.

The sound of sirens always struck fear in my soul. I was always afraid the sirens would be for my mother or me. With my breath caught in my throat, I peered out of my window and saw the ambulance tearing down my driveway. But it didn't stop at my house. It kept going toward Ruthie's.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the back door. What if something had happened to her? We hadn't spoken since that day in the woods three weeks ago. She said she hated me and made no attempt to prove otherwise. There were no knowing glances between us and no secret meetings in the library.
Only cold stares or complete ambivalence.
I tried to pretend it didn't bother me.  I tried to pretend that my time with Ruthie was just a phase I would grow out of. But deep down, I knew it was more.

Leaves crunched beneath my bare feet as I ran toward her cottage. When I got there, they were loading a gurney onto the ambulance. The body on it was covered with a sheet - a sure sign of death. I think my heart momentarily stopped.

"Sorry for your loss, Ruthie," someone said.

I turned and saw her sitting on the steps in front of her house. I could breathe again.

Ruthie nodded numbly while staring straight ahead. She seemed frozen in place as the ambulance slowly made its way down the hill toward the main road.

I stared at her in silence for a moment. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to reach out and stroke her curly brown hair. But I wasn't sure if I could,
knowing
what I knew. I wasn't sure if she would let me.

Slowly, forcing one foot at a time to move, I walked toward the porch. I sat next to her on the steps, the way I used to do when we were children. I remembered the countless times she had doctored my wounds there. She always took care of me. Now it was my turn to take care of her and I couldn't.

"My grandmother's dead," she said after a few moments, still staring into space.

"I know." I lifted my hand to place it on her shoulder and paused. I put my hand back on my leg. How was a brother supposed to touch his sister? I didn't know. I thought it best not to touch her at all.

We sat in silence as I racked my brain, trying to figure out a way to comfort her. There was nothing I could say. Nothing I could do but sit there. Hopefully, that was enough to let her know that I would always be there for her.

"It's true, isn't it?" she said finally.

"What is?"

"He's my father."

I closed my eyes tightly to hold back the tears that instantly formed. I nodded.

"Last week my grandmother started coughing and didn't stop. I knew she was going to die. I started going through all the documents I could find, trying to figure out –”

She stopped abruptly and put her head in her hands. Then she took a deep breath and said, "He's my legal guardian. Always has been." She lifted her head at stared at the same spot of nothingness.
"Why in the world would he want custody of a little nigger girl unless I was
his
little nigger girl?"

"Ruthie, don't talk like that."

She stood and turned toward me.
"Why not?
Why the hell not? What does it matter? What am I supposed to do, Stephen?"

I stood as well and reached for her. She spun away from me.

"I feel like I'm trapped in some sort of nightmare and I can't wake up," she said, digging her fingers into her scalp. "Just tell me this isn't real. Tell me we're not brother and sister. Tell me I'm not completely alone in the world. Tell me you love me and we'll be together forever."

I folded her into my arms and let her cry on my chest. I couldn't tell her any of that. I did love her, but what
good
would it have done to tell her that?

***

"I've asked Ruthie to move in with us," my father said the next night at dinner.

I was too stunned to respond, so I just stared at him.

"She's my daughter and she should be with her family," he continued. "She should be with me, her father. There's no need for her to live alone in that cottage."

I couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. Was he completely delusional? What was all this talk about family?

"She can stay in Matthew's old room."

My stomach knotted. This situation was getting more and more twisted. How was I supposed to live in the same house with the woman I loved, who also happened to be my sister? Not only that, but she was to sleep in my dead brother's room?

"How can you be so insensitive?" I heard the words spoken in my own voice, but somehow I didn't recognize that I had said them until I saw my father's face.

I couldn't think of a worse torture. It was bad enough knowing she was just a short walk away at her cottage. Having her in the same house with me, with just a wall separating us, would be unbearable.

Thankfully, my mother sensed my anxiety.

"What will people think?" she said, not lifting her eyes from her plate.

Was it possible that my father hadn't even considered the scandal this would cause? My father opened his mouth to dispute my mother, but nothing came out. Instead, he silently left the table and went to his room. That was the last we heard of that idea.

"You have a phone call," my mother said a week later as I was lying in bed.  I thought maybe it was Julius wanting to get together to play ball or something.

"I'm not here."  I wasn't ready to reenter the world yet. It had been a month since my disastrous attempt to go back to school. I was probably flunking out. I didn’t care. I knew my father would figure out some way to force my teachers to pass me. I had spent so much of the past two months in bed that I had forgotten how to interact with people. I hadn’t even seen my parents since my father’s ridiculous request to let Ruthie move in with us a week ago. I was falling apart.

"It sounds important," she continued.

"Take a message."  My mother hesitated a moment, trying to figure out something to say to get me out of bed.  Apparently, nothing came to her because she just turned around and left.  A few minutes later she came back.

"He won't leave a message.  He says he really needs to talk to you."  Annoyed, I threw my blanket off and tossed my legs over the side of the bed.  It took more energy than I thought and I fell back down.  My mother reached out to steady me, but I swatted her arm away.  I felt lightheaded and dizzy from too much sleep and not enough food.  I had to brace myself on my dresser for a while before I had the strength to make it all the way to the living room to pick up the phone.

"What," I said flatly when I finally made it.

"Stephen, you need to get down to Paul Morrison's house now."  I couldn't believe Julius had gotten me out of bed to invite me to a party.  Was that what was so important? 
And a party at Paul's house, no less.
  I hated that guy.  I couldn't think of one reason why I would ever need to step foot in his house.

"Julius, I'm sick.  I think I'm
gettin
' the flu or
somethin
'.  Maybe next weekend -"

"It's Ruthie," he interrupted me.  "Get here, now."

I dropped the phone and looked for my keys.  I hadn't driven anywhere in weeks so I had no idea where they could be.  I finally found them on top of the refrigerator and dashed out the door.  It wasn't until I was sitting behind the wheel that I realized I wasn't wearing a shirt, but I didn't care.  Ruthie was in trouble.  She needed me.

When I got to Paul's house, Julius was waiting for me on the curb.

"What took you so long?"

"Where is she?  What's wrong?"

"Damn, Stephen, what happened to you?" he asked when he saw the bruises on my chest.

"I said, ‘where is she?’"  I grabbed Julius by the collar.  I was losing my patience with him.  If Ruthie was in trouble, I didn't want to waste time with irrelevant questions.

"Calm down.  She's inside."

"What's wrong with her?"

"She's drunk.  She's not acting like herself.  I was afraid something might happen to her."  I let go of him and looked around.  There were cars everywhere.  It was one of Paul's famous parties that usually ended with a police raid and several people going to jail on possession charges.  This was not Ruthie's type of party.  How did she get involved with these people?

"She wouldn't listen to me.  That girl has a wild side I never knew about," Julius said.  I gave him a fierce look before he went any further.  I didn't want to know the details of what she had done tonight.

I was marching up towards the front door, intent on taking Ruthie home, when Julius grabbed my arm.  "Wait a minute, Stephen.  You can't just go barging in there like some sort of barbarian, throw her over your shoulder and run out.  You
gotta
play it cool.  Here, take my jacket."  I put on his jacket and flipped up the collar.  I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to calm down.  It didn't really matter, though.  When I got inside the house, most of the people were passed out.  The rest were too drunk to pay much attention to me.

The house was completely trashed and smelled of beer and vomit.  Paul was fairly wealthy, so it struck me as odd that he would let people destroy his house like this.  But I really didn't care about Paul or his house right now.  I had to find Ruthie.  I made my way through the living room, the den, the kitchen, stepping over bottles, cans and people -- still no sign of her.  Julius and I started opening bedroom doors and glancing in, but I was really hoping not to find her in any of them.  Behind each door was a progressively worse scenario: rooms filled with smoke or beds filled with naked bodies.  It took only a few seconds to determine that Ruthie wasn't in any of these rooms.  Most of the occupants were white.  The only black people I'd seen at the party at all were Julius, Anthony Everson, and three black girls whose names I couldn't think of.

After circling the house three times, Julius wanted to give up.

"Maybe she caught a ride home," he said.

"I have to be sure." I headed outside toward my truck. I saw Ruthie down the street, making out with Bruce Connelly against his car. My heart raced and ached. I knew she had to move on. Would I ever get used to seeing her with other men?