What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (28 page)

Clifford clears his throat and says he can hold off a little while but not too long, and instead of asking him to clarify the amount of time I decide it’s better this way. Down the road I can refer to this vague answer if the screws start to turn before we come up with a solution. Clifford’s clammy hand bends on contact without sliding all the way into the V of mine, turning our handshake into a prissy half shake with only fingers touching, not the traditional kind where thumbs meet and palms press together in a clean grip. Poor Clifford.

The only other customer in the bank is an overweight woman in an electric wheelchair that has a mini American flag attached to the back and is plastered with ethical bumper stickers encouraging people to forgo meat, to vote, to drive slowly, to take one day at a time. Centered among them is a yellow diamond-shaped warning that she brakes for aliens. Then I notice a mop-headed dog sitting patiently in a towel-lined front basket. Wearing a sailor’s cap.
It could be worse: I could have a dog wearing a jaunty sailor’s cap
.

My mother has no money. My mother is in deep debt.

We are living back home in a house that will be foreclosed on.

We are in big trouble.

Yet here I am, starting the car, cranking the AC, going back to the memory of Eddie holding Carrie and sobbing three-year-old tears. Here I am, turning onto Elm Avenue, smiling at the thought of him pulling me close, holding on to me like he used to, years ago, back when we were dating and being separated even for one day felt like torture.

The irony isn’t lost on me: everything around us is falling apart but our family—Ed’s and mine—feels like … I can’t let myself even think it, but maybe I’ll get it out of my system now, while I’m alone. This ridiculous idea. Maybe if I say it out loud I’ll realize how ludicrous it is and then I can refocus on fixing this ever-growing mess. So here it is:

For some reason, while everything around us is falling apart, our little family is coming back together.

There. I said it. But now that I have, it doesn’t seem so ridiculous at all. We’re healing, Eddie, Cricket, and I. And I know why.

I used to tell myself (and Cricket) that sometimes when parents bury a child they’re so broken nothing can put them back together again. They’re Humpty Dumpty parents, I’d say. But then I went to Wendy’s and found that troubled little girl bearing such an uncanny resemblance to our pain it was impossible to ignore. Standing there with her hand in a bowl of croutons, for goodness’ sake, was our missing link. We need that child as much as she needs us. And while I’m on a roll I might as well admit it: I want to patch things up with Eddie, dammit. I want him back. I want
us
back. But right now we all need to have a roof over our heads, so I’ve got to focus on nuts and bolts.

I step on the gas and turn up Rascal Flatts on the radio. Look out, Mother, here I come.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Carrie

By now I’m real good at fastening a seat belt. I say
hey
to Cricket and Mrs. Ford and strap myself in, easy as pie. Mrs. Ford asks me again if she can meet my momma and how did I sleep and am I hungry. She turns on the radio and I lean over to whisper with Cricket. Just like me and Emma used to do. We’d whisper with each other even when we didn’t need to keep quiet just because it was fun. Sometimes we’d whisper in codes, like saying ever-thing in opposites (“I’m
not
even the teensiest bit hungry” or “I
loved
school today”) or saying every other word backward (“I love
stibbar
”). Me and Cricket should do a game like that of our own, come to think of it.

“I had the freakiest dream last night,” Cricket whispers to me.

“About what?” I whisper back.

“That’s the thing,” she says. “I don’t remember and when I try to remember I almost do but then it’s gone. I hate when that happens! Oh-Em-Gee we have got to play Tetris when we get home—I just did my first T-spin and I’m, like, obsessed with it now. Don’t
worry, I’ll show you. It’s actually not that hard once you get the hang of it.”

When we get to the house Miss Chaplin shows me some more Charlie Chaplin stuff. She makes a big deal over some award he won for a movie he did called
The Circus
, only the statue is embarrassing to look at because it’s a naked man. She says it’s an
exact replica
of the real thing and while she’s talking I want to tell her she’s holding it right where his private parts are but decide against it at the last minute. Then Cricket finally says
let’s go up
.

We’re about to settle in at her desk where I now have my very own place to sit. Cricket brought in a folding chair Miss Chaplin had in some closet
for overflow
and a few days ago we put a couple of
throw pillows
on it to make me taller and moved it right alongside hers so we can both share the desk and I can see the computer better. Cricket’s as great about sharing as Emma.

“Actually, first I have to go pee because once I start playing Tetris I’ll never get up,” Cricket says, already halfway out the door of her room. “I’ll be right back.”

“ ’Kay,” I say, looking around, picking up a cute teddy bear wearing a raincoat and hat. I fold his stiff arms to make like he’s typing on the computer.
Dum-dee-dum-dee
 …

All of a sudden the computer screen goes from being black (I thought it was turned off) to showing a picture of a newspaper with my daddy’s face right there on the front page!

LOCAL MAN MURDERED: POLICE QUESTION LOVER’S JEALOUS HUSBAND
.

The teddy bear tumbles to the floor. I stare at the picture in shock, my belly twisting into a knot, my head exploding—Cricket knows my daddy’s dead! She knows I lied! Did she tell her mother and Miss Chaplin she caught me in a lie? And where’d that picture of Daddy come from? I never saw it before. What’d they say about him in the newspaper? I tiptoe to the door to look down the hall. The bathroom door’s still closed so I’ve got time to try to get the picture to go away so she won’t know I know she knows. Maybe I
can confess before she calls me out so she doesn’t hate me. But how do I turn the picture off? I’m trying to find the On/Off button when she comes back in and catches me looking wild-eyed and guilty as sin.

“Oh, jeez, um, I’m, I mean,” she stammers, hurries over, and presses something so my daddy disappears. “I was going to tell you I swear. I guess I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”

“I’m real sorry I lied to you,” I say, hanging my head because I’m so ashamed and saying it out loud makes me feel even worse. “I’m really
really
sorry, Cricket. I’ll just go down and see if your mom can give me a ride back and you won’t have to see me again.”

Now I know what they mean by a broken heart. Mine feels like it was made of glass and someone dropped it, smashing it to pieces. But then Cricket says, “Wait, what?” and puts her hand on my shoulder to keep me in my chair when I get up to leave. “You’re not going anywhere! I was just about to say
I’m
sorry. I snooped around behind your back but I swear it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you. When we Googled your mom and dad the other day that weird headline caught my eye and I made a mental note to go back and check it out after we looked at the yearbook but I forgot and last night I was looking in my history for another link to something totally different and when I saw the Google search I remembered there’d been some reason I wanted to go back. That’s how this came up.”

I understand almost none of what she’s saying but I can tell she’s feeling guilty.

“Can I ask you something?” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“I’m not asking to make you feel bad but … I mean, why didn’t you want to tell me about your dad being dead? It’s not like it was your fault or anything. Why’d you tell me all that about your parents getting remarried and stuff?”

She kicks off her flip-flops and climbs onto the bed, settling
Indian-style up by her fluffy pillows, waiting on me to answer. I have to come clean. Now’s the time I have to come clean. I know that. But knowing it don’t make it any easier. I get up from my desk chair and climb up to join her on the bed.

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you,” I say. “Something worse.”

I take in a deep breath and say the words as I’m blowing it out because if I don’t do it now I’m scared I might chicken out altogether.

“I had a sister,” I say. “I had a sister and her name was Emma.”

Cricket cocks her head to the side and wrinkles show up between her eyebrows. “But … how come you never said?” she asks. “I mean, why didn’t you ever mention it before? Did she die? You said you
had
a sister …”

“Sorry I didn’t tell y’all,” I say, feeling butterflies in my belly, “but it’s more than just
I had a sister
and I didn’t know how to explain it and then I worried y’all would think I’m crazy and not want me to come over here again plus then with my daddy being dead it all sounds made-up and weird and I thought you wouldn’t want to be friends anymore …”

I trail off because I start crying. Cricket reaches down to the foot of the bed where I’m sitting and touches my leg, something I bet her mom would do if she was here. It still takes getting used to, the way they touch each other all the time in this family, hugging, patting, Cricket drapes herself all over her momma—and her momma doesn’t even mind!

“Carrie, it’s totally okay,” Cricket says, straightening back up, “and just so you know, no way would we think you’re crazy—that’s ridiculous! And no way will we ever not want you to be here. Are you kidding me? Let’s pinkie-swear so I can promise you that, okay?”

I smile through my tears and we hook our pinkies together and you know what? That does make me feel a little better.

“So tell me,” she says.

Before I start back up again, there’s one other thing that’s been bothering me so much I don’t even let myself
think
on it anymore much less write in my notebook about it.

“If I tell you,” I say real slow because I almost cain’t say the next words, “um, if I tell you and my momma finds out? If she finds out I said anything at all she’ll have me sent away.”

“Sent away?” Cricket’s eyes get big. “What’s that mean,
sent away
? Like, to live with relatives?”

“No no. Sent away to the loony bin for kids where they can lock you up forever if your parents say to. And Momma would definitely say for them to lock me up if she finds out I told you all I’m about to tell you.”

“Okay, first of all there’s no such thing as a
loony bin for kids
,” Cricket says. She looks sure about that but how does she know? “And second of all, I swear I won’t tell anyone what you tell me so your mom won’t know.”

I hold out my pinkie again for her to promise and she does so I keep going.

“Emma’s my baby sister,” I say, not knowing where else to start. “She’s opposite of me. She had hair near-white blond, and it was tangled most of the time because she hated combing it. She was real little with tiny bird bones. I could make a finger bracelet around her wrist and still have my fingertip to spare. Her eyes turned the color green when she was mad but normally they were the pale blue color of this robin’s eggshell we found one springtime.

“Back when I used to go to school my clothes fit right and if they didn’t Momma would take us to our neighbor’s house to get hand-me-downs from Maisey Wells, who was a few years older than me and
grew like a weed
. Her mama called ever-one
sugar
and said Maisey didn’t mind letting me have her old clothes but I know for a fact she did mind. A lot. She would act all nice in front
of grown-ups but then she’d tell ever-one at school we were poor white trash. Anyway, Emma being so much littler than me, she went around in nothing but a nappy. Momma said there was no sense buying her baby clothes when she’d outgrow them in five minutes and also in the hot summer Emma was happier just being naked. And that’s another thing: Momma didn’t mind talking about Emma back then when she was a little baby. She didn’t mind hearing Emma’s name at all. But then I wasn’t to say the name Emma ever again. That’s how it is now. I cain’t ever talk about Emma or even say her name.”

“Wait wait wait hold up. Where is Emma now?” Cricket asks.

I don’t know how to answer that so I look down without saying anything.

“Carrie? Where’s your sister now?”

I take another deep breath—this is harder to explain than I thought.

“Well, see, that’s the thing,” I say. My mouth gets dry, which is probably on account of me being at the tricky part. “Momma said—she still says—there never was an Emma. Momma says I made her up out of thin air after—well, um, after …”

“After your dad died?”

I’d been looking down at my hands but when she says that my head snaps up like Pinocchio’s father lifted an invisible string on the top of it, to see how she said it. Like, did she have a mad look on her face or was she making fun of my stupid lying? But she was just … Cricket. She was saying the words out loud so I wouldn’t have to.

“I’m really sorry I lied to you about that,” I tell her again.

“Oh-Em-Gee, it’s totally okay,” she says, batting away my words like they were flies. And then she pauses, which she never does once she’s started talking. She picks up a stuffed giraffe and hugs it close, nuzzling its spotted neck. “You know, for a long time after my sister died I lied when I met anyone new. Anyone who
didn’t know. I’d tell them I had a sister and that she went away to boarding school. If it was summer I’d say she was at sleepaway camp. I made up whole long stories about what she was doing there, her activities and stuff. So don’t worry, I lied too. But wait, so, your mom says you made up that you had a sister because you were so sad your dad died?”

“Yeah. Momma says she felt sorry for me having no daddy so she
humored
me for a while and let me have an invisible friend—that’s what she called Emma. My
invisible friend
. But then I kept talking about Emma and soon—this is the part where you’ll say I’m crazy—but soon I got to where I just believed Emma
was
real. I cain’t explain it good but I saw her, talked to her, played with her. Ever-thing. Most times I felt like Emma was all I had going for me, you know? You wouldn’t know, actually. You got the best family in the world and loads of friends and all.”