Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters (17 page)

The Winter’s Tale

MY LUCK CHANGED IN EARLY SEPTEMBER.

My friend Lula was showing me and Aisha her new house in Owings Mills. Her parents built it from scratch, which fascinated me since the only house I’ve ever lived in is our house, which is just
there
and has been there forever, take it or leave it. But Lula actually got to tell the architect what kind of room she wanted, which way the windows should face and what the closets should look like and where the reading nook should be. The house wasn’t quite finished so the contractors were still puttering around in their muddy boots, their tools clanking against their belts.

We were wandering around the second floor. Lula had just showed us her parents’ bedroom suite. I was opening doors and peeking into places while Lula and Aisha discussed the possible uses of her mother’s dressing room. Scattered through the house were odd nooks for all kinds of strange purposes like laundry-folding and wine storage and scrapbooking.

I opened a door at the end of the hall and stared into total darkness. “What’s in here?” I asked, and felt along the wall for a light switch. I couldn’t find one, so I took a step into the room…
but my foot never touched the floor. It landed on nothing, just air, and I fell into the darkness. It was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me…up till then. A lot of scarier things have happened since.

For one endless second I wondered how far I would fall—I had no idea—and what it would feel like when I landed. What would I land on? Would it hurt? Would I break all my bones? Be impaled on a spike?

I seemed to be falling forever, into a bottomless pit.

And then I landed on my back, on something scratchy but cushiony. I took a moment to catch my breath. Lula was screaming. I could see her about ten feet above me, framed in the light from the doorway. Wherever I was, it was dark.

“I’m okay!” I called up without thinking. I wasn’t sure I was okay, but I didn’t feel any pain. I was lying on some prickly stuff. I felt my way to my feet. What was around me? Were there more holes in the floor to watch out for? I didn’t want to fall again. I’d been lucky to have landed on whatever that prickly stuff was.

“Oh my God, Sassy!” Lula cried. “Can you get out of there?”

I reached for the door overhead but it was too high. I was stuck at the bottom of some kind of weird room, ten feet below the door. I wasn’t hurt, except for the little prickly things stuck in my skin. “What is this stuff?” I asked. I felt disoriented and confused.

Aisha screamed for help. A worker appeared beside her. “What happened?” he said. “Someone fell down there?”

Lula pointed down at me hysterically. “Did you break anything?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Is there a light?”

“It hasn’t been hooked up yet,” the worker said. “I’ll get a ladder. Be right back.”

“What is this place?” I asked Lula.

“I don’t know,” Lula said. “But I don’t like having it in my house. It’s like a horror pit or something.”

The worker returned. “Step back,” he said. He set a ladder down on the floor and held it steady. “Climb on out of there.”

I clutched the ladder and climbed out of the dark pit. Lula grabbed me. “Oh my God, Sassy, are you okay? What’s this pink stuff stuck to your clothes?”

“We stored the extra fiberglass down there,” the worker said. “Lucky for you.” That’s what had cushioned my fall. “How’d you manage to get stuck down there?”

“I opened the door and reached in to turn on the light,” I explained. “And there was no floor!”

The worker laughed as if this were the craziest thing he’d ever heard. “Do you always walk into strange rooms without checking to see if there’s a floor first?”

“Do you always build rooms with no floors in them?” I shot back. Who expects a room to have no floor in it? I felt outraged by his laughter. What I had done wasn’t so foolish. In all my fifteen years I had never come across a floorless room before.

“You should put a warning sign on that door,” Lula said. “It’s dangerous.”

“You’re right,” the worker said. “I’m sorry. We weren’t expecting visitors today.” But even though he said that, he didn’t seem sorry. He seemed like he thought I was some kind of idiot. “Are
you hurt, miss? Check all your bones. Any bruises? Do you need to go to the emergency room?”

I shook out my hands, my arms, my legs, but everything was fine, except for the prickly fiberglass in my skin and a quarter-sized bruise on my thigh. But that might have been there before; I couldn’t remember. “No, I’m okay.”

“Lucky girl.”

He’s right: I was lucky. That was the beginning of my strange period of luck. It lasted until it ran out.

“I still don’t get it,” Jane said. “Why didn’t the room have a floor in it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do I look different?”

We were camped on Norrie’s bed, up in the Tower Room. I stretched out my neck to give them a clearer view of my face so they could tell me if they’d noticed any changes.

“No,” Jane said. “You look dorky as ever.”

“You’ve still got a little fiberglass in your hair.” Norrie plucked at me like a mother chimp picking nits off her baby. “Why would you look different?”

“I feel different,” I said. “Like something happened to me. Like maybe I fell through a hole in the space-time continuum or something.”

They both laughed. I should have known they would. But I really did feel like something about me had changed. I had a rubbery, invincible feeling. Strong, like nothing could hurt me.

“Now that you say that, I do see something different about you,” Jane said. “Your eyes are all crossed funny…and your
ears are growing…your giant nostrils are getting bigger…Sassy, you’re turning into a monster!”

“Ha-ha, so hilarious,” I said. I’m self-conscious about my giant flaring nostrils. Once, Sully said if I flapped them hard enough, I could use them to fly.

We heard a thumping up the stairs and paused to see who dared to come up and spy on us. Ginger hardly ever bothers, but sometimes Miss Maura or Daddy-o tries to eavesdrop on us.

“Bare feet,” Norrie said, cocking her ear. “It’s only Takey.” A few seconds later Takey’s chubby shadow darkened her doorway. He pointed his Super Soaker at us.

“All right, you girls,” he said in a low threatening voice. “Everybody come downstairs with me. Do as I say and no one gets hurt.”

“Why should we?” Jane asked.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll blow you to kingdom come,” he said, still using his mean gangster voice.

“Bubbles has a new trick and he wants us to see it,” I translated.

“We’ve been practicing,” Takey said. “Come downstairs.”

We marched at squirt-gunpoint down to Takey’s room where his goldfish, Bubbles, lived in a big tank. Takey loved Bubbles. Last year for his birthday I bought him a fish-training kit. It came with a set of tiny hoops and poles and a little plastic basketball and basketball net, and some fish flakes and frozen bloodworms as treats. Takey taught Bubbles to swim through the hoops and long tubes, to limbo under a pole, to zigzag through an obstacle course, and push a basketball into a basket with his
nose. Our big goal was to get him to jump through a hoop in the air, like a dolphin. Takey was hoping to show everyone this big trick at the Christmas Eve party.

I never realized before how smart fish are. Bubbles was just like a dog. He wanted food, and if you dangled food in front of him, he’d do anything within the power of his little fish body. It was fun to watch, but it made me sad too. There he was, trapped in his tank, with nothing better to do than entertain us in exchange for fish flakes. It was not much of a life.

“Let’s see this miracle,” Jane said.

Takey dropped his squirt gun and took a bow, like a magician. “For his first trick, Bubbles shoots a basketball.”

“We’ve already seen that one,” Jane said.

Norrie elbowed her in the ribs. “But we’d love to watch it again.”

“Yes, we’d
love
to watch it again,” Jane said.

The tiny basketball net was set up at one end of the tank. Takey held a bit of fish food on a stick at the surface of the water. Bubbles swam up and nibbled the food. Then Takey dropped the little plastic basketball into the water. Bubbles nosed the basketball down the tank toward the net. At the net, Takey waggled another bit of food at him and Bubbles pushed the ball into the basket.

“He shoots, he scores!” Takey cried. We clapped. He fed Bubbles more food as a reward.

“And now, for the most death-defying trick ever performed by a goldfish,” Takey said. “The amazing Ring of Fire!”

We clapped again. Takey held up a small hoop decorated with plastic flames taken from Jane’s old Hot Wheels set. Using clear
nylon fishing line, he tied the hoop so it dangled just above the water in the middle of Bubbles’s tank. He prepped the stick with plenty of food.

“Drumroll, please.”

I rapped out a drumroll on the table. Takey held out some food, and Bubbles jumped out of the water to snatch it off the stick. Then Takey reloaded the food stick and held it through the hoop. Bubbles jumped up and, following the food, dove through the hoop. Norrie gasped and we all applauded vigorously.

“Ta-da!” Takey took a low bow. I squeezed him and gave him a kiss.

“You did it!”

“Thank you. Thank you.” He solemnly fed Bubbles his reward.

“That fish is going to get fat,” Jane said.

That night in bed I lay on my back and blinked in the darkness. A streetlight glowed through the crack in my curtains. The house made a low hum, the sound of its guts working—water running through the pipes as someone brushed her teeth or flushed the toilet, the purr of the dishwasher, the clicking of clocks. Outside in the yard, the last crickets of summer sang
good-bye, good-bye.
A car drove slowly down the street, its headlights bleaching the wall of my room.

Just beyond our little domain I could hear the traffic, the cars rushing down busier streets, zooming along the expressway toward the gigantic hive of the city—the buzzing, screaming, screeching, squalling city.

Then I heard sirens in the distance and a rumble in the sky, the city moving toward me, getting closer and louder, heading straight for my room. The rumble passed right over our roof, the
chop chop chop
sound of a helicopter grating through the air. I peeked through the curtain and saw a searchlight scour the yards and alleys behind the houses on our street. The noise faded and got loud again, circling the neighborhood. A police chopper. The sirens screamed up Charles Street, then disappeared. More sirens followed it.
Chop chop chop
overhead.

Our neighborhood was patrolled by police choppers all summer long, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sometimes I think they’re spying on us. But there seemed to be more sirens than usual, and that night I closed my eyes and wondered
What’s going on out there?
just before I fell asleep.

WHEN I WENT DOWN TO THE KITCHEN FOR BREAKFAST THE
next morning, Miss Maura sat riveted to a breaking news story on TV while Takey calmly slurped a bowl of Cheerios and looked at a Casper comic book. I fixed myself a plate of eggs from the pan warming on the stove and sat next to Miss Maura.

“What’s going on? I heard sirens last night.”

“Some nutjob’s holding a bunch of people hostage at the 7-Eleven on York Road,” Miss Maura reported. “He’s been in a standoff with the police all night. They don’t know how many people he’s got in there with him. The whole street’s closed off.” She shook her head, clucked, and sipped her coffee. “Imagine being stuck in a 7-Eleven with a crazed killer all night.”

“Morning, all.” Daddy-o came in dressed for work in a striped suit with a pale blue shirt and a bow tie. He poured himself some coffee before he noticed me and Miss Maura glued to the TV. “What’s all the fuss?”

“Hostage situation,” Miss Maura said. “7-Eleven. York Road.”

We ride our bikes to the York Road 7-Eleven to get Slurpees in the summer. Takey likes that old sign for the Swallow at the
Hollow, the one with the bird wearing a straw hat and a bow tie and drinking a beer. He thinks the bird looks like Daddy-o.

“Oh my.” Daddy-o leaned over to watch the news. “Everything bad happens on poor old York Road.”

“The hostages have been trapped inside the storage room in back of this 7-Eleven for almost ten hours now,” the TV reporter told us. “Police say—wait—”

There was a commotion behind the reporter, and three hostages rushed out of the store with their hands in the air. The police grabbed them and pulled them away to safety.

“It looks like the gunman has released three hostages,” the reporter said. “We don’t know how many more people are left inside, but these hostages should be able to tell us more about who the others are, who the gunman is, and what exactly he wants.”

Norrie walked in jingling her keys and headed straight for the coffee. “Come on, Sass. We’ve got to leave.”

“Wait a second. I want to see this.”

“Jane’s all ready to go. I can’t be late this morning—I’ve got a French test first period.”

She dragged me out to the car, where I turned the radio to news. The just-escaped hostages had told the police what was going on inside the 7-Eleven. A crazy guy who used to work there had gone in with a gun and forced the clerk and the customers into the storage room. He wouldn’t let them out to go to the bathroom or get water or anything. He pointed his gun at each of their heads and threatened to blow their brains out. He shot two people for no real reason, and the rest of them had to sit for hours
right next to the dead, bleeding bodies. They didn’t know what he wanted, just that he kept ranting about his girlfriend taking his baby away. The three hostages got away by tricking the gunman somehow, but they were worried about what he might do to the rest of the hostages now.

“Scary,” Norrie said.

“How is this going to help that guy get his baby back?” Jane said. “Dude’s not thinking things through.”

I tried to imagine it. I tried to imagine how bad it felt to have your baby taken away, or what it felt like when someone held a gun to your head. But my mind couldn’t hold on to those images for long. It wanted to drift toward happier thoughts.

Just as we turned into St. Maggie’s drive the radio announcer reported that the gunman had burst out of the store waving his gun and threatening to shoot. The police gunned him down. Inside the store they found four dead people.

Jane switched off the radio. “Thanks, Sassy. I’m going to be scared to get a Slurpee now. And I love Slurpees.”

“All you can think about is Slurpees?” Norrie said. “Five people just died.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Cherry-red Slurpees,” Jane said. “I won’t be able to slurp one without thinking of blood.”

“You’re so disgusting,” Norrie said.

“Yeah,” I said. She’s ruined Slurpees for me forever. I can’t get that image out of my head—the Slurpee machine dripping blood. And cherry used to be my favorite flavor.

I had history first period that morning, which was unlucky, because we were studying slavery and the Civil War. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but thinking about slavery reminded me of the 7-Eleven hostages, and I was having a hard time not thinking gruesome thoughts already. There’s so much suffering in the world that I can’t even fathom. Like, what would it really be like to be a slave? For your whole life? To live through beatings and losing the ones you love over and over again, and having no control over where or how you live…I think about these things sometimes, lying in bed at night. How would I act if I were in a concentration camp? Would I be selfish, or would I help others? How did it really feel not to have enough food to eat? How did it feel to be very sick and never get better? To have burns over half your body? To have soldiers ride through your town and kill everyone in sight?

How would I act? I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine it. I
failed
to imagine it.

Nothing truly terrible had ever happened to me.

There was that time when I was four and I sliced open my upper arm on a sharp branch while climbing a tree and I had to have stitches. The nurse told me to clench my teeth together while the doctor sewed me up. It hurt. But then the nurse gave me a lollipop for being good, and everything was okay again. When I got home, Jane was jealous of my lollipop. I still have a little scar on the soft underpart of my arm.

How does that compare to feeling cold metal against your temple and hearing a click?

I’m a lucky girl. I know that. I’m so lucky I can fall down
black holes and not get hurt. I might be the luckiest girl in the whole world.

In history class that day, Sister Martha talked about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, people running from terror and risking their lives to help the slaves escape. If I had the chance, would I risk my life to help someone? How will I ever know unless I’m tested?

Later that day, I found an answer. I went to a Community Service Committee meeting, and the senior who ran the committee, Nancy Blalock, talked about the projects she had planned for the year. Most of it was the usual stuff—clothing drives, food drives, fund-raisers for a needy kids’ summer camp. But one thing she said caught my attention. There was a tutoring center downtown for poor kids who were having trouble in school, and though it wasn’t an official St. Maggie’s activity, anyone who wanted to volunteer could. I joined the Community Service Committee and the first thing I did was volunteer to be a tutor.

“Why do you want to do that?” Lula asked me. “The tutoring center is probably some seedy place near the bus station, with fluorescent lighting and dirty bathrooms.”

“How do you know?” I said.

She shrugged. “That’s what every place downtown looks like.”

“That’s not true.” Some of the girls at St. Maggie’s are so ignorant it’s embarrassing. And I say that even though Lula’s my friend.

“Some little kid needs my help with her homework,” I told Lula. That was my cover. I did want to help someone. But I also wanted a chance to go downtown and look around by myself.

She laughed. “
Your
help? You’re terrible at homework! You’re always getting your sisters to help
you
.”

She’s right, of course. I’m hardly the brainiac of the family. I probably wouldn’t be much help to anyone. But I wanted to try.

I think you understand, Almighty. Once at tea you told us about when you were sixteen and worked as a candy striper in a hospital downtown. All you did was hand out magazines and clear away dinner trays, you said. But you must have volunteered for a reason. Maybe you had the same feeling I have—you wanted to help someone in some small way. You wanted to be useful and independent.

I don’t want to waste my life as a rich, spoiled girl. Who knows how long I have before some weirdo takes me hostage in a convenience store and kills me? Tutoring was the only useful thing I could think of that would get me out of my snow globe of a life for a little while and into the real world, where I could really test my luck.

When I got home from school that day, I decided to walk over to York Road and see what was happening at the 7-Eleven. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I thought I’d just step onto York Road and peer down the street in search of commotion.

I couldn’t see the 7-Eleven from the corner of Northway and York, but I could see police lights flashing. I started walking up York and kept going until I got to the 7-Eleven.

The store was closed and cordoned off by yellow police tape. A few police cars were parked in the lot. A woman in a trench coat talked to a uniformed cop. A truck from Eyewitness News
was parked on the street, but there was no reporter in sight. Maybe she was in the truck, resting or reapplying her makeup.

There was nothing to see, no bloodstains or anything like that, at least not on the outside. Through the broken plate-glass window I saw a big steel door behind the counter. Behind that door was the storeroom where the hostages had been held all night.

I bought a pack of gum at a newsstand across the street and headed home. I was walking down Northway when a car backed out of a driveway and hit me. That was the first time.