The Language of Sisters (7 page)

“She already tells me things,” I shot back at her, my eyes narrowed. “We don’t need you for that.”

“Nicole!” my mother exclaimed.

Sonia’s arched eyebrows rose to the middle of her forehead, tiny black birds about to take flight. “It’s all right, Joyce. We’ll just see what happens, then, shall we?” She reached out to hold Jenny’s hands in her own. After she closed her eyes, her lips began to move silently, her head wobbling in short nods, forward and back.

Jenny was quiet, staring at this woman intently. When Sonia opened her eyes, she bore her gaze into Jenny, completely focused on my sister’s face. It seemed every muscle on Sonia’s face was still; she didn’t blink, her nose didn’t wiggle, and her mouth stayed slightly open. Jenny was motionless as well, her blue eyes as open and accepting as I had ever seen them. The only sound
was the breath moving in and out of their bodies in perfect synchronicity. A translucent energy flowed between them; I was sure that if I reached out my hand I could touch it.

My mother sat on the other side of Jenny, leaning forward. She looked anxious; I could not tell if she sensed the same connection between Sonia and Jenny that I did.

Sonia still did not speak, but continued to hold Jenny’s hands, pulling them to her small chest and cradling them there like a child. This went on for several minutes; my muscles began to twitch from sitting so still. I felt invisible, as though I were intruding on some incredibly private moment. My eyes ached from focusing so intently on their interaction. Then, out of the silence, a giggle erupted from my sister, the sound of tinkling bells, happy and pure. Sonia laughed, too, finally releasing Jenny’s hands and leaning back into her chair.

My mother looked awkwardly around the room. “Umm …?”

Sonia smiled at us. “There is a name for your daughter’s disease, Joyce, but she does not know it. She wants you to know she is happy.”

“But can you heal her? Can you make her well?”

Sonia shook her head. “She’s not meant to get well. But she’s not going to die soon, either. Jenny is who she is supposed to be. She’s who God created her to be. She is His gift to you.”

My mother was silent, her hands folded tightly together as though in prayer. Disappointment radiated from her body like steam from wet pavement. “How much do we owe you?” she asked finally, her voice flat.

“I accept donations only. Whatever you feel is appropriate.”

My mother reached into her purse and slid out a dollar bill, carefully laying it flat on the table. “Ten cents a minute,” she whispered. “Better rates than the phone company. Pretty good racket you’ve got going here.” She stood, pulling Jenny with
her, and looked above my head at some unseen point. “Let’s go, Nicole.”

Sonia watched us move to the door from her chair. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed, Joyce. I did tell you how unlikely it was that Jenny could be healed. She needs your acceptance, not a cure.”

My mother shot her next words at Sonia. “Don’t tell me what my daughter needs.”

We left, and it was my mother’s turn to be silent on the drive home. Tears escaped the corners of her eyes, and she angrily wiped them away as fast as they appeared. I sat with Jenny in the backseat, holding her hand. My sister smiled a secret smile, humming and moaning happily to herself. I felt my mother’s pain but could not help thinking that Sonia had gotten it right. Jenny was exactly who she was supposed to be. It wasn’t our job to fix her. But my mother’s life was anchored to a cure. Sonia, like all the doctors and specialists who had seen Jenny before her, took that anchor and dislodged it further, leaving my mother to sail aimlessly along, a waning flicker of hope her only guide.

•  •  •

The first morning at home with Jenny it took almost an hour simply to get her dressed. Wrangling her stiff limbs into clothing was a far more difficult prospect than I had remembered. Her twisted fingers caught in odd places, bending them back and rendering from her shrieks of pain that lit panic in my stomach like a fire.

“Shit!” I exclaimed as I once again failed to get her arm through the hole of a knit shirt. We were in her yellow-painted bedroom; the contents of the two boxes of clothes I had brought home from Wellman were scattered across the bed and down onto the pale green carpet. Jenny sat precariously on the edge of
her bed as I stood over her. She was naked from the waist up and looked a little frightened of me, her eyes wide and inquiring, as though she wondered if I knew what I was doing.
I
wondered if I knew what I was doing. “What am I doing wrong?” I asked her, exasperated by my own incompetence. I tried to figure out how the hell I was ever going to get her dressed.

Mom stuck her head into the room. “Everything okay in here?” While I had gone to pick up Jenny the previous afternoon, Mom had straightened up Jenny’s old room, changing the sheets and vacuuming the rug. I had taken her industrious behavior as a sign that she was ready to help, but when Jenny and I got home, Mom disappeared into her bedroom, proclaiming she had a migraine. Jenny and I had spent the evening alone in her old room, watching
Elmo in Grouchland
until she finally fell asleep.

“Ehhh,” Jenny cried when she saw our mother. A pitiful edge tinged her voice. Her small shoulders shook uneasily; her eyes were bright.

An all too familiar feeling of inadequacy raised its ugly head in my belly. Leaving the shirt hanging around her neck, I hugged Jenny to me and glared at our mother. “Everything’s fine.”

Mom glanced around the messy room. A small set of worried wrinkles swam briefly across her forehead. She adjusted the thick brown belt she wore around an emerald green cotton dress. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got to get to work, so I guess I’ll see you girls later.” She turned to leave.

“Mom?” I called out, stopping her.

“Yes?” she said. I could almost smell her trepidation.

“I’m taking Jenny to a salon this afternoon. I thought she could use some pampering.”

Mom nodded slowly. “That sounds nice.” Her tone was careful, entirely neutral.

I stepped toward her, gesturing to Jenny. “Should I make the appointment for the three of us?” I thought of the look she had given me the other night, the hope it had held. It had taken courage to open herself that way to me; I wanted to answer her with some of my own.

Mom gave me a half smile but shook her head. “I really can’t afford to take any more time off this week.” She waved at Jenny. “Have a good day, you two,” she said. And then she was gone.

I turned to Jenny, stepping back to face her. “Well, so much for bonding with Mom, huh, Jen?” I kissed the top of my sister’s hair, then wiped my lips, trying to ignore the sting of our mother’s refusal. I felt like a child who had reached out for her mother’s hand to hold only to have it slapped away. I picked up another shirt from the pile on the bed and held it up to examine. “Okay. Back to the task at hand. The problem is these are all just too small. We need to go shopping, Sis.”

Jenny smiled, a small, hesitant gesture.

I touched her soft, pale cheek. Her skin had always been perfectly clear; I don’t think she ever had a pimple. As a teenager plagued by monthly bouts of acne, I remember asking my mother why Jenny never had a problem with it.

“Angels don’t get acne,” Mom answered lightly, as she brushed Jenny’s smooth skin with the tips of her fingers. At the time I figured the zits Jenny would have gotten if she hadn’t been such an angel were simply passed on to her demon big sister.

I shook my head at the memory, attempting to clear it from my mind. “Hold on a second,” I said to Jenny. “I’ll be right back.” I dashed down one door to my room and picked through my old dresser for a sweater. I finally found one I had worn in high school; it was too small for me now, but I hoped it would fit over Jenny’s newly expanded shape.

When I stepped back into her room, I heard a muffled cry, then saw that Jenny had fallen sideways on the bed and had her face stuck in a pile of clothes. I had forgotten that, like an infant, she needed pillows around her at all times or she would tip right over. I rushed over, lifting her as gently as I could back into a sitting position. Her eyes were glossy with panic and tears, her round cheeks flushed. She was panting, her breath hot. I brushed her dark hair back from her face and held her again. Despite her weight gain, she still felt like a child in my arms. “I’m sorry, Jen. There’s so much I’ve forgotten.”

“Ehhh … ,” she moaned lightly, rubbing her face into my chest. Her bare back was cold to my touch, so I quickly showed her the sweater.

“Let’s try this one,” I said as I carefully maneuvered her head into the new top, following with one arm at a time. The green sweater clashed a bit with the hot pink elastic-waist stretch pants I had already managed to get on over her diapers, but I wasn’t about to be picky.

I spent the rest of the morning unpacking her few belongings while she sat in a nearby chair, watching me. Her ankles were crossed, and she rocked in a small forward and back motion, her hands clenched. She seemed uncomfortable; again, I wondered if I had done the wrong thing in bringing her here. Wellman had been her home for ten years. Despite what had happened to her there, maybe she felt the same way I did: displaced, the way you feel when you drive down an unfamiliar street in a city you thought you already knew by heart. Maybe she missed her routine and the familiar faces that had surrounded her for the past ten years. I experienced a stab of guilt knowing my face was not among them.

“Do you want your things folded or hung in the closet, Jen?” I asked her, carrying on a one-sided conversation as I sorted
through the few bits of clothing she had. I was definitely going to need to find her some maternity clothes.

“Uhhn … ,” she groaned, a low, unhappy sound.

I squatted down in front of her, resting my rear on the backs of my heels. I took her callused hands in mine. “What’s wrong, hon? Are you tired?” I reached up with one hand to straighten her dark hair.

“Uhhnnn … ,” she groaned again.

“Not tired, huh?” I surmised from her tone. “Are you hungry?”

She stopped moaning and stared at me, her blue eyes round and wide.

“What do you say, Sis?” I prodded. “Do you want to eat?”

“Ahhh!” came her happy reply. We had figured this game out as children: I would ask her questions, and when I finally asked the right one, her low, negative moans would suddenly escalate into a lilting, positive exclamation.

“All right,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Let’s eat and then we’ll head down to the salon. It’s about time you and I had a sisters’ day out.”

•  •  •

The Filigree Day Spa was only a few blocks from the house, and since the cornflower sky held only the promise of a beautiful spring day, I decided to walk Jenny to her appointment. After a quick lunch, I transferred her into her wheelchair, then carefully maneuvered it out the back door and down the ramp that led into the yard.

As I pushed Jenny up the driveway to the sidewalk, I noted how the yard had been carefully tended in a way it never was when I was a child. Mom had always been too busy with Jenny to bother, and Dad hadn’t seemed to care if the lawn was overgrown
or if dandelions were the main flowering plants under the trees. But now, the enormous lilac bushes that lined the entire property appeared ready to burst, bunches of tiny and sweet lavender knots swimming in the potential of their amazing perfume. A clematis vine wove wildly through a trellis along the south side of the house; its mauve buds were swollen with life, about to give birth. The rest of the yard overflowed with other plants and flowers, most of which I couldn’t name but appreciated for their sheer abundance. As we headed down the street, I considered that perhaps with Jenny at Wellman, Mom had channeled her caretaking tendencies into the land. Or then again, maybe she had just hired a gardener.

I pushed Jenny along California Avenue, one of the main strips that ran through West Seattle. The faces of the buildings looked familiar to me; as a child I had walked this maple-tree-lined street countless times with Jenny, forever aware of the heads that turned in cars, trying to catch a glimpse of the drooling, dark-haired girl in the wheelchair. I felt the curious eyes on us now, too. I sighed as we approached the front door of the spa, wondering what it was that drew people to stare. It drove me crazy when we were younger. “Take a picture—it lasts longer,” I’d whisper under my breath. I quashed the urge to do the same now.

A light-tinkling bell announced our entrance into the spa. The night before, when getting a brush through her matted hair proved to be an impossible task, I had decided Jenny needed a trip to a professional. I had thumbed through the phone book until I found a few salons nearby, and the Filigree had been the only one that could take us both on such short notice. I explained to the woman I spoke with on the phone that Jenny had special needs but was assured that it wouldn’t be a problem. We were both getting our hair done, as well as pedicures.

The receptionist greeted us, then led us to the back of the salon, where two empty black barber chairs sat waiting. The walls were sponged in feathery terra-cotta paint, and the mirrors were all edged in scrolled black filigree, the fancy wrought-iron detail found on the buildings in New Orleans’s French Quarter. We appeared to be the only customers. “Your stylists will be right with you,” she said, then gestured toward Jenny without really looking at her. “Do you—I mean, does
she
need anything?” She was obviously uncomfortable.

“No, we’re fine,” I assured her, and she went back up front. I slid Jenny’s wheelchair in between the two barber seats and sat down next to her, smiling at her in the mirror. She appeared slightly dazed. Her eyes were glazed over and her bottom lip drooped; her hands were clenched together but motionless in her lap. “This will be fun, Jen,” I told her. “I promise.” She didn’t respond. Then I looked at my own reflection in the mirror and cringed a little. My red corkscrew curls frizzed wildly about my makeup-bare, freckled face. I usually managed to at least swipe on some lipstick, but as I’d been so focused on getting Jenny home and busy with her since, I hadn’t even showered since arriving in Seattle. I glanced around self-consciously, then gingerly lifted an arm to see if I was obviously ripe.
Not too bad
, I thought, lowering my arm and crossing my legs under the floral print skirt I’d chosen to wear. At least I’d remembered to put on deodorant.