What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (23 page)

“Hey, Carrie, can you do this?” Cricket asks, rubber-banding her mouth into an ugly position not many can imitate. Her top lip curls to the left while the bottom heads in the opposite direction.

Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter the Subject Changer. The girls proceed to a timeless competition that is as annoying as it is humorous. In the rearview mirror I watch Carrie unsuccessfully try to copy Cricket’s snarl.

“No, but can you do this?” Carrie asks, touching her nose with the tip of her tongue.

“Wow! That’s really something,” I say, smiling back at the two of them.

“Wait, can you do this?” Cricket says. “Wait wait, no, look. Wait, don’t make me laugh. Okay now.”

“Cricket, don’t fold your eyelids up like that,” I tell her, but it’s too late.

“Ew, that’s so scary looking,” Carrie says, clearly charmed. “I wish I could do that.”

“Oh wait, I’ve got a good one. Here, squeeze my hand for thirty seconds,” Cricket says. “Mom, can you time us? Okay starting … now!”

“Girls, are you hungry?”

“Mom! Time us! Thirty seconds!”

“I’m about to pass the grocery store,” I say. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Mom!”

“Cricket, I’ll time you in a second. Just tell me: are you hungry now or can y’all hang on until we get home? Carrie, honey, are you hungry?”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am,” the little voice says.

I can tell she is checking with her new best friend to see if she should be hungry or not.

“Y’all wait in the car, I’m just going to run in for two seconds. I’ll be right back. I’m leaving the car running so you have the air-conditioning on. Cricket, are you listening to me?”

“Mom, I’m paralyzing Carrie’s hand. Watch! Wait, Carrie. Don’t move your fingers until I say. Keep squeezing my hand. Keep going. That’s good …”

“Hannah Chaplin Ford, do you hear me?”

“On the count of three try to wiggle them, okay? Not yet. Not … yet …” Cricket directs Carrie.

“Cricket! I’m getting out of the car now. Wait here with Carrie, okay?”

“One … two … 
three!
Okay now, try to move your fingers.”

I unbuckle my seat belt and turn to watch Cricket beam at her
triumph. Carrie is holding her still-clenched fist out, mentally willing her own fingers to move, clearly horrified that she cannot make the connection.

“I cain’t move my fingers! Help! I cain’t move them,” she says, bursting into tears.

I had no idea this would lead to crying. I’m so glad I didn’t leave them right then. Thank goodness I have a fresh packet of Kleenex right in the glove compartment for emergencies.

“Aw, honey, shhhhh, it’s okay.” I try to reach Carrie to console her from the front seat, but the headrest is in the way so I settle on her leg. “Cricket, what did I tell you about these stupid human tricks. See what happens?”

“Carrie, look, it’s just a trick, see?”

Cricket gently takes Carrie’s hand and opens it flat.

“See?” Cricket says, looking worried and, if I’m not mistaken, kind of sisterly. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. It’s okay.”

“Cricket, don’t do any more of those silly things,” I say. “How many times have I told you to slow down and don’t overwhelm people. Here, let me get you some more tissue, sweetheart.”

“I wasn’t trying to overwhelm her, Mom, jeez! Carrie, was I overwhelming you? I didn’t mean to.”

“Don’t be silly, of course she’s not going to say yes to that,” I say. We talk at once, Cricket and I do, and I realize it can be a lot to take in. Especially for a lost little girl. “Let’s just … let’s just be quiet here for a minute, can we? Honey, let me wipe your face a little.”

Carrie flinches at first, but I’m determined. The caked makeup comes off with each swipe of the Kleenex, revealing an angry bruise above her right eye. Cricket and I both gasp.

“Oh my Lord, what
happened?
” I ask Carrie.

Now I know why she had so much makeup on.

“Answer me, honey,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking in fury. “What happened?”

I stroke Carrie’s knee until her tears come to a hiccuping end.

“Carrie, I hate that silly trick too,” I say, waiting on her to tell me about the bruise. One thing at a time. “Cricket did that to my hand a long time ago—I remember how scary it felt. I’m so sorry, honey. Does it hurt? Your hand? You all right, sweetie?”

Carrie looks in wonder at her now-recovered hand, opening and closing it as though she’s just come out of a coma, then she nods up at me.

“You need to tell me about that bruise … Well, aren’t you sweet …”

While I am talking, Caroline takes her hand that was, until a few seconds ago, immobilized, and places it on top of mine, which is still on her knee. For a breathless moment we look down as though they are disembodied, these appendages of ours. When Cricket reaches over and puts her hand on top of ours, Carrie, eyes full of wonder, finds her words.

“Y’all are the nicest people I ever met,” she whispers. “In my whole life.”

Well, that just about breaks my heart.

“Aw, honey, now you’re going to go melt my mascara right off my lashes,” I say. “It’s not hard to be nice to
you
—you’re such a sweetheart. Isn’t she, Cricket?”

And then my daughter surprises me once again.

“So what happened to your forehead?” Cricket asks her sternly.

Carrie’s hand flutters up to cover the mark and she tells us about playing catch with a kid who lives a few doors down from them at the Loveless and how since she’s no good at baseball she got
beaned
and luckily it hadn’t hit her in the eye.

“That’s what my momma said when she came rushing over,” Carrie says, “you know, when I got knocked down. She was real worried. She practically
cried
she was so worried about me.”

“Of course she was,” I say.

It does sound plausible. After all I went through with our Caroline and the Dressers, I’ve learned not to jump to conclusions too quickly.

Eileen and Whit Dresser moved to our neighborhood from Omaha soon after Caroline was diagnosed. In fact, at first I felt bad for not having the time to go over to welcome them with cookies or a bottle of wine like you’re supposed to, but back then we could barely keep up with all the phone calls we had to return and all the other things that get brushed aside when you have a sick child in and out of the hospital. Ed and I spent our days as a tag team, spelling each other so that one of us was always with Caroline. I don’t think I even laid eyes on either Dresser for their first few months on Witherall Drive. When I wasn’t at the hospital or in a doctor’s office I was picking up the slack at home or I was hunting down second opinions, researching treatment options, washing up and returning casserole dishes, or relieving my mother, who would come over to take care of poor Cricket, whom we barely saw. The Dressers were about the furthest thing from our minds.

Until we got a knock on the door one night from Child Protective Services. It was a Tuesday. I remember because Tuesdays happened to be the only nights Eddie had without the police beeper he’d been assigned. That particular night was a rare one that found all four of us under the same roof at the same time. Caroline was in between treatments. Eddie was upstairs reading to Cricket and I hollered up that I’d get the door. At that time it wasn’t uncommon for neighbors to stop by with food or a stuffed animal, so I didn’t think anything of it being late. We were a tight community there on Witherall Drive, a tree-lined cul-de-sac with a neatly planted island in the middle of the circle. In fall a neighborhood committee of gardeners planted mums around the edges; in May, impatiens. Thanks to an avid botanist a generation of neighbors ago, every spring dozens of bulbs shot two different
varieties of yellow-headed daffodils through the thawing soil. We knew ten of the ten homeowners, nine of whom were young parents of young children who rode Big Wheels and tricycles freely in the street and ran through sprinklers in summer. The tenth home belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, an elderly couple who had raised their three children in their powder blue vinyl-sided house and enjoyed watching ours run wild from wicker armchairs on their front porch. Most of the other homes had been updated to reflect changing and optimistically ambitious aesthetics. Front walks had
pavers
. Front doors had
porticoes
. Whitewashed brick and clapboard replaced siding. It was almost as if our houses were working in tandem with our careers to climb up the rungs of society. We had block parties twice a year, usually timed to coincide with a national holiday like the Fourth of July, where barbecues were wheeled out front and everyone pooled their food on a picnic table festively outfitted with whatever decoration befitted the occasion. Yes, the Websters were lax in taking down their Christmas lights (one year they twinkled back at me on Easter. Easter!), and yes, from time to time Jim Barnestable forgot to pick up after his dog, but on balance it was an idyllic haven in which to raise our girls. When Mr. Hamilton passed away, the grown Hamilton children returned to move their mother into a nursing home, and while it was the right thing to do—she had been showing signs of Alzheimer’s—it was heartbreaking to watch. The Dressers bought the Hamilton home at the asking price and began renovating immediately.

Even when I saw that it was a stranger standing there at our front door on that fateful Tuesday night
—even then
I remember thinking perhaps they were dropping something off for one of our friends. Funny how the mind works. When you haven’t done anything wrong, when you have a wide circle of friends and family supporting you, the last thing you would ever expect is for a complete
stranger to accuse you of something so abhorrent it’s almost comical.
Now
, of course, my suspicions are easily aroused, but back then …

“Mrs. Edsil Ford?” the woman asked me, checking the papers she held. If she saw the humor in my husband’s name, as everyone else did, she did a great job of hiding it.

“Yes?” I answered.

I remember suddenly being aware of the fact that I had forgotten to put lipstick back on after dinner. A nice Southern woman is never without her lipstick.

“I’m Marcia Clipper, C-P-S,” she said, handing me her business card.

Being unfamiliar with the acronym, I struggled to figure out what the letters stood for and was still puzzling on it when Ed came up behind me in the doorway.

“Can we help you?” he asked her.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Not waiting for an answer, she moved forward, knowing we, being polite North Carolinians, would allow her room. Looking back, I realize she was clearly so accustomed to being rebuffed that she had to make inroads before the gravity of the situation bloomed across the mind of whomever she was addressing. “Whoa there,” Eddie said. “Let’s see a badge.”

“Here, she gave me this,” I told him, handing over the business card I had been staring at but not comprehending.

“What’s all this about?” he asked, not even glancing at it.

The rest of that night is a blur of tears and bewilderment and, in the end, helpless fury. Bottom line: the Dressers had seen bruises on Caroline when she went to their door selling Girl Scout cookies,
which
, by the way, she had begged to be allowed to do because
that’s what normal kids do
, she had said. Caroline had promised to come home when she felt tired.
Plus, I’ll make a killing because no one’s going to turn away a Girl Scout with leukemia
, she’d said. She was like that, our Caroline. Always making me smile. She got her father’s sense of humor.

Instead of coming to us or to another of their neighbors, the Dressers called 9-1-1, and Child Protective Services rained down on us like we were running a day care in a meth lab. Even Eddie’s being on the force didn’t deter the
rigorous investigation
they said they were required by law to conduct. An investigation that culminated in Caroline being taken away—alone and crying—in an unmarked car to an unnamed location for questioning. To say I was apoplectic would be a massive understatement. I thought Eddie was going to have a stroke he was so mad. It was splashed across the front page of the local papers.
CHAPLIN KIN INVESTIGATED FOR CHILD ABUSE
. That was all anybody needed to see.
Everybody
was talking about it. The stares and sneers kept me from going anywhere but the hospital for a long time. Ed was put on desk duty because too many people on his beat recognized him and that put his safety at risk. Someone even threw a bottle at him, though thank God they had bad aim. His captain told him the whole thing was
damaging the credibility of the force
. We stopped going to the neighborhood block parties and did our grocery shopping at night at the twenty-four-hour Kroger outside town. Our friends—our real friends—stuck by us, but many of the neighbors I’d considered friends evaporated. Which certainly made moving out a whole lot easier. In the end we were, of course, cleared of any wrongdoing, but to this day the whiff of “child abuser” trails me like cheap perfume. Memories of the turmoil it brought into our lives will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Good Lord, the heat is oppressive today. After scrapping the grocery store, we finally pull into the driveway at home.

“Now, girls, I’ve got to go run an errand, so I’m going to drop
you off and do it now to get it over with. Y’all play upstairs and don’t make any work for Grandma, okay?”

“Mom, we’re not
babies
,” Cricket says, throwing a conspiratorial look to Carrie, “we don’t
play
.”

“Fine,” I say, pressing Door Unlock. “Cricket, I’ve got chips and popcorn for y’all to snack on if you’re hungry. There’s Cokes in the icebox on the door. Now y’all get that for yourselves—I don’t want you asking your grandma or she’ll want to wait on you two.”

“Okay, okay, jeez,” Cricket says. She slides the side door open and hops out.

I watch them bounce up the walk. And then, on her way up the porch stairs, Carrie slips her little hand into Cricket’s and my heart just about melts. I wish Eddie could see this.