The Almost Sisters

by Joshilyn Jackson

  I started to object, because Digby was half mine after all. He would not be black. He’d be— And this time I stopped myself before I got even one word out. Sel Martin was right.

  My son was going to be black. Even when he was nursing in my arms, I would be a white woman with a black kid. There was no such thing as mixed-race in the South, or in America for that matter. The whole country had called a mixed-race man our “first black president.” Lou Elle Peterson, who ran Redemption’s All Sisters Service Club, had light gold eyes, and her skin was no darker than Rachel’s got in summer. But she was black. Everyone thought of her as black. I thought of her as black, and when I admitted this, a weird wave of panic washed through me. A thousand Facebook videos I’d cried over became hideously relevant to me in whole new ways. My hands went to my belly, and I shook my head at Sel, all my words stuck inside me now.

  “He can never wear a hoodie,” I finally said, which was nonsensical, but I was fully freaking out.

  “Okay,” Sel said, very calm. “We have a lot to talk about. But, you know, there’s time.”

  I looked at him with drowning eyes, but he was so calm that I felt calmer, too. There was barely a foot of space between us now, and it was good to be this close to him. I could read his gaze, and it was kind on me. He wasn’t thinking I was stupid; he wasn’t blaming me for being blind. He could imagine Digby’s life in ways I couldn’t, and he knew the world our boy would navigate. He was present, already stepping in, stepping up for a son he’d learned only hours ago even existed.

  My heart swelled up inside my chest, and he deserved the cape. He’d earned the cowl, and what baby could be safer than this nascent one, now curled up barely a breath away from Batman.

  “Okay,” I said, leaning in toward him. “There’s time.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’ve only got one immediate problem,” he said.

  “What’s that?” I asked, and he bent down and kissed me.

  No body contact. Only his mouth, firm and sure, fitting itself to mine, seeking a response. My body gave it, swaying into his. Then his hand cupped my neck, reaching under my hair and tangling in it.

  My stomach dropped in that weightless, roller-coaster feeling. I lost my breath, and my arms went around him, under the cloak, my fingers remembering the smooth lines of muscle in his back. His free hand was on my hip now, pulling me into him. My heartbeat left my heart and became a beat that happened all over my body. I felt its pulse behind my eyes, in my shaking hands, low down in my belly.

  He broke the contact but stayed close.

  I drew a ragged breath, and I said, “Damn.”

  I could tell myself it was second-trimester hormones. I could tell myself that it was just the cowl. I was old-school nerd—God knew I liked a fellow in a cowl. But it wasn’t only these things, just as it hadn’t been only the tequila that night at FanCon.

  Now that he was this close, I remembered his smell. Under the faint, crisp linen of some kind of aftershave was the scent of a man that was this specific man, and it was correct. When he kissed me, it was right like facts were right, like hard science, chemical and sure. I did not know much about Batman, but this part? This part worked. This part worked way too well.

  He pushed the cowl off, letting it hang down behind him with the cloak.

  “Oh, good. I was worried it was just my puh-problem,” Sel Martin said.

  “Nope. That’s both of us,” I said, and he grinned. “Don’t grin like that. This is so scary.” His face changed not at all, so I made stern eyebrows at him. “Really. We need to be careful with each other.” He did not stop grinning.

  “Leia freakin’ Birch,” he said, a world of admiration in the words, all kinds, and damn it all if my mouth wasn’t grinning back at him.

  Stupid mouth. We’d actually solved exactly nothing. We were still near strangers, and pregnant, and had full lives in separate cities that were far away. We lived in different Americas. His was more dangerous than mine, and our kid was going to live there, too. We’d actually undone one solved thing, because Digby would need a real name in a few short months. But we stood too close, grinning at each other anyway like natural-born fools, like idiots who’d been kissing when we ought to have been having scary talk and making hard decisions.

  Brilliant idiots. His hand was still resting on my hip like it belonged there, and I thought maybe the wisest thing I could do would be to pull his face down to my face and kiss him, just a little more.

  Which, of course, was the exact same second Birchie started screaming.

  20

  It was a staccato burst of screams, short and sharp, echoed by a heavy thump and clatter. I ran out the door and back up the hall, spurred on by the sound of breaking glass. Batman ran with me, the deflated cowl flapping at the nape of his neck and his cloak billowing out after us. We passed the stairs, skidding to a stop behind Wattie just as Birchie’s longest scream began, an enraged, near-endless “No!”

  Frank Darian was near the foot of the dining-room table, on our side, clearly panicking. He had his hands raised in an almost comical defensive posture toward my grandmother, as if propitiating a fluffy-haired mad god.

  Birchie stood with her legs braced on the far side of the table. Her face was shiny with sweat, and hectic red circles were burning in her cheeks. She had Lavender’s dirty fork in one fist, lifted like a weapon.

  Wattie, talking so sweetly it was almost a croon, said, “Now, then, hush,” while putting one herding hand out as Batman and I came up, keeping us behind her. She shot us a quick glance over her shoulder. “Don’t, now. Birchie needs a little room.”

  I’d never seen Birchie this way, violent, weaving, puffing. Wattie was so calm, though, that I thought, She’s seen this. She’s seen Birchie this way before, and more than once. God help us. I obeyed her, putting one hand on Sel Martin’s arm for a second to hold him with me.

  Birchie’s chair was tipped over, and the pitcher of lemonade had fallen or been pushed off the table. It was now a large puddle dotted with melting ice and chunks and slivers of glass near us. Birchie’s cup was overturned on the tabletop, and her lemonade was still flattening and spreading across the wood. One liquid finger, then another, reached the edge of the table and began drip-dropping onto the floor. It was a soothing sound, a pattering, like summer rain.

  That sound had no place in this electric room, where Birchie told us in a screechy, rage-filled voice, “I said no, I said no, I said no, I said!” She turned from one of us to the next, the dirty fork held up by one ear in her bent arm, tines facing us, like it was a butcher knife.

  Frank Darian was talking to Birchie, apologizing for something? I couldn’t follow because Batman was asking quietly, “What meds is she taking?”

  I could not remember the names, but Wattie answered, “Exelon and Sinemet.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Frank said again. “I should have called.”

  “Nothing for anxiety?” Batman’s stutter had not come into the room with us. Maybe it was the feel of the long cloak, still hanging down his back, or maybe he was in nurse mode.

  “What are you whispering about?” Birchie said, turning her fork toward us, glaring. “Are you having secrets from me? Are you making more secrets?”

  “I was telling Mr. Martin here that you have Valium for when you’re mad like this,” Wattie said. “In the kitchen cabinet, left of the stove. Maybe Frank can get one for you?” It was a sweet-voiced question, yet every person in the room but Birchie heard it as an order.

  “Of course,” Frank said, and started forward.

  “Go the long way, Frank,” Wattie said, and he obeyed her, turning away from the dining room and going through the entry and up the hall as Wattie went on, saying, “Maybe we should all sit down,” ignoring the fork and the way Birchie’s chest was heaving.

  “How on earth can I? He took my chair!” Birchie said. “This won’t do! This will not do at all!”

  “Your chair fell over. Frank didn’t take it. He went to get your pills,
” Wattie said, sweet and reasonable.

  “You’re bleeding,” Sel Martin said.

  “What?” I said, but he was speaking to Wattie.

  “Not Frank! Don’t be stupid. I meant him,” Birchie said, turning to jerk her fork toward no one, toward nothing, toward her own empty spot at the head of the table.

  While she was in profile, Sel stepped forward, through the wreckage of the shattered pitcher. He ignored the crunch of glass under his shoes and grabbed Lavender’s linen napkin off the table. He went to Wattie and bent to examine her arm, up high near the shoulder.

  “Mm, that’s pretty deep,” he said. He pressed the napkin to her arm, and red splotches came soaking through the white linen.

  “Did she do that?” I asked Wattie, but she ignored me. “Did Birchie hurt you?”

  “How’d you get back in my house, you salty bastard?” Birchie talked over me, furious. She was staring at the portrait that hung to the left of the table’s head. Her father, Ellis Birch, stared back with his proud painted eyes. “We took you out. How did you sneak back in my house? We crashed you in the car!” She was outraged, as if the bones had escaped the evidence locker, refleshed themselves, and come straight home to reclaim the head of the Birch table. It had been her spot for sixty years now.

  It made me want her rabbits back. Birchie’s rabbits had gone bad, but at least she knew they weren’t really there. She didn’t curse or yell at them. That was saved for Ellis Birch, her father, the man she’d ended with a hammer. The worst part was, this shrieking version of my Birchie, lofting her fork, had no remorse. She looked ready to end him all over again.

  “Keep pressing on it, and keep it lifted. We need to get it clean,” Sel told Wattie, folding her hand over the napkin. “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

  Birchie heard him and glanced his way, fork still lifted high. When she saw Sel, she began to giggle. It was a high-pitched, girlish sound, almost garish coming from her small, elderly mouth.

  She shook her fork at the portrait and asked, still tittering, “Do you know he’s black? Look how black he is!” She leaned in, smacking her lips.

  “I did notice that,” Wattie said, unfazed, as if Birchie were talking to her. She was working hard to get Birchie to notice or talk back to someone, anyone, who was actually present.

  I felt my cheeks flush and said to Sel, “She’s sick.”

  “S’okay. I knew I was black.” He flashed me a quick smile before turning to Frank, who’d returned with the pills. I hadn’t noticed him come up behind us until he was handing me an amber bottle. Sel said to Frank, “Can you get their first-aid kit?”

  “Look how black he is, I said, you salty bastard!” Birchie was still talking to the portrait.

  Frank, his whole face gone pink with embarrassment and stress, said, “Sure, yes, it’s in the pantry,” and went back up the hallway.

  Birchie stared the portrait down. “We’re having ourselves a little, tiny black baby. Come next year there’ll be a tiny black Birch sitting at your table, eating up Vina’s recipe for sweet potatoes. Eating right off your spoons. Little toasty marshmallows. Off your spoons. How will you like that?” That girlish, awful laugh got out of her again. “How will you like sitting at this table then?”

  She was blowing, puffing her air out, then pulling in a tiny panted sip on the inhale. The hectic splotches in her cheeks had spread to stains that ran from her chin to the outside of her brow line.

  “How do we make those sweet potatoes?” Wattie asked, holding the napkin tight to her arm. “I forget. Do they take brown sugar or molasses?”

  Birchie swayed, her head cocked. She was listening, but not to Wattie. The lifted fork trembled in her hand. Drool had collected in the corners of her mouth.

  Birchie said, “He doesn’t like it, Wattie,” staring the portrait down, weirdly joyful.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t,” Wattie said. “But I need you to tell me, how much butter?”

  “Fuck those sweet potatoes,” Birchie said, her fury reigniting, but at least she was talking to Wattie now. Not a painting. Not the bones. “Why won’t you hear me, Wattie? You know him. You know, but you will not ever hear me.” Her gaze went right back to the portrait, and I knew we’d lost her again. “She knows you, you fuck, you fuck, you fuck-fuck-fuck.”

  “Birchie?” I said, but she was gone.

  She ran at the painting in a blur, screaming obscenities, faster than I had seen her move in decades. She drove the raised fork into her father’s painted face. The curse became a high animal keening, and she stabbed again and then again, as hard as she could, aiming for his right eye. Spittle ran down her chin, spraying his face as the fork caught. She jerked it out, tearing the eye away entirely. She took aim at the second one, stabbing true, then dragging it down the eye, scouring it.

  I didn’t know her. I didn’t know this version of her, and my hands were on my own cheeks, and my cheeks were wet.

  Sel was on her side of the table so fast I hadn’t clocked him going. He came up behind her, ignoring her banshee wail and the wild tomahawk chopping of her stabbing hand. He took Birchie in his arms in a single smooth movement, catching her wrist before she could stab the painting again. His long arms locked around her, pinning hers. She screamed and reared, her feet lifting off the floor as she kicked the air in front of her, her fluffy bun unraveling as her head thrashed back and forth.

  “Oh, no, oh, no!” I said, helpless, watching my grandmother flailing and screaming in his arms.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Sel Martin said, as calm as Wattie, dragging Birchie back a few steps so she couldn’t kick the wall and hurt her feet. Both her shoes had come off, and I hoped the broken glass was all on my side of the table.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I said, but he wasn’t hurting her.

  His arms around her were firm and sure, holding her as she thrashed like a caught fish.

  Birchie’s screaming thinned, devolving into a word. A name.

  “Wattie! Wattie!” Birchie called, her voice shaking. Her body stilled, in pieces. Feet first, and as soon as she stopped kicking, Wattie was there, in front of her, dropping the bloody napkin to the floor so she could peel Birchie’s fingers open and take the fork. “Wattie!”

  “Hush, baby, hush,” Wattie said, dropping the fork, too. It clattered onto the hardwood, and she put her hands on Birchie’s cheeks to still her thrashing head. Her arm continued to bleed, but she ignored it. She put her face near Birchie’s face and looked into her eyes. “I’m here. I’m here. Hush. Hush.”

  “Call an ambulance,” Sel said to me, calm and sure.

  Wattie said, “Don’t you dare,” in that same voice Rachel had used to send off Lavender. Unbrookable Mother, and it worked on all of us. Except the medical professional.

  “I think we should,” Sel told us. “At least call her doctor.”

  “I’m so sorry. I did not mean to upset her!” Frank said. He was back with Birchie’s first-aid kit from the pantry clutched in his hands. He set it down on the table, then put Birchie’s chair upright, and I was instantly so grateful. It was one less wrong thing in this room full of wrong things.

  “It’s all right,” Wattie said. She kept her eyes fixed on Birchie’s eyes. “I’m here. You see me? I’m here. It’s just us here. We’ll have our medicine? Yes?” She held Birchie’s face firm in her hands, with Birchie’s long white hair loose from its bun and hanging down in strings over her face and Wattie’s hands. Birchie started crying.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “I’m so tired.”

  My hands were shaking, so it was hard to get the bottle open. I got the cap off and managed to spill a blue cotton-candy-colored pill into my palm. One cup of lemonade was still miraculously upright, sitting half empty in front of Wattie’s usual chair. I set the amber bottle down, wiped my eyes, and got the cup.

  I came around the table and said, “Birchie? I have your pill. Okay?”

  After a long moment, Birchie said, �
�Well, all right.”

  Sel was still holding her, but he released her wrist. I handed her the pill, and she put it in her mouth, then drank some of Wattie’s lemonade, swallowing it. Sel’s grip had loosened, and her feet were on the floor. She stood swaying slightly in his arms, her blue-button eyes gone blank and her mouth crumpling in on itself. She looked like she was a thousand years old, her white hair streaming all down her shoulders in a tangle of thin ribbons. I set the glass back on the table, and when I looked up, Birchie was blinking at me, confused but smiling.

  “Leia! Honey, when did you get here?” Her eyebrows knit in mild concern. “I don’t think I got the turkey. Wattie, did we get the turkey?”

  “I got it, not to worry. A nice fat Thomas he is, too,” Wattie said, and then to Sel, “You can let her go now.”

  He didn’t let her go so much as hand her to me. I turned, winding one arm around her waist, supporting her. I kept her near the wall as we walked, keeping myself between her bare feet and the broken pitcher. I glanced at the portrait of Ellis Birch as we passed by, and it wasn’t fixable. One eye had been ripped away down to bare canvas. The other looked as if a tiny Wolverine had slashed it.

  I asked Sel quietly, over my shoulder, “Can you see to Wattie’s arm? Frank brought the kit.”

  “Yeah. Let’s—” Sel began.

  “Shhh, Mr. Martin,” Wattie interrupted, not loud but very firm. Wattie could speak Unbrookable Mother even at low volume. It was a nice trick. “Wait just a minute. If she hears you, sees you, it might set her off again.”

  I was whispering to Birchie, walking her away, “Do you want your nap? Do you want to come lie down with me? We’ll go upstairs and turn the ceiling fan on, and you can have a nice rest in the cool.”

  “That sounds lovely, sugar,” Birchie said.

  We made our slow and careful way up the stairs, to Birchie’s room, and I closed the door. I moved the shams and peeled the covers down. My adrenaline had faded, and every single piece of me felt like sea glass, sanded away and worn. Even Digby, making little turns deep inside me, felt smooth-edged and slow.