The September Sisters

by Jillian Cantor

  “Fine,” I lied. I guessed it was obvious from the tone of my voice that things weren’t fine, that they would never be fine again.

  Mrs. Ramirez patted my knee. “It get better,” she said. “Tomorrow new day.”

  I wished for my mother right then, for a hug from her, for her to hold me against her and stroke my hair. Mrs. Ramirez was a poor substitute; her pat on the knee didn’t console me at all.

  The night after the first day of school was the first time I had the dream about the night Becky disappeared. I lay in bed, stuck on the idea of how she might have been lured out of our house, so I will never really know if the dream was a memory or a trick played on me by my overactive imagination.

  In the dream, I saw a man standing at the door to my room. He was dressed in black pants, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a black woolen winter cap, and my first thought was how strange it was because it was summer and extraordinarily warm. I caught a glimpse of the man’s face, and I knew I recognized him from somewhere, only I couldn’t tell you from where. For a moment I thought he could be Harry Baker; then he morphed into Shawn Olney, then maybe Mr. Peterson, because his handsomeness surprised me. In the dream he did not look like a monster, only a normal man.

  The next day I was sick. I wasn’t just pretending to get out of school either; I really was sick. It must’ve been something I ate, because I threw up three times before my father came in to get me up for school.

  “I can’t,” I told him, and ran to the bathroom to puke again in the toilet.

  “Ab,” he said, “you’ve got to go back. There’s no use pretending.” I realized Mrs. Ramirez must have told him all about our moment in the car, because I hadn’t mentioned my terrible day to him.

  I shook my head. “I’m not.”

  I guess he noticed then that I really was a little green, because he let it go and felt my forehead with his hand. “You don’t have a fever.”

  “I already threw up four times.”

  “Okay. I’ll bring you up some tea before I go.”

  I nodded and crawled back into bed. I got under all the covers, even though I knew it must still be hot in there. I was shivering.

  “You stay here today. Until I get home. If you’re sick, you have to stay in bed.”

  Normally I would’ve argued. I don’t have a TV in my room, and when Becky and I stayed home sick in the past, we’d gotten to take over the couch and the TV in the living room. But I was so happy that I didn’t have to go back to school that I didn’t even mind the churning in my stomach, the pulling at my insides like two hands twisting, the day without TV.

  I fell back to sleep after my father left, but I woke up around noon when I heard the doorbell ringing. My stomach felt better, more settled somehow, and I was sweating. I got out of bed, turned on my fan, and debated if I should get the door. The doorbell rang again, and I decided to go downstairs and answer it.

  I looked through the peephole and saw an unfamiliar man standing on the doorstep. “Who is it?” I yelled.

  “Pinesboro Police, ma’am. Detective Kinney.”

  The man took his badge out of his coat pocket and held it up to the peephole, so I could see it. It looked authentic, similar to Harry Baker’s, so I turned off the alarm, opened the door, and let him in.

  He looked surprised when he saw me. After all, he had called me ma’am, so I knew he’d been expecting my mother. This was the first time I ever saw Detective Kinney, but I instantly despised him. His nose protruded out over his mustache in a steep point in a way that made his whole face seem inaccurate, unreal. His eyes were a steely gray, and they shot right through me. If a look could burn your skin, Kinney had perfected it.

  “Is your mother home?” he asked.

  “She’s sleeping,” I said. “Anything to drink?” I was trying to act as grown up as I could, despite the fact that I was still in my pajamas, and my hair was sticking up in at least twenty different directions. I wanted him to talk to me, not my mother. If my mother came down, she would act crazy; this man would take that as guilty.

  “Could you ask her to come down here, please?” Kinney was trying to baby me. I could tell, the way he made his voice all mushy, almost as if he were speaking in baby talk, but it didn’t sound right coming from him

  “Where’s Harry Baker?” I asked. “Why isn’t he with you?” I suddenly hated Harry Baker because I felt he’d sold us out, that he’d abandoned us. I could already tell this man was like the grown-up version of everyone in my school, who thought my parents were psychos who would kidnap their own child.

  But I realized that here I was, all alone with him, and I knew it was my opportunity to plead my parents’ case. “Look,” I said, trying to use my best grown-up-sounding voice. “My parents would never do anything to hurt Becky.” Kinney started squirming a little bit. I guess he didn’t like being lectured by an almost-thirteen-year-old.

  Normally I wouldn’t speak to an adult like that. I would be quiet and respectful, but I felt so desperate that I wanted to scream until this detective listened to me, until someone listened to me. “I’ve lived with them all my life,” I said, “and they’re wonderful people. They really are. They love us. Both of us.”

  It may sound corny, but I believed it. Despite my mother’s spacey, depressed episodes and my father’s temper, I knew that they loved Becky and me. They used to seem just like everyone else’s parents, distant, odd, adultish, but I always knew they wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.

  Then suddenly I knew I had to tell Kinney about my dream, an image that was still so fresh in my mind that it felt real. “I think there was a man here that night,” I said.

  He looked startled, as if he hadn’t been expecting new information, new clues, and then he frowned. “A man? What did he look like?”

  “He was wearing all black, and he was very tall.”

  “Hmm?” Kinney didn’t take out a notebook or anything the way detectives always do on TV, so I wondered how carefully he was listening. “Well, I’m afraid that doesn’t help too much.” He paused. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

  “I didn’t remember it before,” I said. I didn’t tell him the truth, that I wasn’t sure if it was a memory or a nightmare, but I knew it couldn’t hurt for the police to check it out.

  Kinney frowned again, and I instantly knew that he didn’t believe me, that he thought I was making the whole thing up. I felt my face turning red.

  I heard a sound behind me, and when I turned around, my mother was standing there. She’d actually gotten dressed, put her lovely blond hair up in a twist, and was wearing some makeup, a little pink lipstick and some mascara.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “Abby, sweetie, get back into bed.” Her voice was soft, subdued, without a trace of anger, craziness, irrationality. She turned to Kinney and smiled. “She was sick this morning, so my husband let her stay home from school.”

  “I’m feeling better now.”

  “You should rest, hon.” She kissed the top of my head, which surprised me. Normally she was annoyed when I stayed home from school and felt better halfway through the day. Sometimes she’d threaten to send me in late.

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine.” But the protest was useless. It was as if the adults had made a silent pact not to say another word until I left the room, because they didn’t. And they started to stare at me so I began to feel uncomfortable.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll tuck you in.” She turned to Kinney. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute.”

  My mother and I walked up the stairs together in silence. I didn’t know why she was coming up to tuck me in, what exactly was going through her head. I wondered if she was putting on an act for Kinney, if she’d known that the only way to get me out of the room was to act like a real bona fide mother again.

  But she did tuck me in, and she stroked my hair back from my forehead. “You feel warm,” she said.

  I shrugged. My body felt awkward again, off kilter. On the way up the
steps I’d been slightly dizzy. “I’m okay,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

  She kissed my forehead. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered. “Sweet angel dreams.”

  I closed my eyes, and I heard her tiptoe out and shut the door behind her. For a second I felt a moment of safety, an odd sense that everything might be all right, but then I remembered what was waiting for her downstairs. So I lay there wide-awake, trying to think of a way to save her.

  Chapter 6

  ON SEPTEMBER 16th, exactly six weeks after Becky disappeared, I turned thirteen. Becky and I are two years and one day apart, which means her birthday is September 17th. My whole life my birthday has been reduced to the day before Becky’s birthday, but never more so than on my thirteenth birthday.

  In the days leading up to my birthday, I wasn’t sure what to expect, really. I knew I wouldn’t be having a party. That I just assumed without even asking my parents. But I wondered if they would ignore my birthday altogether. At school I was still something of an outcast, but I’d begun to blend in, to become this fixture that no one really noticed. People no longer stared and giggled at me, but they didn’t talk to me either.

  It’s not like I had been everyone’s friend before this year, but Jocelyn and I had been inseparable, and when we were best friends, it seemed like everyone liked us. Maybe it was just that everyone liked her, that without her I was semi-invisible. Even if my parents had given me a party, I’m not sure there would’ve been anyone to invite.

  On the day of my birthday I begged my father to let me stay home from school. “You only become a teenager once,” I told him.

  “Ab, you already missed a day last week.”

  “But I was sick. That was different.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t whine. You’re too old to whine.”

  I wanted to tell him I wasn’t whining, but he was right: I was. I’d never gotten to stay home from school on my birthday any other year, so I couldn’t blame that on Becky’s disappearance or my mother’s strange behavior or any of it. I guess the thing was, in years past I’d always liked going to school on my birthday. Last year Jocelyn brought me a balloon, and I carried it through the hallways of the junior high, from class to class, and as I walked by, people I hardly knew said happy birthday.

  I got to homeroom early, before Jocelyn arrived, and I felt a small glimmer of hope. Maybe Jocelyn would come through for me. She couldn’t forget my birthday, after all.

  When she walked in without a balloon, I felt something small drop in my stomach, like I’d just swallowed a piece of gum and it’d got stuck going down. Jocelyn sat in her seat next to me, and she stared straight ahead to the front of the room, the same way she’d been doing every day since the first one. Then she reached down and pulled a card out of her bag.

  “Here,” she whispered, and sort of threw the card on my desk without really looking over.

  “Thanks.” I wanted her to look at me, to smile, to tell me that everything would be okay, that even though the rest of the world had collapsed everywhere all around me, she was still there for me. But the bell rang, and she didn’t say anything, so I just picked up the card and put it in my bag.

  All morning I imagined what the card might say, and I thought that Jocelyn must’ve written a secret cryptic note that only I could understand. I began thinking that Jocelyn still wanted to be my friend but her mother had suggested she stay away from me, or maybe she was just afraid of our talking in front of everyone at school. I couldn’t blame her, really. I didn’t want her to be an outcast just because of me.

  I didn’t get to open her card until lunch. The week before, I’d begun eating lunch at the nerd table, mainly because no one at that table cared who sat there; everyone left me alone, and I realized that it beat eating in the library. I was happy then, though, that no one talked to me or noticed me, because it gave me a chance to open Jocelyn’s card with some sort of privacy.

  The card had two red balloons on the front, and it said “Happy Birthday” in bright red bubbly letters. On the inside Jocelyn had written, “Happy 13th, Luv, Joce.” I was disappointed, and I knew immediately that Jocelyn’s mother had made her give me this card. I imagined Mrs. Redfern standing over her, telling her to write something nice.

  We usually wrote each other long notes in our birthday cards. Last year Jocelyn and I had written our birthday notes in our secret code. I would’ve expected her to say something terrific in her card, something like “Sorry about Banana. Iced Tea won’t let me call you. BFF.”

  I read what she actually wrote, examining it over and over for secret signs or messages. But then I had to face the fact that the card was empty, like Jocelyn herself. I knew we would never be friends again.

  Mrs. Ramirez picked me up after school, and when I got in the car, there was a bouquet of thirteen yellow roses sitting on the passenger seat. “Happy birthday, Ah-bee-hail.”

  I put the roses on my lap, then held them up to my nose. Their scent was intoxicating, delicious. This was the first time anyone had ever given me flowers. I was somewhat embarrassed that they came from Mrs. Ramirez. I would’ve wished for them from a boy or my father at the least. But still, the flowers were perfect and sweet, and it was the first time that I felt glad for Mrs. Ramirez, so happy that someone was trying to do something special for me on my birthday. “These are really cool,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You put them in water right away. Otherwise they die.” I nodded. I knew my mother kept a few vases under the sink. My father usually bought her flowers for her birthday and their anniversary, pink calla lilies, her favorite and, my father always used to say, just as beautiful as she was.

  “You know tomorrow is Becky’s birthday,” I said. I’d been thinking about Becky all afternoon, all through advanced English and intro. to Western civ., thinking about how tomorrow she’d be eleven. And I wondered if she’d get any presents wherever she was.

  “Si. Just like twins. I remember when she born.”

  I don’t, though I’ve heard the story a million times. Becky was born six weeks early, her lungs so tiny and undeveloped that she had to spend a week on a breathing machine before my parents could bring her home. Becky and I should’ve had birthdays nearly two months apart, but some small act of fate had Becky born all those weeks early.

  My mother always called us the September Sisters and told us that someday we would appreciate it, that it would be a nice time to share. She was always telling us that when we were older, we would love each other, we would be friends, we would be happy to have a sister. Usually, though, we fought over birthday cakes and birthday dinners and birthday parties, and every hour on the hour during my birthday Becky would hold a countdown to hers.

  “I took care of you,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “Every day for a week. And you cry and cry and cry. I thought you dying, you cry so loud.”

  I tried to remember even a moment of it, but I couldn’t. My earliest memory is of the day my parents finally brought Becky home from the hospital. They’d let me sit on the couch and hold her, just for a minute, as they hovered over me and protected her head. She was my little doll, my amazing sister. As soon as she started to crawl, talk, walk, we fought constantly, but for a few months she was perfect.

  When I got home, my mother was in the kitchen, cooking something at the stove. I hadn’t really seen her since the day I’d stayed home sick the week before, except for one evening when she came downstairs to watch TV with my father and me. We watched an old movie together, something with Katharine Hepburn that my parents remembered having seen at some earlier point in their lives. When my parents discussed it, my mother smiled, and I thought her smile seemed genuine.

  I was surprised, but then again I wasn’t, to see her in the kitchen. I didn’t really think she could ignore my birthday. I wondered if for her, the ache of missing Becky was subsiding. It was odd, but for me, the feeling was getting worse. I realized I was beginning to miss her, to think I really loved her, that in some odd way we had a special bond
. When she was here, she drove me crazy on my birthday. I hated her on this day more than any other. But on the day of my thirteenth birthday something felt more missing than it had any other day since she’d been gone.

  “Nice flowers,” my mother said when I walked in.

  “Mrs. Ramirez gave them to me.”

  “Oh, how sweet. She’s always been such a darling.” She reached under the sink and pulled out her favorite vase, a gift she’d gotten for her wedding. It’s hand-painted up the side with these lovely purple windy lines. “Here. Trim the stems first.”

  I’d seen my mother do it a bunch of times, so I knew exactly how to cut the flowers and place them in the water. I suddenly felt like such a grown-up. Here I was with my very own flowers. “I should put them in my room, “I said.

  “Or you can put them right here.” She picked up the vase and put it in the middle of the kitchen table, like a centerpiece. “They brighten up the room.”

  “You’re right. They do.” She went back to the stove to check on the food. “What are you making?”

  “Spaghetti and meatballs. Your favorite, sweetie.” She smiled at me.

  “Great.” Actually, spaghetti and meatballs were Becky’s favorite, the meal she always requested on her birthday, but I didn’t want my mother to see how disappointed I was. For my birthday I usually asked for chili and cornbread, my mother’s two original specialties. The truth is I don’t even like meatballs all that much. They’re okay. I don’t hate them or anything, but my mother’s are usually a little chewy and overspiced.

  “Set the table, sweetie. Your father will be home soon, and I want to eat early tonight.”

  We hadn’t eaten as a family since Becky disappeared. I set three places at the table instead of four, Becky’s old spot so awkwardly empty.

  “Can I go watch TV until dinner?” I was suddenly desperate to see something else, to be absorbed in someone else’s life instead of my own. I didn’t want to look at the oddly empty table. I didn’t want to watch my mother cook Becky’s meal.