The Sisters

by Nancy Jensen

  A long while later, when Marshall had packed away the sherds again and got up to leave, she told him about Lynn, let him peek in at the child asleep in her bed, and asked him to come to dinner the next night. The night after that, when he invited Rainey out to celebrate his interview in advance, he’d made sure to choose a place they could all go, where Lynn would be as welcome as they were.

  From the start, Marshall was more natural with Lynn than she was, able to keep the girl cheerful while Rainey cooked or got changed. He stocked his car with coloring books and inexpensive toys and taught Lynn how to play I Spy.

  It was weeks before they kissed, but when at last it happened—Rainey had had to lean in close and lift her face to him to let him know it was all right—his lips touched hers so completely, so tenderly, she wept. He drew back then, his eyes full of concern, and she had smiled, shaken her head, and pulled him to her. Making love—those wonderful, wonderful weeks—he looked into her eyes, stroked her cheek, her hair, her neck, kissed her, said her name.

  Mistakes, mistakes, her mother would say. If Rainey dared to tell her about Marshall, Mother would say Rainey’s every choice had been bad: a mistake to speak to him, a mistake to go out with him, a mistake to go to bed with him, and a mistake to let him go. Strange, wasn’t it, and exasperating, how people could be so certain they were using exactly the right word to describe something, when really they were using exactly the wrong word. Grace herself—her beautiful, sweet-hearted Grace: If people knew the truth about her birth, they would whisper to each other that Grace was “a mistake.”

  Rainey had no intention of letting that happen. Thankfully, it hadn’t been difficult to keep the secret. Within just a few weeks of returning to Newman with the girls, she realized that everyone outside the family simply assumed Grace was Carl’s child. Mother and Daddy had been too embarrassed to tell anyone about her divorce when it happened, and so now the neighbors and people at church were divided, when they gossiped about whether Rainey had left Carl or Carl had left her. Of course, she’d had to tell the lawyer, Mr. Prather, that Carl wasn’t Grace’s father, but on hearing this, Mr. Prather had once again shaken his head sadly, making clear he thought it was perfectly understandable that Rainey, after her terrible shock, would have been vulnerable to the charms of a normal man. He certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  So all Rainey had to do was stay quiet—she was good at that. And her silence would be a protective shield around Grace, who would grow up believing what it was natural for her to believe—that she and Lynn shared the same father: an absent father, but the same.

  But Rainey hadn’t reckoned on Carl’s coming back. Though she hadn’t lied about Grace—he couldn’t charge her with that—she had let a lie be believed. What would he do if he found out? She couldn’t think about that—not now.

  Rainey passed the cloth again to her mother for another rinse in the cool water and laid her hand on Lynn’s neck. The child still seemed overheated from the violence of her nightmare, so Rainey folded down first the summer bedspread and then the top sheet. With the refreshed cloth, she wiped her daughter’s bare legs, and as she did, Lynn began to stir.

  “Are you waking up, baby?”

  Lynn’s eyes fluttered open, then winced closed again as she moaned.

  Mother now knelt beside the bed and gently stroked the girl’s hair. “What’s the matter, honey? Are you hurting? Tell Grandma where.”

  “It hurts.” A tear rolled down Lynn’s cheek. “It hurts.”

  “You banged your head pretty hard,” Rainey said. “It probably will hurt for a while, but I can get you an aspirin.” She started to get up.

  “Mom!” Lynn’s cry was followed by a sharp intake of breath and a flow of tears.

  Rainey sat down again and took Lynn’s hand. “Is it just your head, baby? Please. Try to tell me where you hurt so I can help you. Is it your tummy?”

  “All over,” Lynn wept. “My middle. My arms.”

  “Turn on the light, will you, Mother?” Rainey shielded Lynn’s eyes from the sudden brightness. “Now, let’s have a look at you,” she said, lifting the T-shirt.

  From her chest to her navel, a pale yellow-brown band girdled Lynn’s body. In other places, especially under each arm and along her ribs, she was pocked with deeper, purple bruises, like fingerprints.

  “Mother! Come see!”

  “Oh, Rainey! She couldn’t have gotten all this from just falling.”

  Rainey drew the T-shirt down again and stroked her daughter’s cheek. “How did you hurt your head, Lynn? Can you tell me?”

  “On the post.”

  “When you fell on the dock?”

  “When I was in the water.”

  “In the water? In the lake?” Suddenly Rainey remembered the white canvas shorts and the sleeveless seersucker blouse. They were strangely damp, wrapped in a towel, stuffed into the top of Lynn’s bag. She’d remarked on it to Mother, wondering if Lynn had been playing in a sprinkler.

  Rainey began to shake. “Why were you in the lake?” Lynn had never learned to swim. She had told Carl over and over that Lynn didn’t know how to swim, that he had to promise not even to let her go wading by herself.

  “Lynn, why were you in the lake?” Rainey asked again, her voice too sharp.

  Lynn turned her face into the pillow, weeping pitifully.

  “Honey … honey,” Rainey soothed. “I’m not upset with you. Just tell me, please. How did you get in the lake? Did you fall?”

  Lynn sniffed and choked. “Daddy let go.”

  Rainey felt herself falling, as if she were dropping under the water, but then she felt a firm arm winding through hers. Mother was holding her up.

  “Sweetie.” Rainey pressed her throat to stop her own rising tears. “What do you mean, he let go? When you slipped on the dock? Was he trying to catch you?”

  Lynn shook her head fiercely, clamped her eyes shut, and wailed, “He said I was a rotten girl. He was swinging me.… Too high, Daddy! No! Daddy! Don’t let go!”

  With their trembling hands, Rainey and her mother petted Lynn until her sobs carried her back into sleep. For a few moments longer, they sat together on the bed, silent. At last, Mother stood up and switched off the light. Rainey watched as she found the washcloth, put it back into the bowl, picked up the bowl, and set it down again.

  “In the morning,” Mother said, softly, slowly, “I’ll stay home with Grace, and your daddy will drive you and Lynn over to see Dr. Wolfe. You tell him to call that hospital doctor to find out everything he can.” She placed her hand on Rainey’s shoulder. “And then we’ll all go back to see that lawyer—that Mr. Prather.”

  Rainey put her face in her hands.

  “You’re not to worry about the money,” Mother said, kneeling beside her. “You’re not to worry about that.” She took Rainey in her arms and rocked her, back and forth, back and forth. “You hear me?” Mother said. “You’re not to worry. We’ll be all right. Our girls will be all right.”

  TWELVE

  Breaking

  November 1965

  Newman, Indiana

  LYNN

  WHEN ASTRONAUTS WERE OUT IN space, they floated around like dandelion fluff. That was because in space there wasn’t any gravity. She had learned that at school. Gravity was what held you down on Earth and what made an apple fall and bruise when you let go of it. Gravity came from below and it didn’t hurt at all, except when it helped pull you down if you tripped on the playground. Try as she might, though, Lynn couldn’t think whether she had ever learned the name of what it was that pressed you down from the top. What was the heavy heavy thing that pushed down all over her, that pushed so strongly even on her face that she couldn’t lift her head up? She wanted to move her arms, to raise them and feel with her fingers what might be on top of her, but it was even harder to move her arms than the rest of her. If she really tried, she could scoot her bottom a little this way and that, and, even though they were caught in something hot and scratchy, she could
twist her feet toward and away from each other. She could wiggle her fingers, but not her wrists or her elbows, not even a little. Sometimes when she opened her eyes to try to see what it was on top of her, she saw only yellow light, but it seemed too high to be touching her, and it hurt her eyes. Other times, it was dark, except for a dim light off to one side. When she heard what sounded like voices nearby, she tried to ask someone to help her get out from under, but even her voice seemed trapped.

  Now, her eyes were open again. It was dark above her. Somewhere down past her feet, there was a blue glow that seemed to breathe, in an uneven way, sometimes slow, like it was asleep, and sometimes short and fast, like it had been running and was out of breath. She found she was able to raise her head now, just a little, so she tipped up toward the blue light and saw what looked like big gray turtles bobbing through the air, surrounded by darker gray leaves that looked almost as big as the turtles. She’d never seen a turtle float in the air, and she wanted to watch, but her head got too heavy and dropped back down. In the lake, when she was underneath, a turtle had paddled above her. She had wanted to push her arm up through the water to grab the turtle’s flipper so it could pull her along, but the turtle was too fast and the water was too heavy. It wasn’t fair that everything else seemed light and free. She didn’t expect to be able to fly or even to float on the air, and in her mind she told God so. She just wanted to be able to raise up and look around. She wanted to be able to rub at her eyes, which itched with tears. She wanted to blow her nose.

  A man’s voice seemed to come from the same place the turtles floated in the trees: Today U.S. soldiers fell under heavy fire while raiding a village south of Da Nang said to be sympathetic to a band of Vietcong guerrillas that has terrorized troops in that region in recent months.

  “Please turn that off, Mother.”

  Lynn understood that. It had been a woman’s voice.

  “She’s asleep.” Another woman’s voice.

  “She doesn’t need to see that if she wakes up,” said the first voice. “There’s not to be anything on that might upset her. That’s what the doctor said.”

  “Well, I can’t sit here in the dark without the television. If you want it turned off, then I have to have a light so I can crochet.”

  Grandma Bertie crocheted. In the daytime, when she watched her programs. The gleaming silver hook flashed through the bright yarn while Grandma talked to the people on the television, warning Lisa not to open the door because some strange man who had come to Oakdale was watching her from the bushes, or telling Bob to be careful and to check the medicine in the needle because another doctor was trying to get him to make a mistake so the man in charge of the hospital would see to it Bob’s license was taken away and that he would never again practice medicine.

  “You know it’s costing a dollar and a half a day for us to have that TV.”

  “I told you I’d pay for it, Rainey,” Grandma said. Lynn was sure now it was Grandma Bertie talking. “There’s nothing in my programs gonna upset her. She likes watching them with me when she’s home from school.”

  “Fine. Watch those in the morning. But do you have to have the news on now?”

  “I’m waiting for Gunsmoke. The girls like Festus.”

  Lynn could hear her mother sigh the way she did sometimes, with a whispered I swear buried inside it, but she didn’t say anything else to Grandma Bertie.

  Lynn still felt like something was on top of her, but now that she knew Grandma and Mother were there, she wasn’t so scared. The way they talked, they could see her, and if they could see her, soon they would see whatever it was that covered her and take it away. But she might have to wait for them to get Grandpa Hans and some other people to help, since it was so heavy.

  It was getting a little easier to keep her eyes open, and, even though it was dark, if she looked really hard when the light from the television flashed brighter, she could see that above her there was a ceiling, and in the ceiling there was one of those big lights like they had at school, the ones that held the long white tubes. If someone flipped the switch, the light would shine right in her eyes. She could turn her head a little to the side, and when she did, she could see the edges of what looked like a pillow, though it was hard and rough against her cheek, not at all like the one she had at home. So she must be in bed. A strange bed with a kind of silvery fence around it, like a crib but not cheerful. She was very hot and she now could see there were lots of white blankets on top of her, but there must be something more than that. Maybe under the blankets.

  “Hey, sweetie.” That was her mother’s voice. She couldn’t make out a face, but the familiar shape of Mother’s puffed-up hair leaned over her, and she caught the sticky alcohol smell of hair spray and the minty smell of cigarettes mixed up with the other, sweeter mint that came from the red-and-white candies Mother rattled in her mouth when she wasn’t smoking.

  “I want to get up.” Lynn was surprised at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t even had to try to force the words out.

  “I expect she needs the pot,” Grandma said.

  “No,” Lynn said. “I want to sit up. My nose itches.” She felt her mother’s hard, polished nails scratching at her nose, too hard and in the wrong spot. “I want to do it,” she said.

  Mother stopped scratching. “You have to lie still,” she said. “That’s what the doctor says.”

  On television one time, Lynn had seen a man in pajamas sitting in a wheelchair. Another man was talking to him about the wheelchair and the man in the pajamas was saying that he’d have to use it for the rest of his life because of shrapnel in his spine. Lie still. That’s what the man in the pajamas said the doctors kept telling him. “Six months of nothing but laying flat on my back,” the man said. “I was plenty glad to get into the chair.”

  Her daddy had told her that shrapnel was what was left over after a bullet or a hand grenade, which was a little bomb, exploded. The spine was the back. If your spine was hurt, you couldn’t walk anymore. Her back hurt, when she thought about it.

  “Sure, I’d rather walk,” the man in the pajamas had said. “Even back to Nam.” And then he had said, “Well, maybe not.”

  Lynn remembered now, too, that there was a war in a place called Vietnam, a place that the teacher had shown them on the map. It bulged out underneath China and touched what was called the South China Sea, even though it looked like the same water as the Pacific Ocean, which touched California. She could find Vietnam if she had a map, but she didn’t really understand where it was. On television every night, Walter Cronkite looked out at the people in their living rooms with his kind face, and in his warm, gravelly voice he talked about Vietnam. Then there would be pictures from Vietnam and different newsmen talking. The newsmen were dressed like soldiers, but you could tell them apart because the newsmen held microphones. The people who lived in Vietnam, the ones who weren’t soldiers, wore clothes like pajamas all the time, like the man in the wheelchair, but they wore them even if they weren’t sick, and some of them wore funny hats that looked like sinking haystacks. On the news every night and in Grandma Bertie’s Life magazine every week, there were pictures of soldiers—some of them sitting and talking while they smoked cigarettes, some of them riding in helicopters, some of them walking through the woods, carrying rifles, some of them leaning against trees or lying in tall grass with shiny black splotches on their arms, legs or faces. Lynn knew the black splotches were blood, and that if they had a color television at home, the splotches would be red. Sometimes the splotches were so big you couldn’t see where the face had been at all. Those soldiers couldn’t get up. When somebody was shot on Gunsmoke, they didn’t get up either. There weren’t any splotches then, but that was because Gunsmoke was make-believe TV. The news was true and the dead men were really dead. Lynn understood that, but Grace couldn’t. She was still too little.

  Lynn tried again to pull herself up. “Do I have shrapnel in my back?”

  Her mother straightened up and looked
over to where Grandma Bertie was sitting. “Shrapnel? Where’d you get an idea like that? You don’t even know what that is.”

  It was making her tired to talk, so Lynn didn’t try to correct her mother. “Will I have a wheelchair?”

  Grandma was beside the bed now, squeezing Lynn’s foot through the covers. “You’ll ride in one when you go for your tests.”

  “Will I have to have it forever?”

  Mother tucked the covers around her tighter. Too tight. “Why are you being so silly? Of course not.”

  “Why can’t I get up?”

  “I’ve told you all about that, baby,” Mother said, her voice sharp around the edges. Lynn knew she mustn’t ask anymore. “The doctor has said you have to rest.” Mother leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Lynn could feel the smear of lipstick and wanted to wipe it away, but even though it didn’t seem so much now that something was pressing on top of her—she couldn’t see anything—she still couldn’t move her arms.

  “Grandma’s going to stay with you,” Mother said. “I’ll be here in the morning—probably way before you’re even awake. Then I’m going to take Grandma home so she can get ready for church, and I’ll come right back and stay with you all day. You start thinking about any of your books or your games you want, and Grandma will call to tell me.”

  Mother’s heels clicked away like gunfire.

  “There now,” Grandma said, patting at Lynn’s heavy arm. “You want to see what’s going on with Festus? He’ll be on in a little bit. I might could raise the bed up some, so you can see the television.”

  “I’m hot,” Lynn said.

  “You have to keep warm, now.”

  “I’m hot.”

  Grandma looked at her for a moment and shook her head, but then she pulled back the top blanket. There were still too many covers, too much weight. “More,” Lynn said.

  “Let’s see how this does.” Grandma smoothed the blanket over the end of the bed. “It’ll take a minute or two for you to cool down.”