A Gift for My Sister: A Novel

by Ann Pearlman

  “Oh, so now you’re showing your true racist self. Have you seen any hard drugs? No. You haven’t seen any ’cause there aren’t any. You don’t see me as I am, you see me how your mind made me up. And you act like your life is over when we’re all here helping you. All of us . . . the drug-using, gangsta-rap crew you accuse us of being.”

  Her fists clench. She might hit me, and my own hand folds to defend myself.

  “You’re making a monument of your grief to prove your love for Troy,” I gasp.

  Aaron steps beside me. Levy’s arms are wrapped around my leg to protect me from Sky’s screams.

  “Don’t blame me for your faults. Look around you. You’re still alive. And so is Rachel.”

  “It hasn’t been a month. Not even one month. Your life is so easy because you only think about yourself. How would you feel if Aaron died? How would you feel if it was your beloved Aaron dead?” She shrieks the word dead.

  Aaron dead. She shrieks the curse. An ambulance wails off in the distance. Then the alarm fades.

  I inhale sharply and my chest heaves. I’ve gathered enough air to continue the fight.

  I’ve thought about Aaron dying. How could I not after Troy’s death, how could I not put myself in my sister’s shoes? How could I not, with a father like mine? Aaron could leave for another woman, he could leave because he was bored. He could die. I’ve known that from the beginning. What would happen to Levy? And it’s in here, in these coulds, these horrible possibilities, that King’s offer gains value and desirability. He’s the ace in the hole. Not King the possible lover or the man, but King the bridge to solo stardom, to security if Aaron’s gone. Before Levy was born, I didn’t plan ahead or worry about safety. I was a go-with-the-flow kind of gal, never knowing what I might do next. Now security is seductive, and fame is safety.

  And in that space, the space of me grabbing all the air I can and these contradictory thoughts warring in my head, Aaron steps between us and puts his hand on my arm.

  So what happens next is: “Help, mister. Help!”

  I turn to see a chubby girl—Brooke’s daughter?—in the water, clinging to the side of the pool with one arm and pointing into the water with the other.

  Aaron makes a leap—flies actually, stretched over the water—to land flat on his belly.

  The resounding spray hits all of us.

  He sinks in the water and brings Rachel to the surface. Swimming and carrying her high above the water. Smoke jumps in, and then they gently lay her on the cement.

  She isn’t moving.

  T-Bone points at the three of them, Brooke blows into Rachel’s mouth, and Smoke’s fingers spread over Rachel’s tiny ribs. Now, Rachel lies, not moving, not breathing, maybe lost too—oh God no, not that too, not that now, how could Sky survive? How could I?

  Brooke breathes for her and Smoke pushes her little chest, squatting side by side, working to save her.

  Sky stands over Rachel, shaking and wailing. Howling. Her rage at me replaced by terror and fear.

  Levy cries, and I turn toward him.

  Rachel lies still. Strands of hair are stuck against her forehead. Smoke’s fingers press her small chest. Brooke blows air into her lungs.

  Over and over.

  Time creeps on. I watch as Smoke and Brooke keep working on Rachel.

  Finally, Rachel coughs. Water dribbles from her mouth. She looks around at all of us crowding her. She sits up, gasps, and wails. It’s a sharp-pitched note that fades, and then reasserts itself. Like a siren, that high-pitched and tense.

  All that in a few blazing minutes. It’s slap-dash hectic action, as though we’re in one of those bizarre movies where action freezes for some people and speeds up for others. Each of us in a different time zone. Molly and her brother huddled by the bushes. Levy hanging onto my leg. Sky shrieking. Aaron’s clothes, still wet from his rescue of Rachel, drip water in slow motion to the cement. Red Dog and T-Bone stand frozen by the edge of the pool, Brooke and Smoke move with the rhythm of their own breathing.

  With Rachel’s cry everything changes. Time resumes normalcy. Sky, Allie, and I weep with relief and gratitude. Brooke sits back on her haunches, her palms on her thighs, and then she and Smoke hug each other. Aaron and Red Dog and T-Bone clap Smoke on the back and ask him how he learned CPR.

  Sky holds Rachel close. Rachel cries into her mom’s shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re okay,” Sky tells her, swaying back and forth.

  Over Rachel’s head, our eyes meet. Sky’s contain relief and sorrow. She doesn’t shift her eyes; they remain fixed on mine as she stares at me washed of rage and desperation. And then, tears stream down her face.

  Rachel looks at all of us standing around her and resumes crying. Brooke pats Rachel’s back and then calls her own children, the chubby girl and a little boy playing in the bushes with a truck, and hugs them close to her.

  My sister cursed me.

  I glance at Aaron and then squeeze his hand. His brows slant down, his eyes narrowed with anger and distrust of my sister for her accusations and curses.

  “It’s easier to be angry than sad and scared,” Allie says.

  “Well, that explains the emotion, not the words,” Aaron tells her. Aaron and I and the crew have gone way out of our way to help Sky. I know that’s what Aaron is thinking.

  Allie presses her lips together and nods slightly.

  Sky’s arms and cries of relief surround Rachel.

  “I hope those are tears of happiness and gratitude,” I say, looking at her.

  She glances up at me.

  Her words can’t be erased.

  I move close, lower my voice to an almost whisper, and say, “I understand how scared and crazed you were.” I try to excuse her. I try to hug both of them.

  But she maintains the truth of her accusations. I consider saying, But it isn’t true, none of that is true, but instead I say, “I’m so relieved, so happy Rachel is okay,” and kiss Rachel on her forehead and kiss Sky’s hand, the one on Rachel’s shoulder with her wedding ring still on the third finger.

  See? Everyone thinks I selfishly immerse myself in my music. But look how hard I try and how my attempts are ignored or misinterpreted. I can’t do it right, so I retreat to a musical solitude, which is a mixed place. Safe. But lonely.

  Then Rachel squirms out of her mom’s arms and runs up to Levy, standing close to Aaron as though she doesn’t understand the mushy fuss.

  Allie says, “Hey. Where’re your water wings? You need to always wear them when you’re around a pool or lake.”

  Rachel turns her mouth down. “Over there.” She points to pink, deflated wings in the mulch, which Tyler has attempted to bury with his truck. Allie pulls them out, shakes them off, rinses them, and reinflates them. One has a hole in it.

  “You can’t go back in the water unless you’re with an adult.” She kneels in front of Rachel, placing her own hands on Rachel’s shoulders. Now she’s taking over the mom role. Sky is back on the chaise, her palms over her eyes. Her shaking chest indicates she’s crying.

  By now the other kids are splashing in the pool. Even Tyler has abandoned his construction project to play Marco Polo with his sister; Levy joins them, but his swimming isn’t up to the task. There’s a shallow end, and I take Rachel and go in. I grab Levy’s hand and make a circle and dance around playing ring-around-the-rosy. When we come to the all-fall-down part, I sit on the bottom of the pool and watch while the kids fall back in the water. Rachel reveals no fear, no memory of danger. But I never let go of her resilient little hand.

  Does Sky actually think I’m stealing her daughter? She should join us.

  Sky sits on the chaise watching, her eyes on Rachel. Brooke is beside her. I steal glances at them. For a while, Sky stares at us. Well, not at us, around us. She watches the water as though she expects a demon, the Loch Ness monster, a mermaid to leap up in an amazing plume and spectacular glory. We skip around the circle again; her eyes are almost on us. And then I realize, she hopes that Troy wil
l surface, stroke through the pool, and leap out to land beside her.

  I say, “Let’s wave to Mommy, let’s wave to Aunt Sky.” At first she doesn’t notice our motion, and then she does and smiles.

  She smiles! I wave her to us and she enters the pool.

  The four of us bounce around, the adults stooping in the water, doing another round or two of our circle game. Sisters playing with their kids; something I once dreamed about, but the joy of the moment is tarnished from the fight. Allie joins us and we bounce around the circle, making great splashes when we all fall down. Sky has a forced smile on her face, and then she takes Rachel aside and says, “I’m going to teach you how to float.”

  I know then the thought that got her out of her chaise. Sky recognizes she has more to lose. She captures a piece of Troy by doing what he would do. He would certainly teach Rachel the glory of the water. Sky can protect Rachel. She’s aware of what she still has.

  Allie comments, “She’s faking it until she makes it. Just as well.”

  “Children heal so quickly. Forget so quickly,” I say.

  Allie shoots me a look. “Sometimes. Or they remember differently. I mean deep somewhere in their nonverbal souls. You did the perfect thing. Making a game out of falling in the water. Now she has to learn both. It’s not all fun. There’s danger, too.”

  I think about learning how to negotiate the fun and staying safe from the danger. With too much security, change is avoided; with too much excitement, safety is threatened.

  For the next hour, everything seems normal. Sky plays with Rachel and Brooke gets in the water. It’s the three moms and the four kids giving different swimming lessons. T-Bone feigns interest, standing next to Brooke, but she isn’t buying his interest in anything other than how her boobs emerge from her bikini top and how her ass pokes out of her bottoms. But I get the sense that something casual might be right up her alley.

  Aaron went to the store, and has one of the motel’s grills going to make barbequed chicken; it’s marinating in lemon juice and herbs. Sweet potatoes wrapped in foil edge the glowing embers. Then Sky gets out of the water and goes toward Smoke sitting at a table playing Hold ’em with Red Dog, a bottle of Hennessy on the wood table. She touches him on his shoulder and he turns toward her just as he picks up his three cards. I see his hand: two aces and a jack.

  “Could you do me a favor? Drive me to find some water wings for Rachel?”

  “When I finish this hand.” He says it evenly, not betraying the win he’s about to have.

  I wonder why she asked him instead of me. I think of a thousand reasons. Brooke is flirting with T-Bone, Allie is busy reading on a chaise, and Sky’s probably tired of being in a car with Allie. Sky wants me to watch the kids, and Smoke helped save Rachel’s life.

  Why do I watch Sky so closely, as though her decisions predict, prophesy something about me? As though her life has an answer or an influence on mine? I always have. The big sister demonstrating an approach to the next stage of my life.

  So I show Rachel and Levy how to take a big breath and put their heads in the water.

  “Watch watch watch,” I tell Rachel and Levy, holding their hands. Then I inhale and put my head underwater, holding my breath. I lift it and exhale. “Now your turn.” I mimic the motions for them and they copy me. I watch as Rachel and Levy gasp and then hold their heads underwater. Levy bobs to the surface, and then Rachel.

  “Good job!” I say.

  Sky calls me to the side and says, “Smoke and I are going to get new water wings. Will you watch Rachel?”

  “Yep.”

  She says, “Rachel, I’m getting a surprise for you. Aunt Tara will watch you, okay?”

  She’s trying. I can see it.

  “Okay,” Rachel grins.

  “Let’s see how long we can hold our breaths.” We inhale as much air as we can and duck our heads underwater. I open my eyes and see the kids floating, each gripping me by one hand. Levy’s eyes are tightly clenched, his shorts billow around his skinny legs. Rachel clasps my hand; her hair surges and drifts with water currents and our bodies. Levy lifts his head. Then me, though I have plenty of air left. Rachel floats, her hair swaying around her head, and then she surfaces. “I won,” she grins.

  I understand her enunciation perfectly.

  “Yay, for Rachel,” I sing.

  “Let’s go again,” Levy says.

  We take turns winning.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Blindly Killing Your Own Family

  Sky

  RACHEL IS OKAY. But that was such a close call. I’m still shaking from almost losing my precious child. I ask Allie and Brooke if we should take Rachel to a doctor. Allie asks her some questions. Brooke says we should just watch her. She seems fine. A tragedy averted, this time. Calamities are always around us, surrounding us like the canyon. I think this as I get in my car, on the passenger side. Smoke pushes the driver’s seat back and inserts the key. “Where to?”

  I check for a Kmart or Walmart on my cell phone’s GPS and, when the directions pop up, I show him the map.

  He glances at it and says, “That’s just around the corner.” He pulls out of the motel parking lot sure of where he’s going, as though he’s memorized the town’s layout.

  I have a bad sense of direction. Even before, when I had Troy, I was afraid of getting lost. That’s why I have a GPS in my car and on my cell. Double the protection.

  “You have remarkable eyes,” I say to Smoke.

  “So do you.” He makes a right turn from the parking lot. He drives to a main street and we stop at a red light. “It’s just that blue eyes aren’t often found on someone as black as me.”

  I don’t say anything. I didn’t mean to comment on his race and now I don’t know what to say. Skin as dark as his is unusual in the U.S., especially with blue eyes. The light turns green and we start driving again.

  He fiddles with the radio. “You like country?” he asks. His bulky fingers delicately turn the knob to adjust the volume.

  “Sometimes. Mostly, I like R & B and rock.”

  “You don’t like rap much.”

  “It’s the language. And the materialistic, sexist messages.”

  “That’s the contrary nature of the culture. Turn the bad into something good somehow, like turning pig guts into a delicacy. We remake it, redefine it as ours instead of some shit shoved down our throats.” He says this calmly, his voice soothing although his words aren’t.

  I resume looking at the scrubby trees in between a Discount Tire, an El Torito, a Bojo’s Grill, a CVS, and a Sam’s Food Mart drifting by, each chain store with a parking lot in front.

  “Do you like country and R & B?” Making small talk is an effort for me, so I have to prod myself.

  “I like all music. Listen, it’s not true what you said back there. You need to know that.”

  “Huh?”

  “About the drugs. Speaking for myself, I don’t use no hard drugs. And I haven’t seen any of us do that shit.” He shrugs, and the motion revolves his shoulder and his arm. “We’re not riding dirty. Too much to lose.” He turns to me when he says this. “See, Red Dog saw shit eat up his moms and pops and learned bitter lessons. We from the bottom of the barrel, growing up in the D. You know Special did time, don’t think he’s about to get caught up in some rinky-ass state where dreams are dashed. Freedom and life too precious. If you listened to what we sing about, really listened, you’d know. I know it sounds like I’m some New Age dude, when I’m not. But I get high playing Africa . . . that’s all I need.”

  I gaze out the window as more chain stores pass by.

  “And as for women. Well, we grown ass men. They aren’t married. Of course some of us may catch what’s thrown at us. But I don’t waste my time that way.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

  “I don’t, but I will for Tara. I’m used to people seeing me with stereotyped eyes. But I got a lot of loyalty for her.”

  He didn’t mention T-
Bone.

  “And I love that li’l Levy almost as much as my own little girl,” he continues.

  I don’t totally believe what he’s telling me. I mean, he’s telling me the truth, but there’s got to be another side to it. You never know what other people do, the secrets that other people keep. Levy seeing the crew go off with different women has an impact. Levy being on a bus with a bunch of men instead of playing in a park influences him.

  “Levy, he’s got lots of fathers,” he says and smiles. “Lots of examples of what a man can be. He’s a lucky little dude.”

  Then I think, have I protected Rachel? Her father just died. She almost drowned. I shudder. I’ve planned, provided, guarded, and look what she’s gone through.

  I see pansies and marigolds blooming under some scrubby willows.

  I still have Rachel left from my life with Troy. Oh, and my law degree and experience, I add as an afterthought.

  At the Walmart Supercenter, we find a bunch of water wings on sale and I buy a pink and a lime green pair for Rachel, and a turquoise pair for Levy. They’re such brillant colors they hurt my eyes. Smoke carries the bag for me and opens the door. I’ve missed such chivalry.

  Sitting in the car next to Smoke feels safe and solid. Maybe because of his size, but mostly because he saved Rachel’s life. I tell him so.

  “Along with Special and Brooke.”

  I don’t know how to thank him. Our seat belts are firm around us.

  After dinner, the kids fall asleep sprawled over each other in my room watching TV. Aaron, Smoke, and Red Dog play cards in Red Dog and Smoke’s room. I smell the basil aroma of pot. Well, Smoke said they didn’t do hard drugs. He didn’t say anything about pot. I don’t know where Brooke and T-Bone are. I wonder if Brooke and I will still be friends after my fight with Tara. I haven’t thanked her properly for saving Rachel, but how do I do that? And Aaron and Smoke. Everyone saved her. Everyone but me and Tara. The people who should have done something.

  In all the years that Troy and I were together, I never yelled at him, not like that. Only Tara, and that was when we were kids. But the truth is, the awful truth, after that shrieking-screeching fight, I feel better. Relieved.