I clutched my sister like she was a life raft and cried into her blond strands that were thicker, darker versions of mine, squeezed her so tight it was like we had one set of lungs, one heart pounding in my head. I hugged Jaime and closed my eyes while the rain beat a million tiny drums around us. I don’t know how to live without you, I thought at her. Come back.
She murmured and opened her eyes. Her head lolled and she squinted at me. “Nerd,” she said and smiled. “Why are we on the floor?” I laughed, silent tears flooding my face, and helped us up onto the wet bench seat.
“We should take you to the hospital,” I said, examining the cut on her forehead.
“I hate hospitals,” Dad said, sliding back into the cab and shutting his door. The shrill dinging stopped and I heard my hammering heart and Jaime’s labored breathing.
“Jaime hit her head and passed out,” I said. “You know, when you crashed.”
Dad said, “We didn’t crash,” and leaned over to look into Jaime’s eyes. He held up three fingers and asked her to count them. She said she didn’t feel woozy, she knew her name, and her vision wasn’t blurry. “She’s fine,” Dad said and turned the key in the ignition.
“She was unconscious,” I said. “Aren’t you worried?”
“I’ve hit my head plenty of times,” Dad said.
“I’m fine,” Jaime said.
“Brain trauma is serious—”
“What are you, a doctor?” Dad said and put the truck into reverse.
I quoted Mom: “It’s better to be safe than sorry.” I pulled Jaime’s seat belt around her and made it as tight as possible.
Jaime said, “I’m okay, Liz, really.”
“That’s my girl,” Dad said, getting back on the empty road. “Reids are too strong for hospitals.”
“You can’t know for sure if her—”
“We can’t know anything for sure,” Dad said, cutting me off. He flipped the radio knob and the voices of the Beatles filled the cab. “Chill out.”
I buckled myself in and wiped at Jaime’s bleeding forehead with a tissue, my muscles more tense than ever. Dad used one hand to tap drum beats on the wheel like nothing had happened, and I understood then that Jaime and I were on our own. I had to stop biding time, waiting for the relief troops to arrive. No one was mounting the rescue I’d been naive enough to hope for, and Jaime had paid for my hesitation.
Back at Crystal’s trailer I cleaned and bandaged Jaime’s forehead cut and called an advice nurse when Dad went to the bathroom. I observed Jaime like she instructed—though she strongly suggested we go to the ER—and Jaime was never out of arm’s reach near Dad again.
All that night I replayed the memory of my little sister lifeless against me in the damp night air. I relived the guilt over my too-slow reaction, the fear that she wouldn’t wake up. The fiery terror I’d felt in my gut when I thought Jaime may not return to me burned in nauseating waves, and I used the blaze to fuel my defense boot camp, my new twenty-four-hour guard. I was all Jaime had now. I needed to be tougher.
4
“You could live with me,” Rachel says when I tell her I’m moving to Salt Lake City.
“Yeah, right,” I say. We’re sitting on the floor of her bedroom, Pearl Jam on the radio, Cosmo magazines open to beauty how-tos. Rachel already applied my makeup, eye shadow and lip liner in darker shades than I would have chosen, and now she’s fussing with my hair.
“Why did you do this without my help?” She makes a “grrr” sound as she tries to make my too-short and uneven bangs—the result of a school-less day spent with scissors at Gary’s—look stylish. “Seriously,” Rachel says over the buzz of the hair dryer. “My dad loves you.” She blows my jagged bangs to the side and pins them. “We could share this room,” she says. “I’ll give you half my closet.”
I tear up. It’s like Rachel offering me her kidney. I say, “If it was my choice, I would totally stay here.”
“My dad could talk to your mom,” she says, turning my head and brushing my hair from my scalp to the blondest tips at my shoulder blades. “He thinks you’re a good influence on me. And you do the dishes and stuff.”
“I think my aunt Tammy already bought a plane ticket,” I say. “She’s pretty cool. My mom says I’m a lot like her.”
“Well then she must be cool,” Rachel says. “But wouldn’t it be so much cooler to live with me?” She beams. “We could be like real sisters.”
“We are like real sisters,” I say, leaning to nudge her with my shoulder. “Moving away won’t change that.”
She shoves my arm. “You can’t leave,” she says. “Who will explain things like symbolism to me?” Her hazel eyes fill with tears. “I can’t imagine not seeing you every day.”
“Me, either,” I say, and scoot closer to her. “Who’s going to make me laugh through all this bullshit?” I say and lay my head on her shoulder.
“No more Cosmo quizzes during lunch hour,” she says, and half-laughs, half-sniffs.
I smile as my own eyes moisten. “No more bedroom karaoke weekends with your boom box or rainy walks in the park.”
“No more baking peanut butter brownies and lemon bars and stuffing our face while watching My So Called Life,” she says and sighs. “Jared Leto is so hot.”
I laugh a little as liquid slides out of the corners of my eyes. “No more walking the halls together singing, ‘Son of a Preacher Man.’”
“But you’ll be back soon, right?” Rachel says. “I mean, this is still your home.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I whisper. “I think it might be a really long time.”
“What did your mom say?”
“She’s acting like this isn’t a big deal. Like moving to a new city by themselves is something all teenagers do in the middle of their freshman year.”
Rachel puts her arms around my shoulders and squeezes. “I’m sorry, Liz Wiz,” she says after a few minutes. “Will you at least be able to visit?”
“I hope so, but you have to promise to write to me.”
“Or call,” she says.
“And call,” I say. “Promise.”
“Of course,” she says and lets me go. “Now let’s fix your hair.”
My aunt Tammy traveled all over the country on business trips when I was younger. She mailed me postcards from Boston and Chicago with acronyms that I had to decode, like HAGTWYWH. I made stationery pages by drawing flowery designs and curlicues as borders and stamping cats with top hats and dancing frogs in pink and purple ink, and covered them in my developing cursive. I sent her a new letter every week.
My bunny Pandy died today. It was raining and she stood shivering in her cage and then she just stopped moving. I wrote at night from my perch on the top bunk, flashlight in my mouth and Jaime asleep below me. Mom said you might visit soon. If you come on the nineteenth you could go to my open house and see my science fair project on bean sprout growth. I signed each letter, Love, Elizabeth, and added a heart above the lowercase i.
A few weekends each year, Tammy flew to Sacramento just to visit. She slept on the couch and woke us up early to go on Saturday outings. She took Jaime and me to Marine World where we watched whale shows and waterskiing shows and I got chosen from the audience to pet a sea lion which felt slick and smooth and not like fur at all. Tammy took a picture of me and Jaime holding baby white Bengal tigers with barely opened eyes, and we ate funnel cake on a bench watching the giraffes tower above the visitors holding out eucalyptus branches.
“Do you want kids?” Jaime asked Tammy.
“I have you girls.”
“Don’t you want your own?” Jaime said.
“Don’t be rude,” I said.
“But you have to get married first,” Jaime said. White powdered sugar dusted her lips. “God says.” She licked her fingers. I handed her a napkin.
“You could marry Sam,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jaime said, running sugary fingers through her hair. “You already live together.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “I’m not even sure I want to marry him.”
“I want to marry Ryan from church,” Jaime said. “He’s a hunk.” As Jaime listed the names of her five future children, Tammy smiled, but her eyes were somewhere else.
On another visit Tammy took us to San Francisco’s Pier 39 and we watched the white-faced mimes and spray-painted silver robot men on the streets; saw the mounds of sea lions lumbering across wooden planks anchored in the bay, barking and falling over each other into the dark green sea where they glided through the water like torpedoes. We ate thick clam chowder from sourdough bread bowls bigger than our heads and tried to ignore the seagulls circling like vultures. Jaime convinced Tammy to buy her a caricature portrait, and when the artist was done drawing and Jaime saw the triangular lips and pointed nose on the picture she got grumpy. “I look ugly,” she said.
I said, “It’s supposed to be funny.”
“It’s not,” she said and pouted until Tammy offered to buy us ice cream.
“How come Jaime always gets her way?” I asked Tammy while Jaime was in the bathroom washing mint chocolate chip off her hands.
“You know she doesn’t.”
“When I complain, Mom tells me to shut up.”
Tammy squatted in front of me and looked me in the eye. Hers were bluer than Mom’s, more like mine. “I know all this seems hard now,” she said. “But as one eldest to another, someday you’ll appreciate the struggle.” I crossed my arms across my chest. “It makes us stronger,” she said and stood up. “You are going to do great things.”
“How do you know?”
She squeezed my shoulder and said, “Trust me.” I hugged her and hoped she was right. I cried every time after she left.
Tammy came for Mom and Terrance’s wedding, and her appearance was the only bright spot in a series of days full of worry-knotted muscles and fake smiles. Mom squealed with delight while I feigned excitement for what felt like a death sentence.
Pastor Ron announced at church that after a few months of dating, my mom and Terrance, two souls met and united under God, would make the ultimate commitment to each other. I missed the service because I spent most Sunday mornings after the hymn portion ended sitting on the bathroom floor reading books starring witches and vampires. I would tell Mom I was volunteering in the nursery and hope she didn’t check.
A woman who had once told me I had a beautiful singing voice came in just as I was finishing a chapter and said, “Congratulations, young lady.”
“For what?” I said.
“On the engagement, of course.” She tilted her head up at the mirror and brushed her rouged cheeks with the tips of her fingers. “Why aren’t you in the service?”
I waved Master of Murder in front of me. “I can’t read while Pastor Ron is talking,” I said. “What engagement?”
Her fingers paused above her painted eyes. “Your mother, dear. And that nice young Hispanic man with the ponytail.”
Mom apologized for not telling us sooner. “It was all so sudden,” she said, like a teenage Disney princess. Even once the wedding date was set and the invitations were in the mail, the food and flowers ordered, the dress bought and honeymoon booked, I didn’t think she’d really marry him until Tammy showed up.
Tammy did my hair and Jaime’s while she paid for Mom to have hers done at a salon by a professional. Tammy paid for Mom to get a manicure and makeup, too, so we had the whole morning alone in our apartment.
“Can we wear makeup?” Jaime asked. She was nine and I eleven, and she was just excited to get dressed up.
“I don’t see why not,” Tammy said and dusted our faces with powder. She wore a slip and a bra without wires. Her chest was freckled and tan.
“Did you know he was in prison?” I said.
Jaime said, “Shh,” and elbowed me.
Tammy said, “Close your eyes.” She smoothed a light peach shadow across our lids.
“He buys us ice cream,” Jaime said.
“I hate him,” I said.
Tammy said, “All done.” She brushed her hands together. “You both look beautiful.” Our long blond hair was twisted and pinned into loose buns atop our heads with freed wavy strands framing our faces.
“Wow,” Jaime said, staring at her reflection. “We really do.” She twirled in her pink dress, the lacy skirt spinning around her legs. “Can I watch TV?”
“Sure,” Tammy said and when Jaime was gone she said, “Elizabeth.”
“He really was in prison,” I said.
“Do you know why?”
“Mom won’t tell us,” I said. “I think she’s pregnant.”
“She is not,” Tammy said. She hesitated. “I hope she’s not.”
“I found prenatal pills in her bathroom,” I said. “She said they want to have a baby as soon as they’re married but she’s been throwing up, too.” Tammy’s eyebrows went up and then came back down together and she was quiet for a minute. I said, “She thinks I don’t know.”
Tammy sighed and closed her eyes for a second. “Can you be nice today?” she said and looked at me.
“Will you move to Sacramento?”
“I’m staying until after their honeymoon.”
I said, “Can’t you stay longer?”
Tammy hugged me to her and rubbed my back through the slippery satin of the new dress she’d bought me. “It’ll be okay, Liz.”
With my face pressed into the soft skin of her stomach, I closed my eyes and pictured the way Terrance’s eyes lingered on Jaime and me, the way he rested his fingers too long on our small knees and shoulders, the way he bit his lips when Mom wasn’t looking. I whispered, “When you leave, we have to live with Terrance.”
Mom walked down the aisle in a cream dress patterned with large maroon flowers. A gold clip with pearls held up some of her hair and some of it fell down in soft loose curls. She wore cream-colored heels and lipstick the same maroon as the flowers on her dress, held a bouquet of deep red roses, and smiled so big I was almost happy for her. A polished wooden cross spanned the back wall of the room which doubled as a gym for the Christian school attached. Terrance stood next to Gary at the altar in their brown suits, both of them wearing matching gold-and-maroon ties. Tammy stood next to Mom in her plain beige dress, her thin brown hair half up in a gold clip.
“Mom looks gorgeous,” Jaime whispered in my ear. “I can’t wait to get married.” She sighed and put her hand on her heart when the rings came out like some of the older ladies in the audience. Pastor Ron talked about God and commitment, and like many of the women in the congregation who cried when he pronounced them man and wife, tears fell onto my lap, too, when I bowed my head for the final prayer. I didn’t close my eyes but instead watched the dark spots on my purple dress ripple out across the fabric.
That weekend, during the kind of late-night conversations that made Tammy my favorite adult, she told me she believed you could choose your family, that you didn’t have to love someone just because fluids had been mixed somewhere along the line. Cancer had killed Tammy and Mom’s mother when Tammy was six and Mom was four, and they grew up getting beaten by their stepmother while their workaholic father sat in his leather recliner reading the newspaper.
“‘Related’ is biology,” Tammy said. “Blood connections are on indisputable genetic levels.” Mom and Terrance were honeymooning in Mendocino and Jaime slept on the couch. Tammy had let me stay up and have a sip of her wine. She was on her third glass. “But love is not science,” she said. “Family is more than biology.”
Mom and Terrance were due back the next day and I wished they wouldn’t come home. Tammy had cooked homemade macaroni and cheese with corkscrew pasta noodles and sharp cheddar, and lasagna that had never been frozen. She gave us facials with creams that smelled like melon and apricot, put tea bags on our eyes and hot washcloths over our faces. She made pancakes that weren’t from a boxed mix and eggs with chopped vegetables for breakfast. She rented movies and played Monopoly and Lif
e with us for hours after Mom would have quit.
But what I liked best was this: after the moon rose and Jaime fell asleep, Tammy talked to me like I was a grown up. She used adult language, and when I asked what a word meant, she told me, instead of Mom’s usual, “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“My friends are my family,” Tammy said. “And when you get older, you can choose to have that, too.”
“Mom says I have to love Terrance,” I said. “That he’s part of our family when they get back.”
Tammy said, “You don’t have to love him. You just have to be civil.”
“What does that mean?”
“Polite.”
“She promised not to marry someone we didn’t like,” I said. “She lied.”
Tammy swirled the liquid in her glass and we watched as the wine coated the clear walls with a red film. “We can’t always decide how we feel.”
“But we can decide what we do.”
“Sometimes,” Tammy whispered.
“What?”
Tammy shook her head. “You’re right, little girl, you’re right.” She reached forward and ruffled my hair. “Such a smart kid.” She sighed, took a sip of her Pinot Noir, and closed her eyes.
When Mom and Terrance got back we were supposed to be asleep so I closed my eyes as she came in to check. I tried to steady my breath to match the rhythm of deep slumber in Jaime’s. Terrance went to get the bags from the car and Tammy whispered right outside our bedroom door, “Are you pregnant?”
Mom sighed. “How did you know?”
“Is that why you married this guy?”
Mom’s breath faltered. She said, “I do love him.”
“Enough to spend the rest of your life listening to his awful jokes?”
“Is that your worst criticism?”
“Why was he in prison?”
“Why is that what everyone focuses on?”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s not like that’s the only thing he’s ever done,” Mom said. Tammy laughed. “It’s too late, okay?” Mom snapped. “He’s my husband.”
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