Sister Mine

by Tawni O'Dell

  Almost all our conversations centered on Jolly Mount. He had no interest in trying to impress me with his wealth and his worldliness, which made him more mature in my eyes than most of the grown men I’d been involved with.

  He especially loved my description of a neighbor’s hound dog howling over the hill at night, how he only cried when he wanted to mate or kill. He said that was exactly the way he felt.

  We had a week together. He was charming and intense but easily distracted, and angered, and bored. It was obvious to me that he was a deeply troubled kid, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed and I wasn’t in a position to bring it up to anyone. He had a drug habit and a drinking problem that both parents ignored for different reasons. He was reckless in everything he did, from the way he drove his sports car to the way he fell asleep with lit cigarettes between his fingers to the way he insisted on having a TV set sitting perilously close to the edge of his Jacuzzi.

  He was hell around water. When I escorted him to the hotel pool he claimed he’d never been around a pool so small. The pools where he lived were as wide and deep as lakes, he told me, then proceeded to do back flips off the sides and missed smashing his skull into the cement by mere inches.

  The day before I put in a request to be relieved of my assignment, I taught him how to make a shallow dive.

  He died of a drug overdose the next night. There was some brief talk that it might have been suicide, but he didn’t leave a note and everyone in his family was certain he had everything to live for.

  I was never outwardly accused of anything, but no one could ignore the fact that I had asked to be transferred away from him the day before he died or that when checking the hotel phone records it was discovered that the last two calls he made were to my home number.

  I started to apply for jobs all over the country. I applied to a few in Pennsylvania, but I wasn’t trying to move back home. Shannon’s death and my dad’s life still loomed too large for me in Jolly Mount.

  I went back a few times to visit. It was nice to see Isabel and Jimmy even though the black cloud of Shannon’s disappearance hung over all our conversations.

  I saw my dad, too, despite my suspicions over what he might have done to my sister. I was a grown woman now. A police officer. A single mother of a fine son. I made more money than he did. Yet as soon as I was around him I fell into my old role of subservient daughter, apologizing constantly, never venturing my own opinion, praising everything he said, making him meals, cleaning his filthy house, doing his laundry.

  It was a comment from Clay that led me to stop seeing him. He asked me during one of our visits, “Why do you act like you’re stupid when you’re around Grandpa?”

  His question stopped me in my tracks. The way he asked it. The phrasing. Not “Why do you act stupid?” which can basically mean anything, but a very specific “Why do you act like you’re stupid?”

  I couldn’t begin to answer him. I also knew I wasn’t going to change. Instead I decided it was in my son’s best interest not to see me around my father. I finally had a reason to sever our relationship that I could defend.

  I hadn’t seen him for four years when I got the news that an explosion in Beverly had killed twelve miners. The job on the Centresburg police force was purely a stroke of luck and timing. I heard about the opening when I went home to bury him.

  I came back three months later for an interview and to take the borough test along with seventy men who also showed up at the high school cafeteria. I was the only woman. I knew I was more than qualified for the job, but I was still surprised when I beat out the others.

  I found out eventually that the reason the chief chose me was because I offered the perfect solution to a family crisis. One of the candidates was his loser son-in-law, and his daughter expected the chief to give him the job. He knew if he gave it to another male candidate his daughter would never forgive him, and if he gave the job to his son-in-law he’d never forgive himself, so he told his daughter that the latest town budget insisted they hire a female officer in accordance with the Equal Opportunity Employment Act and he hired me. She grumbled and pouted for awhile, but got over it.

  My next twelve years as a Centresburg police officer were fairly uneventful although a few of my cases made big local headlines.

  PANTSLESS MAN ARRESTED: A man wearing no pants was arrested outside the Golden Pheasant bar in Centresburg. Local authorities confirm intoxication was a contributing factor in the incident.

  MAN FLINGS GRILL: An Ebensburg man flung a grill at an RV windshield after his wife poured out the contents of a vodka bottle during a domestic dispute at Yellow Creek Campground.

  DOWNSPOUTING RECOVERED: A two-foot long section of white vinyl downspouting believed to be the weapon in a recent assault on Lowe’s general manager, Harold Brink, was recovered by Centresburg police.

  BIBLE-WIELDING BRIDE SMASHES CHURCH WINDOWS MORNING OF NUPTIALS: Ashley Dawn Hale, 22, of Marion Center, was charged with destruction of private property and attempted assault Saturday morning after destroying four stained-glass windows in the Pine Mills Presbyterian Church and throwing a Bible at the head of a wedding photographer.

  Hale was allowed to stay for the marriage ceremony before being remanded into police custody.

  No explanation was given by Hale as to the reason for her actions. Hale’s mother claims her daughter has been under a lot of stress planning the wedding.

  MAN DRESSED IN GROUNDHOG SUIT ASSAULTED: A man wearing a groundhog suit was severely beaten after Friday night’s high school football game against Punxsutawney. Centresburg defeated the Woodchucks, 28–3. Go Flames!

  Centresburg is not a high crime area. The majority of calls I responded to dealt predominantly with people acting carelessly, selfishly, or cruelly, but rarely criminally. My job was basically to prevent someone from doing something stupid, to clean up after someone who had already done something stupid, or to find the person who had done something stupid and then left.

  I also handled a fair amount of domestic abuse.

  I answered a 911 call a year ago and found a twelve-year-old girl with severe vaginal bleeding locked in a bathroom. The call had been made by her little sister. Upon examination I found a lightbulb had been inserted inside her and crushed. After I calmed the girl down and assured her an ambulance was on the way, she explained to me that she was pregnant and her mother told her this was a way to get rid of the baby. Her mother made her lie on the floor; she was the one who pushed in the lightbulb then stomped on the girl’s belly. The father of the baby was her mother’s boyfriend.

  Her mother denied everything during my preliminary questioning of her but when her daughter was wheeled by on a paramedics’ gurney, her face turned red and ugly and she spat the word “slut” at her.

  I grabbed her by the throat with one hand, backed her against a wall, and jammed my gun into her forehead. It was a beautifully pure moment I will always remember and crave and envy. I gave no thought to rules, boundaries, parameters, consequences, laws, excuses, or the Ten Commandments. It wasn’t an intellectual decision or an emotional or moral one. My actions came from base animal instinct: I needed to kill her because she threatened the well-being of my species.

  The only thing that prevented me from pulling the trigger was her daughter screaming for me to stop.

  I left her with a dime-sized indentation in her forehead from the pressure of my gun, a bruised trachea, and her own urine dripping down her leg.

  Back at the station I laid my gun and creds on the chief’s desk and said, “It’s time for me to quit.”

  The girl lost the baby, changed her story to say that she had tried to hurt herself, and claimed her mother’s boyfriend had never touched her, but she wouldn’t support her mother’s charge of police brutality against me. Neither would the paramedics. The stories circulated anyway.

  A voice pipes up over the background noise coming over my phone.

  “Testing. One. Two. Three.”

  “For Ch
rist’s sake,” I grumble to myself. “Pamela,” I say into the phone. “You’re not supposed to talk to me. We don’t want her to know your phone is on.”

  “I was just testing…”

  “There’s no need to test. Put the phone in your purse and go sit down with her. Do you see her?”

  “Yes, she just looked up and she’s waving at me. She looks happy to see me.”

  I hear the hope in her voice.

  “Okay. That’s good. But just remember why you’re here in the first place. She might be trying to pull something over on you. Don’t trust her.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing myself say. When did I become someone who cares about protecting this woman’s interests? I should be protecting my sister’s interests, but I have no idea what they are.

  “Hi, Pam.”

  “Jamie, how are you?”

  Silence. I assume they’re embracing.

  “You look wonderful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “A little tired, maybe.”

  “I am tired. The baby’s due in a couple days, you know.”

  “Of course I know. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. I was worried sick about you. Why didn’t you tell me you were going away?” Pamela’s voice begins to sound a little desperate. “I could have gone with you, or at the very least you could have let me make plans for you. You could have used our summer house.”

  “I needed to be by myself.”

  “Did you find your friend?” Pamela asks. “Are you staying with her?”

  “Yes. She’s been really good to me.”

  “Better than I’ve been to you?” Pamela asks with a laugh.

  Jamie’s voice turns cold, “She hasn’t bought me anything if that’s what you mean.”

  “Good morning, ladies,” a waitress interrupts their conversation. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “What kind of coffee do you have?” Pamela asks.

  “Regular and decaf.”

  “Oh.” A disappointed and bewildered silence follows.

  “Do you have iced tea?” she perseveres.

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind?”

  “Regular.”

  I think I hear Shannon snort a laugh.

  “You can put sugar in it,” the waitress adds helpfully.

  “Fine. I’ll have an iced tea.”

  “I’ll have coffee,” Shannon volunteers eagerly. “And a piece of coconut cream pie.”

  I smile.

  Shannon was around seven years old and I was about thirteen when the Eatn’Park Restaurant was built in Centresburg. It was an immediate sensation with its big laminated menu full of mouth-watering photographs of every type of comfort food and its fabulous display case of glistening pies.

  Shannon and I never got to eat in a restaurant. We also never got to go to Centresburg. But I had heard so much about the Eatn’Park pies, I was determined that we were going to sample one. I took some of my precious allowance money that Isabel had begun to give me because she said I worked harder than most adults who had full-time jobs with steady paychecks, and I arranged a ride with Lib, who was driving into town to pick up a part for his mower, and Shannon and I set out to have some pie.

  I can still picture her standing at the case with her hair pulled back in a shiny pigtail like a rope of braided reddish mink and her freckled nose pressed up against the glass.

  She made me tell her the name of each pie and when we got to coconut cream, she looked up at me and asked me if it wasn’t true that coconuts grew in Africa.

  I praised her for remembering that fact and reminded her of the National Geographic book about Africa we looked at and the pages about the Ivory Coast and the photos of palm trees dripping with bunches of the hairy brown fruit.

  We both had coconut cream, and as we ate it we congratulated ourselves on being able to taste Africa, and we tried to remember as many things as we could from the book.

  Shannon remembered that in some African tribes old people leave their families when they become burdens and they find a tree they like and climb into it and wait to die. We decided to already pick our tree when we got home that afternoon. Even though we were only children. Better safe than sorry.

  She also brought up the pictures of the men who worked in the South African diamond mines. They were dark-skinned and slighter than our miners but had the same clamped jaws and the same stoic stubbornness shining in their weary eyes.

  There was one other difference between their mines and ours that we both remembered: Their mines were numbered; they didn’t have names. All of J&P’s mines were named after women.

  This made us feel bad for the African miners. The lack of a name would make it impossible for them to talk about their mines with the same familiarity and affection the J&P miners used when talking about theirs; the way they complained about Beverly’s gassiness and Lorelei’s dampness or praised the height of Marvella’s seams and Jojo’s roomy cross-cuts; the way the mention of Gertie made the respectful silence due to all deceased loved ones descend over any conversation.

  Our miners trusted their mines, but each day as the African miners approached their dark portals, they would have to feel the trepidation of putting their fates in the hands of a stranger.

  Shannon and I couldn’t imagine any greater honor for a woman than having a mine named after her. While other girls in other places wanted to have beauty pageant crowns placed on their heads or they longed to have their faces splashed all over fashion magazines, we aspired to have our names be synonymous with a much-needed job to scores of tired, filthy men. We knew the mine could be a place of death and danger and degradation, but it was also our source of life.

  Shannon was sure someday someone would name a mine after her, and I made her promise when it happened she’d make sure to have a sister mine named after me.

  “I’m having doubts about the adoption.” Shannon’s words intrude on my memories.

  “I don’t understand,” Pamela responds. “Nothing has changed. Your situation hasn’t changed,” she stresses. “You know that Dennis and I can give the baby a wonderful home and every advantage. Not to mention all our love.”

  Silence. The waitress brings the iced tea and pours the coffee. Both women murmur thank-yous.

  “If you love your child, you’ll want the very best for him or her,” Pamela begins again.

  “I do want the best for my child. That’s why I’m having doubts. I think I may have found a better family.”

  Another silence.

  “Better in what way?” Pamela finally asks, sounding offended.

  “Lots of ways. And they’re willing to pay more money than you’re going to pay. A lot more.”

  “I could pay a lot more, too, if I hadn’t already paid for the last five months of your life.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you accusing me of something?”

  Bad move, Pamela, I think to myself, but she can’t possibly know the lines she can’t cross with Shannon. She only knows Jamie, and I’m getting the feeling that this might be the first time Shannon is showing glimpses of her true self to her benefactress.

  “No, I’m just pointing out that we’ve done a lot for you already and this other family has done nothing. Plus we had an agreement.”

  “Agreements don’t matter. Biological mothers always get to keep their kids if they want to.”

  “But you’re not talking about keeping your child. You’re talking about selling it to someone else for more money.”

  “So what? I can do whatever I want. It’s my kid.”

  “It’s one thing to decide you want to keep the baby for yourself, but it’s quite another thing to go back on our agreement because you see an opportunity to make more money. I’m not sure it’s legal.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No. Of course not.” Pamela quickly backpedals. “What would I be threatening you with?”

  “I don’t think you want to try and take me to
court,” Shannon states flatly. “You’ll lose.”

  “Maybe. But at least we can afford a good lawyer.”

  Shannon laughs.

  “Knock yourself out,” she says unconcernedly.

  I start to wonder again about Kozlowski’s involvement in all this. He said he and Shannon had business dealings, and he also knows her by her real name. He’s not Pamela’s lawyer but maybe he’s Shannon’s. That would explain why Shannon isn’t intimidated by threats of going to court.

  “That looks great,” I hear Shannon tell the waitress. “Thank you.”

  I wonder if the sight of the pie makes her think about me.

  “What are these other people willing to pay?” Pamela asks her.

  “Eighty thousand,” she replies with her mouth full.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper.

  “I see,” Pamela says simply.

  Their conversation ceases. All I hear is the enthusiastic clink of the fork against the plate as Shannon gobbles her pie.

  “Will you excuse me, Jamie? I’m going to use the ladies’ room.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  I wait. The parking lot is beginning to fill up with Sunday brunchers getting out of their cars in their church clothes.

  “Did you hear everything?” a whisper suddenly hisses over the phone accompanied by the echo from a bathroom stall.

  “Yes.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Stall for some time. Tell her you need to discuss it with your husband.”

  “Yes, that’s good.”

  “Tell her you want to meet with her again tomorrow and try and find out where she’s planning on having this baby.”

  “She doesn’t seem very concerned about it, does she?”

  “At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if she gives birth in the booth while you’re gone, then orders another piece of pie.”

  “Should I bring up the fact that I know she’s had another baby?”

  “No,” I warn her. “Let her think she’s in control. Let her think you believe everything she’s telling you. Don’t put her on the defensive, whatever you do. Stroke her like a cat.”