by Paul Pen
I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands before she faced me.
“And the mask?” Dad asked. “Can’t you see the boy’s here?”
“I wouldn’t worry,” she replied. “You have your son perfectly trained. There’s no way to make him look at my face.”
“Good. He shouldn’t have to see it.”
My sister moaned with pain.
“Tell me what you’ve done to the baby.” Dad spat the words out.
“I gave him a little bit of this,” she replied. I heard a sound I couldn’t identify.
“Put that tongue away,” said Dad. “And tell me why it’s blue.”
“And why do you care so much—Dad?”
She said the last word in an exaggerated way. I understood the meaning behind it. I heard the first slap. Then there was another.
My brother’s guttural laugh exploded somewhere near them.
Grandma took me by the wrist. “Let’s go,” she whispered.
There was another slap.
This time my sister groaned.
“Are you trying to disfigure me?” she said. “Even more?”
My grandmother guided me across the bedroom. When I remembered the firefly jar under the bed I wanted to stop, but Grandma yanked me out of the room. The door closed behind me. On the other side, my sister screamed.
In the bathroom, my mother was holding the baby to her chest. A wet mark covered a bit of her T-shirt.
“I did it,” she said. “He’s been sick.” She ran a finger over the wet material, picking up some white and blue residue. She shook her finger over the washbasin. “See?”
“What is it?” asked Grandma.
I described it to her.
Mom held the baby out in front of her to inspect his face.
“Will he be OK?” my grandmother asked.
She examined him, looking for any unusual symptoms. “He looks all right. I think he got everything up.”
“Have you washed his tongue?”
“I had to pull on it. That’s how I made him be sick.”
“He couldn’t have had much,” I said. “I came out from the bed before he started sucking.”
“Why were you hiding there?” Grandma asked.
Mom rocked the baby. “Hidden?” she asked. “And why are you dressed like that?”
I thought about my secret mission. The idea to protect my sister from Dad. When really it was the baby who needed protecting from my sister.
I left the bathroom without answering Mom.
“Hidden where?” she asked again, but I was already setting off down the hall toward the kitchen. I heard my grandmother explain what’d happened in the bedroom. I hit the switch, and a cone of orangey light illuminated the main room. It still must’ve been several hours before the spot of light would appear. I pressed the back of a chair against the oven in the kitchen and climbed onto it to reach one of the highest cupboards. I opened it. It smelled of dry rags. There were bottles of bleach and ammonia, two half-used candles, matches, scourers with the green side worn away, and, at the back, the box I was looking for. The box of rat poison. I jumped off without bothering to put the chair back. I observed the picture of the rat in a yellow circle.
In the sink, I pulled back the flaps on the top of the box, shaking it so the cubes that were left would fall out. I turned on the water. I crushed the poison with a big wooden spoon, pushing the pieces down the plughole so they’d dissolve and wash away.
I cried thinking what could have happened. Imagining how I would never have been able to hold the baby in my arms again or enjoy the spot of sunlight together in the living room. Or stand by the window in the hall, breathing in the air from outside. Or how we would never have grown up together so that I could tell him about the night I left the firefly lamp in his crib so he wouldn’t be scared of the dark.
My sister was wrong when she said that what the baby and I had in the basement wasn’t a life.
Of course it was.
It was our life.
The only one we had.
The poison finished dissolving in the sink.
A door opened in the hall.
I heard my sister crying. There were thumps against the walls.
“Make her throw up as well,” my father said. “She’s swallowed the lot.”
The water started running in the washbasin.
While the whole family was seeing to my sister, I took the chance to go back to the baby’s room. I searched my hiding place under the bed. I found what I was looking for. The firefly jar had been hidden when it rolled away before the incident. This time I concealed it under the black T-shirt. It was obvious it was under the material, but I knew no one would pay any attention to me right then. In the hall, my brother was craning his neck to watch what was happening inside the bathroom from the door.
Before closing my bedroom door, between my sister’s groans, my brother’s donkey noises, and my grandmother’s instructions on how to make my sister sick, I heard Dad say: “I’m not dealing with another dead body.”
21
I quickly put the firefly jar in the drawer and undressed. I moved the pillow I’d hidden under the sheets to simulate my body, and took shelter in my bed, covering up to my chin.
I heard my sister throwing up in the bathroom.
She let out a cry of pain.
Similar to the one I’d heard once, when I discovered how my sister’s belly button had popped out when she was still pregnant. It happened one night as we got ready to take a bath, waiting naked for the tub to fill. “Is the baby going to come out?” I’d asked when I saw the belly button sticking out.
“I hope not,” she answered, looking at herself in the mirror while massaging her breasts.
I’d knelt down so my face was at the same height as the baby.
“Is it dark in there?” I asked the tummy. I pressed my ear to my sister’s skin, waiting for an answer that never came. “Do you have any light in there?”
My sister pushed me away.
“Come on, get off,” she said. “How’s there going to be light inside my stomach? Where would it come from?”
“We don’t know where the light that comes in through the crack in the ceiling comes from.”
She blew out behind the mask. “Doesn’t Dad know?” she asked.
I shook my head.
I put a leg in the bathwater to test it. I snatched it out with a spasm.
“What?” asked my sister. “Is it cold?”
“Freezing,” I replied. Although the water in the basement was never hot, turning the faucet all the way to the left made the temperature reasonable. My sister had now turned it all the way to the right.
“Why did you fill it like that?” I asked.
“Get out,” she said to me.
“I have to take a bath, too.”
“Get out,” she repeated. “Or I’ll take my mask off, if you want.”
“Dad will tell us off if we take separate baths.”
“You can come in afterward.”
She surged forward to push me out with her giant belly. She got me out into the hall and poked her head out, looking both ways.
“Count to ten then come in.” She closed the door, leaving me naked outside.
I began to count.
One. Two. Three. On four, I heard my sister’s body go into the water. On six, I heard her let out air through her mouth, and she gave that special cry of pain. On nine I heard her teeth chattering. And on ten I opened the door. I saw my sister struggling to breathe, submerged to the neck in the freezing bathwater. Just her belly rose out of it like a mountain of flesh.
I stepped in the puddles that’d formed on the floor.
I dipped a leg into the water, but I pulled it out with another spasm. The cold cut through my skin.
“It’s too cold,” I said.
My sister’s mask, soaked, turned to look at me.
“It’s perfect,” she replied. Her teeth chattered as she spoke.
&n
bsp; The wet mask and her teeth making that noise was something I never forgot. For the first time I understood the reality of what’d happened that evening in the bathroom. It was the same thing my sister had tried to do now with the poison. Get rid of the baby.
The sound of a dry, rough retch reached me from the bathroom. My grandmother was still forcing my sister to be sick.
My bedroom door flew open.
From the doorframe to my bed, a rectangle of light appeared on the floor. Inside it two long shadows were cast, those of my father and my sister. He was holding her by the shoulders, her back to me. A piece of pink material from the blouse emerged like a handkerchief from each of my father’s fists. My brother’s face was floating somewhere in the background. It was him who turned on the light. My mother appeared with the mask. “Put it on,” she told my sister.
Mom held it to her face, but she pushed it away. “It hurts.”
My father shook her using those handles of fabric. He gripped them hard when her legs bent. Her head danced on her shoulders, the hair moving from side to side.
“I’ve barely touched you,” said Dad.
“You’re fine,” Grandma added from somewhere in the hallway. “You deserved much worse for what you’ve done. To a poor defenseless baby.”
Mom held the mask to her face again.
“Come on,” she said, “your brother’s in the room. You can’t sleep in here without this.”
She managed to get the mask on. She stretched the strap until it was around the whole head and then let go of the elastic.
“You’ll sleep with your sister from now on,” Dad said to me. “We can’t risk leaving her with the baby.”
Dad pushed her into the room. She twisted her body to stop herself, and then let herself fall. She hit the floor with her backside. I felt the vibration in the bed frame. Dad was left with her blouse in his hands, with my sister’s arms stretched upward, her face hidden behind the material. The garment’s neck was turned inside out at the chin. Her breasts, naked, fell in opposite directions.
“Do what you want,” said Dad. He let go of the material. The buttons hit my sister on the head. The blouse partly found its way back onto her body.
She sat there for a few seconds.
Then she dropped to one side.
I jumped out of bed to help her, but my mother and grandmother were there first. They knelt beside her. “Is it the poison?” Grandma asked.
“It can’t be, she threw it all up,” replied Mom.
“What’s wrong with her?” Dad broke in. “Is she breathing?”
He put his hand on my sister’s chest.
“Of course she’s breathing,” he said. “She’s just fainted. Again.”
I couldn’t remember her ever fainting in the basement.
“Wake up, girl!” my father yelled.
She moaned.
“Ha, there you go,” added Dad.
My sister was lying belly-up. Her white face prayed to the ceiling like the empty mask had done from the table the night of her nosebleed. She murmured something I didn’t understand. She moved her head from side to side.
My father stopped the movement, grabbing her by the forehead. “Try doing something to the baby again and—” Although he didn’t finish his threat, his fingers pressed against the orthopedic material. My sister bent her legs and twisted her waist.
“I hope I’ve made myself clear,” Dad added.
She nodded.
He pulled her up by the armpits and took a few steps back to keep his balance. Then he checked that she was keeping herself up on her own feet. Her waist buckled, and it looked as if she’d fall again, but in the end her legs straightened.
“Help me get her into bed,” he said.
My mother approached, going around them and looking like she didn’t really know what to do.
“Come on, out of the way,” my father said to her. “Pull the sheets back.”
Mom climbed two rungs of the bunk’s ladder and peeled the cover off my brother’s bed. Dad pushed my sister forward. She dug her feet into the floor. Her toes wrinkled up. They shrank as they offered resistance.
“Not in his sheets,” she muttered.
Dad pushed harder. She resisted by skidding on her heels.
“Not in his sheets,” she repeated in a tiny voice, still drowsy from fainting.
Dad blew out to get her hair away from his face. He spat out a lock.
“This isn’t necessary,” Grandma cut in.
“I’ll fetch some other sheets,” my mother said.
When Dad continued to push, my sister let out one last scream. “Not in his sheets!”
Her body relaxed. Or rather, it deflated. As if the scream had taken away the last of her strength.
“Not in his sheets . . .”
My sister fell to one side. Dad bent his legs trying to keep her up. When he found himself unable to hold her dead weight, he let her fall to the floor. Lying on her side at the foot of the bunk bed.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
He rubbed his palms together as if he’d relieved himself of an annoying burden. And it was that simple gesture that set off an explosion of sadness in me, a sadness made by everything that’d happened that night in the basement. Because I imagined my dad could’ve made a similar gesture a few nights before when he got rid of my sister after she’d had to defend herself scratching his back. I thought about how Grandma had described the baby as a shameful sin. And how my sister had tried to poison him so he wouldn’t live with me in the basement.
Right then an unknown emotion was set off inside me. A spark that fought to catch fire.
I felt tears well up in my eyes. My family moved around the room as blurry blobs. Dad’s slippers dragged on the way back to his room. Mom changed the sheets on the top bunk. She gave the pillow a few final slaps to fluff it up.
“Come on, back to sleep,” she said to me.
She left the room without noticing my state. Two streams of snot flowed to my mouth. I resisted the urge to sniff because the sound would’ve alerted my grandmother. She was last to leave the room. She felt the air until she found the top of my head. I opened my mouth so I could breathe, tasting the salty flavor of my snot. My throat felt blocked by the effort I was making not to show that I was crying.
“Tomorrow I’ll tell Mom to make you a special breakfast,” she said. She ruffled my hair and added, “What do you want? Eggs or toast?”
I moved my tongue inside my open mouth. I couldn’t speak.
“Eh?”
“Eggs.” I pronounced it with no g.
“Eggs it is, then,” she said. “And don’t worry about your sister. What she did was much worse.”
She ruffled my hair again before leaving. The smell of talcum powder vanished with her. At last I could relax my throat. I dried my snot with my forearm.
My sister was no more than a heap of clothes by the bunk bed. She was making a strange snoring sound.
The spark inside me caught light.
I knelt in front of the drawer.
I swallowed saliva.
I took out the firefly jar.
“I need you to glow,” I told them. “I need to see the light from outside.” I held the jar in front of my eyes.
It stayed dark.
“Please . . .”
I looked into the emptiness between my hands, wishing I could see the rays of sun they’d brought me from the world up top. Even if that wasn’t really what it was. Even if their light was no more than another artificial light in my life, a load of chemicals in the abdomen of an insect.
“Take me away from this darkness.”
A tear rolled down my cheek to my mouth.
I shook the jar.
“I want to go to where you come from.”
I blinked, preparing myself to be dazzled. I closed my eyes. I waited. I wanted to give them time to light up. I opened them again, expecting the room to be colored green.
But I found the same darkness.
I shook the jar again. “Come on,” I begged them.
The clinking of the pencils against the glass grew louder as I increased the speed of my hands.
I shook the jar until the tiredness in my shoulders made me accept what had happened.
I rested the container on the chest of drawers. This time I cried freely, remembering the magical moment when the first flash of green light had appeared on the other side of the window. The first firefly that arrived from the world outside. Just after I discovered I couldn’t visit that world even if I wanted to, because the kitchen door had always been locked.
It was the first of all the fireflies that had come to die in my jar.
The glass basement to which I’d condemned them.
For the first time I felt lost in that darkness that had always been my world. Unused to it. A stranger in the basement.
The unknown spark that had caught light inside me became a little flame. A flame that burned.
“I want to get out of here,” I said into the dark. I breathed deeply, accepting the truth. Giving in to the desire for a new life.
“I want to get out of here,” I said again so I could listen to myself.
The heap of clothes that was my sister moved. The different materials brushed against each other. Some of her bones clicked.
“Do you really want to get out?” Her tired voice floated in the room’s darkness.
I stroked the cold glass of the jar that would never glow again.
“I want to get out.”
“I can help you do it,” she then said. The mask rose up among a tangle of hair. The voice reverberated against the orthopedic material, which had been knocked out of place in the last struggle. “If I don’t die first.”
“You’re not going to die. They made you throw it all up. Like the baby.”
She groaned.
“Why don’t you want the baby to live in the basement?” I asked. “Why don’t you like us living here?”
“I don’t care where that boy lives. I just don’t want to have to look after him. And I want to make your father suffer. Do you not see?” She adjusted her mask, and I covered my face just in case.
“Don’t be silly, you can look.”
I took away my hands. She finished putting her blouse back on. As she sat up, her hand went to the mask. She stroked that barrier that stopped her from reaching her real skin.