by A.R. Rivera
It’s a lush field with waist-high grass, bordered by encroaching forest. Beyond the immense tree tops, white capped mountains reach high into the horizon. The open sky overhead is amazing: a black velvet expanse specked with a billion points of brilliant light, shining down on me. I marvel at the simple glory and wonder at the distant reaches beyond comprehension.
From the edge of the burgeoning tree line a boy runs into view. He’s thin, wearing animal skin pants and a wide, beaded plate over his chest. The ornament displaces as he moves, showing the plate is too large for his frame. Moonbeams leach the color from his skin, but not his hair, which hangs down in a dark curtain.
I want to move his direction but something I can’t see keeps my feet stuck.
Closer and to my right, I spot another man. He’s hunkered down with his back to me. A laundry basket rests at his feet. I watch him rise—lifting a rumpled white cloth to a long clothesline that appears near his head. As the man stretches the sheet towards the line, the cloth transforms. The fabric he was holding has morphed into a large, metal ring. He magically hangs the circle on the line and turns around.
I lose my breath at the sight of my dad.
When I call out his name, a rumbling wind begins to blow. My father cups his hand behind one ear. I call out again, “Dad! Dad, what are you doing here?” But the wind howls, stealing the sound away. I’m worried, yelling as loud as I can but nothing I say is reaching him over the gusting wind that’s rapidly gaining strength.
The boy is still a ways off and I don’t know why, but I know I can’t move from my spot until he arrives, so I stay focused on my dad.
Dad’s got an odd smile as he takes another cloth from the basket at his feet and morphs it to another ring and hangs it on the clothesline, essentially hooking it in place alongside the others. I’m mesmerized by the instantaneous, magical way the objects change from one form to another. The enchanting metal circles attach to the never-ending rope extending north and south as far as the eye can see. Dad points at the circles, speaking words of explanation that make no sound above the roaring wind.
“I don’t understand,” I complain, trying to move closer, but the boy is moving too slowly.
As my anger builds, so does the noise. I thought it was the wind, but it sounds more like an outboard motor. I look around the open field for a body of water, where I might find a boat but there’s nothing besides my father and me and the boy slowly closing the distance. My dad keeps working, hanging the rings on the rope, pointing and giving silent instructions with a great, ridiculous grin.
When the boy finally nears me, I can move. He follows as I make my way to Dad. But when I reach the laundry line full of metal rings, he isn’t there.
I turn to the pale boy. He’s very young, maybe nine or ten years old. He looks around, wild and anxious, raising a knife to my chest.
The rip of the engine becomes deafening, blistering in my ears at the same time the native boy screams a hellish sound and thrashes at me with the knife.
Suddenly wide awake, the glare of morning sun greets me through the windows of the barren living room. The choppy whirring sound that woke me is blaring from outside. I must’ve slept like a rock for the night to pass so quickly.
Someone’s running a lawnmower.
My muscles register and dismiss the aching from the previous nights’ brawl as I fly from the carpet to the porch to stare across the street. I’ve not slept past sunrise since I got here and now the treacherous orb is high in the sky.
Taking in the scene laid before me I soak up the sights and sounds . . . and the smell of freshly cut grass. All of it floods my mind and triggers a memory of that one horrible day in October. The day that changed everything.
Carrie was three and a half. My mother’s car was parked on the driveway. She was in the shower, getting ready to meet a potential buyer of a house she was hoping to sell. She was going to use the commission to take us on vacation. The grass on the other side of the driveway had already been cut and I was starting on the piece that stretched between the two houses, the one the neighbor and I took turns cutting. That week was my turn. The night wind shook the leaves from the trees and I had to rake them into piles before cutting because the mower blade was old and dull. The grass was wet with morning dew that stuck the leaves to everything. On the grassy patch between the sidewalk and the curb sat my little sister. Next to her was the purple and pink splattered bouncy ball she’d been playing with. I looked at her as she sat in a pile of damp leaves beneath the tree, tossing and scattering what I’d just finished raking into the wind. She giggled, watching the breeze take them away. I was angry. I didn’t want to watch her or cut the grass. I wanted to hang out with my friends.
Carrie’s hair is fixed in a high pony tail with a purple ribbon. She’s smiling, tossing the leaves while little G angrily forces the dull mower through the wet grass.
My stomach wrenches. Today is the day and the moment is right now.
I leap from the porch, barrel down the path and into the curved road.
I have to get her away from the tree, take her inside the house. She can’t be out here. The second my feet hit the pavement in the middle of the street, the pick-up truck appears with two people inside. The passengers’ expression changes, her lips moving in what I guess are words of warning.
One second there’s nothing but the clear street, blue sky and Carrie’s smile. The next, screeching tires. I brace for impact but the man behind the wheel swerves.
She flies with the leaves from her spot beneath the balding tree. There’s a sickening sound of metal objecting as it wraps around the trunk.
Little G releases the mowers handle, cutting off the deafening engine. Just like the first time, he didn’t see anything but the aftermath. He looks around. Bewilderment deforms him as he makes the painful connections: where she should be, where she is now, the way she was and the way she is. The truck. The broken tree. The shock as he understands that she is broken, too.
He chokes her name and runs inside.
My mother crashes from the house and down the steps. She’s hysterical, screaming and falling when she sees.
Noise is everywhere. Crying, doors opening, closing, people mumbling. Little G stands alone, unsure what to do. Maybe it’s his marked loneliness that helps or her little face staring blankly up from the soft grass.
“Call 911, NOW!” I point to Little G and he disappears.
I kneel beside her, push her mother away to give me room. Her fists crash against me as I lean down, looking and listening for signs of life. I’m not sure how to perform CPR but trying is better than watching. I tilt her head back, straightening the airway to listen.
“G!” I call. He reappears beside me with a cordless handset at his ear. “Get her! I can’t hear anything!” He takes his mother by the arm and yanks her across the grass.
Once again, I attempt to listen.
Nothing.
“Come on, Carrie!”
I’m unsure of the count but I know what to do. I re-tilt her head, lean in, and force air from my lungs into hers.
Give breath.
Once, twice, three times.
Compressions. One hand because she’s so small.
One, two, three.
Breath.
Once, twice, three times . . .
Listen. One forced rush of air grants me a grain of hope and I sit up to look at her. She whimpers and draws a breath on her own.
Relief washes over me. Until I remember.
And then I want to puke.
“Mommy,” my sister screams.
“Carrie?” Her mother whispers back.
A blink. A whisper. And one, final wail.
That’s all there is. Nothing more than her little face smeared with red dirt. Her twitching legs fall into repose as death relaxes her. The bright eyes hollow out and nothing is left.
Nothin
g, save the rancid emptiness trailing her departure, and her tiny palm in mine.
Then, that’s taken, too as a team of paramedics swoop in. “Start compressions.”
Their hands fly as if there’s still time. One plunges a needle into my sisters’ tiny chest. More words and commands sail through the vacant air.
The voices outside my floating world are no more than white noise. People lucky enough not to know me.
Someone pulls me back and I can’t do anything but go along and stare. I had my chance. What did I do? How did this happen again?
My mother’s curled on the driveway with wet hair, in her bathrobe, holding her screams inside as she looks on, dying to know what will happen. There’s still a bit of hope in her face. That was their last breath and she doesn’t even know it. I want to grab her, shake her out of her stupid daydream where the only thing she has to do is love the dead.
But I know better. I read the end of this story and nothing changes. “I told you to keep her inside!”
Then, there’s the brown truck. The broken windshield concealing a hunched driver.
I swear there is an audible crack. I actually hear it with my ears. A last bough from the crumbling tree, maybe. Or my psyche. A shift in gravity. It’s like the truck has become a powerful magnet and I’m helplessly pulled to it. The closer I get, the more ire consumes me. The shadow of her image from five minutes ago perched beneath the tree waiting for deliverance blocks out everything. Nothing remains. After is just meaningless, pointless bits of nonsense.
There’s no justice for the weak in this world. There is never any justice.
The drivers’ side door won’t open but the passengers’ does. A medic pushes me out of the way, but I grab and shove, reach around her, and pull at the woman in the passenger seat. I yank and yank again until both obstructions are out of my way. They fight at me, but it’s not enough.
My fingers coil around the throat of the driver that reeks of sweat and alcohol. I feel his pulse beneath my palms and press harder.
The window on the driver’s door breaks. Arms stretch across me from in front and behind, forcing me to release his throat. I fight at everyone, especially him, until my arms are squeezed behind me and my strength gives way to the gaping pit of pain. I fall to the ground and go limp, telling them I’m fine so they’ll leave me be.
I don’t want to see it, but can’t stop myself from looking because the merciless curb isn’t high enough to block my view. Past the edge of what’s left of the pile of leaves, a small, white shoe quavers as the paramedics continue working.
Her mother bawls on the gray driveway, convulsing in dramatic sobs for the entire neighborhood. Pitiful stares. The only quiet is drowning in the eyes of her son. The child she’s forgotten. He’s already blaming himself. Me.
More sirens blare—more emergency vehicles arriving too late.
I twist away from the ground where I’ve been left like a rabid animal. Slippery and fast, down the block, in a full run before anyone notices. My feet cannot take me far or fast enough from this nightmare. I don’t know where I’m going.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
Up and around the corner. Into a random alley between some houses. Cutting across adjacent yards. I climb over numerous fences until a familiar house stops me. I’m back inside my own yard, not understanding how I managed to run away and come back. A convoluted circle. With the help of a low branch on one of the apple trees, I get over the six-foot fence, desperate to hide.
Clinging to the old ladder boards, I climb inside the unfinished tree house. Behind a row of propped up, rotting planks, I sink. Hopelessly buoyant in the pooling sorrow.
Was success ever an option? Somewhere in my mind I must have known that I would fail. Why else would I choose this place, of all places?
Wake up!
I couldn’t speak the words to the ones who had the ability to help. My shame was too precious to share with anyone who didn’t see it right off and I’ve always denied it to the ones who do.
Why can’t I wake up?
I have heard that you can’t change the past, but that isn’t what I was trying to do. I wanted to save it. I only ever wanted her to live and be happy. Have a chance to grow up and experience life. So many times, I’ve pleaded with Heaven for a chance to go back, knowing what I know now, swearing to change everything. This was my chance and I blew it. I blew it.
I allowed myself to wonder who she would become. Who she would look like. I wondered if she’d marry young or wait until after college. She might have had children. I would have been an Uncle. Our family would have stayed intact. I would be different. I would be better. I got so carried away with all my imagined success I forgot to remember how useless I am. Whatever you call the opposite of the Midas touch that is what I’ve got. Everything I touch turns to shit.
Here is the end of that imagined life. The death of every hope for the betterment of hers and mine. There’s nothing left in this world for me. My past is unchanged, my future sucks. The present is lost.
The page will turn now to the beginning of a new chapter all about how I’m supposed to live the rest of my life knowing I’ve done it twice. Both directly and indirectly I have killed my little sister.
I clench my eyes tight, commanding my subconscious to soak in every ounce of pain, praying for the answer that will end this nightmare.
Remains