Black Box

by Julie Schumacher

  Where she had been napping on the couch, I saw only an indentation on a pillow.

  I checked the living room. Empty.

  I went to the bottom of the stairs. “Dora?” I ran up the steps and saw that the bathroom door was closed. The water was running. “Dora?” I rattled the knob.

  I ran back to my bedroom, found a nail file, and stuck it in the lock.

  She was in the tub. She looked up at me, amazed, then took the headphones out of her ears. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she asked, pulling the curtain. “Can’t you leave me alone?”

  50

  “You look a bit nervous today,” the Grandma Therapist said. “Are you feeling nervous?”

  “No.” My knee was bobbing up and down.

  “Would you tell me if you did feel nervous?”

  “Maybe.” Sometimes when I talked to the Grandma Therapist I imagined that my entire body was covered with little invisible doors and it was my job to make sure they didn’t open.

  “I get the impression you aren’t used to confiding in people,” the Grandma Therapist said. “You like to keep things bottled up. Do you think that strategy is working for you?”

  Sometimes, though she was a mild-mannered person, I found the Grandma Therapist terrifying. “I’m not going to fall apart worrying about things that won’t happen,” I said.

  The Grandma Therapist waited.

  “You asked if I was nervous,” I explained. “And so I’m saying that even if I was nervous, I would be okay. Because there are things that can happen and things that can’t. And I’m not going to worry about the things that can’t.” I was talking too fast.

  “All right. What are the things that can happen?” The Grandma Therapist smiled. I used to hate it when she smiled—it made me think she wasn’t taking me seriously—but now I understood that it was her way of paying attention.

  “Floods.” I looked at the plant on the table beside me. “The basement flooding. That happened once. Or breaking your leg. Or getting mugged.”

  “Those are all things you’re willing to concede,” the Grandma Therapist said. Then, in case I didn’t know what concede meant, she added, “You’re willing to admit the possibility of those things existing.”

  “Yeah.” I noticed that both of my hands were clutching the arms of the chair.

  “You aren’t looking at me,” the Grandma Therapist said. “Is there a reason why?”

  “No.”

  “All right. What are the things that can’t happen?”

  I still couldn’t look at her. I was holding a number of invisible doors closed, and it took a lot of concentration. “Things get messed up sometimes,” I said. “But then they get better. They don’t just get worse and worse and worse. That isn’t what happens.”

  “You want things to make sense. You want a reasonable pattern. Is that what you’re saying?”

  I didn’t answer. I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain it, but I used to have a feeling of a promise made to me—a kind of unbreakable, unassailable bargain with the universe: nothing terrible would ever happen to me or my sister. Now I wondered where that feeling had come from. I want that magic wand after all, I wanted to say. And I want a story with a happy ending.

  “Elena?”

  “Could Dora have you as a therapist?” I asked. I was thinking out loud. Of course I would have to convince Dora that the Grandma Therapist would be worth her while; at first, partly to try to cheer my sister up, I had made fun of the Grandma Therapist and pretended that she was a hundred and eight years old.

  “No. I’m not a psychiatrist. Your sister needs more care than I can offer her. And I can’t prescribe medication.”

  I nodded, then pulled a piece of fuzz off the cushion beside me. “Dora’s pills have a black box.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “On the label,” I said. I explained that Jimmy had helped me look up my sister’s prescriptions, and that at first I had thought, when he said “black box,” that he was referring to the devices on airplanes. “Because whenever you hear about a plane crash,” I said, “you always hear about people running around trying to figure out how the crash happened. And if they find the black box—you know, the recording—sometimes they can hear the pilots talking and then they can understand what happened and why the plane went down. It made me think that if Dora had a black box inside her, someone could find it and open it up. And they could keep her from crashing. That sounds really weird,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

  “No, not to me.”

  I plucked a yellow leaf from her plant. “I don’t know why I’m talking so much,” I said.

  “Maybe you have a lot to say. Are you talking to your parents?”

  “They’re pretty busy.” My mother had dropped me off at my appointment; my father was supposed to pick me up in the lobby.

  “This is hard for all of you,” the Grandma Therapist said. “It’s hard for each of you in different ways. Your part may be especially difficult.”

  It seemed odd to hear her refer to my part, as if I had accidentally won a role in some awful play. “My part is to watch over Dora.” I plucked another leaf from the plant.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Because of the black box,” I said. “Someone’s supposed to watch out for her. It even said so online.”

  The Grandma Therapist leaned forward in her chair and held out her hand for the two dead leaves. “Your sister is suffering from an illness,” she said. “But she still has choices. And she still has responsibilities—like everyone else.” Her voice was soft. “Is there anything you think you ought to tell me?”

  I shook my head.

  She dropped the dead leaves into the trash. “Of course you want your sister to get better. But she has her work to do and you have yours. Ultimately,” she said, “the responsibility for Dora belongs to Dora.”

  I looked down at the rug.

  “A drowning person doesn’t rescue herself,” I said, because whenever I thought about the game Dora and I had played when we were little, I pictured Dora struggling and drowning.

  “Good point.” The Grandma Therapist folded her hands. “Which is why it’s so important—for your sister and for everyone else—that she learn how to swim.”

  51

  Some days I was sure Dora was getting better. She did her homework, dressed Mr. Peebles in my mother’s underwear, and spent an hour with a friend on the phone.

  And then she would plunge.

  My parents’ moods were tied to Dora’s. When she was happy, they were happy. When she was in tears, they were upset. Only when Dora was asleep in her room did they follow each other down to the kitchen to continue the argument that never ended: This looks like a nice spot for fighting; let’s shout over here.

  I thought about leaving them a note with an arrow pointing to the vent above the cabinets: This is a heating duct. It leads to my bedroom.

  But I didn’t do it. Instead, one night I put on my bathrobe and went downstairs and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. “What are you guys talking about?” I asked.

  “Elena. It’s late,” my father said.

  “Have you been talking about Dora? Is something going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on.” My mother wiped her face with a towel. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I thought we were all about communication these days,” I said. “I thought we were supposed to—”

  “Lena, please,” my mother said. “Just leave it alone.”

  52

  But I couldn’t leave it alone. “Did you swallow your pills today?” I asked. Dora and I were walking to the bus stop. I’d left the house with two toaster waffles; I handed one to my sister.

  “Yup. Every single pill.” She took a bite out of the waffle. “I even swallowed the ones that smell bad. That fish oil makes me stink like a tuna. So. Have you been talking to Mom and Dad about me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She took another bite of her
waffle, then threw the rest like a Frisbee into the neighbors’ yard. “You don’t have to lie about it,” she said.

  I saw Jimmy leaning against the fire hydrant near the bus stop.

  “I’ve seen you talking to them,” Dora said. “And I don’t blame you.” She stopped walking. “Your life would be easier if I went back to Lorning.”

  “Dora, don’t say that.” I remembered the smell in the halls at Lorning—air freshener and bandages and cafeteria food.

  “And all it would take for Mom and Dad to send me back there,” Dora went on, “would be for someone to tell them I was spitting out pills or forging notes or falling asleep when I wasn’t supposed to. And do you know what’s sad?” She turned to face me; her eyes were underlined with dark half-circles. “You would probably be that person. Who else would it be?”

  I heard the bus starting up the hill. Maybe if we keep moving, I thought—maybe if we get on the bus and go to school and move through the day, we’ll be able to put this moment behind us.

  “I just want you to be okay, Dora,” I said. “I just need to know that when you—”

  “Stop.” She tucked her damp hair into her sweatshirt. “You need to stop hovering. I don’t want you checking on me anymore. I don’t want you asking me a thousand questions. You’re worse than Mom.”

  Jimmy was waving us toward the bus.

  “Do I look all right?” Dora asked.

  She was painfully thin. “You look great,” I said.

  53

  “Why are we having a cookout in November?” I asked Jimmy. “It’s freezing out here.” It was Saturday afternoon and we were in his backyard. The yard was fenced, and the fence was covered with some kind of ivy.

  “This is the best time of year for outdoor grilling.” Jimmy dragged a metal fire pit away from the house and started filling it with sticks. “In the summer we’d be too hot sitting around a fire. It’ll be even better out here in January.” He took a pack of matches from his pocket, crumpled some newspaper in with the twigs, and lit it. “How are you doing? Seventy-five percent water? Eighty percent? What are you thinking?”

  I watched the fire grow bigger.

  “I don’t know. Maybe my brain is fried,” I said. “I can barely think straight anymore.”

  Jimmy unfolded two folding chairs. “Do you want something sweet? Something in the marshmallow family? Or how about veggies—maybe a tuber?”

  “I’m not going to stay very long,” I said. “Dora’s been at Kate’s all day, but she’s coming home at five-thirty.”

  We sat down. Jimmy poked the fire with a stick.

  “You shouldn’t put your life on hold for her,” he said.

  “Who says I’m putting my life on hold?”

  The wind shifted, blowing the smoke toward us. “You don’t talk about anything else,” he said. “You only talk about your sister.”

  “She asked me to save her,” I said.

  Jimmy snapped some twigs and tossed them into the fire. “She shouldn’t have.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not fair.” He looked annoyed. “And because you can’t do it. Are you sure you don’t want my mom to talk to your parents?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure.”

  We watched the flames for a while.

  Maybe it was the ivy-covered fence or the smell of burnt wood, or maybe it was the scar that made the corner of his mouth uneven. But something persuaded me to kiss Jimmy Zenk. I leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were soft.

  Jimmy nodded as if to himself and then backed away slowly. “I don’t think this is a very good time for that,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “No offense,” he said. “But right now you’re upset and we’ve been talking about your sister. I don’t want to make out with you for that reason.”

  “I didn’t kiss you because I’m upset, Jimmy,” I said. “I didn’t kiss you because of Dora.”

  “We were just talking about her,” he said.

  “I know that. I was here, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Jimmy paused. “I’m just saying it felt inappropriate.”

  I stood up; my chair collapsed on the ground behind me. “Do you want me to sign a contract before I kiss you? Do you have a list of reasons why kissing is appropriate?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” He rubbed his hand across the top of his head. “I guess I have a kind of list. But it’s not written down or anything.”

  I walked toward the gate, then turned around. Jimmy was still sitting by the fire. “You always ask me about Dora,” I said. “You’re the one who told me about Lorning. And you told me to find out about the drugs. You told me to watch her.”

  “I didn’t say you should watch her.”

  I wanted to push him into the fire. “You said I shouldn’t put my life on hold. But now you’re letting Dora put it on hold. You’re letting her take something away from me.”

  “Nobody’s taking me,” Jimmy said. “I’ll be right here.”

  54

  That night I dreamed I found a box. I picked it up and heard something shuffling and knocking inside it. I knew it was Dora, even though the box was much too small. I lifted it and carefully turned the box over but it was seamless and smooth; there was no opening.

  I sat up in bed, my heart thumping away inside my chest.

  When I was little and woke up from a nightmare, I used to hurry down the hall to Dora’s room. My feet knew the path even in complete darkness: five steps from my bed to the door, and then I could hold out both hands to touch the bumps in the wallpaper and in eight more steps arrive at the safety of my sister’s room.

  Now that I was older, it was only six steps.

  “Dora?” I climbed onto the mattress and lay down next to her. “Are you awake?” I leaned my head against her bony arm.

  “Nn,” she said. A half-reply.

  I wondered what she was dreaming about, if she was dreaming. Downstairs, I could hear my parents in the kitchen. But they didn’t seem to be arguing this time. It was harder to hear them from Dora’s room.

  “Remember when we used to build forts in Mom and Dad’s bedroom?” I asked. “We’d use all the blankets and all the pillows, and we’d crawl around on the floor and pretend to get lost?”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “That was fun,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We used to do a lot of that stuff.” I wondered if she had fallen back to sleep. “I tried to kiss Jimmy today,” I said.

  “Ew?” Dora turned over so she was facing me. In the dark she looked different. Her face had changed; it was full of shadows. “What do you mean, ‘tried to’?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t want to do it,” I said. “He wouldn’t kiss me back. I think I probably did it wrong.”

  “Maybe you should practice,” Dora said. “I used to practice on my hand. Like this.” She made a fist and held it toward me in the dark. “My hand used to like it,” she said. “No complaints, anyway.” She lifted her head off the pillow. “Do you need me to kick Jimmy’s ass for you?”

  “No,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Because I’m willing to,” Dora said. “I would do it for you.”

  I could hear our parents coming upstairs. “I wish you had told me when it started, Dora.”

  She lay back down.

  I pulled a strand of her hair from my mouth. Our faces were inches apart on the pillow.

  “You used to tell me things,” I said. “We used to talk. I wish you had told me.” I picked up her skinny arm and draped it over my shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said. “We can still trust each other.”

  Dora’s feet were as cold as ice. The bed was too small for two people, but she didn’t tell me to leave and go back to my room.

  55

  Dora’s friends Kate and Lila sat down next to me in the cafeteria. “We came to talk to you,” Kate said. “To the little sister.” She sipped from a plastic water bottle.

  “Ca
n I have your carrot sticks?” Lila asked.

  I handed them over. There was an awkward silence.

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” Lila said. “But did Dora get in trouble last weekend?”

  “For what?” I asked.

  Kate took another swig of her water. “She said she was grounded.”

  “She wasn’t grounded.” I threw the rest of my lunch away. “She was with you guys.” I looked at Kate. “She was at your house on Saturday.”

  Kate twisted the lid back onto her bottle of water. “I don’t know whose house she was at,” she said. “But it wasn’t mine.”

  56

  On my way back to class I left a sticky note on Dora’s locker. Fqkpi mi? Doing ok?

  On my own locker, an hour later, I found her answer: Uvqr uyrafgle og.

  Stop watching me.

  57

  “You’re particularly quiet today,” the Grandma Therapist said.

  I sagged down in her chair. I liked her chair; there were all different ways a person could sit in it.

  “Are you getting enough sleep?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “We’ll need to talk about that,” she said. “But what have you been thinking about and feeling this past week?” She waited. She seemed to have the ability to wait forever. Wasn’t she concerned that my parents were paying for these empty minutes?

  I thought about the different things I could tell her: that I had tried to kiss Jimmy, that my parents barely noticed me anymore, that our lives at home revolved around making sure Dora took her pills and went to school, and that we gauged her mood almost every minute of every day.

  “I like your office,” I said.

  “Thank you.” The Grandma Therapist nodded. “What else are you thinking?”