The Sisters

by Rosalind Noonan

  Over at Hazel’s house there were beads to string into necklaces, glitter glue and paints and easels for real artwork, and a whole shelf full of kids’ books to read. Hazel got to watch Nickelodeon on television, which had shows about real kids. About girls with superpowers or the ability to fill a room with a song and make sad people happy again. Luna knew they were made-up stories, but she couldn’t stop thinking about them. Sometimes at night she wondered what she would choose as a superpower if given the choice. And the snacks . . . chocolate puddings in small cups. Yogurt in a tube. And sometimes Hazel’s mom made them their own little pot of tea or hot chocolate that they poured into dainty blue cups with gold rims.

  The song ended, and the house was flat and boring again as Luna opened her eyes to the very dull room of clapping women. Rachel could pull some amazing music from that cello, but Luna would rather be at Hazel’s, listening to Pandora or watching Nickelodeon.

  “Very nice,” Leo said. “Thank you, Rachel, for sharing your gift with us. That’s why we keep those hands protected and away from cleaning fluids.” Everyone knew Rachel got to work the reception desk at the hotel to save her hands from getting injured. Some of the sisters were jealous, but Luna would have taken any job at the hotel, just to get out of this house.

  “And I’ve become quite good at orchestrating the front desk,” Rachel said. Her eyes stared away when she spoke, and her hair, a drab brown mixed with silver streaks, was always scraped back tight. Luna wondered if she slept that way, too. Dressed in her usual long black skirt and white blouse, Rachel looked like a member of the orchestras Leo made them watch on television because classical music was “good for the mind.” Mama said that Rachel had once played in a symphony orchestra on a big stage.

  “I’m glad we’re utilizing your talents,” Natalie said, “but we’re not here to glorify any one person. We all work hard so that we can eat and have a roof over our heads. That’s all.”

  The light faded from Rachel’s eyes. “I know that.” A deflating balloon, she gave a little bow and shrunk into her seat again.

  Most of the sisters were staring down at the floor now. Natalie had a way of dimming the hope inside everyone.

  “Do you want to play another piece?” Natalie asked.

  Rachel shook her head without looking up.

  “Thank God,” Sienna muttered. “Nothing puts me to sleep like a cello solo.”

  Everyone turned to the new girl, as if she’d just lit fire to the house.

  Big trouble for her.

  “In our house, we focus on the good,” Natalie said. “And I thought you’d been here long enough, Sienna, to learn how to support the sisters who work to put food on our table and keep us warm and dry in the Oregon rain.”

  “Chill, sister. I’m just being honest.” Sienna looked to Leo for support. “Like I tell your big brother, sometimes the truth hurts.”

  “Many things in life hurt,” Natalie said flatly. “But here we focus on good things.”

  “Good things . . .” Sienna pursed her lips and pressed a finger to her chin. “If I could just think of one. What’s good about a house of zombie women listening to a squealing cello? The place smells like boiled barley and old farts and you’ve got more rules than a prison.”

  “Sienna!” Leo glared at her.

  Kimani leaned over to whisper in Sienna’s ear, but Sienna snarled and pulled away. “Remember Annabelle? I never even met her and I could give a crap about some bitch who starved herself in the attic.”

  Her comment sucked the air out of the room. The sisters were frozen in place, stunned by Sienna’s outburst.

  But Sienna was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Luna wanted to tell her. She wished the ghost of Annabelle could be here to speak up for herself.

  Get the legend right, okay? I wasn’t poisoned and I didn’t starve myself. He did it. He locked me in the attic without food and water because I went to the police. I missed the food, but in the end, it’s the water that will kill you. You can’t go without it. People worry about starving, but it’s the water. Always the water.

  Of course, Luna only imagined the ghost. She barely remembered Annabelle, but sometimes when the old house was creaking or sighing she imagined it was Annabelle, longing for a tiny sip of water. Mama had told her what happened to warn her about Leo and the attic, and she knew it was true.

  Always the water.

  “This is just too bad.” Natalie’s stern voice brought them all back to reality. “I’m very disappointed that you put a damper on our music time by acting out, Sienna. I had thought you were ready to socialize with the sisters, but if you can’t follow the rules, you can’t enjoy the benefits. Come with me.” Natalie turned her wheelchair and moved out toward the door.

  “You heard her.” Leo nodded after his sister, his eyes on Sienna. “Go.”

  She rose and stuck her spiky fingers into her long, curly hair. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked Leo. When he shook his head, she squinted and made a disappointed Kah! sound, like an angry bird. But she followed Natalie out of the living room. She would be taken into the big bedroom on the ground floor that Leo and Natalie shared. Luna didn’t know what went on in there during grown-up meetings, and she didn’t really want to know. It was bad enough that she got Natalie’s cold fish eyes and the stinging comments that made Luna feel bad. Dirty thing. As if Natalie couldn’t remember Luna’s name. And then there were Leo’s lame punishments that he insisted she brought on herself.

  One of her earliest memories of him was being carried roughly up the stairs in his arms and lowered to the attic floor, where she was locked in the dark for hours and hours. The punishments always came with stupid explanations like: “I wish you didn’t make me do this,” and, “Maybe you’ll learn,” and, “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

  Luna had spent many hours crying in that attic cubby. The darkness used to scare her, and the small space sometimes grew hot in the summer and cold in the winter. When Mama first told her that a girl had died there, she had huddled against the brick, afraid of the dead girl’s ghost. But over time she had found little comforts there. A glass octagonal window that overlooked Hazel’s yard. A vent that brought her fresh air from between the trees outside. She pretended that the rectangular ridges of the chimney bricks were healing stones that pressed peace into her palms. She recited the “Jabberwocky” poem, reminding herself that she could conquer the monster of fear. Sometimes, if you pretend often enough, you begin to believe.

  After a while she started talking to Annabelle, and though there’d never been an answer, she imagined the voice of a girl like her sharing her sadness. On bad days, Luna dug her fingers into the sharp edges of the bricks and pretended that the cutting pain was the worst pain she would ever know in her life. On good days, she pressed her palms to the brick surfaces and imagined that the earthen clay baked into each brick had a story to tell her. Luna loved stories. She’d been reading at age four with lessons from Rachel and Laura. They still tutored her from workbooks Mama bought at the Goodwill stores.

  But Luna’s favorite part of lessons was writing stories with Mama, who told stories of Luna’s father that were disguised as fairy tales. Yesterday Luna had written down the story of a knight, Sir Winston, who died in battle. His wife lost her home and was forced to give her babies to a fairy for safekeeping. She found work in a castle, where she had another child who was forced to hide in the castle tunnels because the king and queen hated children.

  “That’s me, right?” Luna had asked, and Mama just said, “Maybe.”

  The story work had started as part of her schoolwork when Luna was learning to write, but Luna loved the task of putting the adventures on paper. One day, she was going to tie them all together with ribbon and make a book.

  “Was my father really a knight?” Luna had asked Mama.

  “No, pumpkin. He worked in the oil industry. He was learning to be a welder.”

  A welder. It was something Luna would have to look up in the dictionary
. She wished she could go upstairs and do that, but Leo still wanted together time.

  “Let’s watch something educational,” Leo suggested, fueling Luna’s hopes. Although Leo had blocked Nickelodeon and most kids’ programs, some adult things interested Luna. Maybe he would choose one of the Harry Potter movies. They owned all of the DVDs because Leo claimed it matched the story of his life. He was the original Harry Potter, savior of the world, and he was thrilled that J. K. Rowling had told his story.

  But instead Leo clicked through the stations of basic cable to the History Channel. A story about Vikings who hacked at each other with their swords and let out a holler as their dragon ships sailed through the sea. Why did they always shout and drink and fight?

  “Can’t I go read?” Luna whispered in her mother’s ear.

  Mama gave a stern shake of her head.

  “Because we don’t allow children in this house,” Natalie said all the time, glaring at Luna. As if it were Luna’s fault for existing. “But children grow, and someday you will be old enough to work for us. Earn your keep. Then you will be a real person in this house. Until then, you are your mother’s problem.”

  When Luna asked Mama what that meant, she was told not to worry. “I’ll take care of you.” And Mama did. She brought Luna clothes when the sisters went shopping at Value Village or the Goodwill store. And just this week, she’d brought Luna beautiful soft underwear to wear over her breasts. Bralettes, Mama called them. “To give you some privacy, so, you know, you don’t show through your shirt.”

  Luna didn’t know that she’d been showing through, though she had noticed Leo looking. There was a kind of mad look on his face when he stared at her chest. It made her want to curl up like a wilting flower. She turned and caught him staring now, instead of watching the Viking ships cross a map of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Folding her arms protectively across her chest, she leaned close to Glory and whispered, “Can we go upstairs?”

  “As soon as this is over,” Mama whispered back.

  Luna let out a sigh, impatient to leave the circle of sad faces. But those were the rules. The stupid rules.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Look, I’m crazy about you,” Tyler said as he put a twenty-dollar bill on the bar. He had a way of lowering his voice and watching her that made Glory feel like she was as amazing as a sunrise. “But we both know this is an adult relationship—a social thing. No strings, no commitment.”

  “Is that what you think?” Glory’s voice was playful, but she had to struggle to keep her hand from shaking as she took a sip of her lemon drop. Nothing was working out for her. Tyler had been her best prospect, her shining star, but she’d failed again.

  For weeks, she had been scouting men at the mall and meeting them at night, after she snuck out of the house in the dark. It was a difficult role to play, buttering men up, pursuing kindness, loyalty, and enough generosity to get the offer of a place for Luna and her to live while Glory saved some money, got a job, and hooked on to any government assistance she could get. For weeks, she’d been failing.

  Shoe salesman Shawn had seemed promising. A sweet kisser and a romantic at heart, he had seemed ready to pledge his undying love to Glory until she suggested they go to his place.

  “It’ll have to be your place, since I’m between apartments.” Turned out Shawn was living with his mother, who had stringent rules about what would go on under her roof. At first Glory had been devastated when that didn’t work out, but she’d learned from it. Shawn had shown her that she had the courage and ingenuity to escape from the house at night, circumventing double-bolted doors locked from the inside that only Leo held the key to, as well as Leo’s “laser-light security system.” Shawn had helped her purchase a very basic cell phone for which she had been able to pay for six months’ service in advance. It wasn’t a smartphone, but she was able to text, which gave her a way to reach people outside, and it was small enough to stash in her bra. And Shawn had helped her realize that she still had a power over men. After a decade of hiding her light in a house of badgered slave women, Glory still knew how to shine and lead a moth to the flame.

  Prospective hero number two managed the Cineplex at the mall, a step up, she’d thought, except that they had never made it out of his car in the parking lot of the Crescent Bar. Back in high school, her friend Kendall had called a guy like that “a human octopus.” Not that Glory would have minded having sex if it were folded into a commitment. At thirty-four, she was ready to end the dry spell and release some of the demons that had been locked inside her. But Glory wasn’t out for a good time. She needed a path of escape. When it became clear that Mr. Cineplex’s car was not going to take her down that road, she declined his invitations.

  And now Tyler Engle, a guy with a real job designing cabinetry for a major Northwest home builder, was rejecting her. He had shown her some of his designs the first night she met him at the Crescent—computerized maps of kitchens that he could open on his phone, with tiny measurements and three-dimensional models. A little bit of art and a lot of math. Tyler was a smart guy. She needed him to be her guy.

  “Why don’t you take some time to think about it,” she told him. “Because we do have a good thing going. I hate to toss that away just because it’s a little bit out of your comfort zone.”

  Tyler sucked air in through his teeth. “I’m afraid we’re looking for some very different things.”

  “But that might change if we give it a try. Maybe you could just give us a place to stay until I get back on my feet.”

  “Sorry, Glory. I feel your pain; I really do. But that’s not who I am. I’m meant to be single.”

  “So maybe it wouldn’t be forever,” she pleaded. “Please, just for a few weeks . . .”

  “My apartment is tiny, and I’ve already got two kids. At least that’s what my wife says.” He grinned, but his pointed chin and gray bristled cheeks fell short of a roguish look. “That was a joke. She’s my ex-wife.”

  “But I’m not laughing. It’s hard to joke when your life is at stake.”

  “You’re being overly dramatic. I realize living in a group home probably sucks, but it’s a roof over your head for now. So why don’t you stay there while you save up and get back on your feet? It’s as good a plan as any.”

  Staying in the house was no plan at all, but Tyler couldn’t know that from the limited information she’d given him. He wouldn’t understand that her salary went directly to the house account, as did her food stamps from the state. He wouldn’t believe that her girl was undocumented. He didn’t comprehend the risk she took on the nights that she climbed out her window and slid down from the roof of the shed so that she could meet him. She had never mentioned how difficult it was to navigate the stunt with her bad left knee.

  He didn’t understand that she and Luna couldn’t just leave; they needed to escape.

  Not that she hadn’t tried to get Leo and Natalie’s permission to leave with her daughter. After Luna had been sequestered in the attic yet again, this time overnight, Glory had begun to wonder if Leo and his sister were annoyed enough to release them and be done with the hassle of hosting a mischievous ten-year-old.

  She decided to appeal to Natalie, the numbers person, by presenting the prospect of saving Natalie money. As the bookkeeper for the hotel and the house, Natalie tended to reduce everything to what it cost her. “I can’t pay that kind of money,” was Natalie’s line for anything from an overpriced piece of clothing from Goodwill to a repair that Leo had called in an electrician to handle. It wasn’t just that Natalie did the accounting; she actually owned the hotel and house.

  “She got rich in a lawsuit,” Annabelle had explained in secret soon after Glory had joined the sisters. The two women had shared a room when Glory first arrived, and Annabelle had been happy to fill her in on the culture of the sisters or, as she had called it, “The Ballad of Leo and the Gnat.” The Gnat had been her nickname for Natalie, a cruel nickname for a disabled person, Glory had though
t, until she got to know Natalie better. With her unrelenting drive to burrow under your skin and find fault, Natalie was quite the irritating pest.

  “Once upon a time there was a beautiful brother and a sister who wanted to rule a kingdom.” Annabelle had paced as she told her story. “But, poor them, they didn’t have any money and no one wanted to be in their kingdom. So they got lucky one day when the princess got hit by a car. I know, that doesn’t seem to be so lucky, but the car was driven by this rich lady, and the princess wasn’t hurt too bad. But she played up her injury and said she’d never walk again. And they sued the rich lady and got a big payout to get the kingdom rolling. So they bought a van and a hotel and a house. And they filled the house with broken women like us who were desperate enough to be their slaves and keep the hotel running for cheap. And the princess spent her days counting their money, and she was so happy. And the prince, well, you know how he spends his days, getting a lot of happy endings for himself. So they got their kingdom, King Leo and the Gnat.”

  A young woman with hair the color of ginger and a fiery temper, Annabelle was so convincing she appeared earnest even when you knew she was telling a lie. As a girl she had been kicked along through the foster care system until she’d found the gumption to stop kicking back and simply escape. She was the most defiant of the sisters, and Glory knew to take her story with a grain of salt.

  Still, the tale had spurred a dozen questions. What about the rest of Leo and Natalie Petrov’s family? What was the truth about Natalie’s spine injury? Hadn’t they taken in all these women out of charity? “And why don’t they just hire a staff to clean the hotel so that we can get our own jobs?”