My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In the kitchen close by, Lila was preparing dinner. It was early evening but dark as midnight outside the family room windows. Mummy hadn’t yet returned from her Thursday appointment with Dr. Stadtskruller, unless it was Dr. Screed, or Dr. Eustis, and whether Daddy would be home in time for dinner or was working late at the office or forced to spend the night at the company-owned condo in New York City, Skyler had no idea. Luckily, neither Mummy nor Daddy could overhear this exchange: Mummy did not like such “prying” questions of Bliss’s and did not like Skyler to “indulge” her; Daddy thought such questions “morbid” no matter who asked them.

  “People don’t ‘buy’ their children, Bliss! Don’t be so”—Skyler hesitated, not wanting to say stupid a second time, for he’d seen how the jeering word made his sister wince—“silly. Everybody knows where babies come from.”

  Bliss squirmed so on the sofa, the opened Floating Dirigible slipped from her lap to the floor. “They do? Where?”

  Evasively Skyler said, “‘Having a baby’ is what a man and a woman do together, when they get married. That’s how they know the baby is theirs. They make it.”

  “‘Make it’? Did Mummy and Daddy ‘make’ us? How?”

  Skyler had to concede, this was implausible, and alarming. He tried to remember what Calvin Klaus had told him so vehemently: screw together, hole between legs, cock fits in. Something gets shot up inside the woman that turns into a baby inside her belly—how? Skyler could not imagine. His brain flickered like a light bulb about to go out.

  Bliss said, in a lowered voice like one imparting a secret, “Mummy says that Jesus will love us again if we have faith, but Mummy says that maybe we are bad, and should die. Mummy and me, I mean.” Bliss was scratching at her scalp in the way that Mummy hated. The pretty faux-nails were gone, Bliss’s own nails were bitten and brittle and broke easily. A twitch had gotten into her cheek that made her look as if she was smiling and winking naughtily. “It would be a special place, for Mummy and me. And Jesus would be there. ‘Going home,’ Mummy says. And Daddy would not be there.”

  Skyler said hotly, “Where would I be?”

  “Not with us. It would be just Mummy and me.”

  “Yeah? Where’s this special place?”

  “Mummy knows. Jesus knows.”

  Skyler felt a shiver of dread. His sister’s words were both utterly clear and yet confounding as their mother’s words were so frequently since the terrible thing that had happened in Pennsylvania.

  Bliss added, in a wistful voice, “Know what, Skyler? Mummy and Daddy don’t love me anymore. Since I fell on the ice, nobody loves me,” and Skyler said quickly, “Yes they do. I do,” and Bliss said doubtfully, “You do, Skyler? Why?” and Skyler said, “Because you’re my sister,” even as he wondered if that was why; if that was a legitimate reason; and if, if this twitchy little sad-eyed girl wasn’t his sister, if Bliss had had no brother named Skyler, would anyone have loved her? (And why did anyone love anyone else?—Skyler wondered.)

  In the kitchen, Lila was singing one of her sad-happy songs, she’d told them was a song from when she’d been a girl in a faraway place. They had asked Lila if she was lonely for that place and Lila said no because she carried that place inside her. But Skyler could see, the soft sad look in the housekeeper’s eyes, that this wasn’t so. Bliss was saying, “I was thinking about the time before I was born, and who was there, and did they miss me,” and Skyler said thoughtlessly, “I was there. Before you were born. Just Mummy and Daddy and me and we didn’t miss you.” Bliss blinked slowly, taking in this fact. She seemed about to speak but could not speak. Quickly Skyler amended, “But if you went away now, Bliss, I would miss you.”

  * Yet not repentant. For the tattoos were good-luck talismans that Skyler needed for survival at Fair Hills Day School and maybe at home, too. In his classes, in the boys’ lavatory, in his room at home compulsively inking daggers, skulls, spiders, snakes and the secret initial C.K. on the insides of his forearms and elbows, on his thighs and flat little stomach, in both red ink and black and mostly hidden beneath his clothes. The task of scrubbing them off fell to Lila who never asked what the ink-tattoos meant and never reported Skyler to his mother as if the Rampikes’ housekeeper-from-the-Philippines understood the desperate magic of tattooing.

  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

  “SKYLER, WAKE UP!”

  Mummy was shaking him, for Skyler could not wake up.

  Mummy was agitated, and seemed to be blaming him, and Skyler tried to wake up but could not for his head was heavy and leaden and his eyelashes were stuck together like glue.

  “Skyler, please! I can’t find Bliss.”

  In the night, Bliss had pushed open Skyler’s door. This was the third time that Bliss had wakened Skyler that week and Skyler resented his sister and pulled a pillow over his head pretending not to hear her stricken voice Skyler! Something happened in my bed a bad accident in my bed but peevish Skyler refused to respond this time, in disgust muttering Go away Bliss! I’m not getting up clean your bed yourself afterward unable to recall if this had truly happened or if it had been a dream for earlier that night when Skyler had just gone to bed (at about 9 P.M.) Mummy came into his room bringing Skyler his bedtime pills which (Skyler was sure) he’d already taken from Lila as he did every night, with warm milk and cookies or Lila’s special warm applesauce sprinkled with cinammon which both Skyler and Bliss loved. Yet there came Mummy teasing: “Skyler, I know your tricks! You and your sister both, you hide your pills in the side of your mouth and when no one is watching you spit them out, you and your devious sister both, you must be watched.” Mummy laughed, Mummy’s eyes were lustrous as reflections in glass. “But you can’t help it, you’re his children. And you are his son. He named you.” And so Skyler had taken the pills (again) except it seemed to him that there was one extra pill, a large white capsule he didn’t recognize for it was easier to take these pills than to rouse Mummy’s anger at this time of night. And later wakened by a sharp pressure on his bladder, a terrible need to pee, he’d managed to stumble from bed and into the hall and into the bathroom and on the way back to his room he saw a light beneath the door of Mummy’s private room and like a boy in a dream not wholly his own he went to the door that was ajar pushing it open hesitantly seeing Mummy in her silky champagne-colored nightgown and over it the warm white terry cloth bathrobe Mummy wore when Daddy was not home for this bathrobe made Mummy look fat and Mummy did not want Daddy to see her in it. Mummy was at her desk leaning on her elbows frowning and muttering to herself, bent over a sheet of paper, gripping a pen as Bliss gripped a pen in her right fist printing in block letters Skyler glimpsed upside down from several feet away. Mummy glanced up with a startled smile: “Why, Skyler! What are you doing up? What time is it? You little—owl.” Mummy spoke playfully though Skyler could see that she was annoyed by the interruption; and Mummy did not like to be spied upon by her children, not ever. On the desk beside Mummy’s sprawled arms was a dark amber bottle with a bright green parrot label and a small container of white pills. “As long as you’re up, sweetie—how d’you spell ‘theaten’?”

  “‘Theaten’?”

  “Yes. ‘Theaten.’”

  “Do you mean ‘threaten,’ Mummy?”

  Slowly Mummy blinked as if confused then said, shrugging: “Oh, never mind! You male Rampikes are so smart, aren’t you. ‘Y’ chromosome up your ass.” Mummy splashed amber liquid into a glass, and drank, and laughed, and waved Skyler with a negligent gesture.

  Next morning Daddy was coming to take Bliss away—“A special birthday outing, just Daddy and his bestest-best li’l gal”—to which Mummy had reluctantly agreed, since Mummy had a “real birthday party” planned for Bliss on the actual date of her birthday to which Daddy had not been invited. Bliss had been speaking of nothing else for days: Daddy would be taking her to New York City to the Plaza Hotel for lunch and then to see a matinee of the Broadway musical The Princess Bride; and afterward, Daddy would show Bliss the new apa
rtment where Daddy stayed when Daddy “had business” in the city: not the company-owned condominium but, it seemed, Daddy’s own apartment on Central Park South overlooking the park. Skyler had no reason to be jealous of Bliss for (1) It was Bliss’s birthday, not Skyler’s; and (2) Daddy had promised to take Skyler to see the Knicks play in the city, at which time Daddy would show Skyler the new apartment, too. Now Mummy was shaking Skyler to wake him, for Skyler was so very sleepy, and Mummy was pulling up his pajama sleeves saying, “Skyler, let me see your arms,” before Skyler could stop her forcing him into the light so that smudged little rows of black daggers/red hearts were revealed on the inside of Skyler’s left elbow. “There must be a devil in you! This is ugly. This is pagan. Hasn’t Mummy warned you.”

  Ashamed, guilty, Skyler wished he could hide. But where?

  Mummy pulled back the bedclothes on Skyler’s bed—as if somehow Bliss might be hiding beneath them, curled up at the foot of the bed. “Where is she? Where is Bliss!”—Mummy had become frantic, unreasonable, kneeling to peer beneath the bed, stumbling then to Skyler’s closet where she pawed through Skyler’s hanging things, knelt and groped about on the floor amid Skyler’s shoes like a blind woman. As if Bliss might be hiding in Skyler’s closet, on the floor. Skyler asked Mummy if she’d looked downstairs and Mummy said Yes! of course she’d looked downstairs, she had looked everywhere but Bliss was gone. Mummy pulled Skyler with her across the hall and into the nursery where the Mother Goose lamp beside Bliss’s torn-apart bed gave off a warm soft mild glow lost in the brighter light of the ceiling fixture, Skyler saw that Bliss’s sheets and mattress were stained, an unmistakable sour smell made his nostrils pinch. Mummy was striking her thighs with her fists half-sobbing, “Bad girl! Again! On purpose to spite me!” as Skyler stood irresolute as if he was to blame and yes he will be blamed for Mummy turned upon him as if seeing him suddenly in a new, terrible light staring at him pleading, “Skyler? What have you done with Bliss? You’ve taken her, haven’t you?—where?”*

  * This painful account of Skyler’s recollection of the night of his sister’s death differs in small but (possibly?) significant ways from the account in Part I. How to explain this? I’m stumped.

  RIGOR MORTIS

  THESE CONFUSED EVENTS OCCURRED BETWEEN APPROXIMATELY 6:20 A.M. and 6:37 A.M. of January 29, 1997. I have tried to be faithful—the impatient reader might complain, only too faithful—to nine-year-old Skyler’s impressionistic experience. Not for another three hours would his sister’s body be discovered, by their* distraught father Bix Rampike, in a shadowy corner of the furnace room of the Rampikes’ house, already stiff with rigor mortis.

  * The scrupulous reader has discovered an error of usage here, which editor and copy editor let slip past: their should be his. For a body is (not) (no longer) a human agent, capable of possessing a father. Reader, you are correct. But I refuse to change what I have written, know why? Even in death, in the throes of rigor mortis, to me my sister Bliss is still alive.

  IV

  Posthumous

  EVER AFTER

  AND THEY ALL LIVED HORRIBLY EVER AFTER.

  “NINE-YEAR-OLD SUSPECT IN SISTER’S DEATH”

  NOT A TEAR DID HE SHED.

  Cried continuously!

  Traces of his DNA would one day be identified on the crimson silk scarf used to bind his sister’s wrists together above her head, in a “seductive” pose on the smutty floor of the furnace room.

  HAIR FELL OUT. BOY’S WAVY “FAWN-COLORED” HAIR, IN CLUMPS.

  Within weeks of the sister’s death, the brother’s bumpy/scaly/scratched-at scalp resembled that of a child cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy.

  And the eyes: “haunted” “zombie” “ghost” eyes.

  MUTE. (EXCEPT WHEN ALONE, OR IMAGINING HIMSELF ALONE: WHINING/ whimpering/sobbing/laughing/muttering/“conversing”)

  BECAUSE HE IS A NERVOUS CHILD.

  Because he is a dyslexic child.

  Because he is afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder.

  Because his neurologist believes that he may have an impairment of the hippocampus.

  (Hippocampus? “Higher brain,” in which memory is stored.)

  Because he is but nine years old.

  Because he has been nine years old for a very long time.

  Because, though soon to be ten years old, forever yet he will remain nine years old.

  Because he knows nothing about what happened to his sister.

  Because he has told us, his parents, all that he knows. He knows nothing.

  Because what he may have known, he cannot remember.

  Because we know our rights as parents.

  Because our attorneys have advised us.

  Because we are a devout Christian family.

  Because we place our faith in God.

  Because he loved his little sister very much.

  Because he is innocent. We know that he is innocent.

  Because our daughter has been sacrificed, we will not lose our son, too.

  NECROPOLIS

  IN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TOMBS OF THE KIND PATRONIZED BY RICH AMERICAN tourists there are said to be “unfinished murals” on the walls. And hieroglyphs thousands of years old telling fragments of histories of long-ago pharaohs and gods.* Must’ve been a belief of their religion that such murals/histories should be left unfinished as the ancient dead are not dead exactly but in a suspended state; and so I’m thinking that this damned document/“confession” of mine sucking at my soul like a vampire bat fixed to my carotid artery is going to be unfinished—“tantalizingly incomplete”—“unconscionably fragmented”—no matter how hard, how long, how obsessively and with what anguish I work at it. Forgive me reader I can’t help it.

  * How do I know this? Not from personal experience! In the months following my sister’s death it seemed that Daddy’s squash partner friend Morris Kruk was often visiting with us, for my parents had hired Mr. Kruk (and, in time, Mr. Crampf, of the prestigious Fair Hills law firm Kruk, Crampf, Burr & Rosenblatt) to “protect the rights, privacy, and reputation of the Rampike family”; and Mr. Kruk had recently taken his family on a Nile cruise and a guided tour of the Great Pyramids. And though Skyler was not meant to hear Mr. Kruk discussing the Rampikes’ legal situation yet Skyler was allowed to hear Mr. Kruk speaking in his affable yet bellicose voice on neutral subjects. (Morris Kruk! And Josh Crampf, who came to be much admired as well. The Rampikes’ high-priced attorneys who would brilliantly block any and all attempts by the Fair Hills police to interview my parents, or me, on the subject of my sister’s death. After a preliminary interview at police headquarters, no Rampikes ever returned to be questioned further. Since sufficient evidence would never be gathered by detectives to convince the district attorney that warrants, summonses, or subpoenas should be served to any of the Rampikes, delivering them into police custody to be interviewed at length, weeks, months, and eventually years would pass in what some observers have called a legal coma.

  PROMISE!

  MUMMY PROMISED. MUMMY PROTECTED. MUMMY LIED FOR HER LITTLE MAN’S sake That little red heart on the palm of our daughter’s left hand?—Bliss drew it on, herself. It was meant to be a good-luck charm.

  BLACK DIRIGIBLE 2007

  “JESUS! CAN’T BREATHE.”

  Sixteen hours. Without a break. The room smelled gassy like bowels, organic rot.

  Panic came over me, had to get out.

  The day after Bliss’s birthday. An eerie January twilight. Something felt wrong. Not just she was dead—she’d been dead for ten years, and I knew this—but 8 P.M. should be dark, dark-as-night, not daylight.

  Maybe the Turnpike had caught fire? Reflections of lurid flames in the massed clouds overhead, I could see by kneeling on the floor of my room and peering up anxiously slantwise through the fissures in the blind. A fiery sun was wrong for 8 P.M. in late January, in New Jersey.

  Grabbed the jacket with the drawstring hood and stumbled down the stairs. The look in my face, you’d have to
know that I was crazy and you’d want to keep your distance and yet: “Hey there, bro’. How’s it goin’?”

  Evasively I mumbled okay. Goin’ okay.

  A fellow tenant to avoid, since I’d run into him last month at the Middlesex County Probation Dept.

  “You in 3C, eh? Looks like you got mail.”

  It was so. In the row of dented tarnished-brass mailboxes in the vestibule, in the dented mailbox 3C, there was a single envelope just visible, amid anonymous junk mail.

  “Jesus! Not now.”

  Fortunately no one is tracking Skyler Rampike who seems to have been transformed into a sweaty mouth-breather muttering Jesus! every few minutes and clawing at his scratchy unshaven face.

  Mail addressed to Skyler Rampike was rare. He’d had friends, a few, in school, of which more later, but none of these friends knew where he was and he’d been estranged from his family for some time. The only mail that came to him at regular intervals like clockwork, every four weeks on the first Monday of the month, came in business envelopes from the Pittsburgh law firm Crunk, Swidell, Hamm & Silverstein* but the size, shape, color (smallish, squarish, pale-apricot) of the envelope just visible inside the dented box was a kick in the gut signaling that this letter wasn’t from the single person from his old/former life who knew where he lived now.

  “Hey bro’: something wrong?”

  “No! Nothing is wrong.”

  Had to escape. Running/limping along Pitts Street not knowing where the hell I was headed.

  Bro’! Whose bro’ is Skyler Rampike!