The Girls

by Lori Lansens

  The wind had kicked up again. There was a loud noise from the direction of Merkels’, like something big had fallen down. We couldn’t see if Mrs. Merkel was still in her garden. Ruby and I wondered if we should head back, the reality of tornadoes never far from our thoughts, but the adults just waved from the yard, Nonna delighted to see we’d made friends with her grandson.

  Ryan didn’t turn to look at us. For a long time no one said a thing. We watched the creek from our separate sides of the bridge, seeing much the same thing but not the same thing at all. There were skitter bugs racing on top of the brown water, and some underwing moths resting on cowbane nearby. Then, suddenly, a yellow warbler fluttered and burst from a tall patch of ironweed and came to rest on the edge of our side of the bridge. Had Ruby and I been alone, we would have shrieked over the sighting. The warblers came from Mexico and South America. It was rare to see one, and rarer to see one up close.

  No one spoke until Ryan asked softly, so softly at first that we had to ask him to repeat.

  “Could I touch it?”

  Ruby and I knew instantly what Ryan meant and were shocked dumb.

  “Could I? For a sec?”

  There was something obscene in the request.

  “No,” Ruby and I said in unison.

  “I just want to touch it.”

  “No,” I repeated.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  We felt Ryan’s slitty eyes on the backs of our skulls. “Just for one sec?”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I’m gonna be a doctor.”

  I was unconvinced.

  “I like bones,” he added hopefully.

  We three stared down at the rippling water. Ruby motioned at the house and I shifted so she could see. “Have they started the barbecue yet?”

  Uncle Stash was stirring a pitcher of fruit punch. There was nothing on the grill.

  “We’re dying of starvation here!” Ryan suddenly shouted.

  The adults, who hadn’t heard exactly, just waved and nodded, which made Ruby and me giggle.

  “We’re dyyyying,” Ryan cried, sending Ruby and me into peals of laughter.

  “I’m never gonna make it!” Ryan fell back onto the bridge, pretending to be dead. Ruby and I laughed about that, surprised when the boy rose and was instantly petulant. “They can’t wait forever. We gotta go to church.”

  “Can’t you miss it one night?”

  “I can’t miss it ever. I’m gonna be a priest.” Ryan huffed, as if it was something we should have known.

  “Thought you were gonna be a doctor.”

  “Why doesn’t she go to church Sunday morning, like a normal person?” Ryan wondered aloud.

  “Nonna likes the folk mass,” I replied, though it wasn’t quite the truth.

  “Nonna doesn’t want to hear Mass from Father Pardo because he’s the one that won’t make us the baptize,” Ruby added.

  “Plus, she’s addicted to Coronation Street,” I said, which was true.

  “You’re not baptized?” Ryan’s horror frightened me. “What if you die?”

  (On the subject of our dying unbaptized, Aunt Lovey had always said, “If God stops two good girls like you from entering heaven just because some drunk old priest wouldn’t sprinkle water on your head, well then, God is just not who I thought She was. I most certainly wouldn’t want to spend eternity in a place a whole lot of perfectly nice people were turned away from. You girls shouldn’t either.”)

  “If we die,” I told him, “Aunt Lovey said there’s another heaven, one like the Catholics have, only more tolerant.”

  “That’s a lie! There’s no tolerant heaven!” he said, leaning over Ruby to see me. “There’s just purgatory. And you don’t want to go there.”

  We watched the wind chase some chipmunks through the weeds. I could feel Ruby holding back a flood of tears. I followed an impulse: “Bet you’ve seen a million baptisms.”

  Ryan shrugged.

  “You probably know the words. Do you know any of the words?”

  He shrugged again.

  “You are gonna be a priest.”

  “Or a doctor,” Ryan countered.

  “Probably a priest though,” I insisted. “You remember the words to say for a baptism?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know, it’s all stuff about the Holy Ghost.” Ryan craned to check on the adults.

  “You could do it. You could baptize us.”

  “No way.”

  “We could do it down there.” I pointed to a shallow place under the rickety bridge. “Come on, they won’t see us.”

  Ryan was resolute. “I’m not doing it.”

  Ruby shifted. “Do it. You could do it.”

  Ryan shook his head again.

  “We’ll let you touch it.” I shifted, grasping my sister’s thigh. “Right, Ruby? We’ll let you touch it if you baptize us.”

  Ruby inhaled. “For one second.”

  Ryan moved so he could see the adults in the distance. They were too involved in their discussion to notice us. Ruby and I sat perfectly still as the boy’s hands found our scalps. He used his fingertips to probe our fused skulls slowly and with very little pressure. He was tender like Aunt Lovey, the way no doctor had ever been. I felt the heat from Ryan’s breath as he shifted to investigate our faces, the separation of our jaws, our missing ears, my pulled eye, Ruby’s pretty nose.

  I swallowed hard, unprepared for my sudden swell of emotion. Ruby felt my tears impending.

  “That’s enough,” Ruby said, though I would have let Ryan Todino touch me forever.

  Ryan said nothing as he sat down beside Ruby, dangling his legs from the bridge. I didn’t know any other nine-year-old boys very well, but I didn’t think they could all be as strange as he was.

  “Now,” I said, “let’s go.” I had a sudden craving for this union with God’s spirit, this Holy Ghost that could grant me passage to the real heaven. I badly wanted to glow with the power of God’s love.

  Ryan scrambled down the slope near the bridge and found a shallow spot (the water was only ten inches deep) beside which we could kneel. I followed, Ruby riding my hip.

  Ryan cleared his throat a little and glanced at the sky. “I’m just gonna say ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost.’”

  “All right.”

  “I’m not saying anything else.”

  “All right.”

  I kneeled in the mud, formulating a lie for Aunt Lovey about how I got dirty. Ruby gripped my neck and whined because the bottoms of her stockings got wet.

  Ryan made the sign of the cross and cupped his palm, preparing to scoop the brackish water collected by the pool beneath the bridge, cautioning that if we died before he became a priest, or if he did not become a priest at all, the sacrament would not likely be valid.

  The wind began to blow like an oscillating fan. Little gusts on a two-four beat. “I baptize you,” Ryan whispered to us as he bent to dip his palm in the water. He sprinkled the water on my sister’s head, then mine. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy —”

  Suddenly a voice in the distance boomed, “Ryan . . . ?”

  Ryan bolted like a fugitive. We heard the swish of weeds as he scurried up the bank of the creek. I started to rise, so we could see where Ryan had gone, but I slipped on the mud and lost my balance. I tried to break our fall, but I came down hard on my arm and heard my bone snap clean a couple of inches above my wrist.

  There was mud in my nose, my teeth, my eyes. My arm felt hot. I didn’t dare gasp for air until I could push us clear of the water. But I couldn’t push us with my broken arm. I couldn’t lift us an inch. And my other arm, having grown around my sister as it has, was useless to me too. Our joined heads and our particular anatomy make Ruby and me top-heavy. I could not, using any muscles or the fulcrum of our bodies, raise us from the creek. I knew, given the depth of the water, that Ruby’s face was subme
rged too. We were drowning.

  Pressure in my lungs and my throat and my sinuses and behind my eyes. It’s said that your life flashes before you when you’re about to die, but it wasn’t like that for me. (Ruby claims to have seen a tunnel and some light, but she told me about that memory two years later, after she’d watched a show about near-death experiences.) I did not see any life but the present, and I saw it from somewhere above—perhaps it was a view from the rickety bridge—of me and my eight-year-old sister drowning in ten inches of water.

  I felt my body, though I was certain I did not have one, flushing with a strange, thrilling calm, and I knew that Ruby was experiencing it too. Ruby and I do not fully understand what happened next. I think it’ll remain one of the mysteries of our life. Ruby’s right arm, though a normal arm, is a beam in the structure of our connected selves more than it is a tool. Her arm is limber, but not strong, and though it must be assumed, because there was no one else around, that Ruby was the one who pushed us out of the water with her thin and fragile arms, she has no memory whatsoever of doing it. Ruby thinks it was a ghost, and given the date (our birthday/Larry’s death day) and that we were so near Merkels’, she’s pretty sure it was Larry who saved us.

  One moment we were drowning, the next we were rising and gasping, and Ruby was pointing to the mud near my knees at a half-submerged toy fire truck, which had to have been Larry’s and therefore was a sign.

  The adults found Ryan sobbing behind a tree, a few yards away from Merkels’, with Cyrus snarling at his heels. Ryan pointed out Ruby and me, panting beside the creek, mud packed in our eyes and nostrils, kneeling perilously close to the water. We were rushed to the hospital, where my broken arm was set, and Dr. Ruttle cleaned our nostrils and examined our craniums. Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash would never know about the attempted baptism or exactly how close my sister and I came to drowning. Still, we were punished for playing near the creek, never saw a slice of birthday cake, and had to wait a full week to open our presents. My arm took forever to heal. We never showed anyone the little toy truck.

  We wouldn’t see Ryan Todino again for nearly fifteen years until he appeared at the front door of Nonna’s bungalow one Sunday morning out of the clear blue asking to borrow money. He looked not unlike his nine-year-old self, except for some scruff on his chin and some muscle in his chest. If he had a memory of having baptized us in the creek near Merkels’ that July when we turned eight years old, he did not show it. Instead, Ryan glanced at us furtively, or not at all, and declined the tuna sangwiches Nonna made us all for lunch. “You’re not eating your sangwich,” Nonna had cried.

  Father Pardo was transferred (or banished) from Holy Cross many years ago. Nonna experiences dementia from Alzheimer’s now. She has good days and bad days, but more often than not doesn’t recognize Ruby and me when we visit and seems not to understand that we are two women. Nick (Ryan’s father) has been living with Nonna on Chippewa Drive for four years, and though he hardly ever cuts the lawn and hasn’t pruned a bush or tree since we’ve known him, Nonna seems well fed and the house is always tidy, even when Ruby and I do our surprise inspections. Ruby hates Nick, but I think he’s fine. Just sort of sad. He’s lost a lot in his life. You can see it in his eyes.

  I’ve thought often about that day of our eighth birthday when we were baptized and nearly drowned, and I’ve wondered about the Holy Ghost Ryan called upon. Sometimes I feel possessed by it, and other times I hope to hell Aunt Lovey was right about heaven.

  It’s Ruby Darlen writing now.

  Let me start by saying I’m not the greatest writer in the world. Books are not my thing. And I haven’t really written anything but a couple of letters since we graduated from Leaford Collegiate. I tend to avoid doing things I’m not good at, like writing, so it’s taken me a while to get to this. I’m not even sure what this is. My sister says it’s her autobiography. I asked her how a conjoined twin can write the story of her life when she hasn’t lived her life alone. Rose said if I really feel that way I should write some chapters from my point of view.

  So here I am writing from my point of view. The problem is Rose won’t tell me what she’s writing beyond saying her life. Kind of a broad topic. So I don’t know what I should be agreeing with or what I should be disputing.

  Rose said just write like I’m writing to a friend.

  So, Hi friend.

  And she said use quotation marks if it’s dialogue. I’m thinking—Dialogue? In an autobiography? What’s she gonna do—quote herself? I don’t plan on using dialogue, as in she said this and I said that, just so you know. But I do feel it’s important to have some say in the story of my sister’s life because although we’re conjoined twins, and technically have parallel vision, we don’t always see eye to eye.

  I’m not allowed to read Rose’s chapters (not like I know how to use her computer anyway), so I said if I couldn’t read her chapters she couldn’t read mine. We made a deal that when the book’s done we’ll make a copy and read the whole thing together. She’ll read my chapters out loud. And I’ll read hers. (There’s a party you don’t want to miss.)

  Rose has high hopes of having this thing published. She won’t admit it, but she does. She says if no publisher wants it she’ll do it on the Internet, which I don’t understand, but she says it’s possible.

  I’m being realistic about Rosie’s odds. Who wants to read about a couple of sisters who work at the library in a boring small town, even if we are joined at the head? If you spend an hour with us, you get over the physical weirdness of our being conjoined and see that my sister and I are just two normal women. I’ve never seen any book written by a conjoined twin before. And working in the library, I’ve seen lots of books. The reading public wants mysteries, and crime dramas, and hysterical romance, and glamour, and dirt (by that I mean celebrity gossip). Rose and I are not mysterious or criminals. We have been hysterical once or twice, but we’re not glamorous. We’re sort of celebrities, though. To people in Baldoon County. Personally, I’m as well known for my Indian artifact discoveries as I am for being conjoined. I was invited to join the Baldoon County Historical Society. And I have had many telephone conversations with professors and museum guys about where I found artifacts on our farm, and how the things were positioned in the ground. A couple of guys came out to the farm so I could lead them on a tour of my finds. A picture of Rose and me standing alongside Errol Osler, a real expert on the Neutral Indians, was in the Chatham Daily News. Errol Osler is a volunteer at the Museum of Indian Archaeology in London. The London museum is the re-creation of the Indian village that stood on its site four hundred years ago. Rose and I have been going there since we were kids. Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash used to take us there after my specialist appointments.

  Rose is not interested in the Neutrals the way I am, but she never complained about going to the museum. She’s done some online research for me too. We are completely supportive of each other, even though we have different interests. But I don’t necessarily think it’s because we’re conjoined. I think it’s mostly just because we’re sisters.

  I’m writing my chapters in longhand on a yellow legal pad, which is at my side and which Rose can’t see because she’s a bit nearsighted. Doesn’t really matter. Rose can read my mind. She’s done it since we were little. And even though I can’t read her mind, I know she’s probably writing embarrassing things about me—which, personally, I think if someone wants to call their story an autobiography, they should write embarrassing things about themselves and leave it at that.

  Rosie tends to exaggerate things so there’s a warning for you.

  She also tends to round things off. Know what I mean?

  Rose said I should start by saying what it’s like to be conjoined. I’ve thought about that one for a long time. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to write, because I can’t imagine how even the most brilliant author could describe to a stranger what it’s like to take your life’s journey with your sister attached to your head. />
  When I told Rose I was stuck on what to write about our conjoinment, she said I should share my interests and hobbies. Well, my hobby, since I was about eight years old, has been searching for Indian artifacts. Specifically artifacts from a large band of Neutral Indians who had a fishing camp spread out on our farm hundreds of years ago. Our farm isn’t right on the Thames like you’d expect, but a ways away, on higher ground that doesn’t flood.

  Ninety percent of the Neutral Indian artifacts at the Leaford Museum, which is almost right across the street from our old farmhouse on Rural Route One, were found on our land, by me. The bone handle with the engraved decoration, the bird effigy pipe, the bone-bead necklace, the dozens of arrowheads, the flanged cooking pot. I have a list somewhere of the rest of the things I found. I’m not an Indian expert or anything, and I don’t get how writing about my interest in the Neutral Indians tells you anything about me and my sister and what it’s like to be conjoined, but Rose says all that stuff will fall out between the lines.

  After we met with Dr. Singh in Toronto last month, Rose and I took a short taxi ride to the beach, and we found a quiet spot where we wouldn’t be stared at or interrupted, and we talked about what we’d like to do with whatever time we have left.

  That night Rose started to write this book, which she calls Autobiography of a Conjoined Twin. I told her I think that’s the worst title I’ve ever heard. She already thought of a book jacket design. She says the design is very important.

  She said our prognosis gave her inspiration and a deadline in two words. She can joke about it all she wants. I know she’s scared.

  I think that’s why she’s so obsessed with writing so much so fast. The tapping of her computer keys drives me nuts when I’m trying to fall asleep. I don’t know how she stands it. Banging on the keys. Looking at the computer screen for hours and hours. Remembering. Thinking. Rose has always been reflective. She’s the in-love-with-learning type. I guess that’s why she’s a writer. I don’t really like to learn. I just like to know.