The Language of Sisters

by Cathy Lamb

  “No. I’ll win, but there’s something ...”

  “Something?” I felt cold inside, an instant hit, sensing Valerie’s fear. Fear, as in my hairs were standing on end all over my body and getting ready to run.

  “I can’t figure it out yet. But it feels different. He’s a scary guy, his family is scary. They’re unpredictable. Unhinged.”

  “Now I’m scared. We’re a trio of problems. Valerie’s prosecuting demons, Ellie can’t breathe because she’s engaged, and I am actively trying to avoid a nervous breakdown and it isn’t working.” My phone went off. I glanced at the quick alert I received by e-mail. My e-mail, and the police scanner, were always a source of current mayhem, murder, and chaos. “I have to go. Another shooting.”

  “Have a splendid time,” Valerie drawled as she stood up and gave me a long, long hug and kissed my cheek. My father hurried over, his kind face wreathed in concern. “What wrong, what wrong?” His face, his dear face, so worried.

  “What is this? Why is my Antonia leaving already?” my mother said. She cupped my face. “You no eat dinner yet, it up in two minutes, you need to eat dessert, too. I make ptichye moloko cake. You too thin. Not enough skins on the bones.”

  “I’m off to a crime scene.”

  “That crime scene,” my mother said, shaking her head, which somehow seemed to shake her whole body. “I don’t know why you must write about the criminals. We come here to America, get rid of crime. You can work here in the restaurant, I tell you, many times, your father tell you, many times. Come. Work with us. You be the boss of the desserts. You are happy girl with desserts when you younger, you bake like Mary, mother of Christ—”

  “Yes, like mother of Christ,” my father agreed.

  “There’s no mention of Mary, mother of Christ, baking in the Bible,” I said.

  My mother ignored that comment. “You go to school and become lady who write about shootings and murder and the bad mens.” She threw her hands up. “What I do wrong make you do this? What? Curse on me.”

  “No childrens working the restaurant. Bad for us.” My father shook his head. Even his slanted nose seemed sad.

  “Bad for us,” my mother echoed.

  “I burn food,” I reminded them.

  “Tsk,” my mother said. “We fix that.”

  “Tsk,” my father said. “I teach you.”

  “I have to run.” I hugged my parents and my sisters; waved at Ralph, who saluted me; and at Charlie, who was playing Mozart, who smiled back dizzily, not everything clicking on all cylinders in there.

  I told myself this was my last murder.

  I knew it wasn’t.

  * * *

  The scene was busy, loud, ugly, as always. The police were there, more coming, lights flashing, sirens on, yellow crime tape surrounding the sight. Men and women in suits, detectives, one taking photos of the crime scene, passersby with their cell phones out, also taking photos. I parked, half up on a curb and started run/walking to the scene. I had a peek at the dead people, gang members, lying on the ground.

  Looked like teenagers. No more than eighteen. Skinny. They got up and got dressed this morning, ate breakfast, and this is where their lives stopped. They were about three feet apart from each other. From where the guns dropped, it looked to me like they probably took their last breaths staring into each other’s eyes, their hatred gone, their lives fading.

  They had mothers. Fathers. Siblings. Friends. Those people would never recover.

  Captain Martin Belbee gently moved me out of the way. Martin and I went to high school together. “Sorry, Toni, gotta back you up there. How ya doing? How’s your sister, Ellie? The wife bought one of her pillows the other day. Red with a lion on it. The lion was blue and green. The wife said it made her feel like roaring. We’re going to your parents’ restaurant tomorrow. Hey, do you think your mother is going to make that special called ‘Menopause Nightmare’? Lamb and beef. It was delicious when I had it before. The wife loved it. She’s having hot flashes.”

  I backed up with Martin, answered on automatic, told him I’d check with my mother and let him know. I asked Martin questions about the crime, and he answered with what he could. I knew he’d call me later with more info. I mentally started writing my story that would go up on the Oregon Standard Web site immediately. I would add to it as more details came in. That was my job.

  Yes, I write about crime.

  It’s not for sissies.

  Neither is it for people like me. I wanted out.

  * * *

  My mother would make “Menopause Nightmare” for Martin and his wife. I e-mailed him. Martin e-mailed back, “I cannot wait. Thanks, Toni. Thank your mama for me. Is she still mad at Ellie for her bad choice? And why do you and your siblings make your mama worry? I saw that on the Tonight’s Specials board the other night, too. You shouldn’t do that to her. She’s a good woman.”

  * * *

  Hours later, at two in the morning, I climbed in my bathtub with a box of chocolates. I ate them while I soaked. Not the whole box. Half of one tray. I like to eat treats in the bath. Makes for a tasty time, and it sucks away my stress.

  3

  At seven in the morning, I heard Ellie in my head. She said, Toni.

  I’d been awake for two hours already. Once I’m awake, I have to get up immediately, have coffee, and make the choice to stay up. I have to make the choice not to hide under the covers. I have to make the choice not to give up on life that day. I learned that the hard way. If it’s not raining, I have coffee on my deck and watch the river, check on my river pets, search the sky for Anonymous, and read the newspaper. Sometimes I’m having coffee in a down jacket, hat, and gloves.

  Toni.

  I called her.

  I knew it was about her wedding.

  We arranged to meet at the end of the week at Ellie’s for Pillow Talk.

  Which means we sisters get together and sew pillows and talk and laugh.

  Now and then there’s a fight. A few things have been thrown: a spool of thread, fabric, a handful of buttons, pillows—for sure nonweaponry-type things.

  No scissors, thankfully.

  * * *

  Sometimes I can hear my sisters, Ellie and Valerie, talking to me in my head. It’s rare, and it only comes in emotionally intense times—when we’re worried, scared, in danger, falling apart, or conversely when something perfect happens to us. All of a sudden, I hear them.

  I do not know their day-to-day lives. I don’t know the minutiae of their thoughts. I don’t know when they’re making love or fighting with someone.

  Some might say that we only think we can hear each other because we’re sisters, and best friends, and in tune with each other, that it’s nothing remarkable. Some might say we’re making it up, or it’s some sort of natural reaction because we know what is going on in each other’s lives. We know the truth.

  “The brothers and sisters of the Sabonis family can hear each other. Gift from God,” my mother says. “It comes from all the way back, from the time of the Romanovs, those spoiled fools, to Lenin, that mass murderer, may he be whipped by the devil each day; to Stalin, a much worse mass murderer, may his body be set on fire in hell; to Germany’s invasion, those sadistic Nazi thugs; to the siege of Leningrad, to the Cold War, we have heard each other.

  “We have called for each other, Antonia. We have begged for help. We have said good-bye as we lay dying, crying as we gave birth. We have shared secrets and joys. It is passed down to all of us. It’s the language of brothers, the language of sisters.”

  My earliest memory of this special language was in Moscow, when I was six and Valerie, called Valeria then, was four. Ellie, Elvira then, was two, and she was asleep in her crib.

  Valeria and I were in the kitchen of our tight, dingy apartment making our mother’s Russian tea cakes with pecans and powdered sugar. Our mother had managed to trade eggs for powdered sugar with a neighbor.

  Our kitchen was small, the walls sometimes damp and weeping, the
oven didn’t always work, and the refrigerator made a clanging sound like a ghost’s chains, but my mother was clever with what little she had.

  As I was sifting the flour, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I could feel myself shutting down, getting dark inside, floating. “I’m dying,” I told my mother, my voice weak.

  Valeria, her hands covered in rolled dough, stilled. Her head tilted back and she went pale. She gave a tiny gasp, a choked breath lodging in her throat.

  “Mother of God, what is it?” our mother said, dropping a bowl, one of only two mixing bowls that we had. It shattered as she reached for Valeria, when she fell straight back, her face growing more sickly, splotchy white by the minute.

  I felt a pull into that blackness. I knew it was death. I collapsed to the floor, then lay on it, curled in a ball. I wanted to help Valeria, but I couldn’t. My mother shook Valeria’s shoulders. “Valeria! Valeria!” she screamed, then crawled over to me, “Mary, mother of Jesus, help me. Antonia!” She slapped my face, not hard, as I closed my eyes.

  I heard babbling in my head. Baby babbling, the same sounds that Elvira made, but they were scared, panicked. “Elvira,” I whispered. She cried, a weak wail, sadness.

  The black pulled in tight, sucking out my breath, my vision. I felt myself floating upward. My mother shook me, yelled my name as I felt myself spinning. I closed my eyes.

  “Antonia!” My mother shook me, screamed again. My vision cleared, I breathed in again, ragged and hoarse, and the spinning stopped. As soon as it had come upon me, the wave of suffocation headed back out. Death’s hand danced away, as forcefully as it had jammed its way in. I exhaled, the blackness gone, the pull gone. I heard Elvira’s cry again in my head, a baby’s sorrowful cry, a sigh, a last breath....

  Valeria stood, wobbled. “Elvira! It’s Elvira. I hear her!”

  “What?” my mother said, on all fours, trembling. “The baby is not crying.”

  I grabbed my mother’s shoulder to pull myself up, then Valeria and I both ran, stumbling, tripping, to Elvira in her crib. She was blue, tears on her cheeks.

  “My God and Mother Mary have mercy!” My mother picked Elvira up in her arms and whacked her on the back, then turned her over and began CPR. She breathed in, twice, not too hard, then pumped her tiny chest with her fingers. She sank to the floor and laid Elvira out.

  Her hands shaking, my mother breathed and pumped, breathed and pumped.

  Valeria and I kneeled, right by our mother, her tears streaming down her face to Elvira’s, mixing with Elvira’s tears, that blue tint seeming to glow, her body limp, her face sweet, a dying angel.

  I heard nothing in my head. Nothing.

  Valeria glanced at me, her face stricken. “She’s quiet.”

  “Mother of Christ. Saint Peter. Saint Joseph. Help me,” my mother begged. “Help me.”

  Limp. Blue. Still.

  Breathe. Pump.

  “Jesus help me. Breathe, Elvira, breathe!”

  Dead angel.

  Breathe. Pump.

  “Damn it, God,” my mother begged. “Are you deaf?”

  Breathe. Pump.

  Elvira’s eyes flipped open and her cry, robust, outraged, a scream from heaven entered too early, burst into the room. My mother, now cradling Elvira, fell back into the wall, white as vanilla ice cream, trembling, holding her baby, rocking her back and forth as her screams pierced the room. Within a minute, my mother had calmed her, and I heard the babbling again, the sweet talk of Elvira in my head. I looked, stunned, at Valeria.

  “She’s talking in my head,” she whispered.

  “Me too.”

  My mother studied us, exhausted. She’d aged a hundred years doing CPR on her baby angel. “How did you know?”

  “Elvira was dying, and she gave it to both of us so we would come and get her,” I said.

  “She talked to us and said ‘Help, help,’ ” Valeria said. “Mama, you look bad.”

  “Yes, Mama,” I said, young and blunt. “Very bad.”

  My mother, reeling from the shock of her life, kissed Elvira, then dragged in air. “You have it then.”

  “Have what?”

  She closed her eyes, head back, then opened them, a new light inside. Pride, maybe? “The language of sisters, the language of brothers. I have it with Uncle Leonid. We can hear each other, inside our heads when something is wrong, or when something is especially beautiful. Now and then we can feel each other. It started when we were children. My father had the same language with his sister. My grandfather had it with his brother. My great-grandfather had the gift with three brothers. It comes down the line, like genes, like our widow’s peaks. Father to son. Mother to daughter. Then the sisters and brothers, we hear each other.

  “It’s a gift. It’s a curse. It is us. The Sabonises. Praise God and Jesus and, most especially, Mary, mother of God, who never got enough credit for her sacrifices and her courage.” My mother reached out to brush my hair back from my widow’s peak, then Valeria’s, then baby Elvira, who had a visible widow’s peak when she was born. She pointed to her own widow’s peak. “This is where it comes in. Through the widow’s peak. We all have one, my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather.”

  We curled up next to her and she hugged us tight while Elvira cooed. She bent to kiss Valeria and me. “My two angels saved the youngest angel. Thank you, daughters.”

  “Do you think I’m a better angel than Antonia?” Valeria asked.

  “No, I’m the better angel,” I told her.

  “You are not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Am, too!”

  “You are both angels,” she said, then glared. “Most of the time.”

  * * *

  That night, our curtains drawn against people who would spy on us, wish ill on us, especially as we were secret Christians, I peeked out at my parents from our closet-sized bedroom. My mother was still holding Elvira, and they both held straight shots of vodka. My father kissed my mother, tenderly, and she kissed him back, then they headed to bed.

  I heard them that night, as I did often.

  My parents didn’t realize how thin the walls were.

  It was like rock-a-bye baby music to me. I went to sleep to my mother’s laughter, my father’s whispered comments, then the bed’s headboard hitting the wall.

  Elvira slept in her crib that night, next to my parents, and Valeria and I slept together in our bed, curled up together, as usual.

  “I’ll always listen for you, Antonia,” Valeria said, tapping her peak. “In my head.”

  “I’ll listen for you, too, Valeria. I promise.”

  We put those widow’s peaks together, held hands, and went to sleep, clutching the stuffed bears our grandmother Ekaterina had sewn us.

  * * *

  I took three phone calls on my way home from work the next afternoon. This is why I’m glad I have a headset in my car. My family is large, complicated, and they like to talk on the phone.

  The first call was from my aunt Polina, who was in a tizzy about Ellie’s wedding. Aunt Polina wanted to make sure that I knew that she was not—not!—going to sit by my aunt Holly, as Holly is a “... body busy. You know what I say, Antonia? Body busy!”

  “A busybody?”

  “No, body busy. She always want to know my business. That not right. And, I say to you, that body smell. Yes, Holly smell. She say it perfume, I say it like this: rat fart. You no put me by her at the wedding table. How you are, my sweet Antonia? I see your mother yesterday at Svetlana’s Kitchen. You know what name of special was? No? I tell you: ‘Antonia Quit Your Job.’ ”

  I groaned.

  “We worry about you, Antonia. I bringing you my borscht. You love the beets and cabbage and the pig’s lard, eh?”

  My cousin, JJ (Nadja when we were in the Soviet Union), Aunt Polina’s and Uncle Yuri’s daughter and one of my best friends, called to confirm dinner next Saturday night downtown. “Don’t bail on me. You need to get out, Toni, and you know it. Boris, Anya, Tati, an
d Zoya are going. So is Valerie and Kai and Ellie and Gino. And Jax, of course.”

  JJ owns JJ’s Salon. She has ten stylists in her modern, brick, cement-floor downtown salon. Her brown hair is parted down the middle and curled on the sides. She wears fashionable clothes, impeccable makeup. I had heard her speak bluntly to her customers on numerous occasions.

  “No, I won’t allow that haircut, Amie. Your face is shaped like a square. It’ll make it fatter. Here’s what we’re going to do... .”

  “No. We will not dye your hair that red color. It’s a terrible choice, Maureen. You’ll resemble a middle-aged clown. If people ask where you got your hair done, it’ll be bad for business. I’m going to dye your hair a golden blond... .”

  “What in heck happened to you, Addy? Did you stick your hair in a blender on high?”

  Miraculously, people keep coming back. She is blunt with me if it has been a while since I’ve been in. “Toni, stand still. I’m going to cut your hair so you won’t resemble a Russian sheepdog.”

  “This is my and Jax’s first night out in a long time, Toni,” JJ said. “I need action. I need adventure. I need to feel like a woman again, not a mother of two teenage girls, so I need you and everyone else to play a part in our date fantasy. Listen up. Jax and I are going to meet at the bar and we’re going to pretend we don’t know each other and don’t have two teenagers together and aren’t dealing with his sick dad and business stress. He’s going to hit on me and pick me up. I’m going to introduce you.”

  “You’re going to introduce me to Jax, even though you two have been married for eighteen years?”

  “Yes. Except that his name isn’t going to be Jax. His name is going to be something else. It’ll be a surprise. And my name isn’t going to be JJ, it’s going to be Stephi. I’m telling everyone. We’re going to flirt and then I’m going to a hotel with him for a one-night stand. My parents are taking care of the kids.”

  “I can’t wait. Fun idea.”

  “I know, isn’t it? Stephi is going to get laid, not JJ. Stephi. Zoya and Tati are going to give me a black bustier and a gauzy tiny skirt, too. Hopefully Tati and Zoya will be dressed appropriately and not in their stripper clothes. It’s not necessary to always advertise their business, is it? Anyhow, gotta run, another client walked in and she looks like a tornado hit her.” She held the phone away and shouted, “Laurie, did you walk through a tornado? What the heck?” She turned back to the phone. “Be there or I will hunt you down. You won’t pretend you’re sick, or hide or say you have to work late again, right?”