Henry's Sisters

by Cathy Lamb

  ‘Loose? A lady never should feel loose. Breasts should be in bras, close to the body, with no jiggle. So what is your excuse for flopping about in such a completely unladylike fashion?’

  I resisted the urge to laugh at the hypocrisy behind that statement. ‘Well, I burnt a couple of bras this past week on my balcony and didn’t feel like putting another one on. Plus, I knew, Momma, that I would have the pleasure of your company.’

  She simmered. ‘Pray tell, what does that have to do with bras?’

  ‘I needed to feel a bit freer, not constricted, because I know you’ll make me feel like I should commit myself and beg for a straitjacket.’

  She drew in a deep breath, stuck her bosom out. ‘You will not speak to me like that. I’ll not have it! It’s disrespectful.’

  ‘And you will not bully Janie, Momma.’ I put my hands on my hips, but my whole body hurt. Why couldn’t she love us like a normal mother? Why couldn’t she hug us and hold us and thank us for coming?

  ‘I sacrificed for the three of you for years—’

  ‘Don’t start in, Momma. Don’t start.’

  ‘I gave you everything I had when you were children—’

  ‘Yes, you did. You also were often as mean as a cornered rattlesnake and went to bed for weeks on end,’ I said.

  ‘How dare you. How dare you!’ She hit the table with her palms.

  ‘I dare because I’m not going to allow you to whitewash what happened to us when we were kids to guilt us into staying here.’

  ‘Whitewash? I worked, I did things I never thought I’d do, I provided, I protected you. By myself. All by myself.’

  ‘I know that, Momma. I do. But we worked, too. We baked gingersnaps and lemon twist cookies and banana bread until I hated the sight of sugar with a passion, and I don’t want you twisting our history into your own victimhood.’

  She said nothing, but her face reddened. ‘You may leave now.’ She tilted her head at me in dismissal and picked up her nutcracker. The symbolism was not lost on me. ‘I have decided that your presence is unnecessary.’

  Cecilia leant against the wall, the colour of coffee foam, shaking her head back and forth, her blue eyes beseeching me. ‘Don’t leave me with the witch,’ she hissed.

  ‘You may leave, I said,’ Momma sang out. Her eyes were bright. Perhaps there was a tear?

  Nah. Nada. Not our momma.

  Silly me.

  Behind me, Janie started to chant. ‘I will make my own boundaries and hold myself to them. I will make my own boundaries and hold myself to them…’

  Cecilia put her hands together in prayer, pointing the tips of her fingers at us, mouthing, ‘She’s wicked. You must stay.’

  ‘We’re all fine without you. More than fine.’ Momma’s perfectly manicured hands did not still.

  Cecilia had taken the brunt of Momma for years. She could have left, like me and Janie. But she hadn’t. I tried to smash my guilt down.

  ‘You two have lived your own selfish lives without us. Cecilia has been the only daughter who has valued family.’

  Cecilia closed her eyes tight, her breathing laboured. ‘Please, please, please,’ she mouthed at me. ‘Help me!’

  It was like living inside a horror flick and the resident she-devil was directing what happened.

  ‘I can make my own decisions. I do not have to choose to stay,’ Janie muttered. ‘I am strong. I am mighty. I am not a doormat for others’ abuse. I can say no. No. No.’

  ‘Janie,’ I told her. ‘Grab your suitcases. We’re moving in.’

  Janie sounded like she was choking on a rock. Cecilia squeaked with relief.

  Momma cracked a nut, a slight smile tipping the corners of her mouth.

  I wanted to heave that bowlful of nuts through one of the stained-glass windows, followed by my momma.

  Like I said, if you happened upon Momma, she would remind you of a southern belle. A model for petite, older women’s clothes. A serene lady.

  You would never guess, I thought, as I stomped out to my motorcycle, my stomach churning, my anger switch flipped on high, that our elegant, proper momma had been a stripper when we were growing up.

  That’s right.

  A stripper. Pole, G-string, and glitter.

  Va va voom.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cecilia, Janie, and I trooped towards Janie’s Porsche parked outside Grandma’s house.

  Henry bopped along beside us. ‘Sisters home! Sisters home! Who want to play the hide-and-seek! That game! Hide-and-seek!’

  ‘We’ll play with you, Henry,’ Cecilia said. ‘We have to get Isabelle and Janie settled first.’ Then she muttered, ‘They’re moving into the witch’s house.’

  ‘OK dokay!’

  I hugged Henry. He’s the nicest person I know. My poor brother had survived one wrecking-ball blow after another in his life and he miraculously still found eight hundred things to smile about. ‘Let me unpack. How’s your stamp collection?’

  He laughed. ‘I have fifty-six stamps, Isabelle! Fifty-six! I have a stamp from North Dakota! Do you know where that is? I don’t!’ He clapped twice. ‘Do you know where Michigan is? I don’t!’ Clapped twice. ‘Do you know where Florida is?’ He loved this game. ‘I do! They have swamps and alligators and an ocean and Disney World!’ Henry loves Florida. Never been there, but he loves it. He started singing, ‘Mickey Mouse! Donald Duck! For ever ever ever…’

  I noticed that Janie was not with us anymore. I stopped and turned around. Janie was crouched on all fours in the middle of the grass, her skinny body jerking as she went through a series of dry heaves.

  ‘You think this is hard, you counting hermit?’ Cecilia snapped, her usual compassionate self. ‘Try living with it day in, day out, for years. Know how many times I’ve been told I’m the size of a pregnant hippo? How she never thought she’d have a fat daughter? Get up, Tapping Queen, and suck it up.’ She flounced past me, grabbed two suitcases, and marched back to the house. ‘Get in the house, hermit.’

  ‘I’ll get your stuff, Janie,’ I told her. She nodded weakly, went back to dry heaving.

  Janie had brought five suitcases, a laptop, a sack of self-help books and her classics, a giant picture of her houseboat (‘so I can visualise a peaceful place’), East Indian music, her embroidery basket, teas, a Yo-Yo Ma CD, a yoga mat, a picture of her therapist, and nine new journals to ‘write in when I feel like Momma will overwhelm or diminish me. My journals will recentre me, help me to find the goodness and strength within myself, and the courage to stand up tall as a person who deserves respect.’

  I left Henry patting pale Janie, slung my favourite camera around my neck, and dragged my suitcases into the house, up the wood stairs, down the yellow-painted hallway, and into my old bedroom.

  My bedroom was painted a light sage colour and had a window seat overlooking the front porch. I used to climb out this window at night to meet one boy or the other for attention and copulation purposes. My bed was a twin, with a flowered bedspread on it. Two white nightstands and a white dresser and desk completed the room.

  Janie’s room was pink with white curtains. Her room was smaller than mine but had a funky, pitched ceiling and two dormer windows. I knew she would soon be cowering in her closet, chanting to herself, rocking, embroidering flowers, trying not to let Momma undo years of therapy.

  I already felt like the walls were sucking me in, stripping away my fragile, tenuous hold on sanity. The blackness in my head foamed a bit, bubbled, swirled. I had been an adult for so long, but a few minutes in this house and I was regressing.

  I flicked my braids back and took a shuddery breath.

  I was home.

  Welcome back to your nightmare, I told myself. Welcome back.

  I heard the van pull up in front of the house about an hour later. I leant out the window of my bedroom, that busy wind blowing my braids and beads.

  There she was. I couldn’t help chuckling. Within minutes I heard her marching up the steps, then a brisk knock on my
door.

  I smiled at my grandma, a tiny woman with white, curly hair, standing in the doorway wearing old-fashioned, air force flight gear, including an antique flight helmet and goggles. It was hard to believe that until a few years ago, when dementia caught up to her, Grandma was a firebrand who’d nitpicked Momma until she could barely see straight through her fury.

  ‘Amelia!’ I exclaimed. ‘Amelia Earhart!’

  ‘Good to see you, young lady.’ She narrowed her eyes at me, saluted, clicking her black army boots together two times. ‘You’re familiar to me. I believe we met during my speaking tour in 1929. That tour exhausted me!’ She flipped a hand to her forehead. ‘It was my sinuses. Clogged. Burning. Running.’

  ‘How are your sinuses today, Mrs Earhart?’

  ‘Better.’ She tipped her head up, touched her nose. ‘Probably because of my latest operation. The doctors had no idea what they were doing, none. Men are stupid. I’m surprised my nose is still on my face.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s still there, Amelia.’

  I hugged her. She seemed surprised at first but then hugged back.

  ‘My fans love me!’ she declared, then stepped up close to me, flicking one of my braids back. She smelt like roses and mountain air. ‘I love to fly at night.’

  ‘Well, Amelia, your night flying skills are excellent—’

  ‘Some people question my flying abilities.’ She adjusted her goggles over her face. ‘Again, they’re men. Stupid, know-nothing men. Eight brain cells. Maybe. I’ve written a poem about them, shall I pronounce it to you?’ She straightened her flight jacket and clicked her boots together. ‘“Men. Slimy and rude, loud and uncouth. Never inclined to give up their booth.” That about sums them up.’

  ‘Sure does, Amelia.’

  ‘I’m a nurse, you know. I aided the soldiers in World War I and I know what I’m doing. If your arm is amputated while you’re here, I can sew it back on. If your head has a bullet in it, I can get it out with a spoon. Care to fly with me soon?’

  ‘It is my dearest wish,’ I told her. ‘It will be my pleasure.’

  ‘Women power!’ she shouted, fist up and swinging. ‘Women power!’

  I raised my fist. ‘Women power!’

  By the time we moved in with Grandma, my first year of high school, all of us were covered in so much fear we were quaking. It practically dripped off of us. Momma was holding on by her fingernails and most of the fingernails were split in half.

  Henry had regressed at least two years and was babbling, his speech lost, bladder control iffy because of what he’d been through. Janie was anxious to the point of cracking. Cecilia was furious and inhaling food. I had retired into my head and my blackness.

  But Grandma’s gracious home was an oasis in the midst of an ocean of night terrors come alive. We had clothes that fitted. We had food on a regular basis that she cooked from scratch. We had heat.

  When Momma hit blackness and crawled to bed, we were not alone. Grandma was not a saint – she had a flaming temper and did not bother to mince words – but she hugged us warm and tight, unlike Momma, who avoided all displays of affection with her daughters as one might avoid malaria, and she cared. Grandma cared about us.

  By any account, you could say that Grandma saved our family. She was smart, strong, and ran a tight ship. As captain of that ship she hounded Momma to get counselling, to get a date, to gain weight, to button her shirt up, to go back to school so she could be ‘someone,’ to stop hiding in her bed, and her hair! A mop! Grandma reminded Momma that she’d warned her this would happen! She knew it! She’d told her! It was endless.

  As I grew older I realised that Momma’s relationship with Grandma was a carbon copy of our relationship with Momma: difficult, competitive, critical, demanding. Never good enough.

  It’s genetics, and we were screwed in that department.

  When they fought, we hid in our closets.

  Amelia and Momma, however, never fought.

  Grandma/Amelia rose onto her toes. Clicked her boots. ‘I must be off to the tower. I have to hide my secrets again so the natives won’t steal them.’

  I nodded sagely.

  ‘Will you be residing here for a while with my co-pilot and what did you say your name was and do you fly?’ She stuck her arms straight out, made the sound of a plane engine deep in her throat, and left the room.

  I wandered into Janie’s bedroom.

  ‘Get out of the closet, Janie,’ I said.

  ‘No. I’m in self-analysis contemplation.’

  ‘Come on. Out you go.’

  I opened the door to the closet. It was filled with stuffed animals. Janie’s face was buried in an alligator. She was sitting on her yoga mat.

  ‘I’m regressing back to childhood, Isabelle,’ she whimpered. ‘I can feel it. Feel the backward passage of time flowing.’

  I got down on my knees. ‘Take it on the chin.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You better. She’s gonna eat you alive, regurgitate you back up, and start picking at your bones if you don’t.’

  ‘You sound gruesome. It makes me uncomfortable.’

  I rolled my eyes. She writes graphic crime novels and I’m gruesome? ‘Sorry, but it’s true. Find a backbone and stick it in your spine.’

  Cecilia came into the room. ‘OK, ladies… Oh, man. What the hell? Get out of there, Janie. Right now. Stop being such a wimp.’ She shifted her weight to a rocking chair. The chair made cracking sounds. She wiped the sweat from her brow. She was wearing a dress that resembled a green tarp, her long blonde hair in a messy ball on her head.

  ‘I have the list from Momma.’ Cecilia whipped out the list. It was written on pink paper. I collapsed on the bed. Janie shut the closet door.

  ‘Damn!’ Cecilia threw the list down, yanked open the closet door, grabbed Janie by her ankles, and dragged her to the middle of the rug. Janie struggled like a dolphin would if caught in the jaws of a killer whale and tried to crawl back into the closet, but Cecilia hauled her back out.

  ‘We’re too old for this…’ I drawled.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Isabelle!’ Janie said. ‘You tackled me outside of my own houseboat!’

  Cecilia grunted and flipped Janie over. Cecilia is fat but she’s about as strong as Popeye. ‘Listen to me, Janie!’ she screeched. ‘You’re not going back in the goddamn closet!’

  ‘Yes, I am, and then I’m going home,’ Janie wailed. ‘Home to my houseboat – let go of me, I was in my restorative mood, claiming my own gentleness in my journal—’

  Cecilia got down on all fours and put her face two inches from Janie’s. ‘You listen to me, you skinny, obsessive crime writer, you are gonna get yourself together and help me. I can’t, I won’t, do this all by myself when you hide in your houseboat, tapping this, tapping that, counting this, counting that, indulging yourself in your problems while you write about ripping people’s throats apart with barbed wire and a machete. That’s sick, Janie. No wonder you can’t sleep at night…’

  ‘I turn off my light at precisely 10:14 at night, fluff the pillows four times’ – she dissolved into tears – ‘tap the tables on both sides of my bed four times, drink water, touch the closets, check the front door to make sure it’s locked, check the stove, check the door and stove again, touch the lock of the door, touch each knob on the stove, retouch the closet doors, get in bed, fluff the pillows, tap the tables.’ She put her hands on her face in complete despair. ‘After that I sleep.’

  Cecilia was speechless.

  I crossed my legs, examined my nails. ‘Think that’s exhausting? Ask her about her morning routine.’

  Cecilia turned her head towards me, her blonde hair flipping over her shoulders. She has amazing hair. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘Nope. No joke. Now let’s see that list you have.’

  Janie clapped her hands four times.

  The list Momma had compiled of things we needed to do while she was in the hospital was extensive and detailed. I will not share
each glorious detail here because if I did, you would probably want to check your own self into a nice, quiet, mental ward and a nice, quiet straitjacket.

  Beyond obsessive detail on how to keep the house cleaned in her absence (corners, girls!) and admonishes to not eat too much or we’d get fatter (Cecilia), or too little and appear corpselike (Janie), and not to sleep with the gardener (me), Momma detailed Henry’s schedule.

  Henry helped at the bakery at least twice a week. He also had to be at the church on Sunday from 8:00 to 1:45. Henry was in charge of bringing the boxes of doughnuts in from Mrs McQueeney’s car. A description of Mrs McQueeney followed: ‘Her facial features are a cross between a nutria and a carrot. She has large nostrils.’

  Henry got the coffeepots out and ready, then sat in the front row for both masses to help Father Mike, if necessary. (‘For God’s sakes, Isabelle, don’t confess to Father Mike. It will humiliate me as a mother. Humiliate me.’)

  On Wednesdays Henry helped at the church for the high school youth group. On Thursdays he went to the senior centre, served lunch, cleaned the tables, and set things up for Bunco. On Mondays and Friday mornings he went to the animal shelter and petted cats and dogs. (‘If Janie is going to obsessively count the cats, keep her away!’)

  When Henry helps in Cecilia’s classroom, ‘remind Henry to make Cecilia go out for recess with the kids. She needs the exercise!’ On Saturdays he joined other special people for a day trip.

  As for Grandma, aka Amelia Earhart, she had her activities, too. Grandma was picked up by one of those short senior buses and taken on day trips with other seniors. Not all of them had lost their marbles yet. They let Grandma come because when Grandma had her marbles still in her head, she’d made a large donation. (‘Do not let Grandma bring the whiskey with her on these trips. Fred Kawa always drinks too much and ends up doing stripteases.’)

  ‘Velvet will come in and help you with Grandma. She is a much better caregiver than the mothball you sent me last time and dear Henry likes her, bless him. She has already been informed to never, ever serve Henry orange juice. You know why.’

  Yes, we knew why. All too well, we knew why.