by LN Cronk
“Oh,” I said, nodding even though she couldn’t see me. “That’s my fish tank.”
“You have fish?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Guppies.”
“Guppies,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” I said again. “Fancy guppies. They’re live breeders. One of them had a bunch of babies yesterday.”
“Really?” Her entire face lit up.
“Uh-huh.”
“What do they look like?” she asked.
“They’re really little,” I answered. “They’re basically see-through bodies with eyes.”
“Oh,” she said wistfully. “I wish I could see them.”
“You can hold one if you want,” I offered.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t hurt it?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered. Actually I was worried that this might not be such a great idea and I didn’t really want anything to happen to one of my guppies, but I decided that I wanted to see Bizzy smile even more.
“Okay,” she said, excitement growing in her voice.
I got out my net and ran it through the water, catching several babies. I pulled the net out of the water and held it over the tank, turning it inside out and carefully getting one of the babies onto my hand. I reached for one of Bizzy’s hands and gently put the baby guppy onto the end of her finger.
“Can you feel it?” I asked.
“That’s a fish?” she asked in awe.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe how small it is!”
“I told you they were little.”
Carefully, Bizzy brought her thumb to her finger so that the guppy was lightly caught between them. She held it for a moment, her face glowing.
“I want to put him back now,” she said after a minute. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Okay,” I agreed, and I guided her hand to the tank, dipping her finger into the water.
“Is he okay?” she asked worriedly.
I looked at him. He floated on his side for a moment and then righted himself. He sat motionless for another second but then darted off toward the heater.
“He’s fine,” I told her, and she broke into a big grin.
I looked at her smile. I loved that smile.
I still had hold of Bizzy’s hand. I kept holding it and continued looking at her, and slowly her smile started to fade. Not as if she wasn’t happy anymore, but as if she knew that I was looking at her and as if she knew exactly why.
I didn’t say anything, but I moved closer, knowing she could tell. I watched her face to see her reaction.
And her reaction was that she closed her eyes.
I hesitated, but only for a second longer. I leaned closer still and kissed her lightly, hoping desperately that my lip wasn’t so messed up that she could tell and hoping that I was doing it right and . . .
What I should have been hoping was that Grace wouldn’t pick that very moment to come traipsing down the hall.
I heard her gasp and Bizzy and I quickly pulled apart from each other. I turned toward the door, mortified.
Grace gaped at me with her mouth open for a second but then quickly pulled herself together, a nasty grin spreading across her face. She turned on her heel and started back down the hall. Immediately, I took off after her.
“Don’t,” I said after I’d caught up with her and grabbed her by the arm.
“Don’t what?” she asked innocently.
“Don’t screw this up for me,” I pleaded quietly. “Please don’t.”
“You don’t need me to screw it up for you,” she said, the grin returning to her face. “I’m sure you’ll do that all by yourself.” And then she yanked herself free from my grasp and continued down the hall.
I watched after her as she disappeared around the corner. Getting inside my head was one of Grace’s specialties, but I wasn’t going to let her do that to me this time . . . I was not going to screw this up.
I headed back to my room.
“I’m sorry,” I said as soon as I was in front of Bizzy again.
“For what?”
“Umm,” I hesitated. “For anything you might possibly be upset about right now?”
She laughed. “I’m not upset about anything.”
“You’re not?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling at me again.
“Good,” I said, and I hoped that she could hear in my voice that I was smiling too.
Grace and I both rode along when my mom took Bizzy back to the orphanage that evening, and Bizzy told Mom that I’d let her hold a baby guppy. She didn’t mention anything about kissing.
“I love animals,” Bizzy said. Then she added longingly, “I would love to have a pet.”
“Have you ever thought about getting a Seeing Eye dog?” my mother asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “but there’s a lot to it.”
“Like what?” Grace asked.
“Paperwork and travel and you have to get trained how to handle them properly and it . . . it’s just not real easy.”
She didn’t say it, but I knew that what she meant was that it wasn’t real easy when you’re an orphan. Not real easy when you don’t have a mom and a dad to help you and make it all happen.
It made me sad to think that Bizzy was never going to have what I had. No family to take her on vacations. No one to tell her stories about all the cute, funny things she’d done when she was a little kid. No house to live in so that she could own a pet. I found myself wishing that there was a way I could help Bizzy to have everything that she was missing . . . everything that I already had.
When we arrived at the orphanage, we walked with Bizzy into the building, and Mom left us to talk to the director while Grace and Bizzy and I hung around in the commons area. Grace and Bizzy were carrying most of the conversation, but whenever Grace wasn’t talking, she was pursing her lips at me, closing her eyes, and making silent, exaggerated kissing motions in the air.
Once Mom was finally ready to go, we all said goodbye to Bizzy and headed out to the car. We’d barely made it out the door though when Mom suddenly remembered that she had one more thing to take care of. She turned and went back into the building, promising to be right back out. Grace and I continued on to the car.
I got there before she did and took the front seat. As soon as Grace climbed into the back, I turned around and started pounding her as hard as I could. She pounded right back until she saw Mom coming, and then both of us sat down and I faced forward, crossing my arms.
Neither of us said a word.
“What’s going on?” Mom finally asked after we’d ridden along for a while in silence. It wasn’t unusual for Grace and me to not talk to each other, but usually we at least talked to her.
“Nothing,” I said.
But at that same exact moment, Grace blurted out, “Marco and Bizzy were kissing!”
“Shut up!” I yelled, undoing my seatbelt. I turned around and climbed halfway over the seat, starting to pound on her again.
Mom caught me and forced me back down, ordering me to put my seatbelt back on while Grace continued.
“They were in his bedroom,” she said. “And they were all like ‘oohhh . . . mmhhhmm’.” She started kissing at the air like she’d done earlier, but this time not so silently.
“Shut UP!” I yelled at her again.
“Grace,” my mom said wearily. “I want you to leave your brother alone.”
Having six kids, Mom knew exactly how to handle kissing teenagers, but none of our other siblings had ever fought like Grace and I did. Mom still didn’t have a clue how to deal with the two of us.
I crossed my arms in front of me again while Grace ignored her, calling out in a singsong voice, “Mar-co’s got a girl-friend.”
“Grace,” Mom said, now using her warning voice. “Apologize to your brother.”
“Sorry,” Grace said. I didn’t look back at her, but I could tell from the way s
he said it that she had a big grin on her face.
“Marco,” Mom said. “Tell your sister you forgive her.”
“Whatever,” I muttered.
Mom sighed again and didn’t push it.
I kept my eyes straight ahead, keeping my arms crossed and trying to act upset, but in reality I could barely suppress the happiness that was welling up inside.
I wondered about what Grace had just said, and the more I thought about it, the happier I felt. I crossed my arms even tighter, like I was trying to hold everything inside of me so that I could savor it forever.
Had Grace really meant what she’d just said? And, if so, was it true?
Did I actually have a girlfriend?
~ ~ ~
AS IT TURNS out, I actually did have a girlfriend – and I bent over backward to make sure that I didn’t screw things up like Grace had assured me I would. I made sure that I never did anything wrong and I did whatever I could think of to make Bizzy happy so she wouldn’t break up with me.
I wrote her notes while I was at school and read them to her when I met her at the orphanage in the afternoons, and I collected romantic songs and played them for her, telling her why they made me think of her. If I ever saw a dog while we were out walking, I would always try to get Bizzy close so that she could pet it, and I would watch her face light up as she stroked its fur. I took her to the movies and spent my time in the darkness leaned in close so that I could whisper in her ear what was happening and enjoy the sensation of her hair and skin against my lips. I baked her peanut butter cookies because they were her favorite, and I never bad-mouthed Grace to her because Bizzy told us both that she didn’t want to hear it.
I treated Bizzy like gold.
Bizzy’s birthday was on a Saturday at the beginning of October. On that day, I headed over to the orphanage as soon as I’d scarfed down some breakfast and emptied all the trashcans like Mom had told me to.
I invited Bizzy to go to the park with me, and when we arrived, we sat on a bench together and I handed her a small cardboard box. She opened it carefully, lifting the lid and tentatively fingering the little objects that lay on top of the thin layer of cotton. She furrowed her brow in obvious confusion.
“What are these?” she asked.
“Jumping beans.”
Her brow knit together even tighter as she picked one up, feeling it deliberately.
“What’s that?” she asked, running a finger over two little bumps she found.
“It’s supposed to be braille,” I explained as she picked up another one.
“You carved these?” she asked in surprise.
“I tried.”
It had taken me a long time to make a different braille letter on each bean (and I’d killed plenty before I finally succeeded – cutting too deeply and exposing the writhing white larva that was inside whenever I did). When I was finished, however, I had nine of them, and I watched now as Bizzy felt each one and her face lit up. Slowly she laid them out before her on the bench:
I . . . S . . . A . . . B . . . E . . . L . . . I . . . T . . . A
“I wanted you to have some kind of a pet,” I explained as the “S” gave a little jump.
“That’s so sweet,” she said, giving me one of those smiles that I loved so much. Then I leaned forward and she let me give her one of those kisses that I loved so much too.
A few weeks later I knocked on Grace’s door – not something I usually did unless I had to.
No answer.
I knocked again.
Still no answer.
Finally I banged as hard as I could and she yelled that it was unlocked, so I tentatively opened her door and stuck my head inside her room.
Grace was lying on her back, reading, with earbuds stuffed in her ears and music blaring so loud that I could tell what song it was from ten feet away. Mom and Dad were always getting on her about listening to her music so loud (and since our older sister Lily was completely deaf, you’d think that Grace would have had a little more sense about something like that, but of course she didn’t).
“What do you want?” she asked when she realized who had been knocking, her voice full of disdain.
I didn’t answer.
When she finally grasped that I wasn’t going to talk until she could hear me, she rolled her eyes dramatically and pulled out one of her earbuds.
“What?”
“I need your help,” I said.
That caught her attention. She pulled out the other earbud, not wanting to miss the sound of opportunity knocking.
“What?”
“I want to buy Bizzy a violin for Christmas,” I said. “Mom and Dad said they’ll pay half, but I have to pay the other half.”
Bizzy had told us both how much she loved the violin and had wistfully mentioned on more than one occasion that her dream was to play professionally. If I could pull this off, I was fairly certain that I’d be her hero forever.
“If you help pay for it,” I promised Grace, “it can be from both of us.”
Grace narrowed her eyes, obviously considering my proposition. Even though she was a total jerk to me, I knew that she wanted Bizzy to have something nice just as much as I did.
She thought for another moment.
“How much?” she eventually asked.
“The whole thing is three-fifty.”
“New?”
“No.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“Máximo’s.”
“How do you know it’s any good?”
“He played it,” I said. “It sounded good.”
“Like you know what a good violin sounds like,” she scoffed.
“You know what?” I said, starting to turn around. “Just forget it. I’ll give it to her by myself.”
“No. No,” she said hastily. “Wait.”
I turned back and looked at her expectantly.
“So,” she said, calculating hard. “Eighty-seven fifty?”
Genius.
I nodded.
“Okay,” she decided. “But it’s from both of us and I get to be there when she opens it.”
“Deal.”
Grace already had some money saved from babysitting and stuff, so when she got Mom to agree to pay her for washing all the windows and screens in the entire house, it took care of the rest of what she needed.
I, on the other hand, was completely broke, and I had to pester Mom and Dad constantly to let me do work around the house so that I could earn extra money. I mulched, I trimmed, I detailed the car, I wiped down all the cupboards in the kitchen, and I moved every single piece of furniture in the house so that I could vacuum underneath.
I think they both got pretty tired of trying to think up things for me to do because when I tried to convince Mom that she needed to pay me to wash and refold all the clean sheets and towels in the linen closet, she talked with the director at the orphanage and arranged for me to do some odd jobs there instead. The orphanage wasn’t exactly in a position of paying kids to do extra work, so I’m pretty sure that Mom was actually the one who was paying me, but I didn’t really care where the money came from. All I worried about was having enough money to buy that violin for Bizzy, and by the time Christmas arrived, I did.
Mom let us have Bizzy over for dinner on Christmas Eve. When Grace handed her the violin, I think she knew what it was right away, even though it was in a box.
She pulled off the wrapping paper and opened it, slowly drawing the bow out first and then running her delicate fingers over the violin, a look of disbelief on her face.
“This is for me?” she asked, awe in her voice.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s from me and Grace.”
“Go on,” Grace urged her. “Try it.”
Bizzy still looked a bit like she was in shock, but she gave Grace a nod and lifted the violin to her chin. She raised the bow and dragged it across the strings, stopping a time or two to twist the tuning pegs, and as the violin emitted its first few squeaks and squal
ls, I was suddenly struck with an awful thought.
What if she was terrible? What if she couldn’t play at all?
Soon, however, Bizzy stopped tuning and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, raised an elbow high, and effortlessly ran the bow over the strings. It only took about two notes for my fears to be completely assuaged.
Have you ever had one of those moments where your heart is so full of joy that it feels like it’s swelling inside your chest and it’s all you can do to hold back the tears but you don’t really even know why?
That’s how I felt right then, listening to Bizzy play.
Christmas Eve pretty much made me feel like that anyway. When I was little, I would sneak out of my bedroom after everyone else was asleep and plug in the lights to the tree. I would sit on the floor in the darkened living room and stare at the glimmering lights until Dad came out and found me and scooped me up. He would carry me back to bed, holding me tight and whispering into my ear that Santa was going to take back my presents and give me coal instead. I would giggle quietly against him, not believing him for a second. Everything was too right in the world for that to ever happen.
That was how I felt right now . . . like everything was right with the world. She played “What Child Is This?” and it was absolutely beautiful.
Everything was beautiful.
Bizzy was beautiful . . . my parents were beautiful . . . my life was beautiful . . .
I looked at Grace.
Even she was beautiful.
Grace glanced at me, as if she sensed I was looking at her, and I felt myself smile at her.
And like a Christmas miracle, she smiled back. It was as though she knew that we had done something truly wonderful by working together and as if things were finally going to be okay between the two of us.
Suddenly I was glad she was in my life . . . glad that she was my sister.
Bizzy finished playing and lowered her new violin, turning her face toward me and Grace again.
“Thank you,” she told us both softly, tears filling her eyes. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”
