Sister Mine

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Oh, I was in a mood, all right. Frigging Abby. And Uncle Hunter, what the fuck was that about I might not be safe around my own dad? Would the essence of Dad really go all Audrey II on my ass?

  Even if Hunter was wrong and we found Dad and everything was copacetic, Uncle Jack said that Dad would never consent to live out his days in decomposing loaner bodies. That did sound like Dad. He was more about the living than the dead.

  What would it be like, having a Dad/Quashee hybrid? Could a kudzu vine Dad keep a house pest-free by politely asking all the mice, rats, and roaches to please take audience with him out in the backyard, not inside? Bellow out the rudest words to the Sparrow calypso about never eating a white meat yet, while rolling out the dough for the lightest, flakiest buss-up-shirt rotis ever to grace the world of clay? Throw a party for all the neighbourhood dogs? Could a kudzu plant persuade crabby, depressed old Mr. Weller from down the street to try his hand at growing roses, and then persuade him into bed, show him how to smile again? A stroke took Mr. Weller the next year, and Uncle came to reap him. Uncle told me that he’d died in his a garden surrounded by a riot of blushing Sexy Rexy floribundas. And that there’d been a giant three-quarters-empty bottle of lube on his bedside table. How could Dad manage, stuck inside that plant? How long did kudzu even live? Would it stay alive until I died and gave Dad’s mojo back to him?

  I grimaced, cracking a tear that had frozen onto my cheek. The tear fell away. My skin stung where it had been. I plunged into the melee of bright television billboards, street music, and general rambunctiousness that was the corner of Dundas and Yonge on any day of the week.

  My lips were too frozen from the cold to cuss. It’d taken me almost two hours to get to Cheerful Rest. My face and hands were aching from the cold, and I was madder than spit. Of course I hadn’t brought any gloves with me. Grumpily, I yanked the outside door of the building open and stepped inside.

  Warmth caressed my windburned face, soothing where it touched. My hands began to tingle as sensation returned to them. I climbed the short flight of stairs, opened the hallway door. Was someone baking cookies? A divinely seductive aroma of sugar, vanilla, and butter made my tummy rumble, never mind that I was still full from the spread that Suze and Roger had put on at the funeral. Home. I was home.

  I put my key into my lock to open my door, but underneath the gorgeous smells, so faint it was difficult to detect it, there was that same sour note I’d smelled before from the ancient drains in the building, like a hint of meat beginning to go off. I started to sniff up and down the corridor, trying to trace the source of the smell, but I lost the thread. Whew. Wouldn’t want that to get worse. I turned to walk back to my unit. Could we fix the drains without dragging in a plumber? From what Brie’d told me, Milo would never go for the expense. Dad used to use… was it boric acid and hot water? Or maybe lemon juice and vinegar? I couldn’t remember. Maybe Brie would know. If I could ever get him to talk to me again. I glanced at his door. It was closed. I shrugged and let myself into my unit. I hung my coat and Super Soaker on their hooks just inside the door. At least I couldn’t smell the mouldering drains in here. As I was on the way to the fridge to get myself a beer, something snared my ankles. I tripped and stumbled. Oh my God oh my God haint where’s my Soaker. I struggled to keep my footing, to twist to see what was attacking me, but I sprawled headlong. One elbow cracked down onto the concrete floor. I cried out. The pain was a white-hot brand, implacable and explosive. I stole enough attention from it to check what was holding my ankles. Nothing important. So then, for most of a minute, all I could do was rock, lying half on my side, nursing the elbow, sobbing and cussing. Slowly the pain eased off. I sat up.

  I’d caught my feet in my half-finished afghan. Served me right for leaving it lying on the floor like that. Lucky I hadn’t impaled myself on one of the knitting needles. I sat, remembering how to breathe, until my heart was done yammering out a tattoo of panic. I clambered to my feet. Wincing whenever I bent the whacked elbow, I laid the bumpy, uneven throw out as flat as it would go. It was ugly as poison, lying there trailing an umbilical cord of denim-coloured yarn that attached it to the sorry-looking remains of my old sweater. Poor misshapen thing.

  It looked warm, though. If I finished it, it’d make a good throw for my bed. My window wasn’t insulated. It rattled when the wind blew, and on an icy evening like tonight, the little thread of air that seeped in through it might as well have been a needle.

  I hunted around until I found the instruction sheet for knitting the afghan, crumpled into a ball and tossed under the bed. I smoothed it out, found the place where I’d stopped. The direction after that read, “Next st on left-hand needle together, K3.” The hell?

  I picked up the needles and sat back down on the floor with my back against my bed. I pulled the unfinished side of the afghan onto my knees. Next st on left-hand…?

  Oh, whatever. I stuck the needles into the weave and started improvising the best I could.

  When I looked up a few hours later, I realized that I had reclaimed and used up the yarn that had made the back of my sweater, both sleeves, the neck ribbing; apparently even the front piece of the sweater that had had the hole in it. If I looked closely, I could see where I’d knotted the broken yarn ends from the damaged sweater front together every few inches and knitted it right into the afghan. That must have been a bitch to do. Good thing I’d zoned out during it. I frowned, trying to remember what I’d done, what stitches I’d used. Nothing. I was probably still bushwhacked from the roller coaster that this past week had been.

  I laid the working end of the piece down on the floor, stuck the needles into it. My forearms ached from bearing even part of its weight for so long, and my insulted elbow had settled into a dull, whiny throbbing.

  I creaked to my feet. I worked the kinks out of my neck. My spine and the backs of my thighs were crampy from sitting hunched over like that. And boy, did I ever need to pee! So I went and took care of business. Then I grabbed one of the beers Brie had brought from the fridge. I popped the tab and took a gulp. The crisp cold of the liquid tasted so good that I overlooked that it was both sweeter and thinner than I liked my brew. I drank it slowly, standing right there beside the fridge, while I considered the monster afghan. It needed something else.

  I tossed back the rest of the beer, and got to work opening boxes. I knew exactly what I was looking for. Where’d I put them? I looked through box after box, and even in the garbage bags where I’d stashed my clothes. Didn’t see them. Perhaps I’d thrown them out after all? I mean, it wasn’t as though I needed one and a half strings of—Ah. There they were. In the bottom box of a shaky stack of boxes, wrapped up in a shredding garbage bag and stuffed into a milk carton. When I finally got to that box and opened it, I could only tell what was in there by the glint of a small aluminum wing that had torn its way through the garbage bag.

  Inside the milk carton was one whole string and part of another of patio lights in the shape of origami birds, made with thin folded sheets of aluminum. For years, they’d been wrapped around the head of a store mannequin that used to be propped up at one end of the bar in Sally’s Bar in Kensington Market. I’d always been fascinated by the little birds, by the combination of metal and delicacy that had gone into making them. When Sally redecorated the place, she’d offered them to me. I’d always meant to make something with them, but hadn’t worked out what.

  As I unwrapped the birds from the tattered green garbage plastic, one of them jabbed into my finger. “Ouch!” I exclaimed. I sucked the blood away. “I guess I deserved that,” I said to the patio lights, “for neglecting you. And you might hate me even more after I do what I’m about to do with you now.”

  The birds had begun to develop little rust spots from sitting wrapped in humid plastic, but something about them still pleased me. Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time.

  I set the string of them down on the floor beside the monster afghan. Yes, they’d cheer it up. It wouldn�
�t be an afghan any more, but I’d figure that out when I got there. I could weave the birds’ wiring around the edges of the piece; unravel what remained of the sweater and use that yarn to attach them. I began to try that. It was slow work, and the birds’ tiny wire claws were tearing through the yarn. I needed something tougher to tie them down with. Found the box in which I had put the seven balls of twisted nylon twine. Yeah, that stuff would do. I returned to the afghan.

  I suppose I should have measured the circumference of the piece, figured out whether the birds would fit all the way around it, but I hated that kind of finicky shit. Got me discouraged and overwhelmed before I’d even begun. So I just plunged. I found the end of one of the balls of nylon; electric blue, it was. Discovered in half a mo that knitting needles weren’t great for attaching the birds. So I used my fingers instead. I wove and knotted and tied—whatever seemed like it would fix each bird solidly in place. It kinda worked, but my fingers were mostly too thick for pulling strands of nylon through the dense weave of the afghan. Ordinarily that would have stopped me right there. I was hungry, and I needed to check in with Abby. But I had a yen on, for some reason. And a few bucks in my pocket, left from the money Abby’d lent me. There was a craft store not far away, in the Eaton Centre. I grabbed my jacket and hightailed it to the bus stop. I made it to the store minutes before it closed. Had enough cash for two crochet needles, one big, one smaller. What the hell did I know about what gauge I needed? Home again, jiggety-jig. On the way, it occurred to me that I’d already begun to think of it as home. But I didn’t spare too much time for the thought. The image of the birds attached around the edges of the afghan, standing sentinel, filled my thoughts.

  The crochet needles were exactly what I needed for pulling the twine through the afghan and the claws of the metal birds’ feet. Took me a few tries to figure out how to attach them so that they would stand along the edge, looking out, their wings held open. Watchful. For some reason, that pleased me.

  Of course I ran out of birds before I got all the way around the piece. I stared at it, grumbling, “Right, that’s me all over. Start shit without a plan, get discouraged, never finish it.”

  Hang on; there was that piece of melted aluminum I’d found on the shore of the Spit the other morning. Turn it the right way, it’d sort of look like a beak, or like tail feathers.

  I got up and rifled through my half-unpacked boxes, throwing stuff out at random when it got in my way, until I found the knapsack I’d put my beachcombed jetsam in. I peered inside it, rummaged around in there. There was the fish bone, the few sad pieces of driftglass. And yup, there was the piece of dull, sand-tumbled aluminum, its edges scoured smooth by wind and waves. I pulled it out. It did look like a beak. And it had that handy hole worn into one end. If I attached it to that springy little coil of red insulated wire from that morning…

  I carried my knapsack over to the afghan and emptied the contents out onto the floor beside it. I sat down and picked up my pliers.

  I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with a section of the afghan draped over my knees. Something scraped lightly along my arm as I got to my knees. The fabric I had to push off me in order to stand was way heavier than I’d expected. I glanced down. It was huge; way too big to be called an afghan any more. Almost big enough to carpet a third of the room. And what was all that stuff clattering around on it? It was dark. I couldn’t see. Had I been working in the dark? I flicked the light switch on the wall and took a look around. The door of the tool cabinet was hanging open. I rocked to my feet and went over there. Needle-nose pliers, hammer, brass shank buttons; where’d those come from? I piled a bunch of tools under one arm. A pair of pliers slipped out and fell on my foot, exploding my brain with a sharp, bright pain. I cussed and hopped around the room for a bit until the pain was only a sullen throbbing. I put all the tools back and wheeled the tool cabinet over to the afghan. Then it dawned on me that there had been knocking on the door and yelling for some time now.

  “Maka? You in there? Makeda!”

  “Yeah! Coming!” God, I was hungry!

  “Makeda!”

  Shit. Abby. What’d I have to do to get her to stop bugging me?

  “Coming, I said!”

  I stumbled to the door.

  “Makeda, open up! You all right?”

  “Just wait, OK?” My fingers were so cramped, it took me a couple of seconds longer to turn the latch and open the door than it usually would have.

  Abby stood out there, Brie beside her, Yoplait sitting beside him. Brie said, “You weren’t sleeping, were you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You were in the dark. I saw the light come on under your door.”

  “Oh, right. Hang on, let me make it a little brighter.” I reached over beside the door and turned the entranceway light on. I squinted at them.

  Abby said, “Butter’s been yowling your name for hours now. You in trouble?”

  “Butter can say my name?”

  “Well, her name for you, anyway.”

  I jutted my chin at Brie. “And why’re you here? Again.”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure. There’s something… it’s coming from your unit. And I heard your sister knocking forever.”

  I asked Abby, “How did you know which unit it was?”

  “Butter doesn’t know from numbers. But once I got inside this place, I could hear why she was upset.”

  “What’s to hear? I wasn’t making any noise. At least, I don’t think I was.”

  Brie, so much taller than me and Abby, was peering over my shoulder. “Holy fuck,” he said. “What is that?” He pointed into my room.

  “What? Did a rat get in?” I turned to see what he was talking about.

  Abby wailed, “A rat?”

  Brie, mesmerized, was already moving past me into the room. I said, “Brie, get out of the way. Can’t see what you’re on about.”

  He exclaimed, “Makeda, this is amazing!” I still couldn’t see past him.

  Abby looked as miserable as a wet cat standing there. “Oh, just come on in, then,” I said. “Since you’re here.” Our kind had a thing about being invited into places before we would enter. Grudgingly, I stood back to let her past me. Bad enough she knew where Cheerful Rest was. I hadn’t wanted her to see the inside of my unit. Didn’t want the whole rant/wheedle/shaming thing to start again: Come live with me, Makeda, let me take care of you, you can’t manage on your own, why can’t you be more responsible?

  As I started to close my door, Yoplait slid inside. “Sure,” I grumbled at him, “why not you, too?” From where I stood, I saw Abby step out of my entranceway into my main space. She pulled up short. “This is where you’re living?” She peered around in horror.

  “It was tidier than this.” Lock was sticking. I’d have to see to that. I went to see what Brie was on about. I really had to do some grocery shopping. A sandwich would go down well right about now.

  My first thought was that someone had somehow broken into the place while I was tranced out and doing what-the-fuck-ever I’d been up to in the dark. The room had more wrong with it than the things I’d first noticed a few minutes ago. Tools scattered on the floor everywhere. Boxes torn open, clothes upended onto the floor and on the futon. Noodle-y piles of unravelled yarn everywhere. The drill press set up on top of the fridge. Under the drill, a shallow bowl with what looked like water in it.

  “Did you make this?” asked Brie, his tone reverent. Standing beside me, Abby just looked stunned. That’s when I saw what he’d been talking about, lying in the middle of the room.

  “I guess I did make it,” I replied. I picked my way through the debris to have a closer look. Yoplait sat sphinxlike at the edge of the afghan to watch the to-do.

  “What do you mean, you guess you made it?” asked Abby. “Don’t you know?”

  “Not exactly.” You couldn’t really call it an afghan any longer. Not sure what you would call it, though. Looked like I’d run out of nylon twine, so I’d taken apart
a whole bunch of my sweaters—my good sweaters!—for more yarn.

  “What are those things around it?” asked Brie.

  “Birds. Had a couple strings of about twenty-two of them. But they weren’t enough. I ran out.”

  “There’s way more than twenty-two there.”

  So there were. Apparently I’d created some more out of aluminum foil. I’d made it to about ten of them before I ran out of foil. My homemade birds were lumpy, vaguely birdlike, with none of the elegance of the ones I’d gotten from Sally’s. I could see clear stuff seeping out from under their mitt-shaped feet, yarn wound around their ankles on top of that. Had I epoxied them on? But that wasn’t all. The original metal birds were now only the inner ring. I’d knitted more rows, and added more birds as I went. I’d strung them together out of my precious hoard of beach glass, the flat pieces. I knelt on the floor to get a closer look. I’d drilled holes in the bits of glass. “I thought that drill wasn’t working,” I whispered. The glass birds got smaller with each row I’d added; some of them so small I could scarcely make out their bird shapes. I guess I must have been getting the hang of it by then, ’cause I’d even given them eyes by gluing tiny pieces of brown, green, or blue glass to the colourless, frosted glass of the bodies. One of the birds had red eyes. Shit. I’d searched forever to find those two red pieces. And sitting smack-dab in the middle of the thing? The fish vertebra from down on the Spit. I yanked at it. It stayed stuck to the rug. I knelt and tried to look under it. “I can’t even see how I attached this. More epoxy, I guess.”