The Super Ladies

by Petrone, Susan

  “Don’t get too into the cutting thing, Aunt Katherine.”

  “I promise, this is the last time I will ever, ever cut myself on purpose,” Katherine said and dropped the knife into the sink. Katherine and Margie just stood and laughed for a second, then even Eli joined in. Abra understood their relief, but there was more going on here. She walked around the kitchen island to where the others were standing and reached for Katherine’s arm, stopping the laughter.

  “Look,” she said.

  All four of them stared at the two thin red lines on Katherine’s arm, the only indication that there had ever been any cuts there.

  “The scar from the other night is completely gone,” Katherine admitted.

  “You’ve done this before?” Eli said.

  “No! Lord no, Eli. Please just, keep this to yourself, okay?’ Katherine stammered.

  “Aunt Katherine had an accident the other night, that’s all,” Margie added. “There’s nothing to worry about.” At that moment, Grant, Joan, and Anna came bursting into the kitchen through the deck door.

  “Dad says everything is ready,” Grant announced. “They sent us in to get the sides.”

  Joan took in the pile of uncut fruit, the half-filled deviled eggs, and lack of other food and said disdainfully, “Which aren’t even ready.”

  Margie exchanged a look with Abra that said Teenage girls are supposed to have an attitude, right?

  “Mom?” Anna asked, walking over to examine Katherine’s arm where the two thin pink lines were still visible. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “Nothing. I think I scratched myself too hard or something.” Katherine reassured Anna that she was fine as they all made a quick effort to finish the side dishes and get everything outside and onto the picnic table.

  Later in the afternoon, after they had eaten, the younger kids and most of the adults were outside playing an enthusiastic game of Sardines. Abra came out of the downstairs bathroom to find Eli in the kitchen eating what was either his second or third hamburger of the day.

  “Beware,” he said, “Anna’s looking for you.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Are you ready for graduation?”

  Eli had just taken a huge mouthful of hamburger but gave a muffled “Uh-huh” and a thumbs-up.

  “See you out there,” Abra said as she walked around Eli and headed for the deck door. The second she stepped outside, Anna bounded up the deck steps and grabbed her hand. “Aunt Abra! It’s your turn! Come and hide with me.”

  “Hide where? What are we playing?” she asked as Anna pulled her along to the oak tree in the center of the yard, where everyone but Eli was standing. Juno was there too, but she was mingling around the humans, making sure no one had gone missing. An aging tire swing that Karl had put up when the kids were much smaller hung from one of the tree’s lower branches, and Joan was standing on it, swinging away in all her fourteen-year-old glory.

  “We’re playing Sardines, even the grown-ups,” she announced. “It’s like reverse Hide and Seek—one person hides and then everyone else has to go and look for her.”

  “Or him,” Grant said.

  “And when you find the hider, you join her—or him”—she managed to make a quick face at Grant without losing a beat—“in the hiding place. And it’s over when everybody has found the hiding place.”

  “How do you win?” Abra asked.

  “You don’t,” Margie said. “It’s cooperative instead of competitive.”

  “Hippie,” Abra said gently, to which Margie only smiled.

  “Are you ladies gonna gab all day, or are we going to play?” Hal said.

  “Play!” Anna squealed. She grabbed Abra’s hand and whispered, “I have the best hiding place.” Everyone else closed their eyes and started counting. (“To forty this time,” Anna commanded.) “Come on,” she said and started running across the lawn.

  Abra good-naturedly followed right behind Anna, who was making a beeline toward a stand of trees and bushes that connected Margie’s and the neighbor’s yards. She guessed there must be a little spot in the middle of all that greenery where Anna wanted to hide. Abra was wearing an old pair of cotton shorts and the new race T-shirt from this morning—a little mud and a few grass stains wouldn’t hurt that outfit. She was happy to go anywhere her surrogate niece wanted to hide. Juno ran alongside them. As they ran, Abra kept one eye on Anna and one ear on everybody else, who were gleefully counting up a storm. With her mind momentarily focused on other things, she didn’t notice when Juno cut right in front of her. Abra saw the dog at the last second and tried to pivot to avoid a collision.

  She didn’t succeed. As her right ankle twisted and she hit the grass, she felt an intense pain in her gut. The only time she could remember feeling something similar was right before she took a flying leap at Sean and his knife. “Crap!” she hissed, not loud enough to get Anna’s attention or to drown out the drone of “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine…” coming from the tire swing. Nobody but Juno heard her. And nobody but Juno could see her either.

  Chapter Ten

  Abra sat on the grass, angry, frustrated, and in serious pain. Juno was licking her face as if trying to apologize for knocking her over. Her right ankle was throbbing and already swollen. Dammit, dammit, dammit, she thought. She looked up at the deck and saw Eli staring at her in shock. Why didn’t the boy come down and help her up? She looked over at Anna and saw an equally surprised expression on the little girl’s face. Anna was only a few feet away, yet she wasn’t making any move to help either.

  Abra made a half-hearted attempt to get up on her own, but it hurt. Sure, it was only a twisted ankle—it’d probably be okay in a week or two—still, why the hell wasn’t anyone helping her?

  She felt…different. She had experienced this feeling just once before, a sensation of being lighter than air, of floating. She looked again at her puffy ankle. She could see it. Juno was still licking and sniffing her, so clearly she was visible to the dog. It wasn’t like Eli or Anna to just stand and stare and not come over to help. They weren’t staring at her, exactly. Their eyes weren’t focused on her. It was more like they were staring at where she had been. For a moment, she just sat, trying to be fully conscious of how light her body felt. It felt downright ethereal. Then she looked at her quickly swelling right ankle, and the pain and her body came rushing back.

  From over by the tire swing came the shout of “Forty! Ready or not, here we come!” and then a general chorus of “Why aren’t you hiding?” and “What happened to Abra?” Katherine reached her first.

  “Can you get up?” she asked as she gently helped Abra to her feet. She leaned on Katherine during the brief controlled mayhem as everyone tried to give advice. Those few seconds of pain and solitude on the grass didn’t seem so bad anymore. Finally Hal and Eli locked arms and picked her up chair-style.

  “Get her inside,” Margie said. “I’ll get some ice.”

  “Mom, I need to talk to you,” Anna said.

  “Hold on a second, sweetie,” Katherine replied. “Let’s get Aunt Abra fixed up first.”

  “But it’s about Aunt Abra,” Anna said in a stage whisper.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. She’s going to be fine.”

  In the jumble of people surrounding her, Abra realized no one was actually paying attention to her—they were all focused on her ankle and offering their opinions on how badly she was hurt. Abra caught Anna’s eye and got a broad smile in return. Anna held her skinny little kid arms out at her sides, glanced left and right as though she was looking for something that wasn’t there, then put her hands to the side of her head and gave Abra a crazy, shocked look. Anna had obviously seen something surprising, something about Abra. But she hadn’t done anything except fall and hurt herself.

  Hal’s vantage point gave him a good look at Abra’s ankle. “Do you have an Ace bandage at home? ’Cause you’r
e gonna need it.”

  “You can borrow my crutches from when I hurt my ankle last year,” Grant offered.

  “Do you want to go to the ER?” Margie asked.

  “No, I don’t think it’s that bad.”

  Eli and Hal carried her inside to the family room, where Karl propped up her ankle on the mess of throw pillows that were older than Grant (“But not quite as dirty,” he quipped) while Margie went to the kitchen for some ice. She returned holding a family-size bag of mixed vegetables wrapped in a dish towel.

  “It’s cold and it conforms to the shape of your ankle better than ice,” she explained as she placed it on Abra’s ankle.

  After a few moments fussing, Abra found herself surrounded by a circle of adults and children. They were all friendly faces, but having everyone staring at her felt a little awkward. “You know, I don’t think this is going to heal in the next five minutes,” she joked.

  “You’re right,” Margie said. “Shall we take you home?”

  Karl offered to drive Abra back to her house, but Margie nixed it. “I’ll take her. You have to be at work early tomorrow,” she said. “Everyone here under the age of eighteen has to go to school tomorrow. Even people graduating in eight days and turning eighteen in thirty-seven days.” Eli rolled his eyes. “And you have to teach in the morning,” she said to Katherine.

  “To be fair, you have to go to work too,” Katherine said.

  “Yes, but I just have to answer the phone; I don’t have to think.”

  “It’s finals week. I don’t have to think either, just proctor exams.”

  Margie ended up driving Abra home, and Katherine promised to drive Abra’s car back to her house in the morning.

  Once she was settled in the passenger seat of Margie’s minivan, Abra let herself sink back and be still. Being around her family of choice was always equal parts lovely and tiring. Karl had put some ice in a plastic bag for her. After it slipped off her ankle the third time, Abra just put the bag on the seat next to her.

  “Does it hurt?” Margie asked with a glance in Abra’s direction.

  “Not so much now. Thanks for driving me home,” Abra said.

  “Are you kidding? Everybody else is cleaning up my house. I feel like I’m getting away with something.”

  They made a quick pit stop at the drugstore so Margie could run in and buy an Ace bandage and some ibuprofen. As she waited in the car, Abra replayed her tumble on the lawn over and over. There was something odd, something she couldn’t explain about it. “Something happened when I hurt my ankle,” she said as Margie got back in the car.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know…”

  Margie shifted the van into reverse and backed out of the parking spot. “You brought it up. You obviously want to talk about it.”

  Abra tried to clear her thoughts and just speak the truth, the facts. “The only other time I felt like this was the night I knocked over Sean with the knife.” Margie didn’t say anything, but a raise of her eyebrow said enough. “Right before I knocked him over, I had this intense pain all through my abdomen, like my body was turning inside out. I had that same feeling tonight, right when I tripped.”

  “Was it from the pain of hurting your ankle?”

  “No, it was just before that—that split second when I was going down. My ankle didn’t really start to hurt until I was sitting on the grass. But both times, I had this strange sensation after the gut pain. Like I was floating.”

  The word “floating” hung in the middle of the minivan. Abra could almost see the word “floating” hovering—well, floating—right there underneath the interior light. What a silly thought.

  “Maybe you were disassociating,” Margie offered.

  “Maybe.”

  They had pulled into her driveway. Abra was immediately grateful for having bought such a tiny house. She’d told Grant not to bother with the old crutches, but Karl had put them in the car anyway. They were almost too short—almost.

  “Good thing Grant’s so tall,” Margie said.

  “Good thing I’m so short.”

  “You’re perfect just as you are.”

  The idea of using crutches had at first seemed like an admission that the ankle was worse than she cared to admit, but it did make getting around much easier. Abra managed the three steps from the side door to the kitchen on crutches without too much of a problem. Her bedroom was on the second floor, but the small guest room and bathroom on the first floor would do just fine for a few days. Margie went upstairs to bring down a week’s worth of clothes and Abra’s toiletries from the second floor while Abra plopped down on the sofa in the living room and put a few pillows under her leg. Clint jumped up and gave her ankle delicate little cat sniffs.

  “Hey buddy,” she said, and managed to pull him close for a cuddle until the cat jumped down and meowed loudly. “Oh, you didn’t get fed tonight. No wonder you’re ticked off.”

  She picked up her crutches and hobbled into the kitchen and over to the corner where Clint’s food and water bowls were. She leaned one crutch against the counter and, using the other one for balance, bent over on her good leg and picked up the food bowl. It was kind of like doing the triangle pose in yoga. “No problem,” she said, proud of her flexibility and balance. The large plastic container where she stored the dry cat food was at the opposite end of the L-shaped kitchen. Carrying the cat bowl over there while each hand was already holding a crutch was problematic. She put it back on the floor and slid the empty bowl along the floor with a crutch until it was next to the shelf where the cat food container was. “Guess what, Clint?” she said brightly. “Your bowl is getting moved over here until further notice.”

  Margie came downstairs, hands full of clothes, and called Abra into the guest room. Then she apologized for getting Abra up, even though Abra was already up. She let Margie fuss over her a little bit. Abra went down to Florida to visit her mother once a year at Christmas and let her mom make a fuss over her, but that was it. She wasn’t in the habit of being nurtured like this.

  Margie set up Abra on the sofa with her ankle elevated and got her a glass of water, a fresh bag of ice (“With a bowl to put it in later so it won’t melt all over the place in case you fall asleep”), the television remote, the book she’d been reading, and her reading glasses and set them all within easy reach. “Is there anything else you need? Do you want me to stay?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” Abra said. She sighed. Maybe being nurtured once in a while wasn’t such a bad thing. “You’re a good mom.”

  “No, I’m not. But I play one on TV,” Margie replied and leaned over to give her a hug. “I’m going to go downstairs and clean Clint’s litter box for you. Then I’m leaving. Good night. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for everything,” Abra said. She leaned back against the pillows and realized just how tired she was.

  “My pleasure,” Margie said as she walked out of the living room. She heard Margie’s footsteps go down to the basement, and, a few minutes later, Abra heard the click of the lock in the side door just as she fell asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Katherine helped clean up at Margie and Karl’s house, then she and Hal got a reluctant Anna to go home. Anna never liked leaving the Josephs’ house because it was the closest she ever got to having siblings.

  Katherine often talked to Anna about her own mother, who died when Anna was a baby. She always said the one thing that made her sad was that Anna never got to know her grandmother. But late at night, when it was just her and Hal, she would admit a second regret—how much she wished that Anna had a sibling. Hal was ten years older than she. When they met, he was just a smart, sexy guy in his late thirties. It hadn’t seemed like much of a stretch to tie her future to his. It was only after they struggled with infertility then started the adoption process, after they had wasted time and energy
with a public system that wanted them to foster when they only wanted to adopt and then switched to international adoption that their age difference became an issue. Hal didn’t want to be fifty years older than his child and didn’t want to retire with a child in high school. Over the years, Katherine had secretly hoped for a gift from the universe in the form of a surprise pregnancy. Hal wouldn’t say no to that—he just didn’t think it was responsible to pursue another adoption.

  Now that she had crossed over the hormonal bridge, the decision seemed final. No more periods, no more opportunities to get pregnant. They were destined for one child. But what a kid, she thought as she tucked Anna into bed. Anna was one of those people who attracts other people, the kind of kid teachers love to have in class because they’re smart and kind and funny and other kids like to play with for the same reason.

  Anna always preferred to have her mother tuck her in, while Hal had become the preferred morning parent so Katherine could run. Katherine loved bedtime, loved the honesty and candor that came out as her daughter lingered between wakefulness and sleep. It was the time of day when Katherine learned things like the name of the first boy Anna ever really liked (In third grade?) and that a kid at school had asked if she knew her “real” parents. (Anna had said, “Yes, I live with them,” which made Katherine’s heart soar.) Tonight, she learned something she already suspected.

  Anna was cuddled under her comforter, along with a fleece Cleveland Indians blanket she had taken a liking to, her pink crocheted baby blanket on which the entire mojo of the house seemed to rest, and fourteen stuffed animals of varying sizes and species.

  “How is that comfortable?” Katherine asked. “It looks lumpy.”

  “It’s not. It’s cozy,” Anna replied plainly.

  “And you aren’t too warm with all those blankets?”