The Language of Sisters: A Novel

by Amy Hatvany

  “He doesn’t have a problem with you being away so long?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, hopeful my face didn’t give the truth away.

  “Well, he must be an exceptional man.” Then she stood, grabbed her purse, and moved toward the hallway that led to the front door. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us to Jenny’s appointment?” The question tumbled from my mouth before my defenses could stop it. Something deep within me wanted her to be involved in this process; she’d always been the one to deal with Jenny’s doctors. And if I was honest with myself, I had to acknowledge she’d always been the one to deal with Jenny. The short time I’d spent caring for my sister had shown me that. Whatever assistance I thought I’d provided as a child was nothing compared to what my mother had done all day, every day, for Jenny for fifteen years. I felt a newly developed, grudging respect for my mother. Perhaps that was why I asked her to come to Jenny’s appointment.

  My sister moved her eyes from her toast to our mother, seemingly interested in her answer.

  Mom hesitated, but then shook her head briskly. “I can’t. I can’t do it all again.” It seemed she said this more to herself than to me. “But you can tell me about it tonight,” she offered, then paused, considering something. “Wait. I’ve got dinner with my book group tonight. I won’t be home until late.”

  My molars squeaked against each other inside my mouth as I stood and moved next to my sister’s wheelchair. “You’re going out again?” She had been home for dinner with Jenny and me only three times since we had been there.

  She looked at the door and not me. “Yes.”

  “Fine.” That settled it. I definitely would not reach out to her again.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I stepped over to the sink and began washing the few dishes there. “It means nothing. It means, fine, go out to dinner. Have a wonderful time.” I hated my voice. I hated this nagging-mother role that had overtaken me without my permission.

  She sighed. “Nicky—”

  “Nicole,” I corrected her sharply.

  Her green eyes hardened. “Okay, Nicole. Don’t take your frustration out on me.”

  “I’m not frustrated.”

  She snorted softly, twisting the straps of her purse in her hands. “Oh. Okay. I take it you’re just naturally this pleasant, then?” Sarcasm crackled in the air between us, dancing around all we did not say.

  “Good-bye, Mom.”

  She shut the door firmly behind her. I felt my anger like the sharp sting of a canker sore. I was unable to keep from tonguing it, if only to make sure it was still there.

  “It wasn’t me who decided you should have this baby,” I said to Jenny, who blinked her gaze away from the door, focusing on an unknown point on the refrigerator, ignoring me. Disappointment clouded her round face. I sighed, then stepped back next to her, running my fingers through her curls. “Sorry, Sis. Mom’s just pissing me off. It’s not your fault.”

  She looked at me like, Well, I already knew that. I set a cup of chopped canned pears on her tray and watched her scoop them to her mouth with a grabbing motion of her right hand. Her left hand was tucked under the tray. She managed to hand-feed herself fairly well, though she had lacked a pincer grasp since she was three. Meals were a messy prospect; I had learned quickly not to dress her before she ate or I’d end up having to change her all over again.

  I checked the time. Our appointment was at ten, and I still needed to clean Jenny up and get her dressed. After last night’s unfortunate incident, I figured I could skip her morning shower; her hair still felt clean. I grabbed the cordless phone and dialed Shane’s work number.

  “San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. How may I direct your call?” a nasally voiced operator inquired.

  “Shane Wilder, please.”

  “One moment.”

  He came on the line. “Shane Wilder.” His tone was intimidating, lawyer-like, daring anyone to contradict him.

  “Hi. It’s me.” I sat down at the kitchen table, hooking my feet around the front legs of my chair.

  He paused, his voice softened. “Hi, you.”

  “How are you?”

  “Busy. As usual. And you?”

  “Fine. A little overwhelmed, but fine. How’s Mooch?”

  A longer pause, full of a hesitancy I didn’t understand. “Missing you, I’m sure.”

  “And how about you?” I prodded, reaching for the carafe on the counter to warm my forgotten coffee.

  “What?”

  “Do you miss me?” I hated having to push him to tell me how he was feeling. I longed for a man who was comfortable expressing himself. If one actually existed.

  He sighed. “Of course I do. I miss you like crazy.”

  “Enough to come see me this weekend?” I ventured.

  “Nicole … ” He sounded tired.

  “What?”

  “I can’t, honey. Things are way too busy here. I’ve got four briefs to write and a deposition to prepare for this weekend.” He paused. “Plus, what would I do with your child?” Referring, of course, to Moochie.

  “Bring him.”

  “Honey, I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Support, Shane. I need your support.” If my mother was going to think he was supportive, he’d damn well better be supportive.

  “I told you, you have it. I talked to the D.A. up there and he said the case is under investigation, but the police haven’t found the guy yet. I also have calls in to several lawyers who could represent you in a civil case against Wellman. I don’t know what else I can do right now.”

  “You could come and be with me.” I knew I was being unreasonable, but I could not keep the petulance from my voice.

  Jenny emitted a short, high-pitched shriek. “Ahh!” I looked over to her and saw that she had cleared all the food from her tray.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Jenny.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with her,” I snapped, making a nasty face at him through the phone. “She’s just done with breakfast and wants me to get off the phone and pay attention to her.”

  “You got all that from ‘ahh!’?” He sounded amazed. Or maybe it was disgusted.

  “Yes.” I grabbed a washcloth and ran it under warm water before using it to clean Jenny’s face and hand.

  “I can’t really talk right now, Nic. I’m due in court in five minutes.” He was always due in court in five minutes.

  “Okay. Call me later. You have the number here, right?” He didn’t answer, just shuffled papers. He had already left the conversation. “Shane?”

  “Hmm? Oh, sorry, hon. I’ll call you later.”

  “You’d better,” I warned. “Love you.”

  “Me, too. Bye, babe.”

  I hung up and looked at Jenny, whose eyes were sly with understanding. I felt the need to defend myself. “Yeah, he’s being a jerk, but he’s really okay, once you get to know him. I promise.”

  She slid her gaze into mine with a wisdom deeper than I was ready to see. I looked away. “I love him, Jenny,” I said, unsure of whom I was trying to convince.

  • • •

  For as long as I could remember, my mother had been a religious woman. She encouraged me to say my prayers each night and delivered me to Sunday school while she sat with Jenny in the sanctuary of our local Unitarian church, hopeful my sister would not start screaming in the middle of the sermon. At Mom’s request, the congregation prayed every week for Jenny to be healed. But just as the medical establishment’s failure to cure Jenny drove our mother to Sonia the Psychic Healer, her church’s inability to produce a miracle soon drove her to desperation.

  A few months after our visit to Sonia, Mom saw an ad for an evangelical service on late-night television and sank her teeth into this final shred of hope for Jenny’s cure. She told everyone she knew about the pastor who performed wee
kly miracles during his sermons. “People who’ve been in wheelchairs their entire lives just stand up and walk after he touches them,” she said excitedly to anyone who’d listen. I stood by her at the front door as she told the postman how Jenny would be cured and watched his expression fade from interest to pity. When my mother took the mail and moved into the living room out of sight, he looked at me sadly. “You don’t let her get to you, young lady,” he said.

  I was mortified by my mother’s religious exuberance. Each time she spoke of visiting the new church with Jenny, recklessness danced in her eyes. It got so that I could barely stand to look at her. She held on to her hope like a man who was drowning in the middle of the ocean would cling to a sinking boulder.

  Before we left to pick up Nova the morning we were to attend the service, my mother stuck her head into the living room, where my father lounged comfortably in his recliner at the beginning of his sports-viewing day. “Are you sure you won’t come, honey?” she asked him, her tone bright. I was glad I had convinced Nova to come so I wouldn’t be bored out of my skull.

  “I’m not going to waste my time at some sideshow religious service. I’m not an idiot.” He looked pointedly at her, then back to the television.

  My mother held her head high on her neck, white skin flushing rosy pink. “You don’t know what you might be missing. What if this man can heal your daughter? What will you say then?”

  “I’ll say it’s a cold day in hell, because that’s when it might happen.” He reached for the newspaper that laid in his lap and snapped it open in front of him, signaling the end of the discussion.

  Though I resented the meanness of his words, I agreed with my father. I agreed with him more when we walked into the metal-sided, barnlike structure where the services were held. With its cement floors and bare wooden rafters, it looked more like a discount furniture warehouse than a church. The place was packed with people, some of whom already stood facing the stage as though the service had started, their hands waving above their heads, their tongues wagging an indecipherable language, wearing their desperation like perfume. One woman rolled on the floor, twitching and moaning.

  “That woman’s having a fit, Mom,” I whispered urgently as we pushed Jenny’s wheelchair toward the stage.

  “She’s just full of the Spirit, Nicky. She’s overcome.” Mom seemed not to see the dime-store religious adornments that littered the place: a grinning, plastic Jesus hung every couple of feet on the walls, each illuminated by loudly colored blinking strings of Christmas lights. She focused her eyes on the stage, on the spot where she imagined her daughter would be healed.

  “She’s over something,” Nova whispered, and I giggled. “Smoke?” she murmured even more softly, and I nodded. We had found an unopened pack of Winston Lights in my father’s truck a few weeks before and were not so successfully trying to start a habit.

  “Mom? Nova and I are going to the bathroom, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll save your seats. Hurry back.” Her white skin was tight and shiny, her smile a painted red slash above the point of her chin.

  Nova and I wove our way through the crowd of zealots, out the side door to what we hoped was the alley. We walked a few doors down from the church, where we found a woman already standing by some garbage cans, puffing away. She was thin, painfully so; her black hair was stringy and loose around her pale face. She wore jeans and a shabby silk blouse with a large bow tied at her neck. She nodded in greeting, sucking on her cigarette like a straw.

  We nodded back, pulling out our half-full pack from Nova’s purse. “Shit,” Nova said, shaking her bag around as she fingered through it. “No matches.”

  The woman held out a lighter and flicked its tiny wheel with a dirty thumb until a flame appeared.

  “Thanks,” I said as both Nova and I used the flame to light our smokes, coughing lightly as we inhaled.

  “Pastor Pete tell you to smoke down here, too?” the woman asked with a voice that sounded as though she had swallowed a handful of pebbles.

  “No,” I said, slightly confused. “My mom brought my sister for him to heal.”

  The woman looked uncomfortable, gazing at the ground as she snuffed out her cigarette with the heel of her worn black shoe. “Ummm,” she mumbled incoherently, then walked around the corner of the building and out of our sight.

  “That was weird,” Nova said, tapping the tiny bit of ash from the end of her cigarette. She held it out from her body and then tapped it again without putting it to her mouth. Neither of us liked the smoking thing very much.

  I looked at the cigarette in my hand, ugly and unnatural between my fingers. I dropped it to the ground and squished it out. “We should probably get back.” Nova took a final puff, coughed violently, then squished hers out, too. I sprayed us both with a plentiful dose of White Shoulders, and we headed down the alley to the church.

  By the time we got to our seats, the service had already begun. Pastor Pete, a rotund, white-skinned, strawberry blond in a badly cut pea green suit, stood in front of a microphone, praying. “O dear heavenly God, our Father who looks down upon us with everlasting, ever-wonderful love. We pray to You, O God, that today, through Your strength, Your will, that we will be filled with Your spirit. Amen.”

  The crowd murmured a collective amen, my mother’s voice among them. Jenny watched the pastor with a skeptical eye, her twisted hands silent in the lap of her daisy-printed, short-sleeved dress, drool leaking a thin stream onto her chest. My mother had taken the time that morning to style Jenny’s chestnut hair in a long French braid and had even allowed me to brush a little sheer blue eye shadow on my sister’s lids. Among all these supposedly holy people, she was the only one who resembled an angel.

  Nova elbowed me as the pastor continued. I elbowed her back. “Before us today, dear friends,” Pastor Pete said, “is Jane Riley. A young woman stricken with a terrible disease. The horror of not being able to speak. Found on First Avenue, that den of iniquity in our fair Seattle, she has not spoken a word since the day she was born. When I found her, she was selling her body silently for the nickels it cost her to eat. Come before us, dear Jane, and let the spirit of our heavenly Father come down upon you and make you whole!”

  My mouth dropped open as the woman we had met in the alley shuffled onto the stage. I looked at Nova, who was shaking her blond head, disgusted. “What a crock,” she whispered. “Tell your mom.”

  I moved my eyes to my mother, who was sitting enraptured, hands clasped together in perfect prayer as she looked longingly at the stage where the hoax was taking place. Jenny’s eyes caught mine, and the only word that filled my head was please. She knew what was happening. She knew my mother’s hope had gone too far, crossed into dangerous territory. I swallowed hard and tugged at my mother’s sleeve.

  “What?” she hissed through her teeth, not taking her eyes from the stage. “I’m trying to listen.”

  “I know, Mom. It’s just … Well, Nova and I talked to that lady outside. She talked to us, Mom. There was nothing wrong with her.”

  My mother turned her head slowly to look at me. Her green eyes blinked, unbelieving. “What were you doing outside? I thought you went to the bathroom.”

  “Uh, we needed some fresh air. It’s so crowded in here.” I paused. “She talked, Mom. This is a bunch of crap. Can we go?”

  “No, we cannot go. You must be mistaken, Nicole. You must have seen someone else.” My mother looked at the stage again, where Jane Riley was awkwardly stuttering her supposed first words. “P-p-praise J-Jesus!” she said, holding her hands to the sky. She looked down and saw Nova and me in the front row, then winked.

  “Did you see that, Mrs. Hunter?” Nova exclaimed as she sat forward and pointed excitedly. “She winked at us! God!” She threw herself disgustedly against the back of her chair, blond waves bouncing like springs.

  “Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Nova,” my mother said absentmindedly. She stroked Jenny’s bare arm, staring ahead, not blinking, n
ot seeing for several minutes. Her chin quivered, and she gave her head a little shake, as though to clear it of unwanted thoughts. People shouted and cried around us, but it felt as though we were inside a bubble, separate from the entire room. When Mom finally swung her gaze to our surroundings, she carefully took in the garish and glittering decor, disdain shadowing the sharp angles of her face. She scowled at the writhing figures who clutched their Bibles and spoke in different tongues. Her veins pulsed like little blue rivers beneath the thin parchment of her skin, a new understanding flowing through her blood. Each breath she took was deliberate and deep, the pause after each long enough to make me worry she might not take another.

  “Mom?” I urged, touching her thigh. “Are you okay?”

  “Your father is going to love this.” She looked at me, the obvious false brightness of her smile sending fear tap-dancing around in my stomach. Tears illuminated her eyes. She let loose a shuddering sigh and lifted her eyes up to the ceiling. “Dear God, what was I thinking?” she whispered.

  Nova took my cold hand in her warm grasp but did not look at me. Jenny sat quietly next to our mother, as though respecting the weight of the moment. I watched as Mom finally turned to her, Jenny’s eyes holding a liquid blue mixture of compassion and sorrow. Mama, I heard her say, then once again, louder in my heart, Mama!

  Mom smiled and hugged Jenny close, then pulled back to touch the end of Jenny’s nose with her own. “I’m okay, sweetie. Mama’s okay.” Before that moment, I had never heard my mother refer to herself as Mama; she was always Mom or Mother. I wondered then if she had heard Jenny’s cry. If they might share a language all their own.

  “I guess it’s over, then,” Mom finally said. “Let’s go.” We walked down the middle aisle, wheeling Jenny’s chair around prostrate worshipers. My mother held her shoulders high and back, the defeat she felt reflected only in the slowness of her pace and the dim light of her sad eyes.