Even though my sister was in distress, the festivities continued. Surely they were aware of Button, but none of the adults ever glanced in her direction. If a person covers his eyes, a repugnant scene will vanish, will it not? I have always found this toddler mindset bewildering. So many grown-ups were the same as my sister. They could not grasp the notion of object permanence. Never understood that the button, button was simply hidden inside of a palm. Instead, they circled back to the wine table, refilled their glasses, created a white noise of voices to drown out Button’s distress. One busied himself with a pot-bellied charcoal grill. Skinny Bitch had returned in a fresh (white) outfit, strikingly similar to the first, her damp hair knotted on top of her head.
Button lifted the massive plastic container again. And again. She had almost consumed the entire contents.
Then I saw her stop. She lowered the bottle, and lifted her round filthy face, stared up at me. For a moment, she tilted her head, and smiled. A tiny smile. An innocent, happy, grateful smile. As though I had given her something precious. And she wanted me to know she loved me for it. Loved me best of all.
I closed my eyes. Waited. In that moment, I decided I would stop the game. I would saunter down there and take charge of the situation. Yank the orange soda from her stained fingers, throw the remainder into the pool. See what asshole Larva and my idiot aunt had to say about that. Who the hell did they think they were? Button belonged to me. One hundred percent. They had no right to make her suffer. This pathetic bullshit attempt at displaying authority had gone on long enough.
When I opened my eyes again, Button was no longer looking at me. Her head was drooping, arms limp. She had dropped the bottle, the last of the soda bubbling and tumbling from the narrow opening. Her dimpled knees crumbled, and she flumped onto the concrete deck. For a moment she was still, but then her swollen body began to spasm. I leapt up. This was not what I had expected. Children continued to splash and yelp in the pool. Enjoying themselves. Detached laughter cutting through the chatter as Button convulsed. Her back arching off the cement, neck cricked, eyes rolling backward. I heard choking sounds, like fingers snapping.
I bolted down the stairs. Elbowed through the drunken wave of grown-ups that was moving closer. I knelt down beside my sister. She was stiller than she had ever been, and I knew instantly she was not there. Gone. I pumped her chest until her ribs cracked underneath my fists. Tangerine foam and brilliant strings of saliva rose up through her tiny mouth, bubbled out of her nostrils. Her chest was sticky. She smelled like a candy store. I put my ear to her mouth, heard the delicate crackling of carbonation, but nothing else.
“Button.” I spoke directly into her wrinkled ear. Quietly, but with masculine authority. “Don’t you do this. Don’t. Don’t you dare.” I brought my fists straight down on her sternum, yelled as loudly as my throat could manage. “I will hate you, Button. Hate you! I swear I will hate your stupid guts if you leave.”
“Stoppit!” My aunt behind me. “Stoppit now! Babe? Babe? Do something!”
Larva yanked me up, pinned my arms behind me. I kicked backward, bony heel connecting with his shin. An inch above the band of his fucking white sock. Satisfying pain reverberated through my foot. I flailed and hissed. My aunt’s face contorted, black makeup dripping over her cheekbones. She tried to touch me and I bit her hand. Brought my teeth down through the soft pinch of flesh.
She squeezed her hand, yipped, began to cry. “Stoppit! Stoppit, will you? Stoppit.” Gentler now.
Someone was on a phone. I heard the words. Heard the intonation. A bald man was hovering over Button. Pushing back her lopsided bangs, pressing on her chest, sweeping the insides of her mouth, trying to find a pulse. “How — how can this?” he stuttered. “A healthy child.” The man tried to push air into her mouth. I saw his scalp, freckled and peeling. After forever, he sat back on his heels, swiped his face with his shirttail. Shook his head from side to side.
“She’s gone, Kiddle. Oh my, oh, oh. Oh, good — good Jesus. What will we tell your mother? She’s gone.”
Button. The one who was mine. Inside that sticky barrel chest, her heart was silent. Her floating heart. Her spotless heart. Her perfect wondrous heart.
Something ripped open inside my head, a thousand hands reaching up and yanking. Threads of me were screaming, but I stood, motionless, expressionless, only blinking, blinking, while a putrid cavity formed. I could not see. I could not see. I think I might have been shaking. Revulsion and disgust seeped out into my chest cavity, and I could not take a breath.
“Say something, Kiddle. Say something!”
[22]
“Jesus, Warsie. You got so much shit jailed in here. Is this legal?”
The moment Warren rushed in through his front door, he knew she was there. Her scratchy voice, yes, but before that, her smell. It was the stench of something that lived outside, underneath an old deck or plank of rotting wood. Something decaying had grown legs, found its way in.
“Beth?” Poking his head through the door, he said, “Is that you?” He saw his little sister lying on her side on his kitchen floor, skeleton body facing his fish tanks. His mouth went dry. Had she fallen down? Was she dying right there on the linoleum?
“You need that many, Wars?” she yelled to him, then rolled onto her back, arms out at her sides. “Does it make you feel powerful? To lord over all those fish?”
“Hi.” Standing beside her, he did not stop to remove his shoes. “Beth. You okay?”
“What’s okay?”
“You?”
Her eyes were sunken, unfocused. She blinked. Hard. “Who knows?”
“Do you —”
“I like your collection. I like your fish. I like the plants, too. The plants are nice. Really nice. All underwater like that. Drifting a bit. They can just relax. Zone out. And just let their leaves float. Man, that sounds beautiful.”
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“It looks happy in there. Peaceful. In the tanks. Right, Wars? Right? It’s happy. And if I cover this eye,” grimy hand slapping her face, “I can pretend I’m in there too. And it’s somewhere warm. Somewhere on a beach. Feeling — feeling okay. Like I should be okay, right? And I — I. Warsie. Instead? I’m here in this bumfuck town.” She lay her arms over her head, arched her tall skinny frame off the floor. “What the fuck is going on?” Her black leather pants were worn, loose, pale grey on the knees, and her t-shirt was sheer, coffee-stained. Perhaps it was pink. Had been pink. If Warren was forced to guess the colour.
“Are you hungry?”
She did not respond, but sprung up off the floor and moved toward him. “What the fuck are you doing here?” The smell was stronger now, like aromatic mould. He imagined her back peppered with greyish patches, spores sprouting and releasing with each shift of her spine. Earthy, natural, but a part of the world he did not want to inhale. “Why are you here, Wars? Not where you’re supposed to be. You’re not where you were. Not where I looked for you. You ran away from me. Aaaaa-gain!”
“I didn’t. I didn’t run away. I’m working. I have a job.” Warren counted the windows in the kitchen, the half moon in the back door, the front window, the vertical windows alongside his front door. She was there, safe, could not leave through any piece of glass, could not spirit herself up the chimney, spool herself down the drain. “Beth. I’m glad to see you. I am.”
“Oh, yeah. Right, Wars. I call bullshit.”
“Believe me.” He was. He was telling the truth, even though the sight of her made him nervous.
“I went to that shit apartment, but no no, you weren’t there. Just took the fuck off. Like that.” Weak finger snap. “Why did I have to come all this way to find you? You couldn’t let me know?”
“I didn’t know where you were. Or how to reach you.”
She dug her finger in his chest, and he could see the corners of her mouth were cracked, festering.
Her lips, once full and constantly pouting, were now chalky grey. “Like that’s any fucking excuse.”
Warren glanced into his tanks, did a rapid count of the fish. “I’m glad you found me, though,” he said. Words like feathers.
“Oh, my brother. I always have to find you.”
“How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t. I think a bus. A fucking bus. I think I fell asleep, or something, and then I woke up here. With your fish. I think they helped me get here. Magnets or some shit. I don’t. Just. It’s fucked up.” Hands on her forehead, her fingers were twitching.
“But how did you know where to go?”
With her thumb, she scratched at her crotch, shifted her pants, winced. “You’re listed, Warren. Seriously. You’re not the only one who got brains.” She laughed then, and he saw that her teeth and tongue were black. He smelled acid. Vomit. “Though mine are. I don’t know. All deteriorated. Bad cheese. But even bad cheese can be good, right? Some people love that shit.”
“But how did you get in?”
She started to pace around him. “Oh my fuck, Warren. Do you got a chair and a flashlight. Fucking Spanish inquisition here. Basement. Duh! Window?”
“Oh.” He thought of the people outside, the vans, the police cruiser that had taken up its place on the sidewalk this morning and had not left. “Did anyone see you?”
“People outside doing a tour.”
“Tour?”
“Yeah. Big crowds. Popular place, Warsie. Did someone die in this house? Get murdered? Or did you discover something big? Some super big shit discovery? I bet you did. They want to see you. Shake your hand.”
Shake my hand.
Moving around his kitchen, she tapped everything. Countertops, doorknobs, long metal bar to open his fridge. “You’re famous, brother. Famous with a fuck-up sister. Boring story. Predictable.”
“Beth. Sit down. Please. You’re here now. You’re okay. I’m going to get you something to eat.” He had bread, butter in the fridge. Maybe a can of tuna or sardines. A piece of onion? “You’ll feel better if you eat. And I’ll get you a sweater. Your arms look cold.”
“You got any smokes?” Her bony hands were shaking.
“I don’t smoke.”
“I searched your whole fucking house already, and not a single thing. Nothing to take or smoke or drink or snort. You don’t even have aspirin. Jesus, Wars. I really neeeed something.”
“You’ll be fine, Beth. Just have some food. A bath? That’s it. A warm bath.”
Fingers gripping her ears, she shook her head, began screaming. “You. Don’t. Fucking. Get. It. I won’t be fine. I need some shit, or I’m going to slam this head, that’s my head, I’m going to slam that fucking head into the fridge door. And I’m going to do it over and over until my cheese brain leaks out.” Calmer, “And then I’ll feel better, Wars. Then.” Rapid breathing.
“God, Beth. God. Do you want me to run out?” Rubbing one hand over the other, he thought of the people outside. Angry people. “I mean.”
“Run out? Run out?” She said it as though she did not understand what he was saying. “Run out for what?”
“I don’t know. Cigarettes?”
“Cigarettes.”
“I mean. I could. But you can’t smoke here, Beth. You just can’t. The toxins get into the water. And Stephen. You know, Stephen. He starts to sneeze. He’s old, you know. Lungs aren’t the best.”
His sister, six years younger than Warren, stopped and stared at him as though his skull had just spun a full circle. He could not determine if she was about to cry or wail or have a seizure that would squeeze her heart. Fifteen months had passed since he had last seen her. Four hundred and sixty-two days. That last time, she had appeared inside the doors of his apartment building, asleep in the narrow alcove that housed a wall of shiny mailboxes. For three days she slept and ate like an animal. She wore his clothes, cutting the bottoms off his sweatpants, the cuffs off his shirt. Had a shoelace knotted around her waist. Her shoulders were so gaunt, his shirt appeared as though it were on a wire hanger.
On the fourth day, Warren had come home to find the envelope containing his savings was empty. She was there, though, hunched on the couch watching a cartoon. Warren had asked her, gently, if she had seen it, and for hours she scoured the apartment. Continued long after Warren had given up the search. She would not let it go. Adamant she would find it underneath the lid of the toilet, behind the cereal boxes in the bottom cupboard, among the pages of expired magazines, mixed in with the soil of his plants. Searching furiously, her face red and sweating, she squeaked, “Not here either, Wars. Jesus. Shit just don’t disappear. It shouldn’t, right?”
“Wars?” Three in the morning, and she had shaken him awake, her face pressed into his. “I’m super, super sorry. I couldn’t find it.” She was sobbing, scratching at her face, her arms. “I just couldn’t. But I tried. So hard. I really did. To find it.”
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. It sucks. Sucks. When something just goes. Just gets gone like that. I mean. How does that happen? It’s just not right. It’s just.”
Each word spoken increasing in speed, force, and Warren had tried to calm her. “Beth. Just sleep, okay? It’ll be okay. We can look again in the morning. It’ll show up.”
Of course, when the sun rose, she was gone. A scribbled note inside an empty bowl on his counter, saying I took an apple? Love, Beth.
For weeks, Warren held his breath when he went to check his mail. A small part of him expecting her to be there, hoping she was. He was not upset about the money (he had not been saving the small amount for himself), but upset she had searched so hard. He understood why. Her habits made her steal, but her decency made her search. She wanted to be that person. Wanted Warren to see that good person. Underneath the matted fur jacket, the black fingernails, the scabs and bruises and shorn hair, his little sister glowed. Glowed brightly, and it bruised Warren’s heart to witness her destruction. So much of her life had been dedicated to balancing on dangerous chairs, pasting paper in her stained-glass windows, blotting out her colours. Choking her light.
“Stephen?” She coughed.
“Yes, you know. My cat.”
“The big fat furball? Shit, Warsie. I’m trying to be serious. To impress upon you the nature of this level of serious seriousness here. Of. This. Situation. Do you get it? I need to get somewhere. I need to get away from. I need to get. Me. Do something. I can’t. I mean, I can’t just. You know. I. Well.” She went to the corner of the room, slid down, wrapped her arms around her legs. “You got to help me. You need to. Do. Do. Do. War. I just. Me.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, rolled back and forth on his heels. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” Squeezing his eyes closed, he felt as though he were a young child, back in that house. He saw his father, standing in a crack of light from the basement window. Then his sister, running through the woods, and tugging spider webbing from her face. Everything was so confusing. He could not think. Could not think.
“Warsie.” She fell over, and he heard her bones crack on the floor. “I’m going to die. You don’t think so, but I can’t. Any air. I can’t get air.”
He looked at his sister. Her chest, her bare arms were mottled purple, as though even her blood was dazed. Her body seized, then, and strings of yellow flew from her mouth.
She was going to die.
He waited, still rolling back and forth on his heels, counted backward, fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight. When he reached zero, he rushed to the phone. Dialled the only person he knew might be able to help him. “My sister,” he said. “She’s — she’s bad. She needs help to calm down.”
[23]
“From our understanding, it’s very rare.” I peered down at the scene from the top step, and sensed
an instant familiarity. The lamplight was dim, but I recognized the female police officer’s voice. She was the same person who had come to alert us of my father’s death. Seated in the exact same position. My mother and aunt were in chairs opposite, and based on their owl-eyed expressions, they did not recognize her. “Yes, it’s very rare indeed. At your daughter’s age.”
“We don’t understand,” they chimed. Brainlessly.
The woman unwrapped something and pressed it into her mouth. I could hear the hard lozenge clicking against her teeth, saw the tiny lump stored in her cheek when she spoke. “Things do need to be confirmed, but doctors suspect cardiac arrest. Did she have any previous troubles with her heart?”
Her heart was pristine.
“No, no. Nothing like that. I would have followed up.”
“Of course.” My aunt, perched on the edge of her seat. “We would have followed up.” Parroting.
I curled my toes against the dirty carpet. And a sneeze burst from my mouth. The officer twisted her head, looked up at me. Her eyes stayed on me for several seconds, and I lowered my head, lifted my shoulder to block my face.
“We are so sorry for your loss.” I heard the candy crunch. “It won’t be long before they release her body. And you can put your daughter to rest.”
My aunt stood up. “I just can’t believe it,” she said as she walked the two officers to the door. “One minute running around enjoying the party.” Her voice snagged in her throat. “The next minute, she’s gone.”
I clenched my fist. Rage swelled inside me, and even if I poked holes in my skin, it would not seep out. My aunt had caused this. Her sick need to constantly recreate herself. This time, with me and Button as her family-themed sideshow.
I watched her open the door for the officers and let them out. She looked at herself in the mirror, licked a finger and wiped at the streak beneath her left eye. “I’m leaving,” she called to my mother. Sighed. “It’s been a day. It’s been a real day.”
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