A Sister’s Gift

by Giselle Green

  ‘You OK, Hol?’ That’s Rich again, I can hear him but he’s so far away now on the other side of the great watery expanse. All that pool water lapping against the sides dissolves his words away into echoes and the lights above us suddenly dim right down.

  ‘Just ten more minutes till closing time,’ the girl from her high chair at the deep end warns us.

  Ten minutes to face a lifetime’s worth of resistance. I turn to look back at Rich and my old Chinese friend. I wave at them both and Rich shoots me a little smile. Mr Huang looks confident. ‘Stay here where feet can touch bottom, please,’ he reminds me. He goes and sits back down again but his face remains watchful.

  Ten minutes.

  I know full well why Scarlett wanted me to do this. God, how might her life have turned out differently if I had drowned that day outside the Blue Jazz café? She might have ended up with Richard after all. Except…if he were not mine, would she ever have even wanted him? I feel a surge of anger flash through my chest now, firing up my intent. I can still stand where I am here. My feet are firm against the smooth pool bottom. I pull in a breath and then, for one long cold and unimaginably dark moment, I plunge my whole head beneath the water.

  Oh, but I didn’t know the panic was still there, waiting so quietly beneath the surface to erupt. My carefully saved breath comes spluttering out all at once, leaving my lungs empty, filled immediately with pain instead of air. Suddenly my feet, scrabbling and slipping against the pool bottom which is as greased glass, can find no safe place on which to stand. I can’t get my head back up. I can’t breathe.

  A pain shoots through my pelvis now, an old, familiar pain. That blade running through my innards again. I imagine the pool growing dark with freshly-spurting blood from my sides where that boy Aaron plunged the knife in. The wounds he inflicted were the cause of multiple infections. That I am unable to have children of my own has come about directly of a result of my being at the Blue Jazz café that night.

  And I was there because of her.

  There is no air, there is no air. My lungs will explode any moment now with the weight. Where is Rich who was watching me so closely? Where is Mr Huang? Where is the girl who warned us about ‘ten minutes till closing’?

  Ten minutes is long enough for someone to rob you of every chance of the life you’ve always dreamed of. It was long enough, all those years ago, for me to get between my tearful, drunken fourteen-year-old sister and her out-of-his-head boyfriend when I found them fighting that night. They were arguing outside the nightclub along Strood Esplanade, him brandishing that knife that he ‘never meant to use’. He backed us both right to the edge of the water, slicing the air with that blade. He backed us up so tight against the wall that in the end there was nothing for it but for me to turn to her and scream at her to make her own escape…

  And now – did I just pass out? I’m lying here on the wet poolside leaning over onto one side coughing up pool water and Rich is sitting there dripping beside me, rubbing my hands. Did he just pull me out of that pool? I have no recollection of that.

  ‘How could I sink in this amount of water?’ I cough. ‘I could reach the bottom with my feet for God’s sake! What am I made of, lead?’

  ‘Your heart is heavy,’ Mr Huang murmurs.

  ‘She jumped, Mr Huang.’ I look at him intently, wanting him to understand. ‘My sister jumped down into the river and she swam away. Because she could, don’t you see?’ I was the one who stayed behind to deal with the blows dealt out in frustration and anger that had been meant for her.

  ‘Her boyfriend stabbed me instead of her. I stood between them and let her get away and that’s when he stabbed me – here…’ I point to all the old wounds that Mr Huang once spent months trying to help me heal.

  ‘Are you saying that lad who attacked you soon after we started going out – that was Scarlett’s boyfriend?’ Understanding is dawning slowly on Richard’s pale face. ‘You were out picking her up?’

  I’ve never told him. We’d only just started dating when it happened. He became a regular visitor at the hospital when I was first admitted, it made us all the closer, but I hadn’t wanted to tell him the full story.

  ‘I never told you at the time because…how would it have looked, what kind of family would you have thought you were getting involved with?’ I put in now. ‘Then afterwards, there never seemed any point in dragging it all up again.’

  ‘So that’s why it had to be her,’ he marvels now. ‘Did he know who you were when he attacked you?’

  ‘Aaron only knew I was getting in his way. Who I was didn’t matter at that moment.’

  ‘You sacrificed yourself,’ Mr Huang puts in now. ‘Because you love her.’

  Rich and Mr Huang help me to my feet now.

  ‘I loved her,’ I correct him. Past tense. ‘More than all the world, I did. That’s why I went out looking for her that night when she didn’t come home. There wasn’t anyone else to do it, was there?’

  ‘So long?’ Mr Huang looks sad. ‘A heavy burden to carry, yes? This is why you sink. It is clear now, ha. And sister?’ He shuffles alongside me, looking perplexed. ‘Same sister she carry your baby for you, yes?’

  He understands now, I can see it in his eyes: why I needed her to be the one who would put it all right for me. He glances at Rich and I know he’s remembering what I told him.

  ‘She has betrayed me, Mr Huang. In the worst possible way that she could. All I feel for her now is…’I’m suddenly shivering, but whether through shock or cold or anger I cannot tell. ‘Hatred, to tell you the truth. I hate her, Mr Huang. I hate her because she made me lose my fertility. I hate her because she tried to steal away my husband.’ I glance at Rich and I can’t help but see he looks remorseful. ‘And I hate her because for all I know she’s still carrying our child and I will never, ever get to see it. Are those good enough reasons for a person to feel that way?’ I catch the sudden look that passes between him and Rich. The lifeguard has long since departed to gather a load of forms that she feels I need to fill in.

  ‘That is another heavy burden, hatred,’ Mr Huang observes. ‘Difficult to swim in pool with so much weight about your shoulders.’

  I lift my hands to my face because now the memory of Aaron’s eyes, boring into mine, won’t go away.

  ‘All these years,’ I stutter, ‘ten years – I haven’t been able to recall what he looked like.’ Aaron’s been a dark shadow that destroyed my life. Something I locked away. Now here he is, his face as fresh and living in my memory as if it happened moments ago. ‘I thought he was really going to hurt her! I thought, when I saw him waving that knife about…and I couldn’t let him do that. I wanted to keep her safe, that’s why I stepped in front of her…’ For such a very long time it has all been a blur, the sequence of events, who moved first, who said what. There was shouting and she was crying and then he pulled his knife out. ‘We were backed up against the wall, you see. I told her to jump, to get away. That’s all I could think of, that I had to help her to get away.’ She was just a child after all. My little sister.

  I gulp, because it’s all coming back. Aaron’s eyes; a kaleidoscope of emotions unfolds before me – frustration, scorn, anger. ‘Get out of here, you stupid bitch, this is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘He didn’t want to hurt you perhaps?’ Mr Huang suggests. I didn’t realise I had spoken the words out loud, but I must have. ‘You weren’t involved.’

  ‘My God, I thought I would lose her! I thought Aaron was going to kill her. How could I let that happen? If I lost her, how could I ever live with myself again?’

  She was my beautiful Lettie, turning into an adolescent pain in the neck, maybe, but still my Lettie. For a moment that night, I got a flash of what my life might have been like if I had to live the rest of it without her. It hadn’t been something I’d been prepared to risk.

  ‘I knew in that moment, it was either her or me,’ I tell them both now. ‘I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.’

  Scarlett
hesitated so long on the wall, she hadn’t wanted to leave me. In the end I threatened to push her over. I knew she’d be OK. She’d be able to get away.

  ‘You chose her safety over your own,’ he affirms.

  ‘I am not a violent person, Mr Huang, but in that moment -if I’d had to turn that knife back on him in order to save her, I would have done.’ Rich places the soft white towel he’s been holding around my shoulders now. I pull up the end of it to dry my face, to dab at the chlorine that’s stinging my eyes.

  He never meant to do it, Aaron said afterwards, he was stoned, didn’t know what he was doing.

  ‘He did time in prison for it, I know.’ I look up at my two supporters now, my throat aching. ‘But I have done so much more time than he has, haven’t I? The legacy of what he did that night is going to last me a lifetime. He’s still here, still in my head, in the wounds he inflicted; he’s never going to go away.’ Rich puts his arms around my shoulders. For a split second I see Aaron’s face in the darkness again, shocked and stunned at his own actions before I fell back, into the water.

  ‘But maybe,’ Mr Huang says softly, ‘this man remind you of how much you love sister too?’

  I stare at my old friend, open-mouthed. ‘That…that’s not true! Nothing he did has had any good come out of it, Mr Huang. I don’t accept that, not at all. I don’t know why he’s come back into my head right now, but I’m going to push him out again, that’s for sure.’

  Then it hits me.

  The energy blocks, is this what he has been on about all this time? I’d blocked out Aaron. Now he is back.

  ‘But surely – he remind you of how much it hurts to lose her,’ Mr Huang points out and I frown furiously at him for doing so. I look down at the puddle of cold water at my feet and I’m still shivering but I can’t help the feeling that maybe he’s right? Aaron has reminded me of how desperate I was not to lose her. And now I’ve gone and sent her away forever, all by myself.

  It’s strange, but for some reason I just don’t feel so angry any more. I want to. I feel I ought to, but I can’t. The fury that I’ve felt towards her for so many days now has just gone. I still feel sad at the way things have turned out between us but I can’t feel angry any longer.

  I wonder if…if I will be able to go in, now. If I will be able to start to learn to swim? Because the blackness that was the memory of Aaron isn’t waiting in the water any more. I can feel it.

  The girl who’s gone off to find the ‘incident forms’ hasn’t come back yet. Rich is still here though, his eyes looking sadder but calmer than I’ve seen them for a long while. At least now he understands.

  And the pool is open, calm as a pond on a summer’s morning, still waiting for me.

  Scarlett

  ‘So you got the herbs?’ Emoto’s voice is rendered both muffled and echoey by the heavy mist lying over the swollen riverbank this morning. He’s come up behind me and is looking over my shoulder at the little herb pouches I’ve been contemplating for the last two hours.

  ‘Yep. These are the herbs Tunga gave me last night,’ I confirm. The powders that are going to make me a free woman again; free to do what I can to help what remains of Tunga’s people. The powders – I shiver – that are going to put an end to Hollie’s baby.

  But I have a commitment to others here too. Tunga only came back because Barry told him I had returned. The rest of the tribe were due to follow, arriving here by dawn. They’ve come because they still believe I can help save their land.

  ‘I’ve got to mix these powders together and take them all in one go dissolved in water.’ We both glance at my little tin cup which I’ve perched on the rock beside me. It’s got about two inches of rainwater in it at the moment and more is collecting every second.

  ‘Just waiting for the cup to fill up, eh?’ Emoto smiles kindly. ‘Waiting till my cup runneth over…’ I can’t quite bring my eyes to smile back at him. He knows what’s at stake here. I don’t want to do this.

  ‘Barry has warned he expects the river to burst its banks some time today.’ Emoto stands up suddenly. Shielding his eyes from the rain, he uses the vantage point of the rock to peer a little further down the river to the ramshackle bridge. ‘I don’t want to rush you, but…he reckons there’s a high chance the bridge is going to be swept away too. We have to get the jeep over before it won’t take the weight any more. He sent me to tell you.’

  ‘We’re leaving?’ I look up at him, feeling a stab of desperation. I’ve been sitting on this rock for so long waiting to…just bring myself to the point where I was ready to do it. I thought I’d made my decision. Why can’t I just do it?

  ‘Yes, we’re leaving.’

  ‘I can’t…I can’t go yet, Emoto. I’m not ready.’

  ‘Scarlett.’ He sits down beside me on the rock. His Kangol anorak is pouring with water, his face is dripping wet. ‘Look.’ He takes my chin and guides my gaze back in the direction of the hissing and bubbling river, swollen to enormous and angry proportions by the rain. Barry is right. It is going to break its banks. A few metres down we can hear the creak and distress of the wooden bridge, groaning with the weight of water rushing past it.

  ‘It reminds me of home,’ I say softly. ‘Was it ever as bad as this?’

  ‘No,’ I laugh, despite myself. ‘But it reminds me of when I used to sit on the coal bunker and watch the river for hours as it hurtled by.’ Something…wild would get into me then. The feeling that I was like the water, that I owed my allegiance to no one and no place. ‘I’d get a feeling of such power, watching it. The feeling that I could never be tied down to anything, that nobody could ever hold me back. Have you ever felt like that?’ I glance up at him, but his face is inscrutable.

  ‘This child could hold you back,’ he reminds me and I catch my breath at his words.

  ‘I’ve got to…’ I open up the palm-leaf pouches slowly, ‘mix these two up together.’ Emoto makes no move to help me. The rain runs down his flat forehead, drips off the bridge of his nose. He just sits there in silence, watching me.

  ‘Do you think I’m doing the right thing, Emoto?’ I shoot him a sidelong glance as I tip the first pouch of herbs into the cup. ‘Or do you think that it’s wrong to take a life? I used to think so. The funny thing is – this baby I’m carrying – it would inconvenience my life in every way imaginable; it would ruin any hope of help from Gui, any chance of a life with him. And yet, deep in my heart, I still don’t want to do this…’

  Emoto doesn’t say a word.

  ‘She hates me, you know. My sister. She hates me with a vengeance, now. She should, too. I’ve ruined her life, really. I dangled all her hopes in front of her like carrots and then threw them away. I’ve betrayed her at every turn. Even now, doing this. It’s all for a good cause, but it’s the greatest betrayal of all…’

  I pick up the little tin cup and swirl it around, waiting for the powders to dissolve. I’ve hardly got enough water in the cup. It’s ridiculous; the sky is full of water; the river is full of water; my heart is full of tears; and yet there is hardly any water in this cup!

  ‘What do you want, Scarlett?’

  What do I want?

  What does it matter any more, what I want? I can have it all anyway, now, can’t I? I will. Any dress. Any car. Any home. The love and devotion of a good man. The protection of a powerful family. What else is there? I look at him dully.

  ‘What do you want?’ Emoto repeats. He kneels down beside me and takes the cup from me, placing it back on the rock. He takes my hands. ‘Is it the Klausmann? What you offered me? The validation of your peers and profession?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. Not any more. I did want that. But not any more.’ What do I want? ‘There’s something I thought – I almost had, once. But it slipped through my fingers.’ I turn my face skywards and let the cool rain patter down onto my skin. It runs into my eyes and down my neck and trickles down under my T-shirt…

  I remember how it rained around four o’clock every day that Augu
st. The weather had got into a funny kind of loop, doing the same thing over and over. Like me; I’d stand by the cracked window in the disused cow shed beside the vet’s office and live for the moment when I’d spy Richard hurrying up the road, his collar upturned, rain pouring down his cheeks. If he missed a day I’d be gutted. It felt like a whole day wasted.

  Ruffles rallied; the vet told me my dog wouldn’t have to be put down but we still didn’t know if they’d manage to save both his legs. I hung about a lot. It was only the thought of Richard’s visits that made my life bearable at that point.

  And he was so shy! I never understood how someone so handsome could be so shy around women. He’d create a real flurry of interest around the nurses every time he came in, I knew ’cos I could hear them wittering away from my hideout in the shed next door. But he never stayed talking to them. He came to check out how me and Ruff were doing, that was all. And he knew exactly where he’d find me.

  ‘Love, Emoto. Once, I thought I knew what it was to truly, deeply, love someone. Have you ever been in love?’

  Emoto smiles but does not reply.

  ‘That feeling that – you’re so filled up with the other person that at that moment you’d do anything, give anything, to be with them?’

  ‘Do you feel that way about Guillermo Almeira?’ He shoots me a sideways look.

  I pause. I thought I might love Gui; that maybe I could come to love Gui. This past week we’ve spent together has been so good in many ways and yet…The truth is, if I live the rest of my life out with him it would be a compromise, nothing else.