My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  Moments later my father stands, more composed than before, though his head still hangs low. He steps up to the lectern and a chill passes over me, radiating from the bare stone walls. I realise that he is about to read a eulogy, and the very idea of it draws me like a moth to a flame.

  ‘I would like to thank you all for coming here today to celebrate my beloved Cassandra’s life.’ Only now does he look up and glance at those of us packed inside the small church. He avoids me, which convinces me that he knows where I am. ‘Cassandra’s life was cut shorter than we would have hoped, taken from her by a terrible disease. Many of you here have watched as she battled cancer, and many of you supported us and helped. I thank you all for being there when we needed you, now, during her disease, and in times past.’

  The crying intensifies around the church. Gentle sobs turn into proper tears. Handbags rustle and noses are blown. I am composed and calm, the antithesis to my sister, who is wailing, and who for the first time I can absolve of any guilt. It was cancer that killed her. Just another average death, in another average family. Because I think I am starting to ascertain that that is exactly what we are.

  ‘But I do not wish to dwell on such times,’ my father continues. ‘It is not how I want to remember my wife, my friend. My partner. I choose to remember her as the fair-haired girl of seventeen who complimented me on my bicycle and asked me to take her for a ride. I will remember her as a keen painter and collector of antiques.’ I think of the faded butterflies and know, just know, that they are hers. Painted for me. ‘How she used to drag me out into the surrounding hills whatever the weather. Our happiest times were in youth, when our family was young, when our memories were fresh.’

  And then he glances at me. I see the tiniest flicker of his eyes, like the glint of a distant planet in a dark night sky. But it disappears as soon as I look at him. I think Joyce notices it too, because I am sure that she clutches my arm a bit tighter at that moment.

  ‘I am sure many of you can attest to Cassandra’s generous soul. She was always there to help when a friend or stranger was in need. She was a woman who would sacrifice her time for the sake of another. A wonderful wife who loved to cook, and who never tired of making me laugh.’ By this point I can hardly stand to listen to the fairy tale. The eulogy; a version of the truth with all the ugly details scratched out. It’s me Photoshopped, so that I have no scars and my bones are perfectly aligned. He pauses to wipe his eyes, and somebody dashes to offer him a tissue. They hang around supportively at his side, but he reassures them he is all right to continue, and they return to the second row. He clears his throat.

  ‘Cassandra was a selfless mother, always doing what she thought was best for her child.’ A rumble of interest whips through the crowd, and I’m sure a few heads turn my way. Do they recognise me after all? Again my father looks to me. For certain this time. Joyce seems bothered by this last comment, and her grip on my arm keeps strengthening. Maybe she thinks I am a flight risk. But I’m not going anywhere, because the thought that he can describe her as a selfless mother while looking at me has to mean something. Why did he want to see me alone? What couldn’t he tell me while Elle was there? What truth is he still hiding? More than ever I think my mother loved me, wanted me, and did what she did believing it was for the best. He is telling me that they had no choice, that it hurt her too. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to say it, not with me here. Perhaps I can learn to mourn. Perhaps I will be comforted and find peace.

  A little while later, we disperse from the church. I hang back from the crowd, not wanting to get too close as they lower the coffin. While the diggers shovel soil into the grave, the crowd buzzes around my father offering good wishes and kind words. I stay hidden behind a large gravestone, from where I keep an eye on Elle. Miss Endicott is close by; she must have been quick out of the church, one of the first. She appears awkward, lingering behind the wall of the porch in the same way I hide behind the gravestone. Soon she begins hurrying away, making her way across the road to either the school or her house.

  Joyce mutters something under her breath as she watches the schoolmistress leave. I don’t quite catch what it is. ‘What did you say?’ I ask. ‘I didn’t hear.’

  ‘Never mind, Irini. Nothing important.’

  My detachment from the crowd is noticed by more than a few inquisitive eyes, and I see people whispering to each other while casting sneaky glances over their shoulders. It is quite obvious to me now that they know who I am: the lost child, returned. It makes me feel like an intruder. But Elle soon starts rounding them up, ushering them in the direction of the Enchanted Swan, her behaviour bordering on inappropriately cheerful. Nevertheless, I am grateful, because as she directs the crowd, she doesn’t spot me in my hiding place. And soon enough, with the exception of a few unknown faces hovering in the graveyard, perhaps visiting their own relatives, I notice that my father is alone. After reassuring Joyce that I am going for a walk to catch my breath, I make my approach.

  ‘We have nothing to say to each other,’ he says, before I have even got within an arm’s length. He is steadying himself with the help of the wall that bounds the church, standing next to a small gravestone. The wall is supposed to keep the nearby sheep out, yet now it keeps him from running away. He will listen to me. He has to. ‘You heard everything I had to say in there.’

  I take another step forward, not wanting to let him off the hook. Doesn’t the fact that I have just attended my mother’s funeral mean anything to him? I have recovered from our previous meeting, and know that now is my chance, whether he wants it or not. Elle isn’t here, and he is broken. This is as strong as I’m ever going to feel.

  He turns slightly, taking all of me in. He brings his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, casting his face in shadow. The weather is glorious, an unexpected late summer’s day. I cannot see his eyes, but I can feel them upon me. After only a few seconds he shifts, angles his head to the distant hills where Cassandra used to drag him out whatever the weather. ‘Elle is right,’ he says softly. ‘You look so much like her.’

  I take a breath. ‘There is only one thing I want to ask,’ I say. ‘Then I will leave, and I promise I will never bother you again. I know that’s what you want.’ He looks hesitant, so I add, ‘I think you owe me that.’

  ‘I don’t owe you anything,’ he says. ‘I gave you every last shred of my soul many years ago. I have nothing left to offer. I can’t talk about this today. Not now. Not to you.’

  ‘Please.’

  He takes a breath, clutches the wall. ‘Just ask me what it is you want to know.’

  ‘When Elle said that she always wanted me here – my mother, I mean – was it the truth?’

  He looks back out to the hills, catches sight of a blackbird circling ahead, follows it as it settles on the pile of earth covering the freshly dug grave. It pulls out a worm and makes off with it. We both watch as it flies away. I look back to my father, who is nodding his head.

  ‘Then why did you tell me that I shouldn’t have come? Even now, to her funeral. If she regretted what she did,’ I say as I edge closer, ‘if she regretted giving me away, it would have been good for me to know that. It would have made me feel less worthless throughout my life.’ I am crying again, but I do not try to stop it this time.

  ‘You are not,’ he says in the softest voice anybody has ever used with me, ‘and never were worthless, Rini.’ My crying intensifies when he shortens my name, teardrops falling like rain to the ground. He looks at my flushed face. I see a flicker in the muscles of his hand, and for a moment I think he is about to reach up and wipe away my tears. I am close enough, and I wouldn’t stop him, even though I now know that he must have been the one who forced my departure. The flicker amounts to nothing as he sets his hands on his hips. ‘You were and still are worth everything. That’s why, for you, I was prepared to pay with everything I had.’

  ‘So why would you tell me that I shouldn’t be here? Surely I deserve a chance to say goodbye, properly t
his time.’

  He draws a long breath in before saying, ‘Because you open up old wounds, Rini. For me and your sister. Wounds that will never heal.’ He takes a step closer and again I think he is about to touch me, his lips parting; perhaps a kiss, a final goodbye as we both stick to the deal that was made all those years ago on my behalf. But again he stops himself. ‘I don’t wish you harm. Quite the opposite, in fact.’ He looks to the pub, nervous, and then back to me. ‘But you should leave. Leave now while you are still able to get away from us. You’ll see it’s for the best. Now that she thinks she knows the truth, she will leave you alone.’ He just about manages a smile. ‘There is nothing left for you here.’

  16

  So it’s true. My father has confirmed my darkest fears. I should accept that I don’t belong here, go. But it’s a hard concept to face, the idea of having nothing. Of truly being alone.

  When Elle burst back into my life with her attack on Robert Kneel, I wanted so much to be around her. She saved me that day, made me feel that we were a team. Her sporadic input into my life made me feel better about myself. Her presence gave me a position in the world, in the beginning at least. It didn’t matter that I had no friends at school, or that they called me names. Even that became little more than whispers behind my back after the attack on Robert Kneel. Now it was a risk to ridicule me. You might lose one of your balls if you pissed me off. I marvelled at the way Elle’s presence gave me power, but I didn’t realise that Elle felt the same about me. I didn’t understand that I was her pawn, a game piece that she could toy with, manipulate. But I would learn soon enough.

  We used to meet regularly, Elle and I. When I suggested I spend my Saturday mornings at the library, Aunt Jemima thought that I wanted to improve at school. She was cautiously impressed. But she also knew Elle was back in the picture. I’d heard her talking about it on the phone with my father after the school questioned me about the attack on Robert Kneel. Keep that bitch away from us, she had told him. So she only agreed to the idea of the library if she could take me and pick me up. But it was easy enough to slip through the fire exit at the back, where Elle would be waiting.

  Every Saturday we got two hours together. At first it seemed that Elle wanted to test the water with me, so the first few meetings were pretty safe. Nothing too rash: spitting on the pavement, smoking cigarettes, scrawling the names of my teachers on toilet walls, with telephone numbers for fake chat lines. She would plant some hair in her burger and complain to the staff. It was nothing to be pleased about really, because we had to give up the best part of one meal to get a replacement. But it was the principle of it, and we got to keep the chips. What she wanted was for me to see that she was in control. That she got what she wanted. That she could make people do things.

  The graffiti grew more enthusiastic. I made sure to find excuses when it came to bridges and bodies of water, but otherwise you could see our handiwork across the city. The cigarettes turned to weed, and she taught me how to skin a joint while we sheltered from the rain in a bus shelter. The disgusted looks from passers-by made it even more appealing. But we were always limited by our two-hour time frame and we were both sensible enough to realise that intoxication levels had to be minimised if we wanted to keep our meetings a secret. She told me that I had to earn my aunt’s trust. She told me that I had to earn hers, too.

  The first time she made me wait outside a shop alone, I knew it was a test. She was gone for what felt like hours, and all I could think was that Aunt Jemima was probably in town killing her two hours of waiting time and might see me at any moment. I was trying to hide as best I could, blending into the crowd, dipping back and forth to check the Balmoral Hotel clock tower on Princes Street, when suddenly Elle appeared, strutting down the hill with a grin splashed across her face. She didn’t stop walking as she gripped my arm and led me forward.

  ‘Keep walking, don’t look back,’ she said. I did as I was told.

  She ploughed on, dragging me along as I hurried to keep up with her confident strides. We walked in the shadow of the Scott Monument to our left and Edinburgh Castle to the right. We dropped down to the lowest level of Princes Street Gardens until the sound of the departing trains could be heard in Waverley railway station. She pulled me to the grass and we sat under the shady canopy of a large oak tree, where, like a magician, she began pulling a bright orange cloth out from up her sleeve.

  ‘You did good. It was easy this time. Here,’ she said, shoving the material at me. ‘This is for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. I held it up and it dropped into shape: a vest.

  ‘I got it for you,’ she said, and winked at me. The idea of her buying it flashed through my mind, but I knew that was wrong. I knew from the smile, the cheeky little wink. She got it for me. Stole it for me.

  I ran my fingers across the ribbed-knit vest, which was exactly the one I wanted, cut high to show my midriff. That was cool in 1996, and I wanted to be cool. But the spark of gratitude was short-lived, replaced instead by the realisation as I fiddled with the security tag that for the first time in our joint history I was actively involved in something bad. The Robert Kneel incident wasn’t my idea. I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t feel responsible. But I had complained only half an hour ago that Aunt Jemima only ever gave me hand-me-down clothes. I had complained that I wanted something new. This was my fault. Elle was a thief because of me.

  I didn’t say anything, though, and instead I snuck back into the library with the vest in my bag. Elle had managed to get the tag off with a minimal amount of effort. I was sure everybody knew it was there. Aunt Jemima picked me up, and when she asked, I told her that I had been reading about Shakespeare. She asked me which play, perhaps as a test, so I said Othello, because I had seen the 1995 version with Laurence Fishburne a few months before and remembered roughly what it was about. She seemed impressed, and when we got home she offered to make me a hot chocolate because there was a chill out. Instead I went upstairs, hid the vest in my cousin’s drawer. I saw her wearing it under a tartan check shirt only a month later. Nobody questioned where it was from.

  After that temporary moment of shame, I got quite used to Elle’s thievery. It came in handy when I wanted something new, or if I just liked the look of something. It was easy to turn a blind eye, and most weekends she would turn up with something for me, or steal it while we were together. She took great pride in getting me what I wanted. Sometimes she even stole stuff that neither of us wanted. We just dumped those things in a bin later on, laughing about how unstoppable we were. One time she stole a man’s scarf, and when I suggested she give it to a homeless person in one of the bus shelters, she hugged me and said I had a sweet heart. I felt proud about that, especially the way she looked at me, like I had done something good.

  So when Elle told me that it would be her birthday the following week, I knew there was only one option. I didn’t get a pocket-money allowance, so it was time to be brave. I fished around for ideas about what she would like, but she gave very little away. I sneaked out from school one day, went into town. It wasn’t even that hard. I waltzed into Elle’s favourite shop and lifted a massive pair of gold hoop earrings and an A-line denim skirt with buttons running up the front. She would love me for these things. She would see how much I wanted her to stick around. The morality of the theft didn’t even register.

  I met her out the back of the library the following Saturday and told her that I had a surprise for her. She seemed so excited, so I built it up a little on our way to the nearest McDonald’s, saying it was for her birthday and that I hoped she’d like her gift. Her surprise. She laughed along at my side, hugging me, holding my hand, saying how great it was that I had bought her a gift. She wanted to know where I got the money. What did Aunt Jemima say? Did I think they might let her come and visit? I was too naive to see that her eagerness was bordering on mania. By the time we reached our seats with the burgers on our trays, she was uncontrollable, pawing at me, desperate to find out what it
was.

  I was all of a fluster when I finally gave it to her, my cheeks flushed from the embarrassment of putting myself in the line of her judgement. But she loved it. She put the earrings straight in, waggled them about with her finger and shook her head so that they slapped against her cheeks. She stood up and wrapped the skirt over her baggy jeans and said it was perfect. It was too big for sure, but it didn’t matter to her and so it didn’t matter to me. She reached over, hugged me, drew me in to her. My heart nearly stopped it felt so good.

  ‘What did you tell them the money was for?’ she asked.

  And there was my moment. It was what I’d been waiting for, the chance to admit what I had done. For her. That I was like her. That we were the same. I smiled, winked just like she had when she first gave me that orange vest.

  ‘I got it for you,’ I said.

  ‘You stole it?’ she asked. I smiled collusively and bit into my burger. With that she grabbed my arm and shoved me backwards, the burger falling apart in my lap. ‘You stole it?’ she asked again as my head cracked against the mirror behind me. I heard it shatter. ‘You don’t. Fucking. Steal,’ she spat. She sat back, letting my arm go.

  I was so stunned, I didn’t move for a second or two. A few other people noticed the scene, and watched as she ripped off the earrings. One came out all right, but the clasp on the second got stuck and she tore her ear lobe in the process. Blood dribbled down her finger when she touched it. She took a bite of her burger before licking the blood from her hand.