Wrath of the Sister

by Shannon Heuston

  WRATH OF THE SISTER

  By Shannon Heuston

  CHAPTER ONE

  My fingers closed over the cold steel blade of the knife in my pocket as I huddled beneath the rotting planks of the old shed. The sun had risen, illuminating the icy splendor of the world around me, but giving no warmth. My heart thudded against my ribcage.

  I heard the crunch of footsteps on the frozen snow. I held my breath.

  “Melody,” she called, her voice clear in the crisp air, “come out. You don’t have to hide. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m your sister.” She giggled.

  Those were the wrong words to say. I stayed put, my hand wrapped around the knife.

  It began with Agnes Ripple, and she would have liked it to end with her. She died in the kitchen gasping for air, her eyes beseeching me for help. Despite everything, I would have given my life to save her. She did not deserve my loyalty.

  Agnes gave birth to her golden child first, and therefore whoever came second could never quite measure up. Certainly not me. I should have been a boy. Maybe that would have evened the playing field. Instead, I was a dim second to the ethereal Laurel, slender, blonde, blue eyed, intelligent, mature, thoughtful, and well-liked.

  I made a sad contrast, with my mud colored hair and intense, emo disposition long before it became trendy, a disappointment before I could talk. With Agnes, it could be no other way.

  My first memory was of reaching for a cookie and getting slapped. “You can’t have a cookie, you’re too fat!” Agnes screeched. I was three years old.

  I knew Agnes hated me before I even understood what that meant. To a small child, it means tensing up when she cuddled me, knowing the hand stroking my hair could clamp down and yank. Hiding when I heard a certain tone in her voice, because I knew no matter what frustrated her, she would vent it on me. Shrinking when she praised Laurel, then ended with, “Well, at least we got lucky once. Couldn’t ask for more than that, I guess.” Sigh.

  I could never understand what I was doing wrong, other than everything. “Listening to the sound of her squeaky voice gives me a headache,” she complained to Greg, our father.

  He took me into the bedroom, sat me down on the bed, looked me in the eyes, and said, “You need to learn to be quiet. You need to learn not to make her mad.”

  Not make her mad? Impossible. Everything made her mad.

  I tried to hide in my room. I lay on the floor coloring, a quiet activity. Agnes came to check on me, lounging in the doorway. “Just look at you,” she spat. “I don’t know where I got you from.”

  I stared at myself in the mirror. I didn’t know where she got me from either. The only trait we shared was our blue eyes. Every other characteristic came from my father, down to my square chin that was attractive on a man, not so much on a woman.

  “They must have given me the wrong baby at the hospital,” she sighed.

  For a long time, I feared that strangers would come to take me away.

  I developed an obsession with hands. I hated Agnes’s hands, always reaching for me. Scrubbing chocolate off my chin so hard it left marks. Brushing my hair and yanking when the brush hit a tangle.

  I eyed my teacher’s slender white palms as she gesticulated during the lesson, imagining them lifting to punish me. I stared at my aunt’s hands on the steering wheel of her car as she sang along with the radio, picturing them clenched into fists poised to strike me. Then there were Laurel’s hands, smooth with perfectly shaped oval nails, painted shell pink. She and Agnes tried to paint mine, too, but I bit them, so they looked bloody.

  Hands were weapons, just as effective at ending a life as a knife or a gun.

  My world was a scary place. I existed in varying degrees of terror, on hyper alert, always waiting for hands to descend on my trembling body, hands intent on hurting me.

  I wished for death long before I was old enough to understand what it meant. All I knew was it would take me away from the treacherous hands of the people around me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I was unprepared for the strength of my grief after my mother’s death. Maybe it was because there were two Agnes Ripples. The first Agnes was my mother, a woman who loved me fiercely. She would defend me against the devil himself. This Agnes criticized, but it was for my benefit. Or so she thought. At least her heart was in the right place.

  Then there was the second Agnes. The one who punched, hit, pulled my hair, wrapped her hands around my throat and squeezed. No one in the Ripple family acknowledged the existence of this Agnes. She blew through the house in a temper, scattering family members as she bore down on her favorite target, me. I buried her beatings along with her rage filled screeches beneath a level of denial so thick I would feel a lump on my face a day or so later and wonder how it happened. Did I bang my head? Was I stung by a bee?

  I grew up in the era of the ABC Afterschool Special. Occasionally the network interrupted their scheduled broadcasting (soap operas) to present an hour-long show about teenagers struggling with drugs, sex, and discovering themselves on milk cartons because their divorced mother kidnapped them from their father. (An actual episode). Many of the storylines dealt with child abuse and alcoholism, which went hand-in-hand in every household except mine.

  I envied those children emptying their mother’s bottles of booze into the sink, because at least they knew why she abused them. She couldn’t help it. She had an illness. It was no one’s fault. It was the alcohol.

  Agnes never touched a single drop of the stuff. “Makes me sick,” she declared whenever anyone offered her a drink. “I must be allergic or something.”

  If alcohol wasn’t making her hurt me, then it was my fault. There was something wrong with me. I was evil and unworthy. There was no other explanation. After all, she doted on Laurel.

  “Laurel picks up after herself,” Agnes would say, folding her arms to survey my messy room. “Laurel is mature and responsible. I don’t understand why you can’t be more like Laurel.”

  Because Laurel is six years older than I am! I bit back my retorts, because my Dad claimed it was my mouth that made me a target.

  “You’ve always got something to say,” he stated, shaking his head. “Just get out of her way and let her yell herself out. Laurel and I are smart enough to figure that out. Why aren’t you?”

  The two-story Ripple house was a prison I couldn’t escape. Once I came close. I lasted three semesters at SUNY Albany. I planned to board a train and ride as far away from my family as possible after I graduated. I looked forward to the day the Ripples would fade into the past, just a horrible childhood memory I told my kids.

  Then my father had a stroke, and Agnes summoned me home. “I can’t pay the bills and take care of your father all by myself.”

  That was my mother. She turned requests into complaints. She was a master manipulator, a trait she passed onto Laurel. She infused everything she asked for with a guilt trip, making it impossible to refuse. At least for me.

  I was the only one who could help her, because Laurel was married and had a six-month old son, Caleb. She was already pregnant again, so she couldn’t care for my father. Conveniently. Knowing Laurel, it was believable she’d gotten pregnant just to avoid it. That was the sort of person she was.

  The plan was for me to return home and take classes at Westchester Community College until everything was resolved. I could transfer the credits when I returned to SUNY Albany. But I knew that wouldn’t happen even as I packed my dorm room. I was done with school, and its freedom. It was back to the two story prison I called home, this time for good.

  It was the height of irony that my self-centered family somehow produced a daughter who could not leave them in a lurch.

  My father died six months later. I
could have returned to SUNY Albany. I only missed one semester. I had a whole other life waiting there, including my first boyfriend. But I never went back, for reasons I could never understand. I was a bird who wouldn’t fly out of the cage despite the open door.

  I stayed with Agnes, in the pleasant two story raised ranch that had become my prison.

  The years passed. I dated occasionally, mainly men I met through Match and POF and OK Cupid. Those relationships went nowhere, because I couldn’t bring myself to leave Agnes. It didn’t matter that she abused me when I was a child. I couldn’t hurt the woman who hurt me. I loved her, although I’d never admit it. She needed me.

  Meanwhile, my sister had a second son, Nathan. She and her husband, George, lived with his mother in a spacious mansion in New Canaan. All their expenses were paid. They viewed themselves as wealthy, although none of the money was theirs.

  Laurel worked as an interior designer, and because her mother-in-law covered most of her expenses, she spent her salary like a teenager working their first job, indulging her family’s every whim without saving a dime. Every summer they spent two weeks at an expensive resort in Montauk. Their rooms were right on the beach. I nearly fainted when I heard the price tag. Two thousand dollars a night! My sister and brother-in-law spent the equivalent of a down payment on a house for a vacation. The way they wasted money nauseated me.

  Therefore, it was no surprise when Laurel wound up heavily in debt. “I will never pay these credit cards off, not ever!” she wailed to Agnes, her mascara smeared from her tears. “I owe more than I could ever earn!”

  I couldn’t keep quiet. “How about not spending what some people earn in a year on a two-vacation, or not throwing birthday parties that cost as much as a wedding, or buying clothes for the kids at Wal-Mart instead of Bambini Fashion?”

  “Hush!” Agnes hissed.

  Laurel swiped a hand across her eyes, smearing her mascara further. “Shut up,” she told me. “You’re always so judgmental. It’s why no one likes you.”

  I shrugged. “It’s just a suggestion,” I said. To me it was common sense. You could go on vacation and rent a cheap motel room. You weren’t going to spend much time in it anyway. Kids didn’t want catered birthday parties at costly venues, that was just to show off to parents. And they grew out of sizes too fast to drop serious money on clothes.

  “You don’t understand. You would if you had kids. You gotta do these things nowadays. It’s not like it was when we were growing up. The stakes are a lot higher. Take birthday parties. You have to hire a caterer and have it at a nice place. It’s not just a kid’s party, it’s networking, making the right connections for your kids. Part of giving them a good start in life.”

  I felt sad for my nephews. Watching some asshole juggle soda bottles was nowhere near as fun as playing games rewarded with dollar store prizes. And there was something obscene about trying to make connections for a seven year old’s future. What happened to letting children be children?

  “I’ll help you,” Agnes assured her. “Don’t cry.”

  Laurel’s tears stopped like someone turned off a faucet. She narrowed her red-rimmed eyes, calculating. “How?” she asked Agnes. “How are you going to help?”

  I thought of that moment often over the ensuing years, the first time Laurel allowed her real self to shine through the mask.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Agnes helped Laurel by declaring her half owner of the raised ranch I’d lived in all my life, then promptly mortgaging it for four hundred thousand dollars. She gave Laurel half. Two hundred thousand dollars was enough to pay off her credit cards and give her a little nest egg. In return, she was supposed to pay half the mortgage payment each month. Which she never did. Not a single time.

  Laurel burned through all her funds then began charging up her credit cards again.

  “What the fuck is wrong with her?” Agnes asked. “When is she going to learn?”

  I was stuck paying my sister’s half of the mortgage. I had no choice; we’d lose the house otherwise. “There’s nothing I can do, your sister put me in a bind,” Agnes moaned.

  Laurel remained her favorite. I gritted my teeth when I overheard her on the phone with one of her friends. “Laurel is the classiest, best behaved girl you’ll ever meet,” my mother gushed. “She never swears. She always offers to help. The other one gives an attitude whenever she’s asked to do anything around here.”

  I rolled my eyes. Agnes made it sound like she rarely made requests, when she was demanding. My father did all her errands for her, going to the bank, the post office, and the supermarket. Now that he was dead, she balked at the prospect of having to wait on a checkout line or pick up the mail. She tried to make me do it instead.

  “I can’t do everything for you, I work!” I complained.

  The maddening thing was, I could do all Agnes’s errands for weeks, but if I complained once, then I was difficult and wouldn’t help. Meanwhile, Laurel appeared once every three months to take my mother to lunch, but she was an angel.

  I knew the score after so many years. Laurel was the golden child, and I was the black sheep. There was no pleasing Agnes and there never would be, yet I devoted my life to her. My behavior made no sense. The Ripple family might be a noose around my neck, but I voluntarily placed my head there.

  Agnes and I had a vicious fight about her giving the house to Laurel. “Laurel isn’t the one stuck paying the mortgage and the bills,” I said. “It’s not fair.”

  I still retained a naïve belief that the world should be fair.

  “Laurel knows this house is to be split down the middle upon my death,” Agnes assured me. “You’ll each get half. I don’t need a will. I trust her to do the right thing. Don’t you?”

  I crossed my arms and said nothing. I didn’t trust Laurel, but I wasn’t going to admit it to our mother.

  “Well, don’t you?” Agnes pressed.

  “I think money does strange things to people,” I said.

  Laurel’s carefree life came to a halt when her mother-in-law died and left the mansion in Connecticut to all seven of her children, not just George.

  “I don’t want to move out of New Canaan, because the boys are in school there,” she moaned. “But the rents for two and three-bedroom apartments are through the roof. I don’t know how I will afford it.”

  Then George filed for divorce. The marriage had been over for years, yet they remained together for the sake of the children. But after George heard Laurel could be entitled to half his share of the inheritance, he went straight to the courthouse, kids be damned.

  Laurel still used the Ripple house as her primary address, so I was present when the divorce papers arrived. I watched as she flipped through the documents and signed every place George’s attorney had marked with an x.

  “Don’t you think you should read it first?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine signing a legally binding contract without scrutinizing it.

  Laurel rolled her eyes condescendingly. “I know what it says,” she said. “And George told me if I sign it without giving him a problem, he’ll give me ten thousand dollars when his mother’s house sells.”

  “Laurel, George isn’t going to give you anything.” My sister was hopelessly naïve. George divorced her so he wouldn’t have to share. He wasn’t going to part with so much as a dime.

  She gazed at me with wide-eyed innocence. “I think he’ll do it,” she said. “I think he’ll do the right thing.”

  “Okay,” I said, and dropped it. Although I couldn’t help wondering where Laurel got off thinking she deserved any of that money anyway. She lived in her mother-in-law’s house rent free for over ten years. Wasn’t that enough? Why did Laurel believe she should get more?

  Just as I predicted, George refused to give Laurel a single cent. “Can you believe it?” she wailed. “How can someone be so cold?”

  I stared at her thinking, how could we be from the same family? Never in a million years would I have expected to receive money
from someone else’s inheritance.

  It hit me then. Laurel had a sense of entitlement. She thought we all owed her. I had a sneaking suspicion this attitude would cause major problems.

  “Your sister keeps borrowing money from me,” Agnes complained a short time later. “She always says Ma can I borrow but I know she really means Ma can I have. She never pays me back, and now she’s pushing for me to re-mortgage the house because Caleb wants to go to some expensive college. I can’t afford it, but she’s insisting. I’m sick of her shit. We’re going to lose the house because of her.”

  I didn’t say I told you so. I just listened as she ran down her favorite daughter, figuring she had to be saying worse about me. Agnes was a complainer. It was her hobby. Other people knitted, or rode bikes, or went birdwatching. My mother was devoted to coming up with new and improved complaints.

  Agnes’s body wasn’t even cold when Laurel announced, “We’re selling the house.”

  We were sitting in the living room. I was shell-shocked, replaying the events of the morning on constant rewind. Agnes’s voice calling me out of my dreams. Watching her struggle to breathe in the kitchen, her eyes huge and panicky. Finally, forcing my mother’s head back to push my own fetid morning breath down her throat, knowing I probably wasn’t performing CPR correctly, but doing something was better than nothing.

  This should have been a private family moment. Instead, John, my sister’s irritating boyfriend, insisted on being present to offer his unsolicited opinions. As usual.

  The only thing Agnes and I agreed on was that Laurel had horrible taste in men. John was a prime example. He looked like a crackhead, thin to the point of emaciation.

  “He’s one of those guys who eats and eats and never gains weight,” Laurel explained.

  It made him look like a prisoner of war. John’s bony face and hollow eyes were framed by hair so greasy you could see the tracks of the comb in it, interspersed with fragments of dandruff. But the worst was his breath.