I want to talk about my sister, just not right now. Right now I’m riding in the car with my mother, on our way to buy my new sewing machine. It’s the hot rod of all sewing machines, with one step button hole functions and countless stitch options. I have been lusting after it for at least a year! It’s a gift for my thirtieth birthday, and the high point of my week. I already know this is not going to work out the way I planned it.
It seems to me that the closer I get to age thirty, the more my mother is willing to tell me, no, fairly bursting to tell me about my sister. Like some sick rite of passage, the details just keep coming as my birthday approaches. Everything I never wanted to know is right at my fingertips, via Mom’s emails at work. Ever since her birthday in August, she has been looming larger, creeping closer, this sister I know so little about. I’m not sure I want the whole can of worms opened up again, but I know I have very little choice in the matter. Just because you lived through something once does not mean it is over.
I was only thirteen when it happened, so I never got more than the most basic summary of events. There were things happening in in my sister’s life that I was never aware of, because I was so young. I never understood why anyone would try to protect me from more information about her. What use is protection, when the biggest blow has already been landed?
So I’m riding in this car with my mother and her disastrous sense of timing and she’s bringing out this photocopied letter. It is several pages long, in loopy, girlish cursive writing. Writing I recognize, though it has been at least seventeen years since I have seen it. Dread floods through my body. The return address on the envelope is the local police station. I’m trying to have a nice day here, alright? Isn’t this supposed to be my birthday present trip? Why this? Why NOW? Instead of protesting, I just take the damn letter.
PREVIOUS PAGE
