Leeta Harding - Sister

Sister

It was the middle of summer when Aunt Nell took Sister away to her house. Sister had mono and Mama didn’t want me to get it. She was just five. We’d go visit Sister in the old house in the front bedroom that connected to the front porch. None of us never spent any time in that bedroom. Aunt Nell said it used to be our great grand mama’s. Me and Sister had always figured that our great grand mama may have died in there. Or if she hadn’t, some lady probably had. But Sister looked so small propped up in our great grand mama’s bed with all those worn pillows. We all talked gently, in low whispers. Sister mostly laid there under the slow ticking fan, always with her eyes closed. She’d cry when we let in any light.

But the bedroom was dark to begin with. All the furniture was deep dark wood. Bookshelves and cabinets for breakable things that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the house made cluttered corners. A pair of silver screw on earrings sat in a dusty floral plate. The painting of a castle on the wall was starting to flake. The hand mirror’s reflection was smoky. The darkness smelled heavy and full but you’d only notice it once you’d been in the room a while. It was the lingering spirit of all the women we were made of but never knew. It came out of the lacey curtain folds, the stained perfume bottles, circled the glittering glass doorknobs.

I didn’t like leaving Sister there in that bedroom. I wanted to take her out on the porch so she could hear all the cicadas. I’d search the barn for their empty shells and bring them in to show her. She was afraid to hold them but she told me to hang them on the lamp shade by her bed. So they could be her pets. I thought Aunt Nell wouldn’t like that, but I did it anyway.

On the day Sister got worse, Aunt Nell told me not to bring in anymore cicadas and I asked to visit Sister by myself. It hurt her to talk but she drew a heart in my hand. When she fell asleep, I prayed for Sister at the end of the dark old bed. I got down on my knees and I whispered to Jesus, asked Him to let her come home. And when I opened my eyes the late afternoon sun was falling behind her, breaking in through the cracks in the blinds, glowing out from behind the old bed frame. And I remember thinking that the ends of the bed posts looked like magnolias that were waiting to bloom.

I tried to remember when Sister was born. I wanted to remember what she sounded like, how she looked at me when they put her in my arms. But I couldn’t. We’re just eighteen months apart. I don’t even know if I was there. At night I’d lay on her side of the bed and feel for her in my sleep, hope that I’d wake up to her kicking me, like she always did.

Before Sister got sick, we’d put on song and dance shows for our family. She sang more wildly than I did. And I remember that I didn’t like that, because she wasn’t singing like the people in the song. But she never cared. She was going to do it how she wanted. And she’d cartwheel down the living room while I’d turn as gracefully as I could. We’d pass each other over and over in circles, trying not to touch. And at the end we’d bow separately, while the other flickered the lights. Then we’d turn the lights back on and hold hands in the middle of the room and bow together.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips,

Woodland, North Carolina, 2014