“Eat it, then.” You cross your arms, sure you have her, but then she opens her mouth and shoves the entire mushroom inside. She hasn’t even cleaned it, so crumbs of soil collect at the edge of her lips. You are stricken, your mind already racing through the what-ifs. You picture yourself carrying your sister’s limp body through the trees, to the road, flagging down a passing car. Sabrina only laughs, open-mouthed, at your shocked expression, the pulp of the mushroom spotting her tongue.
You resume your hunt and aim for blitheness, even though you are watching carefully, for beads of sweat to burst forth at her temples, for her skin to go yellow, for her eyes to glaze over.
“Well. That was stupid. Now you have one less than you did before.”
“It’s okay. I know places you don’t know. Mom showed me.”
You stiffen. Your mother has been gone for over two years. You came home from school to find two delicate heather flowers and two wooden animal figurines—a cat and a horse—in the gap in the brick wall of the old factory building, where the three of you would leave notes and trinkets for the others. A two-line message in her angular print on one of the rough scraps of paper she would make herself:I love you. Forgive me.
You and Sabrina pocketed the flowers and note, carried the carved animals inside, set them on the kitchen table, and when your father came home from work and asked where she was you gestured to them. He understood right away, walked over to your mother’s favorite footstool, covered in blue gingham cloth and trimmed with bric-a-brac, and raised it over his head, slammed it against the wall until it splintered. Afterward he seemed both satisfied and shamed by this display of rage. You placed your flower between two sheets of wax paper and piled your textbooks on top to press it flat so that you might always keep it, this last tender, living thing that held your mother’s touch.
Neither of you ever said it out loud, but you knew that in your heads you and Sabrina tussled over the note. Thatyouof theI love youfelt so small. Trying to make it cover both of you was like two people sharing a too-small umbrella in a thunderstorm.
Not long after your mother left your father took the night shift job down at the prison, his presence in your life reduced to little more than the heap of his boots by the door, the occasional stack of cash left under the brass letter opener that had been his great-grandfather’s. Sometimes you see his car at the tavern up the road. Sometimes, you make out his slumped form in the front seat.
The mention of your mother stings, a sharp, astringent pain. You understand that Sabrina has been saving this statement, hoarding this knowledge, waiting for the right time to deploy it. The pain of it, and your exclusion, hits like a fist in your guts.
“She did not. When?”
“You were at school and I was home sick.”
You inventory your memory for days in which you and Sabrina had been apart, back then. The list is short. But, you think you know. May, before your mother left, Sabrina woke feverish and flushed. It unsettled you all day, that something was happening to Sabrina that was not happening to you, and you could hardly pay attention in class.
You are still watching for signs that there is a poison coursing through her bloodstream when she turns abruptly on her heels and starts to walk back to the house.
“Let’s go out to the factory,” you call desperately at her retreating back. You ache for the afternoons you passed there as a trio, your mother with her fistfuls of wild plants that she turned into tinctures and salves. She hadn’t grown up here but was more at home in the woods than your father, could break the land down into something that could be tamed.
Ahead, Sabrina swings her basket. A glittering thread at her wrist catches the light, and that’s when you realize Sabrina is wearing your mother’s old bracelet, cool spheres of amber that turn a bronzy gold in the sun. The surge of anger that bolts through you is sudden and total. Next thing you know you are running, and when you catch up you shove her as hard as you can. Her basket tumbles, mushrooms scattering in the grass.
“No!” Sabrina screams in a voice that you haven’t heard since you were children: pure outrage. Then, her nails are in your skin, her face so close to yours that the ends of her hair tickle your shoulders. The two of you tumble to the ground, your body now heavier than hers for these past few months but Sabrina is more vicious, her fingers scrambling for your eyes, her hands at your throat. You land a hard kick to her shin, pull her hair until she yelps. For a second you can make out the smell of the mushrooms you’ve trampled, mineral and filthy, but even that passing thought is enough to put you at a disadvantage. Sabrina throws you off her and your head lands hard on the ground, your back teeth crashing together. The truth pulsesbetween the two of you, both of you revealing just how much you want to hurt one another, in the way that only sisters can. Because in that rage, there is need. In that rage is its counterpoint—a wild, ineffable love.
Then, as quickly as she had attacked, Sabrina retreats.
“Annabelle,” she says, and her voice sounds very far away, her breathing heavy. The sound of your name reminds you that you are separate: two brains, two throbbing hearts.
At first you don’t know whose blood it is. Only that it is everywhere. Smears on Sabrina’s cheek and wrist. A splatter on your shin. You both scan the ground, your eyes landing on it at the same time: a broken Ball jar, something your mother used to gather cut flowers in, half submerged next to what used to be her herb garden, the raised beds now disorderly with weeds. The rough edges of the pale blue glass shimmer with blood.
Once you see it, you feel it. The pulse drumming in your arm. Your shirt torn and the air on your skin where the fabric had been. The blood nearly black on the cotton.
“Stay here,” Sabrina says, and bolts to the back door. The screen is wide open still from when the two of you first set out, now that your mother is no longer here to warn about flies. Now that there is never any fruit in the wooden bowl on the counter or baskets of scones to swarm. Only a freezer stacked with boxes of macaroni and cheese.
Wait, you want to say, though you know she is going to get help, to find a way to fix you. Please don’t leave me.
You stare into the dark of the woods at the edge of the yard and wish you could stagger over and dip your body in the cool shade, but every time you move your cut surges with more blood. You lower yourself to the ground, not knowing if it is the heat or the bleeding that is making you lightheaded, making the world feel unfamiliar and indistinct. The blades of grass go fuzzy. The pines look like triangles, trees drawn by children.
Then, a sense of motion out of the corner of your eye. An animal, you think. But then you know the hands upon you as your sister’s.
You are relieved enough to close your eyes, but then you open them to a flash of metal in the lazy summer light. With the blade of your father’s pocketknife she cuts away the fabric of your sleeve, eyeing the wound evenly, without pity, without disgust or fear. She applies pressure, which makes you gasp, and the pain makes the world disappear for a moment, everything black. Sabrina’s hands are steady as she wraps a dishcloth tight around your upper arm and she lifts the cloth every few minutes to check the bleeding, replaces one soaked rag with another.
She sighs. “I think you need stitches.” Her voice is calm but she’s started looking over her shoulder, as though she is searching for someone else who can help. “We could call an ambulance.” What you both know but don’t say: The hospital would be another bill. Another bill would be ruinous. Another bill would mean who knows how long without that cash appearing under the letter opener, both of you hungry, wearing sweaters that are too short this winter. The SAT registration fees you’ll need to pay.
“I’ll be right back.”
She runs to the house and when she comes back she has a package of fishing line, 20-pound test, something she must have brought back from her job at the bait shop. But why? There’s a glint in her teeth that you realize is a needle, something she probably had to scrounge out of your mother’s sewing kit. She pulls a metal Zippo from her back pocket. Much nicer than the junky little Bic lighters your father uses to light up his Marlboros, or the long skinny matches your mother used for her beeswax candles. Where did you get that? You want to ask, but then you realize what she’s about to do and the fear steals the thoughts from your head.
She flares the lighter and runs the needle through the flame.
You know you should feel something on your own behalf, but you can’t. You are staring between the trunks of the trees, drifting somewhere else. Somewhere cooler, somewhere you are not encumbered by a body that can hurt and bleed. You have been able to do this since your mother left. Disappear from your body for long stretches of time. Leave your mind behind.
