Sing for Me (29 page)

“Hush, Sophy. Calm down,” Mother says.

Sophy hisses at her. She turns to me, wild-eyed. “Sing,” she manages to say. “Rose, sin—”

Sophy jerks in Mother’s arms, and the spasms start. Again and again, Sophy’s body jerks, and Mother can’t hold her, and I can’t, either, and she falls to the floor with a sickening thud. Dad lunges for her heaving body as her back arches, her body pitches. He catches hold of her legs. Should we hold her down? Should we let the fit run its course? Different doctors say different things. Dad is trying to keep her from hurting herself against
the table leg, and somehow I am on my knees, too, sliding my arms between her head and the floor. Silver flashes; Mother is holding a spoon. She thrusts the spoon into Sophy’s mouth, presses it against Sophy’s tongue. This is one thing we know, one thing we have learned the hard way: at these moments, Sophy can easily bite her tongue; she could bite through it, bite it off if we’re not careful. She could die.

“I’m here, right here, Sophy. Mother and Dad, too. We’re right here beside you. It’s all right. You’re all right. You’ll be all right. We’re right here beside you.”

I say all this—or maybe it’s just a silent prayer—until Sophy goes limp on the floor. Her head is heavy, her hair matted and sweaty on my arms. Time stops. She’s as limp as the rag doll whose cradle she slept in as a baby. Mother, Dad, and I are stone statues. We stare at our beloved Sophy in terror. Our beloved Sophy, only a breath from death.

But no, there’s a pulse at her throat. And her breathing is steadying, though still shallow and quick. She remains with us.

Tears stream down Mother’s face and mine. Tears stand in Dad’s eyes.

We caused this. Our fighting.

Together, Dad and I lift Sophy into Mother’s lap. Sophy’s skin is cold, cold, cold, clammy and pale, almost translucent. Almost she’s a ghost. But she’s not. She’s my sister, alive, but nearly in shock. I run to the linen closet, and return to the kitchen bearing a blanket. I wrap the blanket around her thin, twisted body. Mother hunches over her, holding her close in the nest of blanket.
As a hen doth gather her brood under her wings . . .
If this verse were a song, I would sing it for Sophy and Mother now.

Dad’s hand strokes Sophy’s hair just the way she likes it. “Light of my life, apple of my eye,” he murmurs. Then he looks at me, and his eyes turn cold. “She needs you, and you say you have better things to do.”

He says this, then gets to his feet, not graceful at all, but a bent, broken man who smells of whiskey and cigarettes. With the halting steps of the aged, he goes to the kitchen door, opens it. He stands there for a moment, a small man looking out at the bleak winter day. Then he is gone, and I’m a little girl all over again, a bad girl who nearly killed my sister, doing something I shouldn’t have done.

I slam my fist down on my bruise, but it doesn’t hurt enough. I’m still bad, and Mother is still bowed over Sophy in her nest. Mother is watching Sophy, guarding her, keeping her warm beneath her wings. I’m not needed here anymore. They’ve forgotten I’m here at all.

I get to my feet.

Dad went that way, so I won’t.

Where will I go?

As a girl, I might have turned to Julia, but our lives have taken different paths. As recently as last month, I might have called Rob, but escaping with him won’t serve me now. There’s Nils, but Nils won’t look at me.

Theo.

I go to the phone in the hallway. But when I call his house, no one answers.

There’s just me.

I go to the bedroom, shut the door, crawl under the covers. I’m still wearing my coat, but I might as well be naked. I’m that cold. I curl into the smallest ball my body can make.
I once was lost.
I want to sing myself to sleep, but I can’t remember the rest of the words.

I wake to find Sophy beside me in bed. We’re lying face-to-face, nearly nose-to-nose. She is watching me closely, the way I’ve so often watched her over the years. Her cheeks have color again. She is warm. I’m warm, too.

“Long sleep,” she says.

I nod. “You, too? Did you take a nap?”

She kisses the air yes. She smells of sour milk. Dried flecks of hot cereal speckle her lower lip. Mother must have wanted to get some lunch into her, and a little hot cereal was all either of them could manage. I have to smile: Sophy’s breath is a comfort, whether it’s sweet or sour. Her breath means she is alive, never mind what the doctors have said from the day she was born. She won’t live a year, the first doctor said, having dragged her with his forceps into the world. She won’t make it to two, three, four, five, the next doctor said. And then it was six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and then Mother found yet another doctor, Sophy’s doctor now, who says maybe twenty. She’ll live to be twenty years old, that doctor thinks. If she’s lucky.

We’ll show him.

Sophy cranes her neck to see something, and then, “Mermaid,” she says. “Please.”

Mounted on the wall behind me is a plate that bears the image of the Little Mermaid from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale.
Den Lille Havfrue
, Mother calls her. Small and unimposing, the Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the harbor, looking
out to sea. Mother and Dad gave the plate to Sophy for her tenth birthday. Sophy has always cherished it; when we moved into this apartment it was the first thing she asked me to unpack, the first thing she asked Dad to hang on the wall.

Now, for the first time since our move, she asks me to tell her the story of the Little Mermaid again.

“Now?” I’m not sure what this story will do for either of our moods.

She kisses the air.

When we were much younger, I would pull out the old, leather-bound book of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales and tell the story as we turned the pages—
tell
the story, not read it, because the book, published in the 1800s, is a Danish edition. Except for our old family Bible, it is the most beautiful book we own, with richly detailed watercolor illustrations. Sophy and I especially like the picture of the Little Mermaid washed ashore, discreetly draped in seaweed. Her prince approaches her, awestruck, lovestruck, holding out his cape like a shield to cover her body.

“Do you want me to get the book?” I know exactly which shelf it’s on in the front room.

She hisses, impatient. “Tell.”

So I tell about the Little Mermaid’s underwater kingdom, her intoxicating singing voice, her love for the handsome, human Prince. I tell how a great storm strikes, and the Little Mermaid saves the Prince from drowning. She swims away, but her longing for the Prince doesn’t fade. It grows stronger. She visits the cruel and powerful Sea Witch, who strikes a bargain:
I’ll give you legs, Little Mermaid, but you must give me your tongue in exchange
. So the Little Mermaid sacrifices the only life she has known—and
she sacrifices her voice—for her Prince. With every step she takes on land, she feels as if she is walking on sharp swords.

I take Sophy’s hand, and we hold tight to each other. We know what happens next. The Little Mermaid finds the Prince. He thinks she’s beautiful. She can’t speak, of course, but he loves to see her dance, which she does, though every step, dip, and sway causes her horrible pain.

I press my lips together. This story troubles me as never before. But Sophy begs me to continue, so I do.

“In the end the Prince marries another, and the Little Mermaid’s heart breaks. At dawn, she throws herself into the sea, expecting death. But instead of fading away on the waves, she becomes a spirit of the air. She rises to heaven.”

Sophy and I are quiet for a moment. Then Sophy says what she always says at this story’s end.

“Sad.”

“Yes.”

“Sing.”

I shrug. “Yes, she’ll get to sing again in heaven. The story doesn’t say that, but we’ll say that.”

“No!” Sophy grimaces with frustration. “You. Now.”

I smile at my sister. “I think I’m a little too tired to sing right now.”

“Now.”

I’m not smiling anymore. “Later. You name it, I’ll sing the song. Right now—I’m so tired, Sophy.”

Sophy hisses.

“Sophy, I—”

Her face reddens with impatience and anger. “You
 . . . Den Lille Havfrue!”

Sophy’s Danish is garbled, but suddenly I understand. I could almost sing my understanding.

She doesn’t want me to be like the Little Mermaid. She doesn’t want me to give up singing for a life that hurts me.

“Oh, Sophy.”

I think my heart might break, the way it beats with love for my sister. I bury my head in her cottony hair. I thank her. I ask her to name the song.

SEVENTEEN

N
ext morning, Mother wakes me at five, all in a flurry.

“I’m late,” she whispers, trying not to wake Sophy. Quietly, quickly she asks me to please pack her something to eat on the train. She can assemble some kind of little lunch at the Nygaards’, but they’ve made it clear that she can’t eat their food for breakfast, too.

There are four eggs in the icebox. I set two of them to boil, and then take a nice loaf of bread from the pantry. Mother must have brought the bread home from the Nygaards’ party—with Mrs. Nygaard’s permission, I’m sure. I slice two pieces. When the eggs are done, I peel and slice them, too, make a simple sandwich, wrap it in paper. Mother gives me a swift kiss, and then she tucks the sandwich into her overnight bag.

“There’s a party,” she says. “I won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”

She gives me a resolute look. There will be no more talk about the risk she’s taking with her health. No more talk about
me singing instead. I give a nod. Let her take my nod as acquiescence. I know what I’m going to do.

I’m standing at the front door, watching Mother lug her little bag down the stairs, when Dad, dressed in his white coveralls, emerges from their bedroom. He goes to the kitchen. The coffee pot rattles as I softly call one last good-bye to Mother and close the door. It seems cowardly to go back to bed, especially as I’m wide awake now, so I straighten my shoulders and head to the kitchen, too. If he talks to me, I will talk to him. I make this resolution.

Dad stands at the kitchen window, staring silently out at the El tracks, so I sit down at the table and wait for some change in his chilly demeanor. I don’t back down. I don’t leave, even as the coffee finishes brewing and he drinks one cup at the window, then a second. I eat a piece of the nice bread. He wraps a few pieces of the bread in a napkin, takes some cheese and meat as well, and then he’s gone, too.

The way Mother treats me you’d think I’d never sung a word. The way Dad treats me you’d think I didn’t exist at all. I go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and hum a few notes to remember who I am, and that I’m here. I splash my face with water. Then I tiptoe from the bathroom down the hallway past Andreas’s room. He must have come home after I was in bed last night; I can hear him snoring through the closed door. Monday is his only morning to lie about late. If I have my way, I’ll have Sophy ready and the two of us out of here before he’s up and at ’em—because up and at
me
, that’s what he’d actually be.