Sister (25 page)

“This is from the investigation still,” she says. “These doors were supposed to be the exits, but the company kept them locked. There used to be one door where you could see, here”—she touches the bald, scarred face of the top door—“where they'd scratched and beat at it, trying to get out, but that one disappeared years ago. Everything else is here, though, the way that it was. People come,” she says, gesturing at the scattering of crushed beer cans, fast-food wrappers, bottle caps, “but they don't seem to take anything with them. I guess by now there's nothing left to take.”

The rolling clouds absorb the daylight. I imagine dropping to my knees, crawling blindly beneath the dusky layer of smoke. The press of bodies in front of me. The push of bodies behind.

“All these years, I was certain we'd find Sam back somehow,” my mother says. “But I thought that when he was found, there'd be a way to make sense of everything, maybe even put things right. All day I've been waiting for a revelation, a sign, I don't know—” The wind whisks her words into the fields, scatters them as easily as cinders. “I have this strange feeling that none of this is really happening. Like I'm standing far away from myself. Like nothing's quite real. Have you ever had a feeling like that?”

She doesn't wait for me to answer.

“They say that's how a person feels during a violent attack. I keep thinking that maybe I'm feeling what Geena Baumbach felt. Like all of this is happening outside myself. I wonder if I'll feel this way for the rest of my life. Like nothing matters. Like it doesn't not matter either. Like it just…
is
.”

What did my aunts and the other girls do when they first realized they would not be rescued? Did they continue to beat and pound and scratch and sob against the doors? Did they fall into each other's arms, wait in silence for their lives to flicker out?
There's a low groan of thunder, then another, and I see the high walls of the cannery collapse, hear the explosions of the machinery, the roof buckling, slapping everything beneath it to the ground.

“Mom,” I say. “I lied to the detectives. I knew Sam had that knife.”

“I knew it too,” my mother says. “It was your father's. It came from the war. He gave it to Sam when he was eleven or so, and it looked like such a dangerous thing that I hid it in my dresser drawer. I figured I'd give it back when Sam was older, but he must have found it, snooping—or maybe Gordon did. Anyway, one day it was gone.

“For years, I've prayed for forgiveness. Each night, I asked God, What else can I do? How can I atone? And then, last night, after we went to bed, I understood what I had to do. It came to me as clearly as if it had been spoken.
Baptize the baby
. I got out of bed and I heard it again.
Baptize the baby
. It began to make sense: This was the test I'd been waiting for, and if I did what God asked, He'd forgive me everything. He'd give me the reasons I needed so that all of this would finally make sense. I got the holy water from my nightstand and went into your room. I could see everything as clearly as if it was day. It was like God was helping me see.”

“You baptized Joe?” I say. I'm so angry I can barely speak. “You sneaked in and baptized my baby?”

“You don't understand,” my mother says. “There were times when faith was the one thing I could give you, the only thing your father couldn't control. Nobody could, not even the priests, not even the Pope or any of those men—and God knows they do try. But I gave it to you, and it's there if you need it, and don't get mad at me for saying that, sweetheart, because I don't mean the Catholic Church, or even God, I mean”—she pauses, searching for the right words—“
faith
. The ability to believe. The ability to
see beyond the place where you are. Do you understand how important that is? Because Sam couldn't do that. And neither could your father. You could, and now you're the only one I have left.”

My mother flinches as if something has struck her, and now I feel a rap on my head, my shoulder, the back of my hand. Hail is falling, the size of buttons, pennies, the sterling-silver charms the girls in my high school wore for luck. Shielding Joe with my body, I run back toward the car; my mother gets there first, opens my door so I can get him safely inside. Hailstones bounce off the roof, the windshield, and the world around us disappears beneath a flurry of pounding white fists. Will the glass break? I glance at my mother; she's wide-eyed, pressed back in her seat. I cup Joe's head with my hand, twisting to shield him, and it occurs to me how fragile all our lives are, how at any moment the sky can open and drown us, the earth can open and swallow us. I think of all the intricate ways our bodies can betray us, the accidents and atrocities, the missteps and misunderstandings. Joe hiccups, a sure sign he's ready to cry, and I feel him tensing up, the slow burn of rage balling his fists. What will happen the first time he looks beyond the concrete hungers of the body? What if he sees nothing but this frail shelter, bones and breath and skin, without the comfort of imagination, transcendence, hope? The hailstorm passes over us as suddenly as it came, and in the silence, I hear my mother take a deep, ragged breath. She turns on the engine, starts the windshield wipers. We watch the cloud move across the fields, the long shadow fluid beneath it, and a part of myself I realize I will never leave behind—the teenage girl singing for the congregation, the child still praying to be chosen—wants to see more than what's actually there: a message, a confirmation. Perhaps I'm only seeing a reflection of myself when I search for possibility in everyday things. But it's better self, a bigger self. I turn to face my mother. I'm not angry anymore.

“I just want so much for Joe to grow up with faith in something,” she says. “To have what you had when you went to the church, or sat down at the piano. All the things Sam didn't.”

“You want him to grow up with—grace,” I say. “So do I. But you have to trust I can find my own way to give him that. And I will. I promise.” I reach for her arm, but she shrugs my hand away.

“No, don't,” she says quietly. “People have been touching me all day, and it doesn't help a bit. In fact, I think it makes it worse.”

“I won't touch you, then.”

“We'll never know anything more about Sam than we do right now, will we?”

“I don't think so.”

“I feel like God has let me go. It's like I'm falling from His hand. It's like one of those dreams where you just fall and fall, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.”

Joe begins to cry, and my mother turns the car around, pulls back onto the highway. All the way home and long into the evening, he cries and cries, sleeps fitfully, wakes up and cries again, as if he's crying for us all. My mother and I take turns walking him. I offer him my breast, the pacifier, my finger. We sing to him, rock him. None of it is enough. When he finally abandons himself to sleep, it's more a result of his own exhaustion than anything we have done. We make hot chocolate and sit at the table, sipping that sweetness, too tired to speak. I can't stop hearing the sound of his crying; I'm raw with it. When my mother finally stands up, the scrape of her chair makes me jump. Hot chocolate sloshes across the tablecloth.

“Sorry,” I say automatically, but my mother nods, understanding.

“Such a terrible sound,” she says, and I know she's seeing my brother's face, “when you hear your child crying and you don't know what to do.”