sister/daughter

catefrances

her first memory was of her mother's funeral. she was maybe four and her brother held her hand so tight she thought he broke her finger bones. it was raining that day and she always associates rain with tears and sadness. she remembers her father holding her other hand so gently it was as if he wasn't even there. in his other hand he held a bible and a rosary. she knew these were her mother's. her book of stories, her mother called it. sometimes towards the end, when she sat upon her mother's bed, her mother would place the beads around her neck. she told her that if she ever needed something she could hold onto the wooden beads and wish for whatever it was. silently she wondered why couldn't just ask her mother if ever she needed anything. her mother talked about an invisible God, and being so young, the child did not understand. she could see her father didn't like these little talks, though he was hardly going to refuse a dying woman her comfort. the girl remembers her father's stern face and his pronouncement that she didn't have to make her mind up about anything until she was much older.
she can't remember how long it was before the woman came to live with them. he father told them that this person was their new mother. her brother got angry and ran out of the house. he didn't come home that night. nor the next. when he did, it was in the backseat of a police car. her brother was a big boy. he rode his bike to the new high school on the other side of town. sometimes she saw him with a girl. he spent a lot of time in his room, which smelt funny, even with the window open. he didn't talk much. not even to her. she was a baby. she'd only been in school for not even a year. one day when her father came to her room and told her that her brother was gone and that he lived with their mother now, she knew he was never coming back. she'd never see him again and she was alone. she didn't understand. he wasn't sick. in fact she knew he could swim better and climb higher than any other boy in town. when she asked why her brother had gone, her father said that he missed their mother so much he couldn't live without her, so he decided to be with her. she cried and said that she missed her mother too and wanted to go live with her. and when she asked him why she couldn't go live with her too, her father cried. she never asked him again, though she thought about it often. she hardly talked to her father after that. as she got older, the arguments with new mother increased. and the silence she got from her father grew louder. there were new children in the house and it was better when she wasn't there.
when she was old enough, she'd wear her brother's shirts. she'd taken them from his room on the day he was buried and resolved never to give them up. she also waited for her father to die. afterall he was the only one left besides her. and she knew she wasn't going anywhere. at least not just yet. she knew that to go live with her mother meant to die. a well meaning classmate told her that when she was nine. she responded by puching the other child. she got suspended because violence is never acceptable regardless of the motivation the principal said. not long after that day she heard the new mother and her father arguing in the kitchen. new mother said she was uncontrollable, sullen(whatever that meant) and wilfully stubborn. her father pleaded for understanding but his pleas fell on deaf ears.
she was in her first year of high school when new mother left. she took the two new brothers with her. she didn't miss them. she now had her father all to herself. she believed this was as it should be. one day she came home to an empty house. she called for her father but he didn't answer. she went about her usual after school routine anyway. today was wednesday, so that meant swimming practice. she swam because her brother had. when her father wasn't home by 4 o'clock, she road her bike to the pool. she figured it was okay cause her father could just throw it in the back of the truck when he picked her up. but he never did pick her up. not that wednesday. not any wednesday after that. not ever again.