Word Count: 383
My sister was older and should have known better, but I got away scot-free.
It was always like that but my folks didn’t see it, that I was the smart one, the instigator, the one who got us both into trouble.
So I was sent early to bed but I couldn’t sleep. Waiting, curled in the weight of the blankets and quilt, waiting for her to come into our bedroom. I listened to the whomp! whomp! of my father’s belt. That was it, just two blows regardless of whatever we’d done. She never screamed, never cried out. The door would open and I’d watch her silhouette slip inside the room. I pretended to sleep, seeing the darkness of her move towards the bed, undress, slip under the covers of the bed that matched mine. Just a small sniffling sound, a slight heave of the round lump of her in the dark.
You okay? I’d ask.
Yeah, she’d always answer.
I’m sorry, I’d say.
But she wouldn’t answer; this time, she pretending to sleep.
I wanted to ask her if it hurt. What it felt like, that fine strap of leather. I never did but I’d imagine the swish of it cutting the air, the crisp slap of it on my backside. I’d fall asleep wondering.
As teenagers she covered for me if I snuck out or dated a boy my mother hated. She walked me around the mall parking lot for hours the first time I got seriously drunk. She was the one who drove me into the city for an abortion. Let me stay at her apartment for a few days to recover. She was the keeper of all of my secrets and yet I never said thank you. Only years and years of I’m sorry.
Her husband died years before and her two sons were married and living out of state. They sold her house and put her in a home. I’m the only one who visits her now. I sit and feed her soup and crackers and brush her hair and buy her pink housecoats and gowns that are forever disappearing even though I put her name on them in indelible ink on the labels. And though she doesn’t know why, she smiles every time I say thank you.
