Ellen was in high spirits the whole day, even when the coffee machine broke at work and she had to deal with angry customers, or when she realized she had read the wrong chapter for today’s lesson, or when the temperature dropped and she had no jacket.
Ellen was not a cheerful person. She accepted all of this with the same resigned poise she accepted everything in life. But today the resignation was tinged with joy, because Ellen was, for the first time in weeks, going to see her big sister.
Not that she’d ever let Miriam know.
They met at a café near the family house; it was the closest Ellen got to it these days.
“Hello,” Miriam said as soon as Ellen stepped in. She frowned at the state of Ellen’s clothes (worn, too light for the weather) and the state of Ellen’s face (pale from the chill, with bags under her eyes) and ushered her to a seat. “I’ll buy you a hot drink.”
“No, thanks,” Ellen said, though her heart yearned for some cocoa. What wouldn’t she do to relive the past for just a second, to be twelve, sitting at a stool in their enormous kitchen while her big sister made her some cocoa, both of them silent as ghosts so as not to wake up the adults. But Ellen wasn’t a child anymore.
“You'll get sick,” Miriam murmured, moving her hand as if to touch Ellen’s forehead. Ellen shifted away and the hand fell. “I’ll get a sandwich, then.”
“I’m fine,” Ellen told her with a polite smile. “I don’t want to linger. If you give me the keys, I’ll get the car and get out of your hair.”
Miriam gave up and sat down, a sad, drawn expression on her face. She didn’t know why Ellen kept pushing her away.
It was bad enough Ellen was letting Miriam lend her the car, which Uncle would be furious about if he knew. Ellen had created enough conflict in that family as a child; she knew Miriam’s relationship with her parents had been worlds better before they had taken Ellen in, a distantly related orphan who’d had nowhere else to go.
“I’ll get myself something to eat,” Miriam said. “Don’t disappear while I’m gone.”
Ellen nodded, distantly polite.
She watched her sister now the woman wouldn’t see, trying to warm up her hands. Miriam looked good. Her skin was even darker than usual, even though it was autumn—maybe she and Uncle had travelled somewhere warmer. She looked so much like Aunt Glory like this, before the cancer made her pale and drawn.
Miriam came back clutching a small coffee and a croissant she slid toward Ellen. Ellen pretended she didn’t see it, even though she could feel her stomach shrinking with hunger at the smell. She thought morosely about the instant noodles waiting for her at home. She had eaten so many instant noodles this week. And the last.
“Tell me how you’ve been,” Miriam asked quietly. She wouldn’t give up. Ellen loved her for it, though it made things harder. “How’s college? How’s work?”
“Everything’s fine,” Ellen said.
Everything had to be fine. That was Ellen’s plan: she was going to get her teaching degree, find a good job, and show her Uncle she was capable and independent and not a burden anymore. She was going to be invited back home, back to her family. It’d just… take a while to get there. Then she’d be able to hug Miry and tell her she loved her.
“How about you?” Ellen asked blandly, pretending she didn’t care about the answer.
“Fine, too,” Miriam said tiredly.
They sat in silence. After a moment, Miriam gave her the car keys and watched as Ellen nodded in thanks and walked out.
***
Though Ellen was passionate about becoming a teacher, she didn’t really care about her classes this semester. She’d had the luck of getting bored professors who didn’t care about what they were saying. She sat at the front of the classroom and dutifully took notes, but she was hungry and so tired the professor’s voice was in serious danger of lulling her to sleep.
So in an effort not to fall asleep Ellen revisited some memories, paging through them like someone leafing through a beloved photo-album.
It had been many years ago, after she had been sent to live with Uncle that first time and Uncle had just bounced her to the next Aunty. (She was sent to Uncle again years later with a firm reminder that nobody else in the family had the means to care for her, and he’d finally taken her in.)
She had been miserable, kept in the corner of a distant cousin’s house like a weird toy nobody wanted, mostly ignored and thus very free, as usual. All of eleven, within two weeks she could walk around the small town like she had lived there all her life.
She’d met Rafaela there.
The year she stayed there, before Uncle came to get her for good, had been the best year of her life until then. If it weren’t for Miry, Ellen would consider it the best year of her life period.
Rafa was also an orphan, so they understood each other in a way no one else had. Rafa had been loud but very serious, and she once took Ellen to her adopted family’s old, unused attic, where everything of her parents was put away, and showed her every piece of jewelry of her mother’s.
They’d all been cheap old things, but it might as well have been a chest of gold to two orphaned kids. Rafa had pressed a pair of red earrings—the stone so dirty it looked black—into Ellen’s hands and promised:
“Even if those relatives of yours don’t want you, I do. We’ll be a family, you and me. I’ll keep you. We’ll have a home and we’ll be happy.”
Her Uncle had not let her keep in touch when he had whisked her away.
Ellen touched her ear softly, finger grazing the perfect red stone hanging there. She took good care of them.
Her professor snapped his fingers right at her ear. Ellen jumped, startled.
“Back with us?” he asked her dryly. The classroom filled with giggles.
Ellen drooped where she sat, embarrassed and disappointed. She sighed at the blackboard, now filled with notes she hadn’t taken. But before she could get her pen, her phone buzzed with a new text. She frowned. What could Miry want when she’d just seen her? Ellen surreptitiously read the text under the table.
Chad: I’m at your place right now please get here ASAP
Chad? He was a distant cousin of Miry’s. What could he want with her?
But… she couldn’t not help him. He was family. Family was the most important thing to her. Ellen sent an apologetic look to her professor.
***
Chad was younger than Ellen but considerably broader. His eyes were brown to her blue ones and while she had long dirty-blonde hair, his was very yellow. She hadn’t seen him in years and was shocked to see him standing awkwardly in front of her apartment door, holding a baby away from his body like it was a bomb.
Chad caught sight of her and deflated in relief. The toddler was an utterly adorable thing—three or four with a mop of brown curls and wide, dark eyes in a chubby face.
“Hi, Chad,” she said, unlocking her apartment and ushering him in. “I didn’t know you had a…daughter?”
If he’d had a kid out of wedlock, she was pretty sure she would have heard about it. The extended family loved drama.
“I don’t,” Chad said, making a face like the idea was terrifying. He set the kid and a little backpack down on Ellen’s ratty couch. She looked curious instead of rattled that her guardian (?) had just brought her to a stranger and was stepping away like she was some rabid animal.
Ellen would not freak out. It would not help. Panic swirled in her stomach anyway.
“Who is this child, then?” she asked.
“Some distant cousin,” he said. Was he walking toward the door again or was that just her impression? “Her parents died two years ago…”
“I’ve heard that story before.” Her words landed like rocks between them.
“I can’t keep her,” he said, grimacing apologetically. “Look—her grandmother is her official guardian, but she’s sick and old so she sent Gabriela to her daughter, and—”
“Her daughter was too overworked,” Ellen said flatly, looking away from him. Gabi was looking at her with those wide, dark eyes. She still hadn’t said a word. “So she sent her to a sister, who already had too many children, who sent her to a cousin, etc., and now it’s been two years.”
“I’m nineteen,” he hissed. “I barely have a job—I can’t keep a kid! My girlfriend would break up with me, I don’t have the time—look, just look after her for now, maybe talk to your uncle about taking her in like he did with you—”
One thought burst into her mind with a sudden, but ferocious clarity: absolutely fucking not.
“Her documents,” she said.
“It’s all in the backpack,” Chad answered, relief dripping from the words.
“It’s a very small backpack.”
“My bag's yellow,” Gabi declared, the words muffled by the way she was biting at her fingers. The backpack was about the same size as her. Did this thing really hold her life?
“Look, Ellen,” Chad said, “thanks, and, uh, I’ll see you later, okay?”
She knew she would definitely see him never. She shrugged and he fled.
She crouched in front of Gabi, who peered curiously at her. She didn’t seem bothered at all by the situation, because why would she? This was normal for her. Ellen remembered how it was.
“Are you a new Aunty?” she asked. “I’m hungry.”
Ellen was not a person who tended to feel things strongly. She was even-tempered and sensible. But the word Aunty made her blood boil. Aunty was what she had called every single distant relative who had taken her in, too.
“I’m Ellen,” she said, lifting a hand to pat Gabi’s curls. They were short, a dark halo around her head. She was the most beautiful baby Ellen had ever seen. “I’m going to take care of you, baby. Do you want chicken nuggets or some apple slices?”
Gabi’s face split into a grin, fingers slipping from her mouth. “Chicken nuggets!”
Ellen smiled back.
What the fuck am I going to do now? she thought.