Julia's Daughters

3 years, 8 months

“Are you there?”

I wait and then I whisper, “I can’t sleep. I don’t know where Mom went.” I roll onto my side in my bed, hugging the stuffed bunny that was mine when I was a baby. It’s kind of ratty looking; he’s missing part of his left ear and he’s got nail polish on his back. I’ve been told he stinks, but I don’t think so. He just smells like . . . an old stuffed bunny.

“She’s been gone almost an hour,” I say, glancing at the digital clock next to my bed. I wait for her to answer.

When Caitlin talks to me, it feels like her voice is coming out of the dark, but from no one place in particular. I only hear her when it’s dark. I know she’s probably not in the room, or if she is, she’s invisible. Maybe she just talks in my head. I don’t really care how she talks to me. What matters is that she does.

“I don’t know if I should do something. Should I wake up Dad?” I ask. It occurs to me that it’s pretty crappy that the only person I have to talk to is my dead sister, but I’ve already got enough things to be upset about right now. “Should I tell him that She Who Shall Not Be Named went out her D window, then Mom’s phone rang and now she’s gone too?” I wait. There’s always a long second of silence between when I speak and Caitlin answers, like we’re talking over short-wave radios or something. I learned about short-wave radios on the Discovery Channel.

“Who called Mom?”

She finally speaks and I smile, even though I sure don’t have anything to smile about.

“I don’t know. Maybe the police. They called Mom when you flatlined. Maybe She Who Shall Not Be Named got in another car accident and she bit the bullet too.” The minute I say it, I realize it wasn’t very nice. I mean . . . I know Caitlin knows she’s as dead as a doornail, but it’s not exactly a nice thing to bring up. “Sorry,” I say in a little voice. “I didn’t mean to remind you that . . . you know, that we cremated you and stuff.”

Caitlin laughs.

There’s no time delay this time. She just laughs. I love it when I make her laugh because I hear her laughter not just in my ears, but in my chest. As crazy as it sounds (and I know crazy is already a possibility because a dead person talks to me like in that old Bruce Willis movie), I feel like I hear her in my heart.

“It’s okay, Sizzy Izzy,” she tells me. “No worries.”

She used to call me that all the time. Sizzy Izzy. It’s a play on Sissy Izzy. I know I’m too old for silly baby names (and stuffed animals), but I like it. I miss it. I miss Caitlin calling me Sizzy Izzy, even though when she was alive, I didn’t like it. It’s one of the things I wish I could take back now that she’s dead. I think about telling her that, but I don’t. I think she knows.

“What if Mom got in an accident?” I whisper, afraid again.

“It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s not,” I say kind of loud and mean. “It’s not going to be okay. Not ever again. That’s just something adults say because they think they’re supposed to. Like kids are stupid and are going to buy it. Things aren’t going to be okay, Caitlin. If anyone knows that, you of all people should.” I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to be a crybaby like Mom, but I can’t help it. My eyes fill up with tears and I squeeze my bunny tighter. I rub his front paw against my cheek like I used to when I was little. I sniff so snot doesn’t run out of my nose. Bunny’s too old to get snotted on.

I wipe my face on my pillow. “How’d things work out for you?” I ask Caitlin. “Things work out okay for you?”

She doesn’t answer and I feel bad that I said that. I sound like She Who Shall Not Be Named when I say mean things like that. And I don’t want to be her. Not ever. I want to be like Caitlin. I want to be smart and funny. I want to be pretty like her, too, but I’m smart enough to know that’s never going to happen.

“Caitlin? Are you still there?” I whisper. I’m afraid she’s gone. Please don’t be gone, I think. Every time she leaves, I’m afraid she won’t come back. Or I’m afraid I’ll convince myself she can’t really be here. Because she’s de facto deceased. And then I’ll never talk to her again.

“Caitlin?” I say again.

My room is quiet except for the sound of the air coming through the vent. I can hear my dad snoring in the living room. That’s how loud he snores. He’s supposed to put a mask on his face, connected to a machine, to help him breathe at night and make him stop snoring. He says it doesn’t work and he keeps it in the closet. It’s called a pap something. Not a pap smear. I know what that is and that’s not for guys.

“Shhhhh,” Caitlin soothes. Her voice is right in my ear and it’s so soft and so pretty that I close my eyes. She seems so close that I think if I reached up, I could touch her. Like she’s leaning right over my bed. I’m pretty sure I can smell the perfume that she gets from Victoria’s Secret. But I don’t reach up because what if she’s not there?

“I’m worried about Mom,” I tell her. I’m starting to feel sleepy, which is another hint that I might be crazy. How could a person fall asleep under these circumstances? How could I have slept at all since February 17th? “What if she bit it too?” I ask Caitlin. “What if She Who Shall Not Be Named killed her, too?”

Again, silence. The whistle of the cool air in the vents, my dad’s snoring.

“It wasn’t Haley’s fault, Izzy,” my pretty, smart, dead sister tells me.

“It was her fault,” I answer stubbornly. “She didn’t stop her car at the stop sign. She went through the intersection and she let that truck hit you. She made you go through the windshield and she splattered your brains all over the road!”

I’m crying again. Not loud crying like the way Mom cried the first week after Caitlin died. Quiet crying, like the way you cry when you don’t really want to bother anyone. Like the way Mom cries most of the time, now.

“It was an accident,” Caitlin murmurs. I can almost feel her touch my hair, smoothing it with her fingers. “She didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“If she didn’t mean for it to happen, she should have stopped at the stop sign. I’m ten, I don’t have a driver’s license, and I know you have to stop at stop signs or cars will hit you and kill people.”

“It was an accident. And if it was anyone’s fault,” she whispers, “it was mine.”

I rub Bunny’s paw against my cheek. I don’t want to fall asleep. I want to stay awake and see if the police call to tell us someone else is dead, but I can’t help it. I can’t stay awake. “That’s ridiculous,” I tell Caitlin. “It can’t be your fault.”

“Sure it can. If I had been wearing my seat belt, I wouldn’t be dead right now.”