One
I was in the grocery store the other night waiting to be checked out, and in the line next to me were these two girls. They were nineteen, maybe twenty years old. And as they stood there leaning on their cart, they let their heels slide out of the backs of their clogs and picked at their chipping nail polish. One flipped through a gossip magazine while the other looked on. When they straightened up, you could see the indentation of their belly buttons through their T-shirts. They were just girls, Mare. And I wondered if you ever got to be a girl like that.
Then a song came on. It’s big right now; you would know it. And as soon as they heard it, these two girls look at each other, and without a word, they let their heads drop back and they opened their mouths and you should have heard the voices that came out. You should have heard how beautifully these girls sang. Now everyone was looking at them, not just me. And for a second, I could have sworn you were there. That you had come up quietly behind me. Listen to them, Bunny, you’d say. I’d turn and you’d be smiling, your lips apple red, the hood of your sweatshirt pulled up like a cloak.
It happens like that. I’ll be in the grocery store or waiting for the train or out on a run. And suddenly you come into my mind and it’s like I’m underwater. Like the rest of the world is above me and I’m watching it through the ripples and shimmers of the surface. And I’ll remember how on those days when the ocean was calm, you’d take me into the water and we’d sink down to the bottom and stay there for as long as we could. My need for breath always sent me bursting to the surface, but it seemed like you could stay down there forever, your black hair swirling around like smoke.
I don’t tell many people about you, Mare. Or at least I don’t tell them much. But I framed some of your drawings and put them up around the house. And sometimes Daniel and I will have friends over, and I’ll see someone staring at one. Who did this? they’ll ask, not looking away, their nose near the glass.
My sister, Mary, I’ll say.