Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(11)

Donna didn’t care; she’d just laugh it off. “Everybody’s gotta die sometime,” she’d say and fire up another cigarette.



Few people knew Donna as I did. We were close in age and grew up together. We shared a room and shared secrets no one else was privy to. Although we were as different as night and day, we were stuck together with the crazy glue of sisterhood. That’s how it was and how it would always be. I saw the inside part of my sister that no one else could see.

In Baltimore Donna thrived, or at least she gave the appearance of thriving. She opened up with a personality that drew people in and made them want to be the one standing next to her. If she walked into a bar filled with strangers, she had nine new friends before she left.

Once she no longer had the responsibility of caring for her children, Donna went back to being the girl who came home from Virginia. Live fast and fly high. She could out-drink, out-smoke, and out-last any partier in the room, and more often than not that’s what she did.

She never mentioned Charlie, but when the news came that he’d remarried she spent the next three days partying harder than ever.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

Donna shook her head. “Nope. What’s done is done.”

I wished she’d cry, not because I wanted to see her sad but because I hoped she’d unlock that dam of misery and let it wash away.

“You might feel better if you get this off your chest,” I said.

“I feel fine,” Donna replied. Then she pulled on a pair of skintight jeans and headed to the Crab House where they were supposedly having a disco dance contest. I tagged along.

We weren’t there five minutes when Donna grabbed a guy standing at the bar and said, “Come on, let’s dance.”

They won the contest, and she came home with a bottle of champagne and a six-inch tall trophy.

“Man, that was fun,” she said, then stretched out on the sofa.

We stayed at Mama’s that night, and when I came downstairs in the morning Donna was having a glass of champagne and a cigarette for breakfast.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Donna didn’t answer, and Mama, standing behind her, just rolled her eyes.





The Call




The call comes four years after Donna moved to Baltimore.

When I answer Mama says, “Donna’s got to go to the hospital for a procedure, and I’m too nervous to take her by myself. You’ve got to come down.”

“What kind of procedure?” I ask.

“She’s having trouble breathing,” Mama answers. Her voice has that nervous high-pitched sound.

“Trouble breathing?” I repeat. This is news to me. I talk to Donna every week or two, and she hasn’t mentioned anything about this. “Are you sure?”

“Dammit, Bette, I know what I’m talking about!”

“But I talked to her last week, and she didn’t say anything about—”

“’Cause she doesn’t want you to know,” Mama argues. “She doesn’t want anybody to know. Just me. She wants to keep smoking those damn cigarettes and worry me into my grave, that’s what she wants!”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

“Well, you’re not here!” Mama snaps.

I have no answer for that because it’s true; I’m not there.

“I’ll drive down this afternoon,” I say.

“Well, hurry up and get started,” Mama says.

I can almost feel the fear in her voice.

~

Mama was never the same after she spent six months thinking Donna might be dead. All that worry caused her to shatter like a plate dropped on a tile floor. Even after Donna came home safe and sound, Mama stayed broken.

For months on end she tried to glue herself back together, but it never quite happened. There were slivers of heart and chucks of determination that were gone forever. You hear that time heals all wounds, but it didn’t heal Mama’s.

She still needs someone to lean on. Needing someone alongside of her is a lot like that plastic bottle of rye whiskey; she doesn’t like it but it’s something she has to have.

~

I drive to Maryland alone, all the while thinking, She’s my sister, so why wouldn’t she tell me if something was wrong? It starts to rain before I hit the turnpike and continues all the way to Baltimore.



It’s still raining the next morning when Mama and I take Donna to the hospital. As we drive crosstown I ask Donna why she hasn’t told me about this.

“It’s nothing to worry about,” she says, but I can hear the thick rasp in her voice. How long has it been this way, I wonder. And why hadn’t I heard it before? Even as I listen to her say it’s nothing, I know better and I hate myself for not noticing sooner.

Once Donna is admitted, we settle into the waiting room. It’s a dreary place with outdated magazines and a television no one watches. Only one other person is in the room. He is an old man with a thin top of white hair. The fingers of his hands drum against each other as he leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees. I can’t help but wonder who he is waiting for. A wife perhaps. Although this is none of my business I find that thinking of this stranger and his troubles, helps me to move away from ours. For a brief moment I stop asking myself why I never noticed the sandpapered sound of my sister’s voice.