Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(28)

I am expecting this to be the best Christmas ever. We have much to celebrate. The days ahead are like the presents. They glitter and promise much, but they are yet to be unwrapped. Just as others anticipate what is in the boxes, I anticipate what is yet to come.



Mama, Floyd, and Donna arrive on the evening of December twenty-third. I offer to make a late dinner, but they refuse.

“We ate on the way up,” Mama says. “Floyd likes the Maryland-style crab cakes.”

Donna says she’ll have a drink, so I fix her a rye and Coca Cola and serve it with chunks of cheese and crackers. She is still painfully thin, and this disappoints me. I had hoped that once she no longer had the taste of metal in her throat she would begin to eat more. But apparently that hasn’t happened.

She finishes that drink and then pours herself another. The cheese and crackers remain untouched.



On Christmas Eve I get out of bed at the crack of dawn. There are still a few presents left to wrap, but first I polish the silver, set the table, peel potatoes, cut slices of celery, and chop onions for the stuffing as I sing along with the carolers on the stereo. I keep the music low in the hope of not waking our guests, but when I lift my head Mama stands in the kitchen doorway.

“What can I do to help?” she asks.

“Grab a cup of coffee,” I say, nodding toward the Mister Coffee. “Then you can grate some carrots if you want.”

She does as I ask and we sit across from each other at the kitchen table, sharing chores and conversation. This is the way Mama likes it to be.

By this evening a crowd will have gathered around the dining room table and before the night ends sounds of laughter and song will echo through the house, but for now it is just the two of us and the kkrrsh, kkrrsh of carrots sliding along the old handheld grater.

“You do have Miracle Whip?” Mama asks.

“Mayonnaise,” I say.

“It’s got to be Miracle Whip. Carrot salad needs Miracle Whip.”

“Isn’t mayonnaise the same thing?”

“Absolutely not,” she says. “It has to be Miracle Whip.”

Mama doesn’t do a lot of cooking, and carrot salad is one of the few things she takes pride in doing. Rather than disrupt the harmony of the moment I suggest, “I’ll go to the store.”

When I get to the supermarket there is not a parking space to be found. I circle the lot several times, then turn around and go home. In the garage I take an old boot and throw it into a brown paper bag. This is what I carry upstairs and clunk down on the side counter, acting as if I got the Miracle Whip.

“I’ll finish up,” I say. “You can take a shower before Donna needs the bathroom.”

“Good idea.” Mama nods.

Once she leaves the kitchen I add several spoons of mayonnaise to the grated carrots and move to the next chore.

A short while later Donna joins me in the kitchen. “Morning,” she says in the gravelly voice that is foreign to my ear.

She is painfully thin. Her dry, colorless skin hangs loose over her bones like a garment on a wire hanger, yet she smiles as if nothing is wrong. I want to believe a smile means she is feeling better, so I tell myself it’s just a matter of time.

“Would you like bacon and eggs?” I ask.

She frowns and shakes her head. “Just coffee.”

I pour the coffee, add extra cream, and hand it to her, along with a plate of still-warm biscuits. She ignores the biscuits and takes a single sip of the coffee.

Although I have promised myself that I will make this a festive holiday for her, I can no longer hold back the question troubling my mind.

“Have you seen the doctor lately?”

She turns away and looks absently out the window. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Maybe not, but—”

“No buts. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I just thought—”

She doesn’t raise another objection but gives me a look that indicates the conversation is over. Still determined to rebuild my sister, I pour a glass of orange juice and hand it to her. “Here, this is good for you.”

She accepts it. I continue mixing fruit into the ambrosia, but I see her take the bottle of whiskey from the bottom cupboard and add a sizable measure to the juice.

“Do you really need that?” I ask, my annoyance obvious.

She nods. “I need something to get started this morning.” She acts as if there is nothing unusual about drinking whiskey at ten o’clock in the morning.

When I give her a disapproving frown, she says, “Lighten up.”

Before she has time to add anything else, I speak my mind.

“You’re not eating enough, and you’re drinking way too much!”

“I know what I’m doing,” Donna answers angrily.

“No, you don’t! You’re killing yourself! Is that what you’re trying to do? Kill yourself?”

For a moment she looks at me and says nothing. I have crossed the line that forbids us to speak of this possibility, and I am sorry. Were it possible to stuff the words back into my mouth and swallow them whole I would, but it is too late. All I can do is stand there in the naked glare of my mistake.

Donna takes a slow drink of the whiskey-laden juice then speaks. “You’re wrong. I’m not trying to kill myself. I’m trying to enjoy the life I have left, and it’s not easy.”