Like a Sister(53)

Strike one.

I moved on to Desiree’s followers. A much more extensive list. That one had three Karmas, none of whom listed a last name of Dodson. I screenshot them all anyway.

Strike two.

Up next was a general Karma Dodson IG search. Three Karma Dodson handles came up, a grand total of one post and five Instagram followers between them.

And strike three.

I moved on to Twitter, still hoping for a hit. Desiree had an account she’d used solely to link to Instagram posts. No Karmas followed. No Karmas following. I did find a Karma Dodson handle with no listed location and only a few posts from 2014.

I didn’t even waste time with Snapchat. Desiree had never been into it. Something about some sponsored post gone awry. And she’d stayed off TikTok too, probably because she never had enough rhythm for dance challenges.

So Facebook it was. I wasn’t much of a fan myself, and Desiree didn’t even have a page. But the reasons I hated it were the same reasons it’d be helpful. It made it hard to be anonymous. Full names. Locations. Doing the utmost to tell everyone your business, from your birthday to your new job to your comment on that pic of your friend’s cute new baby.

I typed in the name. Three people popped up. I clicked SEE ALL in the upper right corner. Facebook loved to make more assumptions than a Black grandmother: that you missed a letter, added a letter, got the word order wrong. It was too late at night and I was still too high to make much of the full list, but I tried, using my finger to scroll. One Karma listed Arizona as her current location even though she was wearing a knit scarf in her profile pic. It’d been two years. Could she have moved?

Number two had a dog for their profile pic and a Pennsylvania hometown. I doubted this Karma would drive two-plus hours to get to Manhattan. Not when Philly was so close. Number three bypassed both location and human profile pic, offering only the Knicks logo. I was about to click on the basketball fan when the guest bedroom door opened. Erin stumbled out, hand covering her mouth, and headed toward the bathroom.

I jumped up to make sure she remembered which door it was. Last thing I wanted was projectile vomit all over my coats. Erin made it in the nick of time. I stood outside feeling useless. Her hair was up in a pony so she didn’t even need me to hold it back. She puked, then retched, then puked some more.

I took it as a sign. It was time to go to bed.

*



I was the last one up Sunday morning, but then I’d been the last to go to sleep. Same dream. Same result, never finding my sister. The guest room door was open, the bed unmade, the carefully curated pillows Aunt E had given me strewn across the floor like landmines. It was the only clue Erin had been there. She was nowhere to be found, but it was okay. I knew where she was.

Aunt E’s kitchen.

I was surprised to find her actually eating, fork moving toward her mouth versus just around her plate. She stared at me in wonder. “I’ve never had grits before!”

I didn’t tell her she’d never have grits like that again. Aunt E’s grits could stop wars, at least long enough for both sides to eat. It took almost two decades of straight begging to get her to tell me the secret. Heavy cream and mascarpone. And according to generations of Black people, her foot in it.

Aunt E had my plate ready and waiting. It was part of our morning ritual, along with the hug, the kiss on the cheek, the waiting for me to take the first bite so I could properly compliment her and she could properly play shy.

“This is delicious,” I said. And it was. It wasn’t why I still struggled to eat.

She beamed. “Not my best, but I’m glad you like it.”

“What are you doing today?” Erin said. “Checking Karma?”

I gave her a look. Not in front of Aunt E. “No plans,” I said. “You?”

She shook her head. “Desiree and I would usually do brunch at Balthazar. I can probably go with someone else, but it’d be weird. But I don’t wanna go home either. It’s been hard to be alone since she died.”

Being alone was my happy place—at least over the last couple of years—but I still felt for Erin. She hadn’t mentioned much about her family, and as usual, I hadn’t asked—but it was clear they weren’t close. I at least still had Aunt E. Even if we hadn’t spent as much time together since Desiree had died, just knowing she was downstairs was comforting. Erin had nothing but a big, empty house.

Aunt E must’ve felt just as bad because she stood up, gently rubbed Erin’s stick-thin arm. “Well, we definitely aren’t kicking you out, baby.” She smiled. “Especially not with those dishes in the sink. I’m gonna go get dressed. You two get to work.”

She left, and we did as told. Aunt E had a dishwasher, thanks to Mel, but she considered that solely for extra storage and special occasions. I spent a lot of time standing in front of her side-by-side sinks, elbow deep in soapy dishwater. Sometimes Desiree had been next to me. Today it was Erin, but it took her just turning on the faucet for me to know she had never given much thought to how dishes were actually cleaned. She used cold water.

“It helps if the water is hot,” I said.

“Great tip!”

She said it with so much enthusiasm, I wondered if we’d need to stop for her to write it down. Once we got the water to a suitable grease-killing temp, she made mistake number two. I grabbed her hand just as it was about to dive into the water and gave her a pair of rubber gloves. “This will preserve the mani.”