Burn Our Bodies Down(69)

she pressed the flame to my cheek like someone putting out a cigarette. i can feel the burn there still. the skin is starting to scar, and i don’t think it will ever fade.

i screamed. i’m sure i did. she let go. and i left. ran away, really.

she stayed upstairs the rest of the day. i didn’t see her. mom didn’t say a word about our birthday or about anything but she sat me down in the kitchen and patched up my cheek. she was gentle and she was steady and it still hurts.

i told her how the scratches got on the dining room table. i told her everything. i said, i remember saying, “something’s not right with her.” i said that. mom knew what i was talking about.

and what she told me was that someone would have to put an end to it. “sooner’s better than later. she’ll only get worse. it’s the best gift you can give her.” i’ll hear that for the rest of my life. i’ll always wonder what a different mother might have said.

it took me all night to decide what to do.

i think it should have taken longer.

i didn’t know how i was going to do it when i woke her up. i didn’t know anything. i probably should have planned. but i went into her room and this time when i woke her she just seemed like herself. like me. and she said “i’m sorry” the second she opened her eyes.

i told her to get up. i said i had a present for her.

that was the first lie i’ve ever told her.

she was in her pajamas still. i have the same pair—mom got them for us both on our last birthday—but i’ve never worn mine. they were too big for her (so too big for us both) and she’d rolled up the cuffs of the pants and the sleeves both. i could see the skin of her stomach through the gaps between the buttons. i hated that.

she asked me where the present was and i said it was outside and she trusted me. she followed me. we went downstairs and we went out onto the back porch and i could see the grove in the distance, a deeper dark than the sky. it was almost dawn.

when we were kids we would stay on the porch and talk all night. i thought that could be the present i gave her. one little bit of our old lives for her to remember. but it was too close to the house and to the light mom left on under the stove hood. so i said we should go out to the grove.

it used to be our place back when we were still young enough that i’d give people the wrong name. so it seemed like the right thing. all of it seemed like the right thing, is my point.

the grove is about a mile from the house. we walked it together, barefoot down the access road that cuts through the crops. halfway there she reached over and held my hand so tightly, the insides of our wrists pressed together. she did it. i never want to forget that. my sister and i walked side by side in the night once, and her pulse beat against mine.

but then we got there.

the place we started, the way mom tells it.

the grove has this smell to it that i don’t know how to describe. it’s like it’s always just rained there. fresh earth, and something sweet. that night it was so strong it lingered in my hair for hours, until finally i took a bath in the black-tiled guest bathroom and changed into some of mom’s clothes.

katherine looked happy. we stepped through the first clutch of the apricot trees and she let out this sigh. like she’d been holding her breath since i don’t know when. since the last time we were there, maybe. and this i remember, this i cannot be wrong about: she said, “thank you.”

that was the gift. bringing her there, that was my gift to her.

if she hadn’t said it maybe i wouldn’t have been able to. but it felt like she was giving me permission. like this was the right way for it to be over for her.

so i let her go deeper into the grove by herself. i let her get ahead of me. and i picked up a rock from between the roots of an apricot tree. i meant to hit her on the back of the head so maybe she’d die without realizing what this was.

but i took too long, or she heard me, or something. i don’t know exactly. all i remember is the line of her profile as she looked over her shoulder. mine. her and me. my mini.

i couldn’t. not like that. i still had to.

i took her throat in my hands and she ended up on her back, me with my knees on either side of her. i was crying, and my hands kept slipping. but she was so weak that it barely mattered.

here is where i have to stop. it is too much. i can tell you i remembered the burn on her finger. and i can tell you i snapped off the dead corn from the fields and piled it over her body, right there in the grove. i can tell you i got a lighter from the kitchen and burned her down.

mom called the fire department. they came. they put it out. the police asked questions, and we told them it was all katherine, which wasn’t really a lie. we told them she disappeared, which wasn’t really a lie either.

i don’t understand how, but when they looked for her body, there was nothing left to find.

that’s the end of it. that has to be the end of it. but it’s been three weeks now, three weeks and seven hours since i did what i did, and something is wrong with my body. at first i thought it was her, getting what she wanted, making us the same all the way inside again. but it’s not. it’s not. i’ve already missed one period. already started feeling sick every morning.

it’ll be a girl.

i have no father and i have a mother i cannot bear to look at and this is the only place i can ask for help. please. i have sinned. that’s what you say when you’re confessing, and i have. but my daughter hasn’t.