The Night Swim(73)

“Stop,” I called out. Jenny tried to shush me. “Don’t say anything. Otherwise it’ll get worse,” she said. I was overcome with anger—at the kids taunting us, but mostly I was angry at Jenny for being so passive, for allowing us to be treated this way.

“Let’s go,” Jenny said eventually, when someone began chanting, “Slut, slut.” She tugged at my arm until she was practically dragging me out of the theater and onto the street.

Once we were on the bus home, we realized that we’d left the drugstore bag with Mom’s medications on the floor by our seats. Jenny had to buy them all over again the next day.

Jenny went straight into the bathroom when we got home. When she emerged, her beautiful long golden hair had been chopped unevenly to her shoulders. Later, I found clumps of Jenny’s hair in the bathroom trash, all stuck together with pink gum. A boy sitting behind her at the movies had put gum in her hair.

After that trip to the movies, Jenny retreated into herself. Mom noticed. She asked if I knew what was worrying Jenny. I said that she was probably bored like me and wanted to get back to school.

I suppose I could have told Mom about how we’d fled the theater as kids pelted us, and about the terrible names they used. I couldn’t bear to do it. Jenny and I didn’t talk about that afternoon at all. It was almost as if we’d made a silent pact never to discuss it.

Jenny returned to her routine of working and coming home in the evening to make dinner, wash her uniform, and leave it to dry on the porch overnight. She would go to sleep while it was light, with the excuse that she had to wake early for work. I returned to riding my bicycle on the gravel road in front of our house. Backward and forward. The distant haze of the sea beckoned.

The woman with the blow-dried hair and church dress came to our house again. This time, she came with another woman who was plump and carried a nurse’s bag.

Mom was expecting them. She told me that visitors would be stopping by after lunch and when they arrived I should play outside. When I heard a knock on the screen door, I let them into the living room, where Mom was waiting in an armchair, wearing a colorful sundress. She’d even done her nails. Despite all her efforts to look well, the brightly patterned dress accentuated her skeletal arms and sunken chest and made her look sicker than ever.

I looked through a window into the living room as the nurse took Mom’s blood pressure and listened to her chest with a stethoscope before taking blood samples with a syringe. When she was done, the other woman passed Mom documents. Mom leaned over and signed them with wet eyes.



* * *



After they’d gone, Mom was so exhausted that she fell asleep on top of her bed. I put a tartan blanket over her and went to wait for Jenny’s bus on the main road at the other side of the hill from our house.

I was always excited to see what Jenny had brought home from work. The store manager often gave her leftover deli meat close to expiration and fruit and vegetables that were about to spoil. He knew how sick Mom was and I guess felt an obligation to help us out.

To keep myself amused while I waited for Jenny’s bus to pull in, I walked along the white line on the shoulder of the road, pretending I was a gymnast on a balance beam. Down the hill, I saw the bus thundering toward me from a distance. It pulled to a stop near the bus stop sign. The hydraulic doors opened with a hiss. Jenny stepped out in her tan supermarket uniform, carrying two large grocery bags.

We walked in silence to the sound of rustling grass and the occasional whine of a car engine passing by. Me in front, Jenny, a few yards behind. We didn’t talk. In the space of a few short weeks, Jenny had become introverted and brooding.

I picked up a long stick and scraped it on the dirt path behind me as I walked. When the path veered away from the road around a clump of trees, I followed it. My feet kicked up dust and my eyes were downcast as I focused on drawing an unbroken line with the stick. The trees blocked the road from view and acted as a buffer from the noise of passing cars.

The path eventually curved back to the road after the trees. Eventually, I realized that I hadn’t heard Jenny’s footsteps or the rustle of shopping bags for a while. I assumed I was walking too fast and Jenny had fallen behind. I stopped and waited. When Jenny still didn’t appear, I called to her.

“Jenny?”

No response.

“Jenny? Where are you?” I called out. She didn’t emerge from the path.

“Hurry up, Jenny!” I was annoyed she was taking so long.

“Jenny?”

I huffed in frustration at the silence that followed. I ran back along the path. When I found no trace of my sister, I walked into the road to look for her. There was no sign of her walking along the road on either side. All I saw was a red apple that had rolled onto the asphalt.

I picked up the apple. That’s when I saw Jenny’s shopping bags lying in the long grass by the side of the road. One bag had tipped over. Loose fruit had spilled onto the ground. The other bag was upright. There was no sign of Jenny. She was gone. I ran uphill, pushing long strands of grass out of my way until I reached the top.

Puffing loudly from running, my lungs burning, I stopped at the pinnacle and scanned the landscape below. I didn’t see Jenny. But I did see a familiar pickup truck driving slowly down an unpaved road leading to the mouth of the forest. I ran down the other side of the hill in the direction of the truck. I crossed the road and followed it into the forest.