My parents smiled, but weakly. They were tired. To pay Lynn's medical bills and our new mortgage, my father worked almost constantly When he was home, all he thought about was Lynn. Our whole lives revolved around what Lynn wanted, what was good for Lynn, and what more we could do for Lynn.
Lynn came home the first week of November, on a rainy Saturday. We had decorated her room and put up a streamer that said WELCOME HOME. We'd bought the streamer at a store. It was the same color as Christmas tinsel. In the store it had seemed beautiful, but with Lynn lying in bed so pale and sick, the streamer seemed all wrong. My father took it down silently.
We quickly formed a ritual. Every night after my mother washed Lynn down, the whole family sat in our bedroom while I read to Lynn from the encyclopedia set my father had bought her for her birthday in September. It was used and it wasn't Encyclopaedia Britannica—we couldn't afford that—but Lynn loved it anyway As she always had been, Lynn was obsessed with the ocean, especially the ocean by California. I read anything in the encyclopedia set we could think of that concerned the ocean. She liked to know about everything, from the most peaceful tiny fish to the hungriest shark. Lynn thought it was all fascinating, and so did I. Some nights after I read, she wanted my parents to leave, and she and I talked about the houses we would live in someday by the sea. Our houses would boast huge picture windows, and palm trees would grow in our front yards. Then I would go into the living room and sleep on my cot next to the couch.
Sometimes I played hooky to be with Lynn. I wrote fake excuse letters from my mother to show the teacher, and sometimes when the teacher asked me directly what was wrong with me, I lied and said I'd had a fever the previous day. At home I read the encyclopedia to Lynn or combed her hair or painted her nails. One day she looked very sad and told me she wished she had some glittery pink polish. I didn't have any money, but I walked down to the five-and-ten store. I'd decided to steal Lynn some polish. I'd never stolen anything before, but it couldn't be hard.
When I arrived at the store, nobody was there except a lady at the front cash register. She was reading a magazine.
First I looked around the aisle where they kept bandages and antiseptic. Then I pretended to be interested in tennis shoes a couple of aisles down. Finally, I approached the nail polish. Nobody was in that aisle. This was too easy! I stuck some beautiful pink polish in my pocket and walked calmly out. I smiled as I walked through the door. It had been raining earlier, and a rainbow filled the sky. The sky was beautiful! Suddenly, I felt a hand grab my upper arm. I didn't even turn to look—I wrested my arm away and ran and ran. I kept waiting for someone to catch up with me, but no one ever did. I never looked back.
At home I painted Lynn's nails shimmery pink. She seemed so pleased, I didn't regret what I'd done. But before I got in bed later that night, I hung out the alcove window and looked up and down the street for the sheriff. The street was empty, so I slept peacefully.
The next morning before I left for school, I checked on Lynn. She was sound asleep, but her arms hung outside the blanket. Her nails looked pretty, and she was smiling slightly.
I hated to wake her up, but I had to, to give her her medicine. Eventually, when she got better, maybe some days I would let her slide and not force her to take her medicine. A part of me regretted making her miserable in this way—I think some of her pills made her feel even more awful than she already felt. Some days I think she was really miserable, because she cried a lot. In a way, I'd had to steel my heart to her crying. You need to steel yourself to a lot of things when someone in your family is really sick. I was going to give Lynn every chance to get better no matter how miserable it made her. I shook her awake.
"It's time for your pills!"
"Do I have to?"
"Yes."
She groaned softly as I propped her up. I never even asked her why she groaned, never asked her what exactly hurt when I did that. I didn't even know what made her hurt and what, if anything, made her feel good. All I knew was that my parents were at work, and it was my job to give her some pills.
I waited until she swallowed her water. Then I gently laid her back down. I got Sammy ready for school and called Mrs. Kanagawa, who sat with Lynnie during the days. As I was leaving she'd turned her head a bit and was admiring her pretty nails. I was in a good mood all day and was even able to answer a question during history.
When I got home, my mother was already there for some reason. She was talking to a white woman I had never seen. As soon as I walked through the doorway, the woman said, "That's her."
My mother bowed a slight bow to the woman and said, "I'm very sorry." She reached into her wallet. "Let me pay for it."
The woman took a dollar from her. "Will she be punished?"
"Yes, she certainly will."
The woman nodded. She walked out, glaring at me along the way. Right before she walked out, she said, "Shame on you!"
As soon as the woman left, my mother burst into tears. "My family is falling apart," she cried out. She ran out of the room.
I felt guilty then. I immediately went to my work area in the alcove and started to do my homework. When Silly's mother or uncle could drive her, she would come over for a couple of hours in the afternoons and help me with my homework. Like my sister, Silly was a straight-A student. I was doing even worse than usual at school that semester, and they were already talking about holding me back if I didn't improve.
Tonight I was supposed to write a book report on The Call of the Wild. It was my most favorite book I ever read, so I thought the report would be easy. The question we were supposed to answer in our report was: What is the theme of The Call of the Wild? What was the theme? I could never figure out exactly what "theme" meant. I wrote down that the theme was that dogs were loyal to good people. Furthermore, I wrote, dogs are good pets to own because of their loyalty. Loyalty is the theme. That is a fine theme. What else? In Alaska you need a dog to pull your sled. This proves that dogs and man were meant to befriends. This is another theme of The Call of the Wild.
Then I walked with Sam over to our former apartment to watch TV with Mrs. Muramoto. We watched until bedtime and returned home. When we came through the door, my mother was waiting. "Your father is in the kitchen. He wants to talk to you."
This was a very bad sign. He had never given me a talk. Lynn, of course, used to give me big talks. And my mother had given me a talk earlier that year, about what would happen when I started menstruating. And the vice principal had recently given me a talk about how if you got on the wrong track in grade school, you might never get off and you would end up either in a terrible job or else married to someone with a terrible job.
I sat down at our table in the kitchen. My father, reading the newspaper, ignored me at first. I examined a chip on our yellow Formica table. Our chairs were green. A neighbor had given us the table, and our uncle had given us the chairs. Nothing in our house matched.
My father set his paper down and looked at me. "Lynn does have anemia," he said. "But she also has lymphoma, and it's very serious." He seemed to be thinking hard. "Tomorrow I want you to go to the store and apologize for stealing that nail polish."
"Okay."
"I know you're a good girl," he said. "I've always known that. But sometimes I like to see it, just to remind me. You think you could remind me of that a little more often?"