“Yesterday, at approximately seven p.m., a Caucasian male entered the Planned Parenthood clinic and detonated an explosive device. It seems there may have been as many as twenty women in the building at the time. We will release names to the media after we’ve identified the victims and notified their families.” He abruptly turned away from the camera and the reporter took over. I didn’t hear a word she said.
My dad was out of town at a conference, so I couldn’t ask him any of the questions swirling through my head. Not that he’d have answers; he and Aunt V had kept their distance since that first summer when she came home.
I ran to my room, stuffed my legs into a pair of jeans, and threw on a T-shirt over my nightgown. It was still early and as the sun rose over the tops of the trees, streaking the sky a golden orange, I pedaled hard, my heart pounding in my ears as random thoughts about Aunt V floated in my brain. Shoes. She loved shoes and had over a hundred pairs. I knew because the week before she’d paid me fifty cents a pair to organize them for her, and I’d earned sixty-seven dollars. The shoes sat on the large closet shelf, each in a cloudy-white plastic box. I’d taped Polaroid pictures to each — red pumps, purple sandals, orange suede boots, pink high-top sneakers, burgundy penny loafers...
I got to Bradley Street and there were people everywhere — police, firemen, neighbors, kids. I scanned the crowd for my mother, hoped to see my aunt. Glass, paper, and broken furniture littered the sidewalk and street. Men in uniforms carried black bags like the ones you see on crime shows from the building and lined them up on the grass outside the front door. The smell of smoke filled my nose and throat, and the faint smell of burning hay wafted through the crowd.
Olivia and Vanya had always shared secrets, and in high school Vanya dubbed Olivia their queen. They’d reveal their confidences before hooking their pinkies, gazing into each other’s eyes, and repeating a solemn phrase they’d learned from their mother: Forever and Always. Olivia told tales of the things she and Seth got up to when she snuck out to meet him at night. V didn’t really like Seth. He was a know-it-all whose mother talked about Olivia, called her wild and worse. Olivia’s biggest secret spilled out the night of her graduation, the night she left town with Seth.
Olivia threw clothes in a suitcase as V tossed her sister’s blouses, skirts, and shoes out of the blue bag until she caught that gleam in Olivia’s eye. She knew Olivia would not be stopped.
“Where you going?” Vanya asked.
“New York or Washington. Seth got into Howard and NYU.” She stopped packing and added, “I’m pregnant. I thought about, you know,” she touched her still slim stomach, “but I can’t do it.”
Olivia closed her eyes for a moment, then tossed a pair of faded jeans into the almost full bag.
“You gonna marry him?”
“Yes,” Olivia answered.
“You know Dad’s gonna try to stop you.”
“When has he ever tried to stop me from doing anything?” O said. “When has he ever cared? Besides, it’s gonna be our secret.” She held out her pinkie, but V didn’t take it. O closed her suitcase as a tear rolled down her nose. She walked to the door.
“Wait!” Vanya called. She hopped off the bed and went to her dresser where she kept her box of memories. It’d been the last Christmas gift she got from their mother. She pulled out a bunch of crumpled bills and stuffed them into her sister’s hand. “Take this,” she said, then extended her pinky.
Seth started at Howard soon after he and Olivia arrived in DC. They lived in a tiny apartment with furniture they found or picked up from tag sales, and Olivia hated it. After a while she started to hate Seth too, but she stayed. She lost the baby a few months after they left home; she tried to forget and found a job on campus answering phones for the English department. When Seth graduated, they moved back to New Haven, where Olivia worked at Malley’s in the children’s department while Seth went to law school and they tried to have another baby. She missed her sister.
Vanya graduated the May after Olivia left and went off to Spelman College. She made friends. She danced at parties and sipped fruity cocktails on dates. She studied for classes and talked to Olivia at least once a week. They still shared secrets but now Vanya’s were juicier than O’s. O had settled into a life with Seth while V had started kissing boys and skipping classes. By the time Vanya graduated, Olivia’s little indiscretions tasted like dry white toast in comparison to her butter-and-jam-slathered tales. Vanya went home to New Haven for a week before moving to Montreal to study nursing and didn’t return home for ten years.
You got off the plane wishing you didn’t look as raggedy as you knew you did. You were ready to start again and go back to before everything had spiraled out of control. Olivia had called almost every day that first year you lived in Montreal, and you’d gab for hours about your new grown-up lives — your classes in nursing school, her relationship with Seth, the baby they never had. A year went by, then two. You finished nursing school and found a job as an ER nurse. Olivia chaired committees, and hosted dinner parties, and you spoke to her less and less. You were lonely, and tired all the time, and you wanted to talk to your sister. Most days you struggled to keep your eyes open, especially on night shifts — you started doing it as a way to stay awake, a way to feel something on the days when life was a gray cloud you trudged through. You told yourself it was no big deal. Lots of the nurses did it. A hit here, a toke there, and before you knew it, you craved its caresses like a lover’s. Some days you didn’t even go to work, and when days turned to weeks, they fired you. You’d stare at your cracked reflection in another broken mirror, in another bathroom, in another bar, and as you painted your lips, you’d wonder who that hollow-cheeked woman was. When it got bad and you couldn’t pay your rent, you’d call your father for money but never told him you’d lost your job, or that your belly was growing, or that your home was a run-down hotel, or that you turned tricks for hits. You loved the act of preparing it, measuring it, grinding it, cooking it, but especially smoking it. The bittersweet acridness of the blue smoke, the crackle of tiny, quartzy rocks as you kissed them with flame. You’d close your eyes and inhale, hold the smoke in your lungs, and then blow it all out as the smooth, tingly sensation creeped from brain to toes. You loved that most of all until the baby kicked and you knew you had to quit. You called Olivia. She came and stayed five months, and you stopped, and when she left, you hooked your pinkies and whispered, “Forever and Always,” before Olivia closed the cab door and flew home with the baby. It didn’t take long for you to start again. You missed O, couldn’t find a job, and the hole in your chest throbbed as you thought of your baby, her baby, and you smoked. The first time you landed in jail you told yourself it’s no big deal. Ten arrests for solicitation later and you spent eighteen months in prison and they shipped you back to Connecticut. You’d missed your father’s funeral. A heart attack took him and you hadn’t found out until three months after it happened because Olivia didn’t always accept your calls. She never came to visit, never sent pictures of your baby, her baby. No one picked you up from Union Station and you loaded your bags into a cab, reciting Forever and Always in your head because you wanted to tell her you were home and she was yours — but not yet.
I was eight the summer I met Aunt V. The sun slipped in and out of clouds as I played jacks on the porch. My mom talked about her, but she’d never come to visit. “Work,” my mom told me. She sent me cards for my birthday and every Christmas. I sat on the porch, tossing up my jacks ball, waiting for her to come, and when a yellow cab pulled up to our curb, I skipped down the front walk to meet her.