But Kitty looks at her pink teapot on her pink stove, which is smaller than the big stove, but even with his big fingers, Kitty’s father doesn’t mind using it. She sighs, on the verge of tears, uncertain why.
Kitty’s father says, “Kitty, what’s wrong?”
Kitty shakes her head, sucking on her lower lip, which is always a sure indication that something isn’t right.
Kitty’s father pats his knee, and she climbs onto his lap, her straight hair nests under the scruff of his unshaven face.
“Are you worried about the moon, Kitty?”
Kitty looks up at her father, amazed by his ability to read her mind.
“You don’t have to worry, sweetheart. The moon is fine.”
Kitty hears her father say all this, but the more he repeats himself, the more she knows that he is lying to her. It’s the first time Kitty’s father has ever lied to her, but she recognizes his dishonesty immediately.
Kitty and her father continue with their day, slowly doing this or that, until night comes, but all day long, Kitty is distracted, her mind unable to extract itself from the moon. She wonders if maybe the moon is sick or if it will disappear entirely, both of which are not pleasing options to Kitty.
When the sun finally hides behind the horizon, Kitty and her father go search for the moon. He takes out his telescope and sets it up on the deck outside of Kitty’s window.
“Kitty! Come here!” he says.
Kitty presses one eye onto the tube and squints her other eye.
“It’s what we’ve been waiting for, Daddy! It’s here!” Kitty says.
“Yes, Kitty, it is.”
“I’ve already packed my suitcase, Daddy!”
Kitty’s father says, “Me too!”
Inside, there is a pink suitcase filled with pink clothes. Next to it, Kitty’s father placed a larger white suitcase.
Kitty’s father says, “Tomorrow, Kitty.”
Kitty’s father picks her up and takes her back into her room. There, he puts her into bed. “Sleep tight, Kitty. We have a big day tomorrow.”
Kitty closes her eyes and tries to sleep, fully knowing that tomorrow will be too late.
Deep into the night, Kitty fights: stay with her daddy or save the moon.
Kitty sighs, sucking on her lower lip, and grabs hold of her pink suitcase.
the story of two sisters (from Beth Couture)
This is the story of two sisters, and let this much be clear, before we get too far ahead of ourselves: they are not superheroes and should not be treated as such, but they are superhuman.
The two sisters are different, not only from each other and their parents but also from everyone else too. And the parents — for what it’s worth — are utterly normal.
Like all children and people who are fundamentally different, the two sisters hid. The two sisters pretended. And even when the circumstances became dire, when the two sisters ought to have shed their flaky fake skins of normalcy, when the two sisters were called to rise to the stature of heroines, they couldn’t.
This is the story of two sisters and the way they hid their secrets, the way they let the entire world fall to ruin.
One is called Ana, the other May. Their parents wanted a third, a boy, but alas, it was not in their cards. So they contented themselves with Ana May. They thought of the two sisters as a singular unit, as if one was necessary to make the other complete. They never bothered to add contractions to differentiate or combine them.
Yet somehow, the two sisters grew to be very different creatures. No matter how the parents tried to instill singularity, the sisters were sisters. They were not the same child. And so they were a constant disappointment.
Ana
Two sisters, and she is the older. Usually, it is a burden being the older, but for Ana, she could have been any sister.
The parents call her “Bug” at times. Other times, they would be more creative and call her “Buggy” or “Bugarug.” They would say, “Buggy May! Buggy May!” And Ana — excited — would yell back, “Buggy may what? Buggy may what?”
But the parents never seem to understand her question, so they simply walk away.
The parents call her “Bug” or “Buggy” because like a bug, she was always creeping, her body like paper flattened along the ground. She never wanted to walk.
Eventually though, she caved into the pressure of being normal toddler. The parents were overjoyed. They’d figured their daughter was going to remain a little buggy forever, and no one likes buggies, no, especially not the type of buggy Ana was: something more akin to a centipede or scorpion than a caterpillar. Caterpillars, at least, have potential.
The day Ana decided she would walk, it was as though someone pulled a string through her skull, and she suddenly could dance, a little marionette girl. And like a puppet, she propelled herself through the air, stopping only occasionally to rest along banisters and light fixtures. When Ana walked, she catapulted herself from furniture to furniture, her toes rarely grazing ground.
The parents thought it peculiar: one day their daughter would not leave the ground, the next she wouldn’t let her twinkling toes touch it.
Ana didn’t know how to tell her parents. She had no way of articulating it: If she could, she would sink herself into the earth, just to be ignored.
Instead, Ana made herself even more of a scene: jumping here and there one moment, a flattened coin the next.
May
Two sisters, and she is the younger. May watches Ana’s body cut air, and she looks for droplets of blood as evidence that her sister is real. May scans the room, and Ana is gone. Ana is always gone, and May is always here.
The parents, when they are jolly, run around singing, “Ana may! Ana may!” and jubilant, May screams back, “Ana may what? Ana may what?” It was a game they played. Ana becomes the noun, May becomes the verb, but there is always an element missing. May is not an active verb. May is an auxiliary verb, a connector, but she connects to nothing. The parents never seem to understand. They simply walk away, bored.
There was supposed to be a third child, a boy, but he never came. The parents don’t say it, but May is certain that she is to blame. And it’s true. She is to blame.
The irony, of course, is that Ana is the verb. She is movement. She is constant action, and May just sits there like a lump. Watching Ana, May becomes tired.
Ana
Two sisters, and she is the older by two years and five days. By the time May was born, Ana was already scaling walls, her body barely visible against the patterned wallpaper. The parents thought perhaps she was a chameleon because of the way she managed to blend. By the time May was born, Ana was more than unobtrusive: she was transparent.
May
Two sisters, and she is the younger. When May was born, the mother was in labor for days and days. That is not the way it ought to have been, the mother knew. When she birthed Ana, it was easy. She inhaled and exhaled and Ana was free, but May was an entirely different story. After some grueling fifty-two hours of labor, the mother, exhausted, bit the doctor’s fleshy forearm until he agreed to remove the pain. The truth of it was that the mother could have cared less about the baby.