Precious (35 page)

Sissy says nothing. She shakes her head, dumbly, and with that, Eva mumbles something else—a piece of advice, perhaps. Sissy barely registers it. Then Eva goes, sprinting down the steps two, three at a time.

Sissy can hear the thudding of footsteps, the rush of motion. The front door opens and closes—a squeak, a bang—before she can say anything else at all. Then there are more footsteps, Natalia, alerted to the front door, hurrying out from her bedroom to see what’s wrong, then calling out into the night, “Come back.” Sissy freezes at the top of the steps, listening. She scrambles down the steps and hears a screech outside. Natalia grabs her by the shoulder. “Sissy,” she says. “Stay here.”

Sissy breaks from her mother’s grasp and runs down the steps, down the sidewalk to the narrow street outside her house. She smells rubber; the tire tracks snake down the macadam. The night is newly settled and quiet, the air still. A few lights go on, here and there, along the street. A front door opens; a neighbor steps outside. Above her stars sprinkle the sky. She looks both ways, down Ellis Avenue, past the sympathetic trees and parked cars lining the road. She stares out into everything and sees nothing.

Time passed and settled into place.

There were always those occasions when Sissy, thirty-two, made the trip back again through seemingly relentless hours and hazy miles, sometimes with her husband and her daughter if schedules permitted; and sometimes, like now and for shorter weekend visits, alone. The train station was filled with people, and over the haze of static and the noise of the bustling crowd walking by, suitcases rolling unevenly, Sissy took a seat and waited for the voice to cut through the loudspeaker and announce the departure of the express from D.C. to Philadelphia. From there she would disembark and catch the bus to her parents’ house, to those same streets and places she remembered from childhood, places where the memory of Eva always lingered. To her side, a board clicked out arrivals and departures with persistent regularity. In front of her a line of people inched slowly forward to the ticket counter. And above her the vaulted ceiling depicted a painting of a locomotive, steam billowing
against the calm sky, a conductor dressed in navy waving people into cars, a smile etched on his face.

There were always times to leave things behind, always times to return again, changed, tempered by the consciousness of memory.

Outside the station, a December rain fell, forceful and even. Sissy called her husband to let him know that even with the slick roads and bad weather, the train was scheduled to leave on time, and her baggage was checked and ready. Her eight-year-old daughter, Margaret, got on the phone, her voice still milky with sleep, and stayed on just long enough to tell Sissy goodbye and come back soon and be safe and bring her back a gift, please. She heard her husband issue a comment about breakfast and then there was a shuffling sound, a small muffle, and his voice on the other end of the line again. “I could still come,” he said, his voice a whisper. “I could get Margaret ready—”

“Don’t be silly,” Sissy said. “It’s only three days, and you’ve got work tomorrow. In and out; I’ll be home before you miss me.”

They spoke for another few minutes, about preparations and arrangements for the weekend: Sissy and her mother and the planned excursion downtown to hunt for slipcovers; her father’s offer to drive them all out to the country. Sissy didn’t mention the anticipation she held on these occasions when she came home, the secret wishes she still, after so many years, held inside her, nor did she discuss the dread that sometimes crept in and clouded her love. She hardly ever spoke about Eva, though she thought of her—and in that way held her close—most days.

That night, after Eva ran away and Frank’s anger receded like a storm wave, it was Natalia who spent days and days calling around the neighborhood to those friends of Eva’s that she knew, finally exhausting her mental list to acquaintances and relative strangers. And it was Frank who drove around town for hours, searching for Greg’s car at the school and parks and at his home. The boy’s parents refused to give Frank
any answers as to where Eva went, but finally, after a week of Frank’s showing up and asking, Greg’s mother acquiesced and gave Frank a slip of paper with an address in New Jersey, a friend of their family. Of course he went. Of course he looked for Eva. When Frank arrived at the small apartment, no one answered the door, though inside a curtain moved. Once, when he lingered too long on the front steps, knocking incessantly, practically pleading, the police showed up and asked him to leave. There was a knowledge that gradually seeded itself, that those who do not wish to be found never are, that Eva stubbornly adamantly, refused to come home and eventually left the apartment in New Jersey altogether, her emancipation finalized on her eighteenth birthday, just three weeks after that night. Eventually, when Natalia herself drove out to the apartment—convinced that if not Frank then she could bring Eva home—she secured only an address in California and was told Eva had bought a bus ticket there, though no one could tell Natalia why.

Both Natalia and Frank waited, hoping that Eva would call. They suffered through scandalous rumors and correctly leveled accusations, though no one ever really thought Eva would stay away forever. No one believed that. Eventually, they all thought, the girl was bound to need something—money, a loan, a favor, advice—but the phone never rang once, and Natalia’s letters trickled back one by one, unopened, refused, and then finally, after another year, it was no longer a valid address. And that was it. It sometimes seemed to Sissy and perhaps to Natalia and Frank and maybe even to Eva herself, that there should have been more—more antagonisms, more debate, more filling in of questions that persisted across the long years. But there was, in place of all this, silence that blanketed the past and the Kisches’ history, covering it like a dense snow. Through all the years, Frank never, ever, spoke of Eva, so final was his remorse. Unlike Natalia, he never would say he’d tried his best, though he never again raised a hand to anyone in the family, and he barely, as Sissy grew, even so much as dared an embrace. In time his resolve weakened with his body, everything seeming to drain from his
flesh—all life, all vigor. Often, when he and Natalia watched television, there might be an alert that appeared, flashing across the screen—a child suddenly gone missing—and Frank would stop doing whatever he was doing and grow contemplative, and Natalia would get up suddenly and put on a pot of coffee and no words would pass between them.

Time had done nothing to alleviate Natalia’s wounds. Her face took on a complex network of lines; the skin at her neck drew itself forward, rope after rope appearing. As Sissy grew, as her body shot up and outward and her face filled in, Natalia told fewer and fewer stories about Gypsies and distant lands and moths that fluttered about, escaping over the wires. Eventually, the stories ceased altogether and were forgotten; indeed in Natalia, all history became lost. Still, sometimes, years later, questions about that summer—about so many things—consumed Sissy. She would remember Eva’s accusation leveled at their mother
— Aren’t you going to do anything?—
and then her final pronouncement to Sissy before she left her bedroom, one forgotten and later remembered, a warning that Sissy should watch her back.
If anyone lays a hand on you,
Eva said,
you get the hell out.

“A story,” an adult Sissy would say, tentatively, to Natalia when they spoke on the phone. “Tell me more about Eva. Tell me more about my sister.”

“What stories?” Natalia would ask. “I’m all out of stories. I cried all my tears,” Natalia said, “when you weren’t watching. Not even God sees everything.”

Inevitably, Natalia would change the subject, or the conversation would end abruptly, and it was as if Natalia were closing a book, their collective history pressed like a flower between the pages. Sissy couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t more they could have done; she couldn’t help but think that in a small way, with Eva gone, something between Natalia and Frank was finally resolved—an order in the house restored—despite the hole at the center of everything that Eva could rightly claim as hers. How they all circled around that space, each of them carefully maneuvering it, in their own ways; how they danced
around the space in conversations; how they sometimes pretended it wasn’t there, turning their backs on it instead.

Did it make anything better to speak of Eva at all? Did it make anything better to dredge around in the murky waters of the past, to lift Eva like the drowned are sometimes mercifully lifted? In lifting Eva up, was she somehow transformed in the light of day? It seemed to Sissy that a terrible injustice was done, not only that summer but in the summers that followed, in the gradual acceptance and forgetting, in the final failure to acknowledge Eva at all. Could it be, she often found herself wondering, that the final hope in anything lies only in a story, in the speaking of her, in the utterance of words issued against the silence, in breathing,
Eva, Eva,
into the open space, calling out for her,
Come home?

The house remained largely unchanged over time, her parents fixed securely in place, waiting, living in the same city that grew and changed around them. The neighborhood took on new faces and problems, people no longer out in the summer evenings, no longer chattering at the mailboxes or neglecting to lock their doors and shut their windows at night. No one called on Natalia. No one was left to call. Often when Sissy visited, she’d linger on streets that were still familiar, after many years and changes, places that held the imprint of time. Sometimes she’d walk downtown, past Mr. Morris’s toy store that was long ago sold and turned into a coffee shop. She might be thinking of something else entirely—an errand she’d promised to run, a gift to purchase—but then something might overcome her suddenly and she’d feel breathless and overwhelmed. She’d turn, searching for ghosts, expecting to find Eva walking along the cobblestone streets. Sissy’s imaginings weren’t grand anymore but simple, almost achingly realistic: Eva would catch sight of her and then turn and grasp Sissy’s arm, the space closing between them. “I know you!” she’d exclaim, even though they hadn’t seen each other once in more than twenty years. “I know you! I’d know you anywhere, you.”

Even though Sissy had long ago grown up and weathered her own teenage years and days spent alone in her room, and even though she
went on to college, where she met her husband and they married, and even though she cut her hair short and her face had aged, Eva would still recognize her. And, in the odd light of memory and time, it was always like this: While Sissy had changed, Eva would have not changed at all. She would still have that look, as if she were perpetually almost eighteen—a catlike, killer walk, a star earring dangling from each lobe, her long hair falling in waves around her smooth face.

“I know you,” Eva would whisper, holding her there in time.

They’d sit, the two of them, outside the coffee shop. Around them glasses would clink and the air would be light and the breezes agreeable—the weather always fine. People would pass, unaware of what a grand occasion it was—such a grand occasion!—to suddenly find someone who had been lost.

“Just in to town,” Eva would explain, marveling, looking around. “Haven’t been back in years.”

“Me, too,” Sissy would say. “How have you been? Catch me up. Catch me up on everything. Did you marry? Have a child? Were you reasonably happy enough?”

“That’s a lot.” Eva would smile then—there would be a balancing of laughter and tears—and it wouldn’t be as though Eva were merely surviving. She’d be vibrant, bright, despite being on her own. She’d be better for it—stronger, more capable. She’d look rested and happy, not a runaway but a girl who had the life she’d hoped for, a life of easy attainment and pleasant days. She would be happy. Sissy would swear by it.

“I’ve never forgotten you,” Sissy would say. “I’ve always wondered what your story might have been if you were given a chance to tell it.”