On the school bus going home she whispered in my ear, “That was because of us, wasn’t it! – what happened to that old bag Harding. But we won’t tell anybody.”
Once upon a time there were two sisters, and one was very pretty and one was very ugly. . . . Though Mary Lou Siskin wasn’t my sister. And I wasn’t ugly, really: just sallow-skinned, with a small pinched ferrety face. With dark almost lashless eyes that were set too close together and a nose that didn’t look right. A look of yearning, and disappointment.
But Mary Lou was pretty, even rough and clumsy as she sometimes behaved. That long silky blond hair everybody remembered her for afterward, years afterward. . . . How, when she had to be identified, it was the long silky white-blond hair that was unmistakable. . . .
Sleepless nights, but I love them. I write during the nighttime hours and sleep during the day, I am of an age when you don’t require more than a few hours sleep. My husband has been dead for nearly a year and my children are scattered and busily absorbed in their own selfish lives like all children and there is no one to interrupt me no one to pry into my business no one in the neighborhood who dares come knocking at my door to see if I am all right. Sometimes out of a mirror floats an unexpected face, a strange face, lined, ravaged, with deep-socketed eyes always damp, always blinking in shock or dismay or simple bewilderment – but I adroitly look away. I have no need to stare.
It’s true, all you have heard of the vanity of the old. Believing ourselves young, still, behind our aged faces – mere children, and so very innocent!
Once when I was a young bride and almost pretty my color up when I was happy and my eyes shining we drove out into the country for a Sunday’s excursion and he wanted to make love I knew, he was shy and fumbling as I but he wanted to make love and I ran into a cornfield in my stockings and high heels, I was playing at being a woman I never could be, Mary Lou Siskin maybe, Mary Lou whom my husband never knew, but I got out of breath and frightened, it was the wind in the cornstalks, that dry rustling sound, that dry terrible rustling sound like whispering like voices you can’t quite identify and he caught me and tried to hold me and I pushed him away sobbing and he said, What’s wrong? My God what’s wrong? as if he really loved me as if his life was focused on me and I knew I could never be equal to it, that love, that importance, I knew I was only Melissa the ugly one the one the boys wouldn’t give a second glance, and one day he’d understand and know how he’d been cheated. I pushed him away, I said, Leave me alone! don’t touch me! You disgust me! I said.
He backed off and I hid my face, sobbing.
But later on I got pregnant just the same. Only a few weeks later.
Always there were stories behind the abandoned houses and always the stories were sad. Because farmers went bankrupt and had to move away. Because somebody died and the farm couldn’t be kept up and nobody wanted to buy it – like the Medlock farm across the creek. Mr Medlock died aged seventy-nine and Mrs Medlock refused to sell the farm and lived there alone until someone from the country health agency came to get her. Isn’t it a shame, my parents said. The poor woman, they said. They told us never, never to poke around in the Medlocks’ barns or house – the buildings were ready to cave in, they’d been in terrible repair even when the Medlocks were living.
It was said that Mrs Medlock had gone off her head after she’d found her husband dead in one of the barns, lying flat on his back his eyes open and bulging, his mouth open, tongue protruding, she’d gone to look for him and found him like that and she’d never gotten over it they said, never got over the shock. They had to commit her to the state hospital for her own good (they said) and the house and the barns were boarded up, everywhere tall grass and thistles grew wild, dandelions in the spring, tiger lilies in the summer, and when we drove by I stared and stared narrowing my eyes so I wouldn’t see someone looking out one of the windows – a face there, pale and quick – or a dark figure scrambling up the roof to hide behind the chimney—Mary Lou and I wondered was the house haunted, was the barn haunted where the old man had died, we crept around to spy, we couldn’t stay away, coming closer and closer each time until something scared us and we ran away back through the woods clutching and pushing at each other until one day finally we went right up to the house to the back door and peeked in one of the windows. Mary Lou led the way, Mary Lou said not to be afraid, nobody lived there any more and nobody would catch us, it didn’t matter that the land was posted, the police didn’t arrest kids our ages.
We explored the barns, we dragged the wooden cover off the well and dropped stones inside. We called the cats but they wouldn’t come close enough to be petted. They were barn cats, skinny and diseased-looking, they’d said at the country bureau that Mrs Medlock had let a dozen cats live in the house with her so that the house was filthy from their messes. When the cats wouldn’t come we got mad and threw stones at them and they ran away hissing – nasty dirty things, Mary Lou said. Once we crawled up on the tar-paper roof over the Medlocks’ kitchen, just for fun, Mary Lou wanted to climb up the big roof too to the very top but I got frightened and said, No, no please don’t, no Mary Lou please, and I sounded so strange Mary Lou looked at me and didn’t tease or mock as she usually did. The roof was so steep, I’d known she would hurt herself. I could see her losing her footing and slipping, falling, I could see her astonished face and her flying hair as she fell, knowing nothing could save her. You’re no fun, Mary Lou said, giving me a hard little pinch. But she didn’t go climbing up the big roof.
Later we ran through the barns screaming at the top of our lungs just for fun for the hell of it as Mary Lou said, we tossed things in a heap, broken-off parts of farm implements, leather things from the horses’ gear, handfuls of straw. The farm animals had been gone for years but their smell was still strong. Dried horse and cow droppings that looked like mud. Mary Lou said, “You know what – I’d like to burn this place down.” And she looked at me and I said, “Okay – go on and do it, burn it down.” And May Lou said, “You think I wouldn’t? Just give me a match.” And I said, “You know I don’t have any match.” And a look passed between us. And I felt something flooding at the top of my head, my throat tickled as if I didn’t know would I laugh or cry and I said, “You’re crazy—” and Mary Lou said with a sneering little laugh, “You’re crazy, dumbbell. I was just testing you.”
By the time Mary Lou was twelve years old Mother had got to hate her, was always trying to turn me against her so I’d make friends with other girls. Mary Lou had a fresh mouth, she said. Mary Lou didn’t respect her elders – not even her own parents. Mother guessed that Mary Lou laughed at her behind her back, said things about all of us. She was mean and snippy and a smart-ass, rough sometimes as her brothers. Why didn’t I make other friends? Why did I always go running when she stood out in the yard and called me? The Siskins weren’t a whole lot better than white trash, the way Mr Siskin worked that land of his.
In town, in school, Mary Lou sometimes ignored me when other girls were around, girls who lived in town, whose fathers weren’t farmers like ours. But when it was time to ride home on the bus she’d sit with me as if nothing was wrong and I’d help her with her homework if she needed help, I hated her sometimes but then I’d forgive her as soon as she smiled at me, she’d say, “Hey ’Lissa are you mad at me?” and I’d make a face and say no as if it was an insult, being asked. Mary Lou was my sister I sometimes pretended, I told myself a story about us being sisters and looking alike, and Mary Lou said sometimes she’d like to leave her family her goddamned family and come live with me. Then the next day or the next hour she’d get moody and be nasty to me and get me almost crying. All the Siskins had mean streaks, bad tempers, she’d tell people. As if she was proud.