I opened up the foil, feeling guilty that I’d called her my half sister to my dad and Tonette. Mom had never allowed us to call each other anything but sisters.
“She’s got a different daddy, but she’s your sister. No half about it,” Mom had told me when Marin was first born, a red, wrinkly squiggle of a thing wrapped up and grunting in a yellow ducky blanket.
“But Dani said that Marin’s not my real sister if we’ve got two different daddies. She said that’s what makes her a half sister.”
Mom’s face had darkened, a frown crinkling her brow as she bounced Marin up and down lightly in her lap. “You tell Dani what makes someone a sister isn’t what’s in your blood. It’s what’s in your heart.”
Since then, I’d never called Marin a half sister, not to her face. I wasn’t even sure if Marin was fully aware that we had two different fathers, though she did sometimes wonder aloud why I didn’t call Ronnie “Daddy” like she did.
I sketched an oval-shaped blanket bundle with a little round head at the top of it. Marin is my sister, I wrote. I felt better.
I tucked the foil in with the others and pulled out the card deck. I shuffled the cards, then scootched back on the couch and began laying them out. I played Black Hole long past when my back started to feel creaky and my eyes became heavy, thinking about summer camp and Noaychjon, who taught me a ton of solitaire games so I could play even when he needed a day off.
A part of me wondered if maybe on some level Noaychjon had known that one day I’d need to know those solitaire games, because one day I would be so utterly alone.
The screen door slammed, jarring me awake. I opened my eyes to see morning sun, and Kyle and Nathan racing down the walk with backpacks on, the whole time kicking at each other and stopping to bend over and pick up rocks and sticks and other things to be used as weapons.
“You poopface!”
“You dog’s butt!”
“You smelly farthole!”
I sat up, realizing when I found a card stuck to my arm that I’d fallen asleep while playing Black Hole. Some of the cards were on the floor. Others were underneath me, bent. I scooped them up, my fingers fumbling sleepily, and straightened them out as best I could, dropping them back into the box.
I stretched, then carefully opened the door and crept into the kitchen.
“I don’t see why she doesn’t have to go to school. Her house blew away, boo-hoo. She ain’t in Elizabeth no more. She’s here and she’s got a house,” Lexi was saying, her hip propped up against the kitchen counter while she shoved something bready into her mouth with her fingers. She made no attempt to hide that she was talking about me when I walked in.
“She ain’t registered here,” Grandmother Billie was saying. “And they told me not to even try it this year because school’s over in a week anyways, so it’s out of my hands.”
I walked on through, as if I didn’t hear anything, and carried my backpack to the bathroom. What business was it of theirs if I went to school or not?
I took a shower, trying to take as much time as possible, hoping the girls would be gone by the time I got out. It almost worked. They were standing by the front door waiting on my grandfather to take them to school, their things all gathered at their feet.
“It’s probably good you’re not going with us,” Meg said, pulling a red lollipop out of her mouth and waving it at me. Her lips and tongue were candy stained. “You’d probably embarrass us anyway. Hey, Lex, ain’t it perfect that her name’s a cow’s name?” She tapped Lexi on the forearm with her lollipop-wielding hand.
“Ew, gross, don’t touch me with that thing,” Lexi said, wiping her arm dramatically. “You’re such a child.”
“That’s enough now,” Grandfather Harold said, coming into the room, keys jangling in one hand. “Get yourselves to school and never mind this one.”
The girls glared at me and then pushed through the front door. While I was grateful that Grandfather Harold had made them leave, I couldn’t help noticing he’d called me “this one.”
I hurried into the kitchen, where Grandmother Billie was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and reading a paperback novel with a picture of a half-naked man on the front, wrapped around the torso of a woman in a gauzy white gown.
“There’s some dishes,” she said, without looking up. And even though my stomach was rumbling and I really didn’t think it was fair for me to have to do everyone else’s dishes when I hadn’t even eaten yet, I was afraid to say anything, so I went to the sink and started the hot water. “You get a chance to talk to my granddaughters yet?” Grandmother Billie said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I didn’t mention them asking for money or calling me an orphan.
Her granddaughters. Clay was their dad. Grandmother Billie was their grandmother. And even though I shared the same blood, even though he was my father and she was my grandmother, too, nobody saw it that way. I was a stranger, pawned off on their family. I guessed Mom was right—family had nothing to do with blood. It had everything to do with what was in your heart. And there was nothing for me in any of the hearts in this house. The hearts that beat for me were long gone.
Just as I finished, Terry came into the kitchen and immediately began dirtying more dishes. A house this crammed with people seemed like it would never be free of dirty dishes, and I wondered if I would find myself permanently rooted to the spot in front of the sink, scrubbing and scrubbing until I wasted away to nothing. I wondered if they’d even notice that I was gone, and figured they would when the dirty dishes piled up, but that was about it.
“She don’t go to school?” Terry asked on a yawn.
Grandmother Billie grunted a negative, turning the page on her bodice-ripper.
I opened a few cabinets until I found some cereal and a bowl. Ordinarily, I wasn’t much of a cereal person, but today I was so ravenous I would have eaten anything, and I was too timid to search for something else. Too afraid that I’d break a rule I didn’t know about.
“Mother tells me you need some clothes,” Terry said as I sat down across from her at the table.
I nodded, the cereal scraping the walls of my throat as I swallowed it without chewing very well. “I need to do some laundry, too,” I said.
“I’ve got a few things,” Terry said. “I can’t get into anything but my old maternity clothes, anyway. You might as well take them. After breakfast we’ll go through my closet if you want.”
“Thank you,” I said, setting the empty bowl down.
“Clay and Tonette home yet?” Terry said, turning back to my grandmother.
“Yep, they came in last night.”
Terry made a face and leaned toward me. “Never can be sure with those two. Some nights they come home; some nights they don’t feel like it. Some nights they land their sorry asses in jail.”
“Oh, that’s only happened twice, Terry, don’t be a ninny about it,” my grandmother said, but Terry only raised her eyebrows at me as if to say, See? It’s bad.
It sounded to me like not much had changed with my father. Like he’d remained the same old drunk he’d always been. In a way I was glad he’d abandoned me and Mom.
Grandmother Billie pushed away from the table, turning down the top corner of her page. Terry stood at the same time, so I figured it was best for me to get up, too, though I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I wanted to watch TV but didn’t feel comfortable taking it upon myself to go into the living room and turn it on. Grandmother Billie didn’t make any offers or suggestions, either. Apparently when it came to doing the right thing for family, the right thing didn’t mean you did anything to make family feel welcome.