Ailey didn’t respond, and settled in, though her sister’s foot tapped nervously. She didn’t want to go, to lose her sister to whatever was calling to her, but Lydia began shaking. She needed to answer that call. She had to, but at the door, Ailey dawdled. Covered the hand that stroked her face, the same way their mother touched.
“I’ll see you next week, baby,” Lydia said. “I love you.”
“You sure?”
“How you sound? Of course I do.”
“And I’ll see you, for real?”
Lydia tried not to shake. She tried so hard, her teeth felt see-through.
“You sure will,” she said.
“All right, now, don’t have me looking for you like Celie at that mailbox.”
Lydia laughed and gave a teasing push to Ailey’s shoulder, a movement to steer into the hallway. The door closing in her sister’s face, and then she ran to the armoire, reached her hand behind it, and pulled out her plastic bag.
*
On Easter Sunday, Lydia sat on her couch as Ailey knocked on the apartment door. She called Lydia’s name, the hope leaching from her voice. She knocked a long time before she left.
Three days later, she appeared. She was sulking, like when she was a little girl. Lydia had stood her up, and that hadn’t been nice. And Easter dinner had been real good. Their mother had made a big ham and so many sides and banana pudding for dessert, but Ailey had been too mad to bring leftovers by.
Lydia turned to her dependable tactic: she offered a secret. When Ailey had been a little girl, that had always chased her anger away. Lydia confessed that she hadn’t run away. Their father had placed her in the apartment, and when Ailey turned her anger on him, Lydia told her, no, it wasn’t cruelty on his part. Don’t be mad at their father. He had done his best.
And Ailey should feel the same about Dante. She tapped her feet while she talked to Ailey about the love of her life. His kindness, how he had tried to protect her. That he hadn’t broken up with Lydia, but had been murdered, and he hadn’t been the one who’d gotten Lydia hooked on drugs, either.
“I know you want to think that. But is that really true, Lydia? I mean, I’m sorry Dante died, but that doesn’t make what he did right.”
“No, listen! It’s Gandee’s fault, not Dante’s!” Lydia hadn’t meant to say it, but she couldn’t let her sister talk bad about her husband. Maybe if Lydia finally told the truth her family would stop demonizing Dante. Their bad opinion of him hurt her almost as much as his death.
Her baby sister touched her hand. “No, you’re confused, darling. Gandee has been dead for almost twenty years.”
She spoke to Lydia as you did to a small child. Or an invalid. Or a dangerously insane person who was wielding a knife. There was no one who respected Lydia anymore. Not even this woman whom she’d taught to swim and taken to the bathroom as a toddler, and wiped her messy behind.
Lydia moved her hand. “I know Gandee’s dead. I might smoke crack every day, but my memory is just fine.” The old bear stirred in its cave. The animal she’d thought had frozen to death during that hard winter years before. “What I mean is, Gandee did something to me when I was a little girl. Something real bad.”
“I know.” Her sister’s voice was gentle. “I heard you downstairs that day, when you came to Nana’s. It happened to me, too.”
Lydia shook her head, no, that couldn’t be true, though the dread crawled through her. She had finally told the truth, as Dr. Fairland had counseled her to do, back in rehab, assuring her that telling the truth wouldn’t be so bad, but here was Lydia’s most beloved person in her small world, saying her sacrifices as a little girl had been useless. No longer a child, as Ailey smoothed her big sister’s hair. Don’t cry, this woman said. It would be all right.
“But he told me I was the only one!” Lydia said. “He told me I was special! And now you’re telling me that I was quiet for nothing? That he hurt you, too? Oh my God. Oh Lord.”
The light was dimming, the sign that her sister should go home. Lydia didn’t want her to leave, but her need was coming on, and strong. She didn’t want to lose herself to what called her, but she couldn’t help it, and she put on a smile to quell Ailey’s concern. She told Ailey she would see her in a couple of days, and watched as her baby sister reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a twenty. Lydia wanted to say, don’t give the money this time, but she couldn’t. She held on to the bill.