Surface Seems So Peaceful

It’s always the same. Wriggling in slow motion, the night crawler clings to the clumps of black dirt in my palm. Every time I have the dream I can feel the aluminum boat throb above the waves as the twilight sky pulsates pink and orange. The worm in my hand squirms with the same motion and I can never seem to spear it with the hook.

I turn to you for guidance but your line is already tracing ripples in the water. Auntie Tara simply giggles, lifting a beer to her mouth. She finishes it in two gulps and reaches inside one of the two coolers at her feet for another.

The Bastet River seems to go on forever into the distance. I watch the sun as it inches towards the dark hills. I eventually turn my attention back into the boat and continue prodding the worm with the tarnished hook. That’s usually how it ends, with me poking my hand again and again until it bleeds. But last night Kat, I did it. I watched the barb sink into the twitching flesh, felt it writhe in pain as I twisted it around the rusted metal. I finally baited the hook.

For fifteen years we’ve shared our room together, but not this morning. This morning I awoke alone for the first time since I was born. Your bed was empty except for your stuffed animals, lined in order of their height along the wall. Speckle the giraffe, Corduroy the lion, Google the ten-armed, four-eyed purple thing and last, Mousy the mouse. The room, though lit by the early morning sun brushing against our comforters, felt cold like the time we worked for Mrs. Anu, piling frozen carcasses in her butchery’s meat locker.

The dead animals had numbed our fingers until they felt like we could snap them off. Once, it got so bad that you dropped a pig’s head. The ear flew through the air, landing on the other side of the giant freezer where it rattled like a fallen coin on the floor.

Mrs. Anu thought we were dying with all our screaming and she scolded us for not working harder. Right then and there you told her that we quit and I called her a bitch. We laughed hysterically the whole walk home but Auntie Tara was waiting for us in the kitchen. I guess Mrs. Anu called her to tell her what had happened. Thanks for standing up for me Kat. I was too young then to be punished, only thirteen, but you risked yourself for your younger sister and I appreciated it. Auntie Tara told us we were lucky that she didn’t call the police.

"I hope you girls realize what you did. Swearing breaks the rules and you both know what that means."

I picked up Corduroy, her brown paws flopping to her sides as though they were weighted with lead. Mom and Auntie Tara gave her to you when I was born so that you wouldn’t be jealous of their attention for me. Who knew that two buttons, some stuffing and three dollars worth of fabric could substitute for a mother’s love?

The spotless chess board linoleum was a sheet of ice on my bare feet as I crossed the kitchen to the table near the window. Mom and Auntie Tara were scribbling on the Monday crossword, heads bowed, the discarded newspaper strewn across their breakfast plates. The front-page headline was cut out, as usual, and I looked on the refrigerator where I knew it would be taped with the others. No. 52 for the Musokorone Mangler.