Kezia-Danielle Weerasooriya
Contributor
Cozy contentment seeps through the night as cars slosh along the slick streets. Mom sits at the dining room table with a phone pressed to one of her large ears. She runs through a list of birthday guests, talking loudly in her overexcited Filipino way. The warm wind flutters the blinds and the smell of cassava cake drifts under my nose. The TV blares from the living room. My eight-year-old sister Naomi—Ate, meaning big sister in Tagalog—makes arts and crafts upstairs. I play with my sister Jillian, who will turn three tomorrow, May 20. I will turn seven in October.
Together, we created a game we call “Rocketship.” I lie on my back with my arms and legs in the air, bent at strange angles, like a dead beetle. Jill clambers onto my shins, pressing her feet against mine and holding my hands for balance. Her long, thick hair tickles my arms. Her small hands are squishy and her brown eyes are bright.
“One, two, three!” I say, and catapult her off of me onto the green and white linoleum. She lands clumsily on her bum.
“Again!” Jill beams, her teeny teeth gleaming. She climbs onto the launch pad and prepares for blast off. I count.
“It should be backwards,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, okay. But that means you should be backwards, too,” I say. This time I hold her feet and she holds mine. “Ready? Three, two, one!”
This repeats for a while, but then Mom’s patience runs out. She slams her hand over the receiver and turns to us, her sleek black hair flying.
“Kezia! Es-stop making noise! I am on da pone! Go up stair!”
“Okay Mommy. Cuddle time for-a-miiiiNUTE!” Jill sings, throwing her arms around Mom.
“Sandwich!” I screech, falling on top of Jill. I poke the mole in Mom’s eyebrow. Mom pats us both.
“Now go get ready por bed!” she says.
Jill and I pivot and bolt out of the kitchen, streaking through the dim living room between the huge TV and a dozing Dad. His moustache quivers. We galumph up the grey-carpeted stairs on all fours like dogs. The china cabinet rattles. We enter my room and flop onto my small bed, which creaks and groans under the weight of two bodies. Posters of puppies cover my walls. I shift aside a heap of blankies and stuffed animals and lie down in the dead beetle position. Then I fling Jill off my legs and she soars through the air before she lands on her knees at the foot of my bed. She throws her hands out in front of her, her face dangerously close to the rails. My purple Doodle Bear fixes her with its button-eyed stare.
“Wait!” I say. I place a pillow beside my bear, against the white bars that almost smashed her face. “Now you have a target.”
This time, the rocketship lands on the landing pad. We giggle and squeal with delight.
“ES-STOP ES-SCREAMING!” Mom yells from downstairs. We ignore her and continue our game. Jill climbs onto my legs again. This time, I hurl her off of me as hard as I can.
Time slows down.
The pillow shifts.
And then red spurts everywhere.
I lock eyes with Jill, her sweet face pale and contorted and covered in blood. Her dark hair sticks to her cheeks, tangled. My eyes bulge. An infinite second of stunned silence stretches on.
Suddenly, Ate stomps out of her room, a foam slipper in one hand. She throws out her chest importantly and irritably pouts out her lower lip.
“Will you guys be qui—MOM!” Her eyebrows shoot up higher the longer she holds the word. I wait, frozen.
Mom is already in the doorway, her eyebrows contracted and her eyes wide and worried. Her eyes sweep over the scene, over the blood on my sheets, on my clothes, on my pillows. Blood gushes from a gap in Jill’s mouth where three of her top front teeth had been. Tears form in Mom’s eyes as she grips fistfuls of her hair and screams. She steers Jill out of the room. As if I’m sleepwalking, I shuffle down the hall after them. Dad strides into the bathroom to help clean Jill up.
My vision blackens and blurs as I watch the sink water turn pink. Mom lets out high-pitched, hysterical sobs. Her hands tremble as she moves around the cramped bathroom. Jill fidgets. Dad keeps his calloused brown hands steady as he slumps over Jill.
He wipes the smears of red from Jill’s face and puts rolls of gauze in her mouth. Dad’s eyes are weary and his curly hair has lost its shine. Jill finally starts to cry. The gauze gives her squirrel cheeks. Dad murmurs to Jill and pets her hair.
“I kanat beleeb it. It’s nine o’clock at night and we’re going to da hospital,” Mom rages to Dad.
I hobble back to my room and sit on the edge of my bed, dizzy and clammy and shaking. Mom follows me. She screams and scolds with unintelligible words, and I cower. Tears slip silently down my cheeks. Flecks of red splotch my Doodle Bear, complementing the blue scribbles.
For a long time afterwards, the three black X’s in Jill’s gums haunt me every time she smiles. The stitches float in the darkness behind my eyelids, disembodied, glowing white.
