The Silence

The Last Girls Club, Wicked Tales, Sept 2022

Not Close

In every old photo, my sister, Therese, is drenched in shimmering light.

She is always happy, either tap dancing or popping out of a cartwheel or hugging Grandma.

In all images of me, I am looking down, or away, caught in a lack of expression, my lips frozen for time in a straight line.

“Celeste is the quiet one,” our parents said, offering an acknowledgement as a kind of

apology. I never knew why my personality had to be forgiven.  I always thought of my silence as solitude, strength.  

Even my teachers were uncomfortable with me.

Good grades. Too quiet,  the comments often read. 

Therese always did the things everyone liked, like talk and join the debate and swim teams. On weekends, we followed Therese’s activity schedule. I didn’t even know how to swim. I sat sweating on the bleachers at her meets, staring at the water, imagining dolphins popping their noses out of the water.

Therese and I were never close.         

Miscarriage

 “I-I need you to come,” she said, a desperate sob, hospital noises in the background, beeps

and loudspeakers.

I turned off my computer and went to my sister.

“There was no-no heartbeat,” she wailed into my shoulder minutes after my arrival. My

mind had to catch up:

1. My sister was pregnant and

2. My sister was pregnant with a not-alive baby.

She caught her breath and attempted to tell me what needed to be done, how this would play out, how she would leave the hospital with no baby inside her.

“Where’s Tim?” I asked. My sister’s husband tended to be always somewhere else. I often

joked that the last time I saw him was at the wedding, not far from the truth.

“He was negotiating a contract. It was too important. He couldn’t come.”

Anger came first, then shock. Shock that her husband would think a contract was more important than this and, selfishly, shocked she called me, not Mom, not her best friend, me.

My bright star sister clung to my shoulder, her tears soaking through my shirt, dampening my skin. Overcoming my shyness and discomfort, I reached for her head, moving one sweat-soaked strand from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear.

Closer

“I’m having coffee with Therese,” I told Noah, pulling a tee shirt over my head. My husband

 was still in bed, his Saturday morning ritual.

Therese and I found we actually enjoyed one another’s company. We met for coffee and

lunch and glasses of wine. We laughed about annoying things our parents did. We complained about our jobs, talked about weight loss and exercise. I never had a girlfriend like this before. I never talked this much before. Noah couldn’t believe it.

“What happened to your morose individualism?” he kidded.

“She needed me, and, I guess I liked that,” I explained.  My husband’s eyes smiled.

Drinking cappuccinos on Express-oh’s sunny patio, my sister shined, and now I shined too.

Her words brought darkness, but I didn’t mind. She broached the subject with me gently, her lowered voice hard to hear amongst the car horns and sirens of the street.

“So, how’s the fertility stuff going?” she asked.

This time, I let my guard down fully, showed how much I wanted this, this baby, allowed the torrent of disappointment and grief to rush out. Without prompting, I moved to her side of the table and collapsed into my sister’s arms, an intimacy I hadn’t even allowed Noah.

Grudge

I thought I had been invited to a surprise birthday party for my sister. When the cake came

out, accompanied by our off-key singing, the lights on top sputtered and spat. After each sparkler burned, a curious question mark of a candle still flamed. Therese closed her eyes and blew.

Tim shushed us all. “I’m about to cut into this monstrosity of a cake. If your slice is pink,

you’ll know the baby is a girl, and if it’s blue, well, you can figure that out.”  The room burst into laughter and clapping. Our mother shrieked and ran to Therese’s limp arms. Noah’s hand gripped mine as I swallowed hard and held in the emotions that were coming like a train. Therese pushed our mother away and ran to me.

“Celeste, I didn’t know about this. We got that early genetic testing and just found out the

gender. I was going to tell you soon, not this way.”  She glared at Tim.  “This is not-“

She kept talking, but I bolted for the door, Noah close at my heals.

#

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned,”  I began my confession to Fr. Jerry. He sat across

from me in jeans and a golf shirt, wearing his purple stole. My father’s brother baptized me, gave me my first communion, confirmed me, and officiated at my wedding. Now he listened to me spill my selfish guts.

“I just can’t get over it. I want to, but I can’t,” I told him. I hadn’t seen Therese for months. I

skipped her baby shower. My mother told me I had spoiled the day and I was destroying the family.

“You and Noah are getting ready to adopt. You will have your baby soon. I promise.”

He gave me my penance: three Hail Marys, join him for ice cream, and call Therese.

“You can fix this, honey. I know it.”

I said my Hail Marys and had ice cream with Fr. Jerry, but I didn’t call my sister.

The darkness inside me grew.

Rescue

Everyone is always celebrating, I thought.

Bonfire wood was piled in a mound on the beach. People were throwing sticks and branches

on the heap, plunging tiki torches in the sand.

I liked running in circles, running alone, moving into the trails, the darkness, away from the

laughter, the fading light of the beach.

I liked running deeper into silence.

I ran until the bright green presence of lake water asserted itself.  I

stopped, as I always did, stood at the tip of the round lake. Catching my breath, I walked toward the water, staring down through its emerald surface. I looked for life, seeing only weeds, roots, petrified wood protruding from prehistoric layers. The wind rustled.

A glow in the water rose and grew, a baby’s face emerged from the water’s depths, its

button nose and rosebud lips poked through the surface. It gasped and cried out.

Was it drowning? Or just born?

As if being pulled by a hand somewhere below, the baby jerked from exposure, receding into the water. My hands reached out. My breath came out in short, sick gulps, my chest heaved up and down. I turned, hoping someone would be there to help.

No. No. No. No. No.

I ran back into the woods, back onto the trail, but of course, of course, I was alone in this, in all of this.

I stumbled back to the water. The rings from the baby’s appearance still reverberated.

Summoning my last bits of dizzy energy, I dove toward the spot of light, the baby, my baby.

The shock of the cold water, the depth of the silence, came as a comfort, a cool, bottomless relief.