Mothered (9)

“Not that yours doesn’t look nice, but I’m too old for that.”

“Me too. It was an experiment. Why don’t you pull out one of the dining room chairs, and I’ll go get my stuff?”

“Okay.” Jackie beamed, looking tickled.

Grace jogged upstairs, her damsels forgotten. She quickly changed into a pair of comfy pants before retrieving her kit—scissors, comb, nylon cape—from the bathroom linen closet. But even this innocent act of “fetching” joggled loose another moment from the past.

Mother’s Day. Grace must have been eight, and she made a picture with the sun. The recollection made her smile because she still marveled at the magical paper, given to her as a precious gift from her science teacher. She’d gathered small pebbles and laid them out on the pale paper in the shape of two hearts. It stayed on the sidewalk in a direct beam of sunshine for two minutes as Grace kept vigil. From the porch, Hope called out when the two minutes were up—and then it was time to take the paper inside and reveal its magic.

Soon after being put in a pan of water, the paper turned deep blue, with white dots where the pebbles had been. When it was dry, Grace stood beside Hope’s wheelchair and they presented the card to their mother, grinning in unison. They’d chosen matching outfits that day, because Mommy liked that. It makes us seem the same.

“Happy Mother’s Day! It’s from me and Hope. We’re giving you our hearts.”

Mommy had hugged Hope first, quick to assume the project had been her idea. (And their mother wasn’t wrong; Grace had wanted to make something with the magical paper to keep for herself.) Even though Grace had arranged the stones and followed the directions just like Mr. Harrison had told her, Hope got most of the credit—the thank-yous and kisses and so-beautifuls.

“I’ll keep this in my special box!” Mommy looked happy in that moment.

After Hope died, Grace continued to make cards for her mother, for birthdays and holidays. But Mommy never admired them. She never put them in the plastic tub full of cherished mementos. Everything Hope did was special. Nothing Grace did was special enough.

The memory didn’t upset her: Hope was more admirable, spunky by nature, ambitious, and always a Mommy’s Girl. Grace had only been willing to make the Mother’s Day gift out of her precious paper because she knew—coming from both of them—that it would be preserved in the damn plastic tub.

Things were different now. Grace was different (at least she hoped so), and it pleased her that she could pamper her mom a little. Restore her beauty, her sense of self. Listen, like a therapist, if that’s what Jackie wanted.

Grace hurried downstairs, eager to do what she did best.





7


No one understood Hope except Grace and Mommy, and Grace understood her best. She knew what other people heard when her sister spoke—the grunts of a wild animal whose palate and fangs were too savage to form words. (Well, maybe other people could understand her, if they gave her enough time to enunciate each word.) Hope didn’t need to say much for Grace to know what she meant. She considered it likely that they did, indeed, possess the kind of twin telepathy they’d read about in books. (Grace read aloud to Hope a lot, and they especially loved stories about twins.) It was also possible that she understood her sister so well because she’d learned Hope’s language from birth; Grace was fully fluent in two languages—English and Hope.

To Grace, when Hope barked it wasn’t so different from her own voice (though when Hope took forever to squeeze the words out, it could be a little frustrating). They both knew that other people looked at them and thought it a shame that Hope had been damaged. People gazed from one girl to the other, and their pathetic faces said, If only . . . Because Grace was the constant evidence of who Hope could’ve been.

“Geh . . . da . . . goo . . . an . . . pay-per.”

“Okay!” Grace might’ve been older than Hope by fifteen minutes, but she obeyed everything her sister said. And she knew “get the glue and paper” really meant “let’s play with our paper dolls now.”

Hope had the largest bedroom (because it was on the first floor—no steps—and wasn’t a bedroom at all but the dining room). Pretty fabric from a place Mommy called The Hippie Store hung over both entryways—one to the kitchen, one to the living room. The fabric, even months later, still smelled like the spicy incense that, in the store, had been strong enough to give Grace a headache.

The cloth panels made Hope’s room feel more like a fort. They were meant to give her a little privacy, but she was rarely alone. Sometimes the special therapists came to the house, or else Mommy or Grace was bustling in and out. Grace often snuggled into Hope’s bed and spent the night spooned behind her (unless Hope was contagious with a cold or pneumonia or a stomach bug, and then Mommy made Grace go upstairs to her own room). The cerebral palsy didn’t make Hope more prone to illness than anyone else, but she was doubly unlucky and her immune system was messed up too.

Grace got the glue and the construction paper and all the other stuff she knew they’d need. Crayons, markers, scissors. And the little jar of adornments. They collected the adornments—small buttons, sequins, broken bits of jewelry—and kept them safe in an old baby-food jar. Most of the stuff they found—on the ground in a parking lot, in the hallways at school—but some of it they stole.