The Secret Sister

noon hour in the staffroom to tear apart friends, husbands and celebrities while sharing the latest dieting fads. But since Guy had told me we’d been invited for dinner at Gord and Nancy’s the following weekend, I couldn’t settle down to work alone. I squirmed on my chair, my heart trilling with barely controlled panic. How could I carry this off? I wasn’t good around other people’s parents. I had no childhood anecdotes or blissful family experiences to share. My background was a jumbled mess of hazy memories. Now and again I’d reach in to retrieve a tangled thread and try to tease out the memories and sensations. Most times I gave up. The truth was, I didn’t want to remember most of my past. Monotony, hopelessness and fear don’t make for good memories.
Restlessness drove me towards the staffroom that day where a large pink and white celebration cake sat on the center table. Fran Kuzyk, the Math teacher, was pregnant. Quick work considering that only a year and a half ago I’d accompanied Sabrina, Fran, Daphne and Kate McAllister, the Work Ed teacher, on Fran’s drunken bachelorette rampage through craft breweries, a strip club and several downtown clubs. We’d all piled into a taxi and taken turns throwing up out the window. The driver finally kicked us all out at Fran’s place and we’d crashed on her floor. Her fiancé, Tom, a lawyer, made us bacon and eggs next morning. I was the only one able to eat it while the others groaned and sipped at cups of black coffee. I was never one to waste free food.
Now Fran sat, pink and glowing, at the center of the group and announced the baby was due in five months. The other girls took turns patting her stomach before digging into the cake. I wished her a quick congratulations before jabbing my plastic fork into a large slice. Maybe the sugar rush would calm my nerves.
“How’s the prof doing?” asked Sabrina, picking at her wafer-thin slice of cake. She’d recently taken up bodybuilding and ropey sinews bulged through the tanned skin of her arms. I pointed to my mouth, which was crammed with cake.
“Careful,” she said. “This crap is poison. Don’t want your new guy looking elsewhere.” Her eyes wandered over my gray cashmere sweater. One of Guy’s many gifts to me.
“He’s good,” I said, licking the crumbs away from the corner of my mouth.
“That’s it? That’s all you can tell me? We need to go for coffee. Have a real heart-to-heart. I can give you some sisterly advice or something.”
I felt the color drain from my face. My shock reflex was so immediate I crashed the plate down onto the cutlery. Sabrina’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Jeez I’m so sorry, Anna. I forgot.”
“It’s okay. No worries,” I croaked as I stood up and fled the room, feeling my way through a fog of tears along the nubbly stucco walls.
A year or two ago – after a few B-52s at a nearby sports bar – I broke down and told Sabrina that my sister had disappeared without a trace. After that, she’d tried many times to prise more details out of me, but even with her free booze, sly questions and her sixth sense, she didn’t get anywhere. I wouldn’t let her.
I sat down at my desk, rested my head on my hand and flipped open the daily journals. Anything to distract myself. Birdie was in my head again. That jerky little puppet figure with the scrawny arms and legs turning around and around like a wind-up doll. I pressed at my eyelids as if I could squeeze away every trace of that image.
The first journal belonged to Carla, the only female in the new group. She looked like a vampire child. Dainty, white face, limpid kohl-lined eyes ringed with violet shadows. Blood-red lipstick. At sixteen she was the youngest and smallest and always kept herself at the center of the boys, shielded by their vast black trench coats. Her printing was square and large like a child’s. I read, letting the pictures form in my head.
I love the outdoors. I love nature and pine trees and camping in the summer. I love my family. I once went in a canoe. I’m a good dancer. My Dad drowned when I was a baby. My Mom gets tired. She has problems with alcool. When she drinks there’s no food for my bruthers and baby sister. I try to get food from the food bank but she says she dusn’t want any charity. When the soshul worker comes I make sure Mom’s hair is brushed and she’s drinking tea. I don’t want to go with those people. They’re all liars. Did you know judges and other types of rich people pay for us to do things to them. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you wot. But the boys get it worse. That’s really gross. That’s why I’ll do everything to keep us together.
I shut the book. If only she knew how much I understood about her life. How her writing brought me even closer to Birdie. I groped around in my mind for a clue, an image of my lost sister. Then it came to me in a rush. So vivid she could have been right there in my classroom.
I remembered her standing on a chair in the group home kitchen, wearing a monkey mask, a striped sweater and a pair of boy’s blue shorts so baggy they flapped around her skinny thighs. She curled her stick arms gorilla style under her armpits and hopped up and down, tilting her head from side to side, making dumb chimp noises. My stomach clenched with shame. She looked pathetic. But she was so into it she didn’t care about the kids who were chanting, egging her on and laughing at her. Then she stumbled forward on the chair edge. It tipped over, sending her tumbling off, arms flapping in panic, the monkey mask