The Secret Sister

I’d always imagined violence lurked in foul, smoke-wreathed rooms or murky alleyways, but this was the first layer that Dane had talked about. The scary stuff was sharp and blinding. The point of a needle piercing a vein, the glinting edge of a knife blade on soft skin, the flash of a bullet slicing through muscle and sinew. Was this how I’d lost Birdie? I held tightly to the edges of my desk, my eyes swimming, and in the nick of time bent my head over the garbage can and puked up my entire lunch.
When Guy was doing one of his late classes that week, I took a trip to the mall again. I drifted towards the Victoria’s Secret store. I’d maxed out many a credit card there. Had drawers full of lacy panties and bras. Usually bought during the two-for-one sale or the five panties for $25 event.
Fuchsia pink signage lured shoppers to the store’s black marble entrance and banks of spotlights flooded the place with dazzling light. Like a pink pleasure palace that sold sanitized sex in frills, lace and satin. Birdie had always been a sucker for anything feminine and girlie, while I slobbed around in jeans and hoodies. She hated looking ugly.
The time after she fell and smacked her eye on the table, she had to wear a bandage wrapped around her head and couldn’t wash her hair for a week or two.
She was a pitiful sight. A one-eyed runt with greasy hair, dragging herself around the group home, refusing to look anyone in the eye. Finally, one of the young supervisors took pity on her and brought her a Cinderella dress and wand from home. Once she was wearing that ivory lace dress with its stiff taffeta petticoat, she instantly morphed into the Good Fairy. Flitted around night and day, laying the wand on everyone’s head and doling out angel dust to make them happy. Even the back-door stoner kids joined in, running around the yard whooping and flapping imaginary wings after getting the Birdie treatment.
After a month or so we had to bribe her with an extra helping of mashed potato to get the dress off her so it could be washed. Once she wore it for a whole week to the playground and caught it on a nail sticking out of the wooden climbing frame. It hung in filthy ribbons and tatters round her legs and then just disintegrated around her.
She cried like a baby when we finally had to throw it away. So I rescued the wand and the plastic Cinderella pin from the bodice and pinned it to her jacket, telling her she was still a member of the Cinderella club. When I was done pinning it, she lit up, placed her palms on my face and tried to twist the corners of my mouth into a smile.
“I love you, Anna,” she said, placing her face against mine and making butterfly kisses on my cheek with her eyelashes. “But don’t be so angry all the time or nobody else will like you.”
It occurred to me as I trailed my hands along the pink corsets with feather accents, the tiny French maid outfit with its bum-skimming frills, and the white garter belt with pink rosettes, that this was the “princess gone naughty” look girls like Birdie were urged into. A slick segue from the innocence of childhood to post-pubescent sexuality. You’re all grown up now, little girl, but you can still play dress up. Only it’s different now. Way different. Prince Charming doesn’t just want a kiss now. He wants payback or he turns into a poisonous toad.
I shuddered. Walking around this store made me miss Birdie even more, but I stayed, circling the displays. Sampled the hand cream and body spray. Found a negligee made of the same lace as the Cinderella dress. It was like scratching a scab that wouldn’t heal, coming to this place Birdie would’ve loved. Or maybe more like gouging an open wound.
After minutes of aimless drifting, I remembered Carla. I’d come here to see her. She wasn’t among the other girls on the floor. Tiny dolls with perfect makeup, running back and forth, talking into headsets, bras slung over their arms. Polished, pretty, perfumed and young. Striving to emulate the exquisite and untouchable angels that strutted their sparkling wings in the everlasting lingerie show that flickered on the bank of screens at the far side of the store.
I finally found her behind the cash desk, wrapping undies in pink tissue. She looked fresh and young, her shiny cheeks and lips scrubbed clean of the thick coat of makeup. I waved and she glanced up at me, smiling like a kid who’s just performed a dive and then emerges from the water pleading for praise. I saw that look on Birdie’s face so many times, I wanted to slap her sometimes when she performed like a trained dog for idiots who didn’t care or who were just winding her up.
On instinct I grabbed a couple of lotions and a body spray and lined up at Carla’s counter.
“You like it here, Carla?”
She glanced around to see if anyone was listening. “Yeah. I love it. I like all the nice things.”
“I’m proud of you. You’re getting on track here. Let me know if you need any advice.”
She nodded and wrapped my purchases in tissue paper. “Thanks,” she whispered but her eyes were elsewhere, darting to the person behind me. I moved aside. Hope was so tenuous for kids like Carla and Birdie. Everything stacked against them. Like tiptoeing barefoot along a slippery balance beam. One wrong move and you fall off. Back into the old life and all the dangers that come along with it.
I watched her for a few minutes longer, then left with a sense of dread. Like my head was being held under icy water. Birdie’s shadow was everywhere, crowding into my new life until the feeling was so heavy it took on a weight