My Sister, My Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

doorway Daddy gripping and kneading Mummy in playful-Daddy hands and now as then Skyler looks quickly away.
    Skyler? where is
    Near the floor of the sea such bizarre life-forms all mouth, sharp glittery teeth, fins, spiny backbones. Yet such a sweet-groggy sleep for a child to be wakened from, Skyler understands that something is very wrong for Mummy is not so angry, Mummy is upset and confused and Skyler tries to push Mummy away but Mummy is too strong for him, with a small exasperated-Mummy cry she pulls back the bedsheets where Skyler has been lying hunched in a pretzel-twist on his left side, both hands pressed between his knees and his knees drawn up toward his chest like a creature not yet hatched.
    Skyler is she in here hiding in here?
    Frantic Mummy checks the foot of Skyler’s bed as if Skyler’s six-year-old sister might be hiding there, somehow. With a sob/grunt Mummy kneels to check beneath the bed, stumbles then to Skyler’s closet, switches on the light and paws through Skyler’s hanging things, kneels and gropes about the floor. Muttering to herself Where! Where is and returningthen stumbling like a drunken woman to Skyler standing beside his bed, dazed and frightened in pajamas, shivering barefoot, that look in Mummy’s eyes, the alarm in Mummy’s voice, briskly Mummy pulls Skyler out of the room, across the hall to Bliss’s room, obviously Mummy has already been in Bliss’s room looking for her, Bliss’s bed is empty, Mummy has been tearing at the bedspread and at the sheets and Mummy is murmuring to herself as often when he is alone Skyler murmurs to himself for Mummy’s thoughts are spilling out of Mummy’s head like skittering bats. Skyler wonders: Where is Daddy? Has Daddy taken Bliss away in the night? Is it Bliss’s birthday outing in New York City, where Daddy and Bliss have gone? Skyler is confused, Skyler will remember none of this clearly, the events of this night about which he will be questioned and will question himself though recalling how in Bliss’s room (formerly a nursery with a door in the wall like a magic door opening into Mummy and Daddy’s big bedroom) there is a lamp on Bliss’s bedside table in the shape of Mother Goose which had once been Skyler’s lamp when he’d been a baby, this is Bliss’s special lamp which has to be turned on at night or Bliss can’t sleep or, if she sleeps, she will have nightmares of ugly-shaped things that hide beneath her bed as in the murky penumbra beyond the brightly lit ice rinks where the crowd erupts in spontaneous applause at the mere sight of Miss Tots-on-Ice Debutante, Tiny Miss StarSkate, Little Miss Jersey Ice Princess except it is a different time now, Mummy is not joining in the applause now but gripping Skyler’s arm as if somehow Skyler is to blame as Mummy stares at Bliss’s small bed with its white satin headboard, beautiful frosted-pink satin spread decorated with white ice-skate appliqués, now tangled on the floor with the bedclothes, and Bliss’s pillow looks as if it has been thrown down, hard. And there is the smell.
    Bad girl! Not again
    On purpose to spite me
    Both Mummy and Skyler see the stained mattress, and smell the sharp ammoniac smell of urine, and worse-than-urine, for there are dark mud-colored star-shaped smears on one of the white linen sheets. And Mummy is furious, or is Mummy frightened?—digging her nails into Skyler’s thin shoulders inside his flannel pajama top, Mummy pleads with him Skyler what have you done to Bliss? Where have you taken your little sister?

IN THE BEGINNING
    IN THE BEGINNING—LONG AGO!—THERE WASN’T BLISS.
    There was Skyler, but not Bliss. Not yet Bliss!
    No one knows this. No one has recorded this. Of the tens of thousands of Bliss-cultists who have polluted cyberspace with their crazed factoids and perve-rantings not one of them knows this: that in the beginning it was Skyler who’d been meant to be the star. It was Skyler who’d been meant to be the figure-skating