Disclaimer: I claim to own nothing, nor am I profiting from this story in any way, shape, or form than improving my own skill.
Summary: I don't like to talk about it much. I think that if I sit and talk about Karen for too long, I'll snap. I swear I will.
Rating: T for language.
A/N:I hope you get a big bang out of this. ;)
AnotherA/N: This is told from Kid Blink's point of view.
Every now and then, especially when it's cold and the selling's lousy; some of the boys in the lodging house will beg Mush to start talking about this sister he used to have. I say "used to" because now she's all grown up with another man's name. She's beautiful, Mush says, just beautiful. I think the other boys like to imagine Mush's sister as some sort of princess, with milky-tea skin and black satin hair. They like to think that she has her lips painted with liquid jewels and her carved cheekbones high and defined. But when I hear Mush talk about his sister, I just like to imagine that he's talking about Karen.
Karen was my own sister. I say "was" because she's dead now. I don't mean it as insincerely as I just put it, but really, I hate it when somebody says that she "slipped away", like she went to the goddamn corner store for a candy or something. When I die, I hope somebody just says that I'm dead, none of this "perpetual sleep", "finally at rest" crap. I really do. I hate using all of those bullshit euphemisms for my sister, because that makes it seem like we're ashamed of her. My sister's dead. My sister Karen is dead.
Unlike Mush, though, nobody ever asks me about her. I don't really like talking about it, if you have to know the truth. It gives me this weird feeling in my stomach- like a rubber band that's been wound too tight and is about to snap. My mother snapped, after Karen died. That's why I can't live with her anymore.
Karen wasn't always dead, naturally. In fact, I was around six years before she was even born. I remember when she finally was born, I cried because I didn't think Mama had had a baby: I thought she had had a monster. A crumply little monster, smeared with blood and this paste-looking stuff, this little crinkled mess that moved in scary, jerky movements. Papa let me hold her a few hours after she was born. If Karen hadn't been so warm, I would've sworn to Christ she was dead. She was little, so little, with tiny fingernails and feathers for hair. The top of her head was warm and smelled musky, and her little nose gently flared in and out. I loved her right then and there. I swear to Christ I did.
Karen was always really skinny. Not like kid-skinny, but like fragile-skinny. Whenever she fell, it scared the hell out of me. It really did. And whenever some other kid would knock her down, I was always afraid one of those bastards would make her chest collapse- she was just so damn skinny. She wheezed a lot when she ran- Karen did- and at night when she slept, if you listened hard enough, you could hear her nose whistle. That cracked me up every time.
She wasn't one of those prissy girls, either, that screamed when her hem got torn or something. We'd go exploring- that's what Karen called it, anyway- every summer, summer after summer, in that same park. She'd make me wear her straw hat that was too small for me, and give me some weird name like "Dr. Livesy" or something. And she'd always just be Miss Karen, but she'd always make to where if anything was hurt, she'd fix it. I think it was her way of controlling something.
After that son-of-a-bitch took my eye out with his goddamn slingshot, Karen would always ask what happened and try to reach up and feel under my patch. It'd make her real upset when I wouldn't tell her. I was never in the right mood. Even now, I don't want to talk about it. If some bastard is playing with his goddamn slingshot, but pulls back too hard and shoots one right through your fucking eye, you've got to be in one hell of a mood to talk about it.
She was one of those kids with good sense, though. If something wasn't funny, she wouldn't laugh like a madman to please someone. She never did dumb things like that or lied of out pity. She'd just get this crooked look on her face and turn away. That was my favorite thing about Karen: you never had to worry about what she really thought. She'd up and tell you. And then she'd get that crooked look on her face and turn away. She'd never lie and tell you something was funny when it wasn't. It wasn't that Karen never lied- she was a terrific liar. Probably the best you'll never get to see. Sometimes, she'd lie for no damn reason other than to amuse herself.
Then there was the winter I was twelve. That was the worst winter of my life, which is really saying something, because now I spend them hungry and freezing with a bunch of boys in a cramped lodging house with smelly sheets. Even though I lived in a cozy apartment, even though my mama would make me dinner and scrub my sheets for me, it's still the absolute worst winter ever. Not just for me. The worst for anyone; that's how bad it was.
First, Papa lost his job. And his wallet. And his life. See, in New York, you got a whole other list of things you got to worry about. Muggers are one of them. Papa was coming home from work one night- two weeks before Christmas, in fact- when some guy asked for his wallet. Papa said he didn't have much. Guy said it didn't fucking matter what you had, just give him something. So Papa pulled his wallet from his pants and pushed it into the bummer's hand. And that stupid, filthy bummer pulled a knife from his pants and pushed it into Papa's intestines. Again and again. When they found him, they said Papa's eyes were still open, so he probably died quick. That kills me, you know. It really does. For a long time afterward, I couldn't think of anything else but Papa and his open eyes that they had to pull shut to make him decent. And even now, I still think about him lying in that cheap box, covered in dirt, his face probably half-rotted and eaten. Christ, that almost kills me. It really does.
And then there was Karen. Jesus, poor Karen. Karen didn't get hurt or anything, she just died. Just got sick one day and died. She was so skinny, and so goddamn little, that it wasn't like the sickness had a lot to eat through. The last thing I remember about Karen is sitting next to her on her bed, her face the color of dough, her skeleton of a body shaking.
"Please", Karen begged, the skin on her face so white and sick, it looked like I could peel it away with my fingers. "Please, Louis. Tell me what happened."
"You tell me what you think happened." I knew that I didn't have a lot of time with her at all. I wanted to preserve the ring of her voice for forever in my head.
"I think you were in a fight." Karen croaked hoarsely, her straw-like fingers straining up towards my patch, "I think somebody said something really bad. So you went off and hit him… in the nose." She rubbed her forefinger right underneath my eye patch, running her fingertip against the smooth skin right below my eye. "'Cept… 'Cept, you didn't know," her voice sped up, excited, "that he had a knife and all. So he pulled it out and stuck up in the eye with it. So you pulled it right out and… and you…"
"C'mon, Karen," I coaxed her gently, the backs of my eyes on fire, "what did I do next?"
"You…" she gasped, "you took it out and stuck him… right… right through the heart. You won that fight, Louis. I know you did. That's why all you have is that patch." She took her fingers out from under it and patted the outside of my patch before her arm fell, exhausted, to the bed.
And suddenly, how I had really lost my eye didn't matter. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was some little kid, just her age, messing around with a stupid slingshot. "You're right, baby. That's what happened. Exactly. How'd you know?"
She sighed, but to me it sounded more like a whimper, "I know."
"You know, Karen?" I gently squeezed her closer to my side, wishing that I could hold her here forever, or that she would take me with her to wherever she was going, "you know, I love you."
Karen sighed again, her body slackening and sinking deeper into slumber, "I know."
I never talked to Karen again. She didn't wake up again, either. She just up and died, right there, right in that cold, lumpy bed, with the scratchy, wrinkled sheets, shoved up against a cold wall with curling paper. And we put her in this stupid, cheap box, just like we had Papa, and then stuck her underground, so the worms and everything could eat her.
I once asked Mush how he knew so much about what his sister was doing. And he just got this crooked look on his face and turned away, and told me that he didn't know. His sister wasn't doing anything: she'd been kicked by a horse when she was just seventeen. That was five years ago- the same year Karen died. So now, I just listen to Mush tell stories about how his sister's life should have been, and I imagine that he's talking about Karen, and about how her life should have been. We never turn out the way we should have: some lives end, others begin; but most… most just keep going. Mush says that he talks about his sister mostly so he can remember her- he says that if he keeps talking about her, it makes missing her a little easier. But I think that if I were to do that, to sit there and talk about Karen to a bunch of kids who won't ever know her like I did, I'll snap. I swear to Christ I will.
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