‘I asked, did you lose your mother, little girl?’
Barbra writhed on the ground at the foot of my bed.
‘If you lost your mother,’ I went on, sticky-mouthed, ‘you can just come home with me.’
My mother finally told us that she’d gotten a job – assistant professor of sociology at a college in Portland. She’d sat me and Abigail and Barbra all together at the kitchen table full of bagels and tuna fish salad and cheese. Abigail started crying right away that she wanted to go with my mother.
‘I assume Dad knows this plan?’ I asked. Oregon was over five hours by plane.
‘Of course your father knows,’ my mother snapped. She looked both sorry and like she felt sorry for me.
Barbra slid her chair over to Abigail’s and put her arm around her. ‘Ruth,’ she said. ‘Let’s celebrate!’
The way Barbra said my mother’s name, it sounded like root.
‘You want a glass of wine? Okay, let’s get a little wine.’
My mother stood up to distract herself. Barbra gave Abigail a napkin to wipe her nose. I felt both cold and excited. We would have this house nearly all to ourselves.
I pushed on Barbra’s back with my boot to stop her writhing around. ‘Why are you balled up, little girl? Don’t be afraid. You can stretch out.’
‘There is no such things as a moral army,’ said my mother, ‘even when they’re saving Jews.’
‘Be meaner,’ Barbra echoed.
My hands formed into fists. My hands looked baby pink. ‘Your mother said it was okay for you to come with me, little girl. Your father doesn’t care. Your father is dead.’
I heard Barbra smothering her laughter in the carpet.
‘You are a very pretty girl.’ I was getting really angry. ‘I’m going to take your picture, naked little girl, and show everyone.’
How could I be meaner? Her laughs sounded like crying. Abigail had stopped crying when my mother said that she could move to Portland, too. My mother had brought out a bottle of wine. Barbra and my mother laughed about tuna fish with wine. I bought these steel-toed Doc Martens at the army surplus store. Root. Barbra seemed way too happy for my mother.
‘I’m lost. Take my picture. You can save me,’ Barbra squeaked.
It occurred to me that she wasn’t just going back to being the little girl orphan of Operation Solomon with the big bad soldier who carried her away. She was channelling Sarah, the Messiah’s orphan-whore wife. Sabbatai Zevi was the first Jewish man in existence who decided that women should read the Torah and pray alongside the men. He said to the women: I’ll make you as happy as men.
‘I’m going to take you home, little girl, and keep you hidden in my burrow.’
‘I dare you,’ Barbra said as she arched her bum up to my boot. ‘Take me.’
I smelled her wetness like moss in the room. My meanness got free. It unfurled at a quick pace. The soldier took her. He picked her little body up. She wanted more violence. Violence for an audience.
I crouched down, took a handful of her hair, and threaded it between my knuckles like I’d done the time before.
‘No! That’s not how you help me!’ Barbra hissed.
She was in character. I abducted by force. I wanted to take her to the kitchen, fuck her smushed against the fridge. I wanted to hold her down in the family room, stomach to couch. Her basement, their bedroom: I wanted to desecrate this whole place. My mother didn’t know how much Barbra drank wine without her. My mother wanted to just make things easy, it seemed. My father didn’t know how much Barbra drank either. He had overdone Friday nights since she arrived. He did more prayers, we went through two glasses each. Barbra stored wine in the basement in brown paper bags. I counted. She must’ve had her own sources. Joel was a drug dealer. I did not procure two bottles a day.
I heard her stomach gurgling on my carpet. I released her hair for the second it took to slide my boot up to the ridge where her hairs met her neck. We were both sweating. My mother did not believe in air conditioning.
‘Little girl, I have a lollipop in my car.’
Barbra couldn’t move her head because of my boot. ‘A lollipop?’ she said.
‘You should try to get up now,’ I ordered.
But Barbara didn’t try. She suddenly stopped writhing. She just lay there playing dead. I didn’t know what had just happened. Was the lollipop wrong?