“Why did you come to see me, then?” she snapped, whipping her words the way Papa could.
“I wanted to see what you were like, how you were doing. Now that I have, I think you’ll survive,” I said.
“But Mama—”
“Mama let me go, M. I can’t forgive her for that.”
“She loved you, loves you. She takes out your picture often, and she cries,” she said.
“He let her keep a picture of me?”
“She kept it secret, but I think he always knew. If he hadn’t died, maybe . . .”
“Maybe I’d get an honorable discharge?”
“You went to the cemetery service, you said.”
“Not to ask him for his forgiveness but to see if I could forgive him. I couldn’t,” I said, and signaled the driver to open her door.
Then I handed her the charm bracelet.
“You should keep it,” I told her. “It’s better that I don’t have reminders of family.”
“No matter what you do, how far you go, you’ll always have reminders,” she told me. “It’s like trying to get rid of your shadow.”
I couldn’t get away fast enough.
Because I knew she was right.
Epilogue
I didn’t see M again until some time later, when she came to the Beaux-Arts to tell me Mama was very sick. She had gotten a bad result on an annual gynecological exam. In my heart, I knew that M was coming to tell me because she was terrified. My father’s brother and his wife were not people with whom she could be close, and Mama’s family was in France, Uncle Alain the closest to her. I liked him the best of all, too. He lived in Paris with his partner, a well-known chef, but I couldn’t see M getting much help from him, either. Nevertheless, I resented her coming to me with more bad family news. I had hoped to shut it out, and I wasn’t very sisterly or compassionate. I hated myself for it, but I thought I could live with it.
I couldn’t.
Despite the hard surface I put on, I found out about Mama and went to
the hospital to be with M while Mama was undergoing surgery. Unfortunately, I knew exactly what was going to happen. It had happened to one of Mrs. Brittany’s girls, who, like Mama, was ambushed by cervical cancer. I didn’t want my sister to live in a world of fantasy, even though I remembered too well that young people, especially young girls, needed that world of illusion to help insulate them against the harsh realities of the adult world that awaited them.
In this case, the harsh reality was that Mama’s cancer was terminal. I tried to give my sister the truth in little doses, first explaining how extensive and serious Mama’s operation was. I was deliberately cold and demanding when the two of us met with her doctor, forcing him to say the truthful things.
Despite my great effort to remain as aloof and hard as I could, when I went with M to visit Mama afterward, I felt like a little girl again. The tears fell inside me, maybe, but they gushed as all my good childhood memories with her came rushing back. I knew the only thing I could do for her was to look after M the best I could, which wasn’t easy for someone like me.
Mrs. Brittany did not make allowances for family problems. We were never to bring any baggage along with us as long as we were under her employ, and too often, she had reminded me that I had come to her with more baggage than she usually tolerated. Nevertheless, I appealed to her, reminding her about how dear Sheena had been to both of us. I think solely because of that, she relented, giving me some time to look after Mama’s and M’s needs as long as I fulfilled the most important assignments, one of which took me away for nearly a week at just the wrong time. That did little to bond me with my younger sister, who at times reminded me more and more of our father, condemning me with her gaze and her sharp tone when we spoke.
I made arrangements for Mama to have a private-duty nurse when she was home. I had no false hope or any illusions about it and tried to get M to understand, but she resisted right up to the day Mama had to return to the hospital. We were literally in countdown now. I made M go to school, but the hardest thing I had to do since I had left our home was to go there and get her the day Mama died.
Uncle Alain had flown over and was with us. Our aunt Lucy and uncle Orman descended like vultures to scoop M up and bring her back to their home. I could see what that was going to be like for her. She would be in an even worse situation than I had been in, because she had no ally, no one like Mama to be a buffer between her and our military uncle and our insensitive aunt. In the end, I couldn’t let it happen. I went to see Mrs. Brittany. I was ready to quit, and she knew it.
“I want to be my younger sister’s guardian,” I told her. “I want her to move in with me.”
“Do you know what you’re proposing? That’s ridiculous.”
“I do. She’ll live with me either at the Beaux-Arts or someplace else, Mrs. Brittany,” I replied, with my eyes as steely as hers could be.
“It won’t work. Do you actually want to expose a girl that young to our world?”
“I wasn’t much older when Mr. Bob brought me to you,” I said.