Please be sure to read the blog entry below (Chapter 1) before you read this one.

Chapter 2 – Help Required?

Last week, though the recollection was more than thirty years old, I stared at the old photo and these memories whipped through my thoughts with unfettered speed. Dashing closely behind my memories, my emotions churned in the familiar patterns; familiar because this happened every time I dwelled on my sister’s life.

Could I have made a difference then? Even if I’d said something or tried to listen to her, would it have changed the course of her life? Probably not; but maybe. Just the mere chance put an adult’s guilt on the childhood memory.

A more likely time that I could have made a difference would have been when she came to me one afternoon, asking a favor of me because she intended to stay out all night. It was a school night, not that she really cared at this point in her life. We were again separated by schools. She was in High School, I was in Junior High. She was only 16.

Though adults view 16-year old kids to be too inexperienced and immature to understand life, most 16-year olds to believe themselves to be wise, experienced and even immortal. Vicki took those beliefs even further. In her rebellion against a world she saw as mean and unfair to her, Vicki contrived to imagine herself as eternally and savagely wicked and, therefore, powerful against her tormentors.

The moments she showed how compassionate she was were overshadowed by her contrivance and by my own immaturity.

“Terry,” she said to me as I was, again, doing homework at the dining room table. I ignored her while I finished a math problem.

“Terry, when I lower my standards in order to converse with you - a mere worm in the context of the universe - you should feel grateful and immediately ignore all else so that you may dwell upon my words.” This was delivered in the dramatic voice she used when insulting us mere mortals. But when I glanced up at her, I saw the half smile on her face that showed she was still ordinary enough to see the humor in her performance.

“Oh, my dear, glorious sister; pray tell, what wonders will you purvey upon me.” My feeble attempt to match her manner drew and even larger smile from her. It was good to see her smile, but I was a teenager and unable to admit that I liked my strange older sister.

‘Terry, listen,” she said, dropping the drama, “you need to tell Mummy that I’m alright, even if I don’t come home tonight.”

“What? You’ve got to be kidding! Daddy will go ballistic and Mummy will have a conniption.” I looked at her and saw she was actually listening to me, something that she hadn’t done for a long time. “Seriously, Vicki, Mum will be worried sick. What do you think you’re doing?”

She sat next to me and touched my arm. It had been so long since she’d touched me without intending to hurt or scratch me that I recoiled. She ignored my flinch, understanding my reasons. With a startlingly friendly voice, she said “You really can be stupid sometimes, can’t you?” She smiled again. “That’s why I’m telling you this, you dolt. I need you to tell Mummy not to worry. I won’t be dead at the side of a road or something, but safe with friends. I won’t be doing anything to hurt myself. Tell her that. I don’t care what our ghastly Father thinks, since he’ll think the worst no matter what. But you tell our dear Mother that I’m alright.”

I looked at her and saw her freshly for the first time in ages. She really did care. If she cared about how our mother was, then she was still a human being inside all of her feigned wickedness. I saw her as a person again, one whose thoughts and emotions could be understood and were not so different from mine. I wanted to hug her, but I knew she wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know what to say that would touch her as she’d touched me, so I spoke as a typical 14-year old – selfishly.

“Umm. Are you sure you want to do this? Can’t you just not do it? If you don’t stay out tonight then Daddy won’t get mad. He won’t be yelling and ranting.”

She laughed. “Again, you choose to show your stupidity. He’ll rant and rave anyway. Everyone in the house will be miserable. However, since I won’t be here to argue with him, it will stay as that. I won’t make it worse.” At this her mouth trembled a little. I found it hard to believe, but it definitely looked like she was trying to keep from crying.

Then it hit me. Just the previous Saturday night, Vicki had come home late and probably stoned. Our parents had already been arguing about something, but that was standard. The initial shouting between my parents had slowed, so I drifted into an uneasy sleep, only to be jolted awake when my father was shouting at Vicki when she got home.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, waltzing in after midnight!” The words were spoken with such intense anger, I pictured my father shouting in Vicki’s face, half and inch from her, face red and eyes squinting, hands balled into fists. My stomach clenched and I felt a cold sweat rise. I barely breathed.

“And what the hell have you taken. You’re stoned, you stupid little bitch! Do you really think you can come into my house stoned?”

Vicki’s response wasn’t as loud as his, but it hit me like a physical blow when she said it, and I could imagine what it did to my father. “Why shouldn’t I come home stoned? You’re always drunk. What’s the difference?”

My father’s bellow was joined by my mother’s entreaty to him, “Wally! Don’t!” I had no idea what he had done, but I’m sure it was either pushing or striking Vicki. When my mother intervened, my father must have turned on her. She was a more familiar adversary to him, and Vicki’s response to him had probably scared him as much as made him angry. He didn’t want to view Vicki’s taking drugs in the same light as him drinking every night.

It was impossible to make out words; all three were shouting or screaming. Soon, the only sounds were my mother weeping, and my sister coming into the room. I turned to her and her anger seemed an almost physical drape over her shoulders. She carried it and pulled it around her, making it a permanent part of her.

She stood by her bed, breathing hard and clenching her teeth.

My mother’s crying went up a notch as if my father had done something fresh to hurt her. Without thinking, as if I hadn’t learned long before that going out there only made the fighting worse, I jumped out of bed with the intention of seeing my mother.

Vicki’s hand fell on my shoulder and she hissed into my ear, “Sister, have you lost your worthless mind? Don’t you dare go out there.”

Though I was much stronger than Vicki, that hand on my shoulder was unrelenting and held me in place long enough for me to realize she was right. Getting into the middle of their arguments, even if the argument was over us, was the worst thing we could do.

So, when Vicki told me she would rather stay out of the house than come in and make my father even angrier than he usually became at night, I fully understood. But, I was naïve enough to think that there must be another solution.

“Why don’t you just stay home instead of going out?” When I remember that moment now, I realize I must have whined the words. Vicki probably showed unusual tolerance of me just to deign to reply.

“Okay, listen, stupid. I’m failing half my classes and I’ve been getting in trouble at school for smoking pot on the front lawn. The principal phoned Daddy who then arranged for our dear Mother to meet with the principal and the counselor, and probably the narcs who turned me in. Mummy’s going to the school tomorrow to discover how bad a seed I am. Daddy’s going to be angry tonight whether I’m here or not. So, I’d rather not.” The last was said lightly, as if it were no big deal. Then, her mood changed again.

“Look, you sniveling goody-two-shoes,” she was squinting her eyes at me the way Daddy squinted when angry. The similarity between the two struck me for the first time. “The point is that you need to make sure Mummy knows that I’m alright. Okay?”

I nodded and she turned away from me. Heading for the door, she grabbed her bag and called out, “Ta ta, my dear, disgusting siblings.” Our sisters looked up at her from the television and she favored them with a smile. “Please be sure to do well in school, be kind to our dear mother, and, always, always wash behind your ears.” She whirled around, threw another glance and a half-smile at me, and swept through the door.

I sat there, stunned and resisted an urge to run after her. She was up to something other than staying out all night, but I had no idea what it was. Would she have listened to me if I’d tried to talk to her some more? Probably not. But I still feel the guilt of not trying.

The next day in school, I was called to the school’s office. There was a phone call for me. When I took the phone, I was bewildered that the school would allow me to take a phone call in the middle of a class, so it must be something horrible. The most horrifying thing to me then was that something might happen to my mother, so that’s what first came to my mind. Something was wrong with my mother and I said with cotton-mouthed dread into the phone, “Hello?”

The voice on the phone was unfamiliar, and that added to my fear. “Hello, Terry. This is Principal Winston from Highland High School. Your sister, Vicki…” The anxiety for my mother lifted but an oily sickness came to my throat as I realized that news about Vicki could also be distressing. “She took your mother’s car and left the school. We believe she’s running away. Did she say anything to you that would let us know what she was planning.”

Tears of happiness drenched my face, because no one was dead or dying, but anger at my sister choked me. She had taken my mother’s car while she was visiting the High School to meet with the principal because Vicki was in trouble. She had done it right under their noses and stranded my poor mother. I could hear my mother tearfully speaking to someone in the background. She’d been trying to help Vicki, and Vicki had taken advantage of her.

“No.” I croaked. The office staff was staring at me crying on the phone and I wanted to run away and hide. I was sure they were thinking awful things about me. What kind of a stupid kid’s sister would steal her mother’s car and run away in it? It must be a flaw in the children! I could swear that they were all looking at me as if they thought I was a conspirator in a major crime. I was crying but would get no sympathy from them.
“No, she just told me that she was going to stay out last night and to tell Mummy…” My voice failed for a moment and I could see each person in the office staff lean almost imperceptibly closer to me. “She said to tell my mother that she was okay. That she was safe.” I choked, coughed and turned away from the office. “But that was about last night. She didn’t say anything about today, or running away.” Even as I said it I realized that she had definitely been talking about running away but I had missed it. I was so stupid and everyone could see it.

I felt as if I should have been the one to run away and end the misery of my poor parents who had such a stupid child. As it was, they made me go back to class. Everyone stared at my red, swollen eyes and mercifully left me alone in my abject misery.

My world had darkened within such a short span of time. I kept thinking of my failings: I had let down my mother; I was stupid; my sister was wicked but I was useless; the police were looking for my sister but I hardly knew her now and could provide no ideas about where she might run away too. I was a bad sister, so I was a very bad person.

Over thirty years of experience and time have dulled the pain of the memory of what my sister did, but the pang of guilt still hurts. I know I wasn’t guilty of anything but being a kid, but I still believe I should have been better.

Vicki was caught in Flagstaff in our parent’s stolen station wagon. She and her best friend were thrown in jail for the grand theft and possession of Marijuana and supposedly some other drugs, though I never found out what other drugs. My parents didn’t press charges and neither did the Flagstaff police. After all, you should give a 16-year old a break in life, I suppose.

That was only the first time she ran away. The most momentous one was over a year later when she was gone for weeks and my father got the call to pick her up from an Ohio jail.

Ohio! I initially thought she was going back to the scene of where her wonder and joy in the world had first become tainted. But it turned out that it was just the destination of the guys who had picked up Vicki and her friend, hitchhiking in Oklahoma.

She came back, but she couldn’t ever seem to be happy about it. I wanted to make her happy, but Ohio, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, with us or without us, she wasn’t happy.

I will occasionally post a story I write. Since I can't seem to find the time to get these things published, maybe someone will read them and like them for one reason or another. That's the point, isn't it?

Here's the first chapter of a short story:

Was it When?

Chapter 1 - Beach Photo

The memories were sparked and then fanned by an old color photo of the two of us, skinny as string beans, wearing colorful shorts and tops, freezing but having the time of our lives in the southern California surf. The photo was taken from above; likely from a dock out into the ocean, though I don’t remember the dock. The photo showed us laughing and splashing in unrestrained pleasure. Only children can be so in the moment that nothing is weighing on them, constraining them to remember that this merriment will end so the grown-ups can get warm, go shopping, get the baby out of the brisk breeze, or have another argument about one of the myriad of adult furies.

I don’t remember the moment that this photo was taken, but it had to be during one of the rare visits we made to my mother’s parents in L.A. A visit where my sisters and I marveled in the luxury of California’s “comfortable” people – not the rich people, since to be rich in Southern California was to be very, very rich – but the ones whose homes were so much better than ours or our friends’ homes. My grandparent’s home, and the homes of my parent’s friends in California, all seemed grandiose to us.

Unfortunately, the memories sparked by the photo were not the glorious moments that I shared with my sister. The memories that were sharpest in my memory were always accompanied by a deep, sharp pain in my chest and were of the moments when Vicki slipped further and further away from my family, away from me and into her tormented life.

With this picture in hand, I began my penance. Every time I remembered Vicki, I would go through the same thing – I would try to think of the moment in our lives when I could have changed a conversation or even word or gesture that could have stopped her from changing and leaving us.

Changing – maybe that’s the problem with my repeated penance. Vicki never went through a drastic change; it was a slow, imperceptible evolution.

For many years, when we were young and even as a young adult, I blamed the Ohio school district for their unbending rules in 1961 when they wouldn’t allow Vicki to go to public school because she was too young. Vicki had already finished English kindergarten and first grade,. Her birthday, in October, fell 27 days too late for Ohio to let her reattend first grade. My parents’ arguments fell on deaf ears, and Vicki was to spend a year playing with me and the children in our new neighborhood instead of furthering her education.

Most kids would think it was magnificent to spend time playing instead of going to school, but Vicki had always enjoyed learning, and now she was relegated to spending time with nuisance children. Those children included me, her snot-nosed sister, a couple neighbor kids who were younger and even snottier-nosed, and a neighborhood bully who had a secret crush on Vicki and could only express it by being cruel to her.
As a result of her limited choice of friends, Vicki spent a lot of time alone, reading or drawing. Her drawings were far beyond what other kids our age could create. Her gift for art continued throughout her life. Unfortunately, it always remained her potential, never realized.

When she was allowed to attend first grade the next year, she no longer cared about going to school or learning because she was already so far ahead of her so-called peers that she was bored and thought to be boring. She never liked school again.

Since I had no control over that gap in her education, I never felt guilty about it, but I did feel guilty when we moved to another district in Ohio that allowed some leniency in the rules, and I was only one grade behind Vicki, despite being almost exactly two years younger. She didn’t speak to me at school, and rarely talked on the walk there or home, unless it was to ask if I had any change for candy at the corner candy shop that always beckoned us on our way home. When I had a couple coins, I felt illogical glee when I could offer them to Vicki, who was speaking to me; a glee that was dimmed but not vanquished when the number of pieces of candy purchased often was enough only for Vicki and her two best friends, not me.

Over the years, through lives in Ohio, then Virginia, and finally Albuquerque, New Mexico, Vicki outgrew her frustration with the fact that her 2-year-younger sister was only one year behind her in school. We were able to be close at times, but Vicki seemed to be drifting inexorably away from me and our family.

I think the first chance that I had to make a difference (the thought of this moment is painful, but not the most painful) was when she disclosed she was becoming a witch.

Vicki was in seventh grade, which meant she was in Junior High School; but I was still in elementary school, unworthy of her attentions at most times, so I never knew what was really going on with her. However, I could tell she was unhappier than usual at school and had only a few friends. I was sitting at the dining room table doing homework, and our two younger sisters were sitting in the living room, watching some after-school special, when Vicki walked through the front door, looking superior and smug.

She tossed her head, dismissing the younger children and walked over to me. She hissed in my ear. She enjoyed hissing and scratching like a cat, so she used words with sibilants whenever she could. “You’d better keep your distance from me now, dear sister,” with each ‘s’ drawn out more like a snake’s hiss than a cat’s. “I’m learning how to become a witch, and I’ll place a deadly curse on you if you ever cross my path.”

I knew she liked to read books about the occult and fictional accounts of witches, and her beautiful artwork had recently been filled with witches, caldrons, and pentagrams, but this seemed a little silly to me. I scoffed her. I know now I should have listened to her and maybe she’d have told me more, but I scoffed her. “Ha, like that’ll change anything. You’ve always acted like a crazy old witch around here.” I looked her in the eye and mocked her hissing, “What’s the difference?”

I turned back to my homework.

“I’d expect nothing better from a shallow, unsavory creature such as you, you vile child.” Vicki had always loved to speak with the eloquent words she read in her books, but recently she’d started only using the mean, venomous words designed to hurt. Most kids thought she was silly; I thought she was inspired. Of course, I never told her that.

She continued, speaking to the room as if in soliloquy, “You’ll regret the day you scorned me! I shall possess powers beyond your imaginings. Never shall I use them to your benefit, but only to your detriment.” She tossed her head again and headed down the hallway toward our room. “Wretched creature that you are now, you shall become ever more wretched in the days to come as I whittle away your mortal energies and reduce you to a wriggling worm.” She disappeared down the hallway.

Only later, when I heard a friend’s older sister talk about this crazy girl in the Junior High School who claimed to be a witch, did I realize how serious Vicki’s problem was. Though I didn’t know the meaning of the term then, now I see how socially dysfunctional she was and how our family did nothing to help her. I worried about her, but, with my mortal energies apparently whittled, I could think of nothing to do to help her.