Henry's Sisters. Cathy Lamb
have been told that the people in the corporate building across the way can see me when I open my window and lean out, and that this causes a tremendous ruckus when I’m nude, but I can’t bring myself to give a rip. It’s my window, my air, my insanity. My nudeness.
Besides, after that pink letter arrived yesterday, I needed to breathe. It made me think of my past, which I wanted to avoid, and it made me think of my future, which I also wanted to avoid.
I opened the window, leaned way out, and closed my eyes as the rain twisted through my braids, trickling down in tiny rivulets over the beads at the ends, then my shoulders and boobs.
“Naked I am,” I informed myself. “Naked and partly semi-sane.”
I did not want to do what that letter told me to do.
No, it was not possible.
I stretched my arms way out as if I were hugging the rain, the Kahlúa bottle dangling, and studied myself. I had an upright rack, a skinny waist, and a belly button ring. Drops teetered off my nipples one by one, pure and clear and cold. I said aloud, “I have cold nipples. Cold nips.”
When I was drenched, I smiled and waved with both hands, hoping the busy buzzing boring worker bees in the office buildings were getting their kicks and jollies. They needed kicks and jollies.
“Your minds are dying! Your souls are decaying! Get out of there!” I brought the Kahlúa bottle to my mouth, then shouted, “Free yourself! Free yourself! ”
Satisfied with this morning’s creative rant, I padded to my kitchen and ran a hand across the black granite slab of my counter, then crawled on it and laid down flat like a naked human pancake, my body slick with rainwater, my feet drooping over the edge.
I stared at the pink letter propped up on the backsplash. I could smell her flowery, lemony perfume on it. It smelled like suffocation.
No screaming, I told myself. No screaming.
Suddenly I could feel Cecilia in my head. I closed my eyes. I felt abject despair. I felt fear. I felt bone-cracking exhaustion.
The phone rang, knocking the breath clean out of my lungs.
It was Cecilia. I knew it.
This type of thing happened between us so much we could be featured on some freak show about twins. A week ago I called her when I heard her crying in my brain. I couldn’t even think she was so noisy. When I reached her, sure enough, she was hiding in a closet and bawling her eyes out. “Quiet down,” I’d told her.
“Shut up, Isabelle,” she’d sputtered. “Shut up.”
We are fraternal twins and our mind-twisting psychic link started young. When we were three, Cecilia was attacked by a dog. He went straight for her throat. She was in our front yard, I was at the grocery store with Momma. At the exact same time she was bitten, I started shrieking and clutched my neck, which felt as if it had been stabbed. I fell to the ground and frantically kicked the air before I passed out. Momma later told me she thought the devil had attacked my very soul.
Another example: Two years ago, when I was working in some squalid village in India, teeming with the poorest of the poor, my stomach started to burn and swell. I had to ride back to the city in a cart with chickens. Cecilia needed an emergency appendectomy.
One more bizarre example: When I was photographing the American bombing of Baghdad, I dove behind a concrete barrier as bullets whizzed by. One grazed my leg. Cecilia’s message on my cell phone was hysterical. She thought I’d died, because she couldn’t move her leg.
It’s odd. It’s scary. It’s the truth.
I covered my face with my hands. I did not answer the phone, waiting until the answering machine clicked on. I heard her voice—think drill sergeant meets Cruella De Vil.
“Pick up the phone, Isabelle.”
I did not move.
“I know you’re there,” Cecilia/Cruella accused, angry already. Cecilia/Cruella is almost always angry. It started after that one terrible night with the cocked gun and the jungle visions when we were kids.
I tapped my forehead on the counter. “I’m not here,” I muttered.
“And you’re listening, aren’t you?” I heard the usual impatience.
I breathed a hot, circular mist of steam onto the counter and shook my head. “No,” I said. “No, I’m not listening.”
“Hell, Isabelle, I know you’re wigged out and upset and plotting a trip to an African village or some tribal island to get out of this, but it’s not gonna work. Forget it. You hear me, damn it. Forget it.”
I blew another steam circle. A raindrop plopped off my nose like a liquid diamond. “You swear too much, and I’m not upset ,” I said, so quiet. “Why should I be upset? I will not do what she says. If I do I will be crushed in her presence and what is sane will suddenly seem insane. Mrs. Depression will come and rest in my head. I’ll have none of that.” I shivered at the thought.
“And you’re scared. I can feel your fear,” she accused. “Ya can’t hide that.”
“I don’t do scared anymore,” I said, still shivering. “I don’t.”
“We’re going to talk about what happened to you, too, Isabelle. Don’t think you can keep that a secret,” she insisted, as if we were having a normal conversation. “Pick up the damn phone before I really get pissed.”
I loved Cecilia. She did not deserve, no one deserved, what had come down the pike for her last year with that psycho-freak pig/husband of hers. My year had not been beautiful, either, but hers was worse.
“Isabelle!” Cecilia/Cruella shouted, waiting for me to pick up. “Fine, Isabelle. Fine . Buck up and call me when you get out of bed and the man’s gone.”
I flipped my head up. She knew! So often she knew about the men. She told me once, “Think of it this way: I don’t get the fun of the sex you have, but I sometimes know it’s happened by the vague smell of a cigarette.”
See? Freaky.
“I’m already out of bed, so quit nagging,” I muttered.
“Is,” she whispered, the machine hardly picking up her voice. “Don’t leave me alone here.”
“Cecilia hardly ever whispers,” I whispered to myself. “She is beyond desperate.” I ignored the tidal wave of guilt.
“You have to help me. You have to help us ,” she said.
No, I don’t have to help. I do not have to help you, or her.
“I can’t do it without you. I will go right over the edge, like a fat rhino leaping over a cliff.” She hung up.
I am going to live my own life as sanely as possible. My answer, then, has to be no. No, no, no, Cecilia.
I conked my head against the counter, then tilted the Kahlúa bottle sideways into my mouth. I rarely drink, but Kahlúa for breakfast is delicious. I licked a few droplets right off the counter when they splattered, my beads clicking on the granite.
The man in my bed stirred. I raised my head from the counter, mildly interested as to what he’d do next.
I couldn’t remember his name. Did he have a name? I flipped over and stared at the open silver piping on my ceiling. Certainly he had a name. Because I couldn’t remember it didn’t mean he had no name.
The man turned over. Nice chest!
Surely this man’s mother gave him a name.
For a wee flash of time, I let myself feel terrible. Cheap and dirty for yet another one-night stand.
“Ha,” I declared. “Ha. This night must end right now.”
I rolled off my counter, grabbed a pan from my cupboard, and