Read Online The Language of Sisters by Amy Hatvany - Free Book Online

help thinking that Sonia had gotten it right. Jenny was exactly who she was supposed to be. It wasn’t our job to fix her. But my mother’s life was anchored to a cure. Sonia, like all the doctors and specialists who had seen Jenny before her, took that anchor and dislodged it further, leaving my mother to sail aimlessly along, a waning flicker of hope her only guide.
    •  •  •
    The first morning at home with Jenny it took almost an hour simply to get her dressed. Wrangling her stiff limbs into clothing was a far more difficult prospect than I had remembered. Her twisted fingers caught in odd places, bending them back and rendering from her shrieks of pain that lit panic in my stomach like a fire.
    “Shit!” I exclaimed as I once again failed to get her arm through the hole of a knit shirt. We were in her yellow-painted bedroom; the contents of the two boxes of clothes I had brought home from Wellman were scattered across the bed and down onto the pale green carpet. Jenny sat precariously on the edge ofher bed as I stood over her. She was naked from the waist up and looked a little frightened of me, her eyes wide and inquiring, as though she wondered if I knew what I was doing. I wondered if I knew what I was doing. “What am I doing wrong?” I asked her, exasperated by my own incompetence. I tried to figure out how the hell I was ever going to get her dressed.
    Mom stuck her head into the room. “Everything okay in here?” While I had gone to pick up Jenny the previous afternoon, Mom had straightened up Jenny’s old room, changing the sheets and vacuuming the rug. I had taken her industrious behavior as a sign that she was ready to help, but when Jenny and I got home, Mom disappeared into her bedroom, proclaiming she had a migraine. Jenny and I had spent the evening alone in her old room, watching Elmo in Grouchland until she finally fell asleep.
    “Ehhh,” Jenny cried when she saw our mother. A pitiful edge tinged her voice. Her small shoulders shook uneasily; her eyes were bright.
    An all too familiar feeling of inadequacy raised its ugly head in my belly. Leaving the shirt hanging around her neck, I hugged Jenny to me and glared at our mother. “Everything’s fine.”
    Mom glanced around the messy room. A small set of worried wrinkles swam briefly across her forehead. She adjusted the thick brown belt she wore around an emerald green cotton dress. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got to get to work, so I guess I’ll see you girls later.” She turned to leave.
    “Mom?” I called out, stopping her.
    “Yes?” she said. I could almost smell her trepidation.
    “I’m taking Jenny to a salon this afternoon. I thought she could use some pampering.”
    Mom nodded slowly. “That sounds nice.” Her tone was careful, entirely neutral.
    I stepped toward her, gesturing to Jenny. “Should I make the appointment for the three of us?” I thought of the look she had given me the other night, the hope it had held. It had taken courage to open herself that way to me; I wanted to answer her with some of my own.
    Mom gave me a half smile but shook her head. “I really can’t afford to take any more time off this week.” She waved at Jenny. “Have a good day, you two,” she said. And then she was gone.
    I turned to Jenny, stepping back to face her. “Well, so much for bonding with Mom, huh, Jen?” I kissed the top of my sister’s hair, then wiped my lips, trying to ignore the sting of our mother’s refusal. I felt like a child who had reached out for her mother’s hand to hold only to have it slapped away. I picked up another shirt from the pile on the bed and held it up to examine. “Okay. Back to the task at hand. The problem is these are all just too small. We need to go shopping, Sis.”
    Jenny smiled, a small, hesitant gesture.
    I touched her soft, pale cheek. Her skin had always been perfectly clear; I don’t think she ever had a pimple. As a teenager plagued by monthly bouts of acne, I remember