The Sisters Read online

  Alma was afraid of the stove, the hiss of gas and how you had to hold the lit match out to get the flame. You never could tell how far it would jump out at you, like a fiery snake. But Daddy had told her to mind and Mother had used her “Don’t-sass-me” voice, so she had no choice. She filled the kettle and pressed the lid down until it snapped tight, then set it on the burner. Her hand trembled as she held the match out while she eased on the knob. Gas sputtered at her before catching and swirling into a short flame. The fire was too low to get the water boiling, so she reached to turn up the gas, but before she could, the flame flashed out to lick at the sides of the kettle and then with a gasp shrank to a flicker. Alma backed away from the stove. The flame kept changing size—she’d never seen that happen before. She was too scared to leave the kitchen to tell Mother about it, so she waited, calling out that the tea was almost ready every time Mother shouted for her to hurry up.

  When at last the kettle began to whistle, Alma flipped off the gas and leaned back against the counter for a minute. She took a deep breath and held it to steady the heavy kettle while she poured hot water into the waiting cup, then took the squashy tea bag from the saucer where it rested. Mother had taught her not to be wasteful and to use every tea bag for two days. And she was to count the dips of the bag—three crisp dunks—so the tea wouldn’t be too strong.

  All the way to the bedroom, she took baby steps, trying not to slosh any of the hot tea onto her hands or, worse, onto the floor. Mother was sitting up in the bed, eyes closed, so Alma set the cup on the bedside table and started to tiptoe out.

  “Is that the tea?” said Mother, opening her eyes. She patted the place beside her. “Thank you, doll. Come on up here while I drink it.”

  When her mother spoke sweetly like this, Alma could almost forget the other times. For as long as she could remember, she’d tried to work out what made Mother angry and what made her kind, but there just didn’t seem any way to really tell, since something that made her happy one day might make her mad the next. Daddy said it was just that Mother felt bad right now, that sometimes waiting for babies to come could make a woman sick, but Mother and Daddy had talked about the baby only since the end of last summer, and Alma could remember plenty of times before that when Mother was snappish.

  And there had been a long time when the leaves were orange and red, about the time Mother’s belly had started to get round, when Mother had acted mostly happy. One day when Alma got home from school, Daddy was dancing Mother around the living room in his jerky step and Mother was laughing. Then when Mother saw her standing in the doorway, she danced over alone and swooped Alma up into her arms and swished and turned back towards Daddy. On the radio an orchestra was playing the tune for “Blue Moon” and Daddy was swaying along with the music, tapping with his bad foot, singing made-up words of his own that didn’t quite go with the rhythm: “Crother’s Mill is open again … money comin’ in … Bertie’s gettin’ a gas stove … blue moon.”

  “Tea’s good,” Mother said, taking a loud sip. “Get me some crackers, sugar.”

  “There’s no more,” Alma said, and Mother’s mouth turned down the tiniest bit. Then she had set the cup back on the table and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “We better go see what else we need.”

  Alma snuggled her face down further in her scarf, trying to find a dry spot, and chanted the list again: “Eggs, milk, soda crackers.” She tried to imagine Daddy building a rowboat. When she thought of him filling sandbags, she worried about the sand going down into his rubbers and into his shoes, scratching at his feet. Her own feet inside her rubbers were suddenly so cold she could barely feel her toes, and looking down, she cried out. Water was rushing around her, just like the water had in a creek she’d waded in last summer. But this wasn’t a creek, it was Market Street. She was almost to the store, just another block. Mother would be upset if she came home without the groceries, so she sloshed on. By the time she reached Gibson’s, the water was lapping at her ankles. The store was closed. She pounded at the door and waited, but nobody came.

  Further down the street, closer to the river, the water seemed to be gushing up and pouring toward her, as if it were coming after her. She turned for home, but in the short time on Gibson’s stoop, the water had come up higher, too deep now for her to run like she wanted to, and anytime she tried, her feet threatened to slip from under her. She walked and walked, her legs weak, tired out from having to push through the dirty river. It wasn’t quite so high and fast when she got to Beeler Street, but still it swooshed over the round toes of her rubbers. At the end of Clark Street, which had only been rain-wet when she left the house, she did begin to run, even though she couldn’t feel her feet and the water here splashed with every step, up her legs and over tops of her boots.

  Panting, she pushed onto the back porch, letting the screen door bang behind her. “Mother! Mother!”

  Alma saw the way her mother’s mouth tightened at her empty arms and at the dirty tracks she’d made. “The river, Mother. The store was closed.”

  Mother pulled the curtain aside and looked out at the street. “Go turn on the radio,” she said. “Then go get your corduroy pants, your warm sweater, your good dress, and a couple changes of underwear and lay them on my bed. And one toy—just one, mind.”

  Alma already knew what she was going to take, not a toy at all. It had rained and rained for almost two weeks, and on Tuesday, her teacher had told the class that the river was rising fast and there might be a flood if the rain didn’t stop. “Think about what’s most precious to you besides your family,” she said, and they all had to stand up and describe what they would take if they could have only one thing. Alma said she would choose her china doll, and the teacher had smiled, but Alma knew what she would really take was her Shirley Temple scrapbook.

  On the front, it looked like Shirley in her bright yellow dress was stepping out of the giant green book to smile at everybody. Alma kept her best school projects inside, plus a picture of Daddy, and a story from an old newspaper about a baby that was stolen away. Daddy had given it to her and said the baby’s father was famous and flew airplanes and that she should keep the story because it was something important that happened during her lifetime, even if she couldn’t remember it. She’d pasted it in to please Daddy, but she didn’t like thinking about a stolen baby. She did like the picture she’d colored of the Indian mother. After making that at school, she’d brought it home and pasted it in the scrapbook, and then, on her own, she drew a little baby on a piece of white paper and cut it out like a paper doll. She knew where Mother saved sheets of brown paper from grocery parcels, so, while Mother was busy hanging laundry out, Alma sneaked to take a piece. She cut a big shaky circle, dotted the center with paste, and pressed it on the page beside the Indian mother. When it was dry, she folded up the bottom of the circle and the two sides, then tucked the baby in. In Mother’s sewing box, she found a threaded needle, and she punched this down into one of the side flaps, leaving a long end of thread, then punched the needle up through the other flap, cut the thread and tied a bow to keep the papoose nicely snug. She liked being able to slide the baby out to lay it in the mother’s arms for a little while, then put it back in the pouch to keep it safe.

  She also had a picture of Myrna Loy, cut from a magazine Daddy had found on a bench outside the drugstore. In the picture, Myrna Loy was wearing a frothy apron and holding out a beautiful platter with a big roasted turkey ringed with apples and roses. Underneath the picture, it said “The glamorous Miss Loy is a star in the kitchen as well as on the silver screen.”

  The best thing in her scrapbook was a card with two pictures, side by side, of a dark-haired girl on a swing. The girl was wearing a pretty dress of white lace, and though she wasn’t smiling, she was even more beautiful than Myrna Loy. Alma didn’t understand why the pictures looked just alike, and she didn’t know who the girl was, but sometimes when she looked hard, she thought it might be a picture of her mother. No matter how much
she wanted to, she couldn’t ask Mother about it, since she’d stolen the picture from the family Bible—way in the back in the Book of Revelation that nobody ever read. If she wanted to know about it, she’d have to put it back in the Bible and pretend to find it again, but she was afraid if she did, Mother might take it away and hide it someplace Alma could never find it.

  “Are you getting those things?” Mother called. “Hurry, Alma!”

  Alma lay on the floor and reached far under the bed to pull her scrapbook out. In her dresser, she had two warm sweaters, but one of them, the green one, really belonged to Daddy. She took that one out for him and imagined herself wearing it over her own if she had to set out to rescue him. She could see herself in the rowboat, standing at the front, directing the grown-ups where to go and keeping them calm by being cheerful, like Shirley Temple always was. If in the confusion Daddy got arrested, like Shirley’s daddy in The Littlest Rebel, Alma would put on her good dress and go see the president to get him out of jail, just like Shirley did. That picture was her favorite. In most of the others Daddy had taken her to see, the children’s parents had somehow got lost. When she and Daddy left the theater, Alma was always sure to smile and tell him how she liked the picture, but later in bed, she would push her face into the pillow and cry for those poor lonely children.

  “Alma, come now!”

  Alma took a long look around her room and then stacked and carried her things back to her mother’s room. Mother was folding a dress and putting it in an open case beside a pair of shoes. Next to the case, the Bible lay on a pile of other clothes waiting to be packed. Mother held out her arms for Alma’s bundle. She didn’t notice Daddy’s green sweater, but she held up the scrapbook and said, “Are you sure this is what you want? Everything that’s left behind might get ruined.” Alma imagined the river surging into their house, filling up the gas stove, floating the kitchen table, pouring into her room, drowning her dolls, her toy monkey. A tear ran down her cheek like a tiny river.

  “Alma?”

  She nodded. “It’s for remembering.”

  Mother looked at her for a moment, her mouth turned up in just one corner, then she laid the folded dress and the scrapbook in the bottom of the case.

  When she was finished, Mother closed the suitcase and carried it into the front room, then sat down in the big chair and closed her eyes. Alma went to the window to look out again. The rain was coming down harder than ever. Across the street, the water had come up halfway on the tires of the car Mrs. Mialback left parked in front of her house for her son to drive on Wednesdays when he came to take her shopping. When Alma pressed her face against the window and squinted, she thought she could see Mrs. Mialback at a second-story window. Their own house had just one floor on top of the basement. On the radio, the music had stopped and there was nothing but people calling up crying and giving their addresses, asking for someone to come after them. They didn’t have a phone at their house, but Alma didn’t worry. Daddy would come for them. He’d said he would.

  The hall clock chimed another hour passing, and then another. The river had come up over their front yard and the first step into the house was almost covered. Alma stood out on the front porch, leaning over the railing, trying to count the odd things that drifted past in the street—a couple of wooden chairs, a man’s hat, three tires, a dead cat, six or seven big cans of peas, and many more things she couldn’t recognize. Somewhere, behind and beneath her she heard what sounded like a giant faucet left to run.

  Mother flung open the door. “It’s in the basement!” Her eyes were red-rimmed and wide open and she snatched Alma into her arms and pulled her into the house.

  “Daddy will be here soon,” Alma said, trying her best to sound sure the way Shirley always did. Mother paced around the room, holding up her belly with one hand and rubbing at her eyes with the other.

  Another hour passed and the water covered the next step. Just one more before it was on the porch. Across the street, Mrs. Mialback was leaning out of her upstairs window, screaming. Her dog was barking along with her, but he was a little dog and Alma couldn’t see him.

  Mother whirled around to glare at the window and covered her ears. “What good does she think that’s gonna do!” Mother picked up Daddy’s red glass ashtray, the one that sat by his chair, and threw it against the wall. Alma ducked down behind the couch and curled into a ball. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t. Daddy would be there any minute, and he would want to see how brave she had been.

  When Alma peeked up over the back of the couch, Mother was gone, but she could hear her rattling around in the kitchen. Mrs. Mialback was still screaming, but now Alma could hear her words clearly: “Over here! Up here!”

  Yes, there was a rowboat coming down the street. She couldn’t quite make it out from the window, but when she ran out onto the porch, there it was. Alma jumped up and down, waving her arms, then ran back inside the house. “Daddy’s coming!”

  She and Mother wound their wool scarves around their necks and hurried into their coats. Mother carried the suitcase out to the porch and they both shouted and waved. There were two men standing in the boat and two others sitting and rowing. A woman and three children sat around them.

  Across the street, Mrs. Mialback leaned out her window to wave at the men, then she snapped down the window. A moment later, she was standing in her coat on her porch, her little white dog in her arms.

  When the boat got closer, one of the standing men waved right at Alma. Alma called, “Daddy! Daddy!” The men looked at each other.

  The rowers guided the boat right up to the edge of their porch and one of the men jumped out onto the flooded steps. Alma didn’t know him. She looked at the faces of the other men, who nodded at her and motioned for her to come onboard. Daddy wasn’t there.

  “Anybody else in the house, ma’am?” the first man said to Mother.

  Mother shook her head, handed him the suitcase, and then pushed Alma forward to be lifted into the boat. Another man jumped out to help lift Mother into the boat, and then the rowers worked to turn it around to cross to Mrs. Mialback.

  When Mrs. Mialback reached out to hand her dog to one of the men, Mother tried to stand up. “I’m not going in a boat with any filthy dog!”

  “Mrs. Jorgensen,” said Mrs. Mialback, “he’s a gentle dog. I’ll hold him tight so he won’t bother you.”

  Mother looked up at the man who had lifted Alma into the boat. “You will not take that dog! It’s people that have to be worried about now.”

  Alma wanted to say something, but Mother was so angry, she was afraid. Fritz was a nice little dog and he minded whatever Mrs. Mialback said. He could even stand on his hind legs and spin in a circle like a dog in the circus.

  “I won’t have it. I won’t have it,” Mother kept saying. “You will not put a dirty dog in with me and my child!” She put her hand on her belly, and Alma heard one of the men whisper to another about women who were expecting.

  Mrs. Mialback stepped back on her porch and held Fritz close to her. She looked icily at Mother and then said to the men, “Will you send another boat for me, please? If you can?”

  The men looked at Mother and shook their heads, then nodded at Mrs. Mialback. As the boat moved away, down towards Beeler Street, Alma watched Mrs. Mialback and Fritz getting smaller and smaller on their porch.

  It seemed like they were in the boat a long time. They stopped at some houses further down the street and picked up Mrs. Peters and her children and then shaky old Mr. Nash and his sister. The boat was full now, but people shouted at them from windows, begging them to stop. They rowed past a few other boats, all full, and each time Alma tried hard to see Daddy, but he wasn’t there. Just after they passed the sign for Pearl Street, one of the men said everybody would have to get out and wade toward Hill Street, where there were trucks waiting for them.

  The men who had been rowing the boat jumped out to help them all onto the flooded street. The water was up to Alma’s knees and so cold it t
ook her breath. For a moment she thought she might sink into it, but then she felt the strong grasp of her mother’s hand. They walked in the direction the men pointed and when they got to a place where the river was down around her ankles, Alma looked back to see the men rowing down Pearl Street—to get Mrs. Mialback and Fritz, she hoped.

  With every block they walked, there was less and less water, and it seemed strange when they got to Hill Street that it was almost dry. There were more people there than Alma had ever seen, and the terrible noise of people crying and shouting, of truck motors rumbling, and of men sawing boards and pounding nails. Lined up in front of the Catholic church, twenty or thirty men were building boats. They all looked the same in their dark wet coats, their hats pulled down over their eyes, but Alma scanned for Daddy.

  Mother tugged at her hand. “Come on.” Ahead of them, a nun was holding a writing pad and taking down people’s names and then telling them to climb up into the trucks. While they waited, three or four trucks pulled away, the beds so full that everyone was standing, pressed up against each other.

  Now Mother was dragging her to one of the trucks, past the men who were working on the boats. Alma looked and looked, and then she saw one of the black-coated men limp over to a pile of lumber. She yanked her hand from her mother’s and ran. “Daddy! Daddy!”

  It was Daddy, and when she got to him, he caught her in his arms but didn’t pick her up.

  “We’re going on the truck,” Alma said. “Come on. I packed you a sweater.”

  Daddy grabbed her hard by the shoulders and looked in her face. He wasn’t smiling. “You go right now,” he said. “I have to stay here. Stay close to your mother.”