I began my day in the dead of night by burying my sister’s best friend alive. It was because I couldn't sleep; I couldn’t focus on keeping my closed eyes from twitching because of the noise. The walls were so thin. My little sister was whimpering in the room next to mine, shifting in her sheets and having a hushed conversation with her friend, awake in the bed next to her. I shifted in turn.
It wasn't my fault that I needed sleep. So did my sister. It wouldn’t last if her friend was with her. I crept from my bed to her room, staying low to the ground to avoid being hurt if I fell over. I did not want to catch her attention, so I let my fingers guide me, tracing the familiar frames on the wall until my fingers curled around the doorway to her bedroom. Her door was open. I waited until she fell into a patchy sleep.
I put my arm through the doorway first, reaching out in the dark as if to check if there was anything but air blocking me, anything but air between me and the bed. I put one foot in the doorway, then the other. I never lowered my arm and I slid against the floorboards and edged across a fluffy carpet to her bedside. I flexed my toes on the carpet and felt the soft threads between my feet. During the day, they were pink, and I curled and uncurled my hands in them as I played with my sister and her dollhouse.
Now, I was very cautious so as not to knock over the dollhouse. My outstretched arm brushed her cheek. She made no sound, she was asleep: good, she was going to need it. I felt across the covers until it landed on the soft, knitted cotton of her friend’s pajamas. I was sure that’s what it was, my sister had been so proud when she showed me and my mother how she was able to knit just like our grandmother, each stitch intentional, done with care, with some kind of history. I felt the thick cotton thread between my fingers and it held, taut. My grandmother would be proud.
At that moment, as I leaned over the bed’s frame, I kicked the dollhouse. It had been
pushed under the bed; my sister had wanted to avoid cleaning. I stumbled, almost, and made no sound when I stepped on the head of the littlest doll, the one that was, at some point, my grandmother’s and then my mother’s, and crushed it.
My sister stirred.
I hurriedly clenched my fist around the threads of my sister’s friend’s pajamas and lifted her from the bed, just like that. I was holding her sleeve. She dangled by her arm above the mattress. I wasn’t surprised to see my sister’s friend’s eyes still wide open, staring at me, buttoned and beady and dark. She made no sound and nearly hit my sister as I brought her to my chest and cradled her unsleeping form.
She was small, smaller than I remembered, when I’d first carried her to introduce her to my sister. Lighter too, about the weight of a letter or a poem, as if she might float. I couldn’t help but meet her gaze as I felt my way through the hall to the garden, the shed. Her eyes were so dark that if it weren’t for the white threads that covered them like cobwebs, the sign of a well-loved best friend, I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish them from the darkness.
She stared at me, limp, half-sitting, eyes still wide open, as I dug the hole.
I almost gave her the honor of a coffin, almost went inside to see if I could find a
cardboard box that might fit her, a blanket to maybe finally lull her to sleep, a picture in a painted frame, some memory for her to leave with. But then I felt her pajamas, the threads again.
I threw her face-down into the hole instead and buried her with just enough time to catch some shut-eye before the sun rose.
I began the morning by preparing for the funeral. I rolled out of bed into a carpet of shadow that the light seeping through the curtains seemed to force away. Sparrows chirped outside and I opened the window to let the breeze cradle my morning thoughts. I stumbled to the closet and dressed in a black dress I’d never seen before. It had been my grandmother’s, and it hung on my frame like an overgrown silhouette.
I could hear the whispers sewn into the dress with careful stitches, and I wondered if my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother had sewn it. I took a deep breath, curled in on myself and tried to inhale it. It smelled like the closet, which disappointed me. I pulled at the hem and shifted in it, but it wouldn’t fit right. I thought right then that it never would.
My sister emerged from her room in her own black dress. I’d knit it myself. Less than an hour after we’d received the phone call, I’d ended up on the living room couch with knitting needles and soft, thin rolls of black yarn. My sister had held onto her friend for dear life, sobbing and hiccuping on the couch next to me as she half-watched reruns of some cartoon my mother had never liked her watching. She’d said it was a bad influence.
I sent her to her room the moment I remembered.
Now I’d have to send her to her room again. I’d knitted the dress just for her, tailored it to her stubby arms and tiny frame. That’s why I wondered why it looked so strange on her when she’d emerged from her room, it’s hem climbing almost to her chin, trying to hide her face. It took me a long moment of staring at her puffy eyes to realize that she’d slipped it on backwards.
I told her to go to her room to fix it. She looked lost, squirmed a little and said that she didn’t know how, that I would have to help her because mom always used to be the one to help her dress in the mornings. Maybe I looked a bit lost as well, waiting for her to raise her arms so that I could pull off the dress. I didn’t realize I’d have to tell her to do it.
I have some vague memory of my mother instructing me gently, chuckling a bit as she told me to reach for the sky so that she could pull off a dirt-stained sweater that either she or my grandmother had knitted for me. I remembered her pursing her lips like she’d tasted something sour, her voice souring as well when she told me that someone who loved me very much had worked very hard to knit me that sweater, and that a good girl wouldn’t have played rough and gotten it dirty.
I have some vague memory of my response; I’d asked what I was meant to do instead.
She’d said something like play with the dolls, play with your sister and I’d stamped my foot and said I didn’t want to play baby games with my baby sister.
Now I repeated my mother’s words, told her to lift her arms to the sky, told her to be a good girl and that she needed to take care not to dirty the dress. I didn’t tell her to play with the dolls.
“It’s time to go,” I said, holding out my hand.
She didn’t take it. Instead, she snatched the first doll she could find from the dollhouse as I waited in the doorway outside her room. I watched her and noticed that if I’d tied her hair a little bit looser and if she had a few more missing teeth and scrapes, she would’ve looked just like me when I was her age. She made no remark about the crushed doll, and instead clung to a faded ragdoll named Miss Lacy, fingers nervously plucking at the doll’s worn dress as she followed me out the front door to the train station.
As the prayers began, I noticed that the pews were not shaped for children. My sister leaned a bit too far back, folded over herself a bit too far as her legs dangled off the smoothed oak. I gave her a harsh look when she scrunched her nose as woman after woman filed in and each lit a candle. I fought not to pinch my nose myself; the smell of smoke and candle wax and old wood was strong. The light filtered through the stained glass windows seemed to scatter in the haze.
We sat in the front row. My sister seemed far too small in the back rows, where she was dwarfed by the vast breadth of the towering arches and sanctified silence. I lifted her onto my lap. Her knuckles were white from clinging to Miss Lacy, who she’d insisted on bringing with her into the church, though I’d told her not to, because dolls were for games, and today you have to be a big girl for me, alright? But even in my arms she was heavier than I’d thought, heavy like I love you and other words that carried weight. I thought that I felt her heartbeat.
The service began and though the minister’s voice echoed and coated the vaults and domes, his words were like the light, scattered in the haze, a cicada buzzing somewhere else.
I looked around through the blur. Many women, many girls, all sat with their heads bowed. I wondered if they were cousins, aunts, friends of friends of friends. I’d not seen any of them before. They were family.
The two caskets were perched at the front, the same pear-tree wood reflecting the dim light. We each comforted each other vaguely as we took turns walking up to the front and staring into the depths of the four wooden planks, maybe whispering something to be taken by the tune coming from the piano in the back. I hadn’t realized it’d started playing until my sister whispered that she could play it better, that she’d like to play, that mother and grandmother loved it when she played. That was true, and I couldn’t play very well at all: I told her no, that would be inappropriate.
I carried my sister over to the caskets. There were many mourners and I was scared she’d be crushed. It was a short distance, and she got heavier and heavier. She stared into mother’s casket and then grandmother’s casket with wide eyes, making Miss Lacy wave to them. A few women awwed I grabbed her hand and lowered it to her side. I placed a framed picture of all four of us in both caskets, the same picture, from when I was little. I was wearing a dress they’d knitted for me and holding a doll called Nina. I remember posing for that picture for us to send with invitations for our mother’s baby shower; she’d miscarried late. I remember being admonished over and over because I wouldn’t stand still, wouldn’t hold the doll, wanted to play. But they always said I looked nice in that picture.
We were unprepared when the procession began, I didn't have a car. I’d been too nervous to drive to the funeral because I’d only ever driven to parties. I got in the passenger’s seat of a car that belonged to someone who called herself my aunt. My sister sat in the backseat next to the woman’s son, who snatches Miss Lacy.
“Cut it out, Adam,” his mother said. And she managed to say it softly, sternly, angry and nurturing. When I tried to say the same to my sister, telling her that Miss Lacy couldn’t come to the burial as well, it had sounded like I'd just hiccuped an extra-sharp butter knife. My aunt rubbed my back at a red light. It takes everything not to whine.
The ceremony as the grave site was mercifully brief. The minister’s words once again blurred with the sounds of sparrow’s chirping and rusting leaves. He handed out flowers, red roses, for us to place atop the caskets before they descended. I refused. I liked my red rose far too much, so much that I snatched my sister’s as well, because she, like my mother, like my grandmother, hated red and hated roses. They would’ve called it an offense, like the day they’d slammed the door when they realized a girl had come to take me to prom and blamed it on the colour of the bouquet she was carrying. They tossed them and gave white violets to my sister, who’d had a little boy-friend over that evening, to play love with.
That didn’t stop a collective shudder when the caskets met the ground and something irreplaceable slipped away. That didn’t stop the shivers when the first shovelful of earth met the casket, its weight seemed to fall and crumble over me. My sister’s eyes were still wide, like she was trying to fit everything into them, like she was lost. I squeezed her hand to bring her back. It was all I knew to do.
We didn’t wait for the Earth to cover the wood completely before we slipped away. She’s tired, I whispered if they asked.
I began the evening by preparing food. The wake was held at our house, and it felt unfamiliar when all the couches and peeling walls and pictures were hidden by family I didn’t know. My hands moved mechanically as I arranged platters and refilled drinks. I noticed that the dress seemed to fit a bit better now, the heavy fabric settling more naturally against my body. I no longer had to watch my feet to keep myself from tripping.
My sister was silent, the loudest in the room as everyone turned to her, clapping politely as she played my mother's favorite song on the piano, Miss Lacy under her arm. When I told her the music was enough, I gently took the doll from her, and said it was time to eat something. Her eyes were still wide, questioning, but she placed the doll in my arms without protest. The words had come out like butter, but as I cradled the doll I held a knife in my stomach.
I found myself knitting, just like my grandmother had taught me, with care, with
intention, with some kind of history. I wasn’t quite sure what; maybe an apron or a mitten or a hat. With each stitch, The dress seemed to stifle me more perfectly. The loose folds seemed to fall into place, the fabric hugging my body. I had to take smaller breaths, there were so many people in the room.
I looked in the mirror: I had grown into it. I looked less beautiful when I slipped it off.
When the guests finally filed out the doorway in their haze of condolences and casseroles and glances, I guided my sister to her room, tucked her into bed and smoothed the covers around her tiny form. She held Miss Lacy to her chest, and she asked if I minded, if she still needed to be a big girl. I said, no, you’re fine in the dark. I added, just no conversations, no noise, just sleep. You need it. I kissed her on the forehead and whispered goodnight, the world shaky as my tongue tried to lift the weight of the day.
I left the door open and ignored her whimpers when she noticed that her best friend was gone, that the covers had been smoothed and the bump that should’ve been her form was there.
I knelt down, fingers trembling as they curled around the shovel, and I began to dig.
It didn’t take long to uncover her, just a few feet down, black, beady, button eyes still staring up at me, unblinking. The moonlight dripping around them almost looked like tears. Nina, my childhood best friend, stared up at me from her shallow grave and I cried.
I picked her up gently, brushing off the dirt, and held her close to my chest so that I could pretend my heartbeat was hers. The fabric of her dress was worn, familiar, the threads between my fingers knit together with a history just for me. Just for me. Mine.
I remembered when I’d gifted her to my sister one Christmas, the way her face had lit up, the way my dress had seemed to fit me perfectly right then, every fold in place. I remembered how the next day I’d whimpered and whined as my sister held Nina close, because I’d given her away and my grandmother was smiling and my mother was smiling. They said I’d been a big girl, a good girl, that now I could just go play with the other dolls. I didn’t want to, but my sister was smiling.
I carried Nina inside like a baby and I tripped over my dress from not looking where I was going. It had loosened to match the detached sheets of my unmade bed. I let myself fall onto the mattress, slip under the covers, curl into a ball and sob. I clutched Nina, kept her close to my chest to hold onto a time when sleep was a promise, not a thing I needed to keep.
The walls were so thin, I could hear my sister’s heartbeat, her sniffles and whimpers and weeping in tandem with my own. I could almost feel our foreheads touching. I needed sleep, and so did she.
I almost forgot to set my alarm to ring in the dead of night, so I could begin my day by burying my childhood best friend before the sun would rise.
Lara Chamoun is a high school student from Toronto, Canada and her work is either forthcoming or has appeared in the Diamond Gazette and Toronto's Young Voices Magazine. She was a 2024 Adroit Summer Mentorship mentee in fiction and reads for Eucalyptus Lit.
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