tiny fiction №3: big sister
to the not knowing and the hope that comes with it
BIG SISTER
I awoke with a jolt, not realizing I had fallen asleep. Quietly, I re-situate, taking a moment to wipe the dried drool from my chin before pressing my cheek against the car window. Snippets of conversations drift from the front seat, while I sit in the back, tucked up against the door, suitcases and bags piled high beside me. I must have been asleep for a while because the sun is no longer in my eyes and the landscape is different, harsher. With my arms folded against my stomach, I fix my sight on the sliver of the silver moon, the only constant in this baby blue sky.
A dad passes us in a minivan, reaching his arm behind him to hand the crying child a stuffed animal. A truck driver opens a bag of chips and sings along to a song I can’t hear. A young woman, still in her nursing uniform, wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. My brief view into their world feels like an invasion of privacy, and yet, I don’t turn away. I watch and watch and wonder if someone is watching me, too: a tired looking teenager crammed into the back of a 2003 black Honda civic, doing her best to go unnoticed.
Just before I fell asleep, we stopped for gas. I stayed in the car while my sister filled up and her girlfriend grabbed some cash for water and snacks from inside. When asked if I wanted anything, I said no thanks and turned back toward where my sister stood, now facing away from me, hands in her jean pockets, waiting. Five minutes later, I’m handed a pack of corn nuts.
It was the middle of the night when we left home and I know what you’re thinking: what a horrible situation they must have been in to have had to leave in the middle of the night. But it wasn’t, not really, it’s just how it worked out. I had yet to fully pack, while my sister, Clara, had driven all the way up from southern California, where she works as a flight attendant, and had just moved in with her girlfriend, Maggie.
I’m now thinking about how I never called my sister, and it’s not that I didn’t want to, I just didn’t know how to say hello and I miss you and I’m also a little bit mad at you, after only having met a handful of times. I did, however, create a fake Instagram account so I could follow her (I could have created an account under my name, and I think she would have liked that, but my anxiety pushed the idea away).
Late at night, when my body was curled up against the faded yellow wall that paralleled my bed, I pulled up her Instagram and clicked through the images of her golden, smiling face. I wonder what life was like when it was just her, dad, and mom, long before I came along. And now, as she sits just a few feet away from me, I wonder what she’s not saying.
Flecks of light dance across the open fields, and when I look out over the great expanse of nothing, I can feel Clara’s brown eyes on me in the rearview mirror. I haven’t wanted to talk about it, though I know I will have to: after I had called her and she came to pick me up from mom’s house, she didn’t ask any questions. She just waited and helped me pack my things into the car as the sun set and the star-filled sky grew brighter and brighter.
I was surprised to see tears drop off of my cheeks and onto the book that sits open in my lap. I pressed my thumb to the thin pages, watching as the salty liquid pooled and spread over the black ink. Something about being near Clara makes it harder not to cry, and I know it’s because she reminds me of mom—of how she used to be before she had to go away and my grandma came to stay and a few months turned into six. ‘Call Clara,’ she had told me, and so I did, and now my sister is here with her girlfriend and I can see her looking at me again, holding back her own tears, waiting for me to say something, anything.
When I said it wasn’t a horrible situation, I meant it. It wasn’t horrible because I wasn’t alone and I knew that I would be safe with Clara and Maggie. As soon as they arrived I felt safe—a feeling that makes me wish I had called her sooner. But I can tell that she wants to be here. That this isn’t temporary. That sometimes the hard thing happens before the good thing and Clara says I look just like her, and that makes me smile because I think she looks like mom, which means that I maybe have something of those big brown eyes and that wonderful smile.
It’s dark enough now that I can see my reflection in the car window. Maggie is bent over her phone, likely queuing up the next podcast. She briefly looks back at me and smiles. I smile back before turning my attention to the window and the moon, bright and prominent in the darkening sky. Somehow, we manage to only make one more stop for gas before morning arrives.
Clara leans back to tell me that we’re about an hour out. I look at my hands and the sun and then I shut my eyes, squeezing them tight, looking for answers in places they don’t exist. There are things I want to say but I don’t know how to say them, and I don’t want to say them and have them be hurtful to Clara, but I also know that I’ll never hear what she has to say if I don’t at least try.
Maggie has gone inside to check us in. I’m still in the backseat, my shoeless foot pressing the door open while the sun beats down on my bare leg. Clara is in the front seat, eyes closed. My hands are shaking and my throat is tight when I say that I’m sorry, and instead of responding, Clara opens her door and comes around to mine, kneeling in front of me. I blink a few times, no longer trying to stop the tears that fill and fill and overflow.
‘Yarrow,’ she says, her voice soft. I swallow, mouth suddenly dry, ‘I am so sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. That I didn’t call. That I made it seem like I didn’t care about you—’ Clara shakes her head vigorously, ‘I am the one that should be sorry,’ she pauses, searching my face, ‘I wasn’t there for you. I didn’t ever call to check in. I was just…I wish…I just don’t know, I guess I don’t have a good enough reason, only that I was afraid. Afraid that you wouldn’t like me. That mom wouldn’t want me there. She had me so young, and because of me, her life changed forever, and when dad left, I was angry, so angry, and so I left, too. I moved and I never came back and I’m so sorry,’ she says, leaning over and wrapping her warm arms around me. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and now I’m probably saying too much, but that’s just because there’s too much to say. We have time though, don’t we? Oh Yarrow, I’m so sorry.’
Hugging her was easy, her tears wetting my neck, mine dampening her hair. I didn’t need it to make sense, at least not yet. I didn’t need her to say the right thing, just as long as I didn’t have to either. ‘Ok,’ I said. ‘It’s ok. And I, well…she’s been like this for awhile, mom I mean, and this clinical trial was supposed to help, but now it’s not, so that’s why I called you, because grandma had to leave and I can’t drive and grandma doesn’t really talk to mom anymore and I’m not sure why, and I wanted to tell you everything but instead I just asked for your help and I don’t know, I guess it’s just been a lot...’ Her hand was now on my cheek.
We didn’t say anything after that. I didn’t know how to and I don’t think she did either. Inside, Maggie stood waiting at the front desk with a gentle expression on her face, telling us she’d wait there. I grabbed Clara’s hand before they took us to mom’s room. And when I looked at her, at our mom, I could tell she wasn’t going to open her eyes again, and a part of me wishes I could go back to yesterday. To the not knowing and the hope that comes with it.
Enveloped by the silence and the beeping of the machines, Clara looks down at me, eyes big and glossy with emotion, and doesn’t try to tell me that things will be alright.
EPILOGUE
Spring fills the air as I reach over the banana plant to open the living room window. The coffee table in the middle of the room has been my home base for this writing project. It’s my home base for a lot of things. I’ve had some of my best crying sessions here, as well as painting, brainstorming, and home-cooked meals. It’s also where we watch our shows and play with our dog. I like this spot. I like what it reminds me of. I like how it prompts me to read or research or dive all in or be inspired by something unexpected. Something old. Something new.
I like that everything can feel the same and be changing all at once, and I liked the feeling I got as I wrote from Yarrow’s perspective. How there was no simple conclusion to the things she was experiencing or feeling. How impossibly big and messy and unknown it felt. How we can pretend to be ok until we can’t pretend anymore, and so instead of trying to fix it, you cling a little tighter to what is real and right beside you.
In order to get better at writing fiction, I have been reading more fiction. Specifically short stories: The Selected Stories, by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s, and Furies: Stories of the Wild, Wicked and Untamed, an anthology of feminist tales, both have me appreciating the art of being thrown into a moment that grabs you straight away. A moment that gives you no promise of a tidy ending.
This fictional story about Yarrow and Clara and Maggie, is me taking what I’ve continued to be inspired or challenged by, and throwing it into the tiny fiction mix. In return, I hope that I’ll have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and that maybe (maybe maybe), I’ll also have learned something that can be applied to the bettering of my next piece of tiny fiction.
As always, thank you so much for being here.
With Love,
Chloe
For everything else…
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This is so lovely. Thanks for sharing it, and your process!
GREAT opening paragraph! I was in the back seat of that car, inside the feelings of your character immediately. That feeling of being separate, but safe, able to watch and listen but not have to do anything. I remember that feeling from when I was a child in the back seat of our car, with my mother and much-older brother in the front seat, driving up the center of California to visit our friends at Christmas. It was a good feeling.
Bravo, Chloe! The whole piece pulled my right in. And I love your explanation in your epilogue of how you are learning by reading stories of authors you admire.