Read More: A brief Q&A with Robert Garner McBrearty
James has only fleeting memories of when the missing sister still lived at home.
She’d fling her arms about violently. She couldn’t speak words, only make garbled sounds. Later, James would think about how desperately she tried to form words.
She was the oldest, the biggest and strongest of the four kids, and James was the youngest. He was five when they took the long drive to Louisiana. They all piled into the white station wagon.
Dora rocked back and forth and made noises in her throat, but she was subdued most of the ten-hour trip. She rocked harder when they pulled up in the evening in front of a three- story red brick building with vines enshrouding the facing, as if, over time, the vines would reclaim the building, suck it back into the bayous.
They parked in the shade of a mossy tree. His parents sat there, breathing, lowering their heads. Then they got out. As their father pulled her from the car, Dora stretched her arms back to James and Len and Sis. The kids huddled frightened inside. She wailed and flung her arms about and her father tried to catch and hold them, and he spoke soothingly to her, not the way he spoke at home. Two stout men in white uniforms came out of the building and she struggled and wailed as they dragged her away. Their mother’s face looked red and splotchy as she leaned into the window and told them to wait. Their parents followed the men and Dora into the red brick building.
“We can’t keep her,” his older brother Len said, a resolute, soldierly sound in his voice.
“She’ll be better off here,” Sis said, repeating something she’d heard, but there were tears in her voice.
They’d had a hard time with her flailing of arms, the fists that suddenly pounded them. But she could be sweet. When she was in her calmer moods, Dora rested her head against Sis’s shoulder while they sat around her and stroked her golden hair.
They waited in the car, getting hot. Three men, or boys, it was hard to tell, stuck their faces against the windows. The pressure of their faces against the glass made their cheeks and noses widen out. Their expressions were strange but not unfriendly. They were studying the children as if they considered them to be mysterious creatures from afar. They slowly drifted away. One of them carried a mop.
Their parents came out of the old mossy building without Dora. Their mother held her hand to her throat as if she was choking. When she got in the car, she was silent for a moment. Then she let out a shriek. She screamed and pounded her fists on the dashboard as their father tried to hush her.
“My god what have we done!” she screamed. “I’m going back for her!” Their father grabbed her arm and yanked her back. He drove off with one hand on the steering wheel, one hand restraining her.
“It’s too late,” he said, “it’s too late. You were the one who pushed for this.”
“I was the one home with her! I was the one who saw what she did to the kids!”
She struck at him, and he warded her off as he drove.
“Mama,” Len said, “Mama, please stop.”
She slumped against the door, sobbing. When the sobbing subsided, their father turned on the radio. There was static, then a mystery show came on, and before checking into the motel, they sat silently in the parking lot until the show was over.
They made the long drive twice a year. They took Dora out to a picnic table on the grounds. At first, she’d be excited to see them. She’d tug on their arms and try to tell them something. After a while she would sit quietly, staring off, eating her sandwich and devilled eggs, drawing her shoulders inward. Her hair was cut short now, the golden luster faded like dry straw. She struggled when they brought her back to the side door for residents. Their father rang a bell and held her until women in white uniforms came for her.
When they drove away, their mother sobbed, though not as loudly as the first time, and there was no shrieking.
Once, she turned in her seat and said urgently, “I love you all,” and later James knew it was a way of saying that she loved Dora, but it was different, that she would never send them away like this, never abandon them, they must know that, and it was a way of saying she would never forgive herself, and if there was anything good, it was that Dora would not hurt them now, not that Dora had ever meant to.
James heard her quietly murmuring, running her rosary beads through her hands. Their father turned on the radio. They could usually find the channel with the mystery shows. Their mother might brighten a little. “I know who did it,” she’d say.
Who? Who? they demanded.
I’m not telling.
After a few years, an institution in Austin opened up. She was closer now, but James and his older siblings were becoming balky about visiting. Dora was an embarrassment, especially when their father insisted on taking her off the grounds so she would see something of the rest of the world. James is ashamed when he recalls lagging behind, pretending not to be with them while they walked into a shopping mall, Dora in one of her sweet moods, skipping along as their mother held her hand.
As time went by, she no longer struggled when they returned her to her dorm. She hugged the attendant who came for her. Sometimes when they picked her up, the attendant had to give her a push so she would join the people she had once known as her family.
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Robert Garner McBrearty is the author of five books of fiction, most recently a collection of flash fiction, WHEN I CAN’T SLEEP (Matter Press). His new collection of short stories is forthcoming in University of New Mexico Press. His stories have appeared widely including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, New England Review and Narrative Magazine.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Robert Garner McBrearty