Chapter Mayte
Mayte
WHEN I WALK INTO MY HOUSE, I CANNOT TELL IF I AM THE GHOST OR if I am the only human in the place. Everyone is speaking Spanish and I am only able to make out bits and pieces, but I hear my sister’s name in the accent I only ever hear my family use. Over and over and over.
My face hurts from smiling; I am pasting one on every time someone looks at me. No need to worry about me.
My mother is a rag doll, walks like she has no bones.
I’ve never seen my father cry until now, and he keeps calling my sister his daughter even though there’s no blood relation.
People will not leave, and I don’t know if I want them to.
When they do, someone will have to make meals, and I know it will be me.
When they do, this house will seem more deserted than it already does, more haunted.
I will not sit in her corner of the couch and I flinch every time someone does sit there.
They are sitting on the lap of her ghost, and I am afraid too much weight will kill her again—I am afraid too much anything will kill her again because no one knows why she died.
She just died suddenly. They haven’t even been able to give us a death certificate yet because they don’t know why she died.
I imagine painting streaks of nail polish across that corner of the couch.
I imagine spilling Coke and milk or sewing stuffed animals to it like some strange altar and reservation sign.
They are telling stories about Aida that I am too young to remember, and I’m holding onto them, swallowing them so I can turn them into a part of me.
Every story someone tells makes me realize how few of my own I have.
Painting her nails. The stuffed dog she liked.
Sitting on the couch after school. Someone tells a story about her throwing a starfish over her shoulder, but I wasn’t there when it happened.
She feels like a character in their lives. She feels like my imaginary friend.
She used to talk. I want to talk to her.
And everyone keeps saying she was an angel, like she didn’t grumble and groan every time anyone looked at her, like she didn’t shove past us and walk away while we were in the middle of talking. I feel like I am mourning a different person.
You will always carry your sister with you, people keep saying to me, but I only lived with her for a couple of months. I don’t have any photos with her that weren’t taken when I could barely speak. I spent most of my life saying I was an only child.
I don’t know if I’ve ever carried her with me.