Page 56 of Good Half Gone

I didn’t like when my oily-haired mother crept into my memories; the thought of her shuffling from room to room,her smell following everywhere she went, made me feel queasy. I turned the page fast. She wasn’t in my life, so she didn’t deserve to take up space in my memories.

The next pages were of the three of us on a hike to Franklin Falls, and then Christmas happened with stockings and presents, New Year’s Eve when Piper and I stood holding sparklers on the little balcony, the parking lot behind us. I skipped ahead until I came to the Easter photos.

The same group we’d gone to camp with later that year was gathered in front of the church for a group shot. I remembered the slinky feel of the dress on my skin as Gran pulled us in. She always squeezed once we were tucked against her. Piper and I had never dressed alike—our mother hadn’t bothered—but Gran bought us the same dress in different patterns that year. It was the closest we got to being matchy-matchy. Piper’s had bold navy flowers on a white background, and mine was a watercolor design of lavender and pink. We’d worn our hair differently though; hers was up and mine down. I remembered that she’d insisted on that, and we’d tossed a coin for who got to wear theirs up.

When I’d had my fill of Piper, I studied the faces along the back row. They were the older teens who helped out in youth group. I vaguely remembered some of their names: Skylar had baby bangs, and Max always wore red shorts, though you couldn’t see them in the photo—only his face was showing. I remember him being tall and kind of goofy. Nice. Had Piper had a crush on Max? No—that didn’t seem right. Max was funny, but she hadn’t paid special attention to him. Someone else occupied her thoughts back then. On the other side of Max was Ruth Byers, Gran’s friend, and her husband Neil—both who did most of the event organizing and came along as volunteers. Below those five were three rows of youth, tiered at random. Gran had labeled this one:Easter Sunday with the MCC crowd.There was one person missing from the photo, perhaps the most important person: the youth group leader.

I kept turning pages, but after that Sunday it seemed that we did most of our activities with or around the church. I stopped turning pages when I reached the camping trip. There we were packing the trunk of Gran’s Subaru, me wearing a baseball cap and Piper in sunglasses—stuffing gear wherever it would fit.

“Jam it in,” Gran would say. “If there’s a will there’s a way!”

The next photo was of us setting up our tent. Gran had talked someone into taking it because she was in this one, posing with a tent peg while Piper and I were bent over the flopping canvas, trying to figure things out.

There were a couple photos of us fishing, wearing silly hats—Twins catch nothing but have fun!Gran’s captions were hilarious. Neither of us looked very happy, but I was downright miserable, my surly teenage face turning away from the camera to spite her. My mood had to do with her forcing me to give my hat to Piper. She hadn’t brought her own per usual, and I was over prepared with my two, so I had to lend her the one I hadn’t worn yet—the one I bought with my own money—since it “fit her head better.” Ridiculous. We had the same head and they both fit me fine, but when she took the argument to Gran, I was told tojust let her wear it. “What does it matter?” she snapped. “Just give her the damn thing.”

Nothing was safe from Piper’s bullshit. If she could take something from me, she would. I handed the hat over. The look on Piper’s face was triumphant and bored like a racehorse. She expected things to go her way.

Piper lost it in the lake.

The next page was empty, the pictures gone and the caption scratched out with blue pen. Odd. Gran would never vandalize a book—and if she needed to cover something up, she’d use Wite-Out; she had bottles and bottles of it in the junk drawer. The plastic sleeve crackled when I turned it to find one more missing photo and then a group shot on the last day of camp.This was much the same as the first except everyone was in shorts and T-shirts wearing sunburns on their faces.

Piper wasn’t standing with us this time; she was in the second to last row with the pinched-faced friends she’d made at camp—the ones she ditched me for. Funny, after all these years I still felt salty about what went down. Words likeleft meandabandonedflew around my head like cartoon crows. Except she didn’t look happy. Her eyes were flat.

The next page was missing another photo. I flipped ahead—more missing photos, more scribbled-out captions. It looked like doodling? I flipped the page to inspect the backside, and the paper pillowed beneath my fingertip. Someone had made those marks in anger. And why? I tossed the album aside in frustration, then thought of that day at camp, when Piper had betrayed me to go stand by her new friends—and didn’t even look happy about it.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Gran had said when I shared my distress with her in the tent later. But there was a whole generation of women who told themselves not to “let it bother them.” They said it to their daughters, and their daughters said it to us. I was bothered and I wanted to be—had a right even. Sisters weren’t supposed to sell each other out, especially after what we went through together.

“You’re growing into your own people. It’s okay to do things separately—and together of course.”

The band is breaking up, I thought, dully.

Gran wouldn’t say it, as picking through her words, mincing around to defend Piper. Gran had the best of intentions, but she was playing peacemaker on the front lines and there was something insulting about having my own twin explained to me.

I wasn’t growing into anything, I was the same Iris I’d always been. Piper was the one who decided to be an activist one week,and a hater the next. Teachers, parents, leaders treated her like she was whimsical instead of untrustworthy and fickle.

“The girls she is hanging out with are stupid, slack-jawed, religious sluts. She’s becoming one too.”

Gran’s eyes did the dancing, widening then blinking rapidly like my words had blown directly into her eyeballs. She looked down at her hands like she didn’t want me to see her expression, and flexed her fingers, something she did when her arthritis was acting up.

“First of all, I didn’t teach you such meanness. There is no call—”

“Your daughter did.”

“What?”

I felt like I was on a roller coaster. I’d rattled to the top. Now there was nothing left to do but tip over the edge.

“Your daughter taught me. If you don’t like me, you should look at the way you raised her.” My glare was first-class. I’d been storing the anger for weeks, letting the pressure build as my thoughts soured.

Gran suddenly looked very alert, her eyebrows picketing to her hairline, her rosebud mouth turned in on itself, and I couldn’t tell if she was shocked, hurt, or as angry as me.

When she spoke again, her voice shook.

I looked away, ashamed but buzzing from the energetic sting my words had on her. I liked that she felt as bad as I did in that moment, but I couldn’t look at her or I’d cry. She hadn’t saved us in time. She was the reason my mother was a monster. She preferred Piper over me just like her daughter. She only raised us because she had to.

Sometimes the truth didn’t need to be said out loud. My mother had a generalized lack of empathy. She was spiteful and mean and lashed out at her mother like a regularly scheduled program. It was boring and exhausting. In that moment I felt like my mother’s daughter.Shame crept in. My eyes were filled with tears when I faced her again.

Gran looked at me with her sad eyes and her neat bob and nodded. “Fair enough. But she’s not here, so I have to talk to you.”

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