Page 49 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“But the baby—should we make sure it’s okay?” Parker said.
“He made sure to only hit me from the shoulders up, so I think the baby’s probably fine.” Iris laughed weakly, and myheart broke for her. It snapped me out of my shock. I put an arm around my sister’s shoulders and pulled her close.
“Okay,” I murmured. “Whatever you want. Come on, let’s get you to bed.” I led her up the stairs, and as we passed by the kitchen, I nearly snorted at how foolish I was, and at how the entire world, it seemed, had changed in the flicker of an eye. Just minutes ago, I’d been obsessing over what kind of tea to make for Iris, and now I wanted to laugh at my naivete. This was not something that a good cup of tea would set right. I didn’t know if anything, short of me driving to Erik’s with a cleaver, could make this right.
I took Iris to the master bedroom and sat her at the foot of the bed. “Do you want to—I could draw you a bath, or…”What do you need?I wanted to ask her.Tell me and I’ll make it happen.Anything to put the broken pieces of her together so I’d see before me the sister I’d always known, the sister I thought I resented, the sister I didn’t realize I would miss until she was gone.
“I don’t want a bath.”
“Okay. Wait here. I’ll clean up your wounds.” I hurried out of the room, filled with a desperate need to be helpful. Outside, I found Parker lurking in the hallway.
“I think we should take her to the hospital,” he said.
On a normal day, I would’ve played my role as a good Chindo wife and deferred to my husband’s judgment. On a normal day, my instincts wouldn’t even pipe up. I wouldn’t even question myself, merely nodded and thought to myself how lucky I was to have Parker around to make these calls so I didn’t have to.
But seeing Iris like this had triggered something in me.Something surprisingly solid and undeniable. An unshakable belief that I knew what was best. I looked Parker in the eye and said, “I’m going to clean her wounds and then I’ll have a better idea whether or not she needs the hospital.”
“She could have internal bleeding.”
That was true, and I took that into account as I went downstairs and poured some hot water into a bowl. The thought of Iris having internal bleeding nagged at me, but at the same time, I knew the last thing she wanted was to be brought to a place with bright lights and people poking and prodding at her and asking all sorts of questions. I unearthed the first aid kit from the back of the medicine cabinet, took out ice packs from the freezer, and went out of the kitchen. I paused long enough to say to Parker, “I’ll sleep with her in the master bedroom tonight. Is it okay if you sleep in the guest room?”
He hesitated only for a second before nodding, and I loved him just a little bit more for that. In hindsight, that was the bare minimum that any decent human being could have done, but I was used to expecting so little. As ridiculous as this might sound, I also felt bad for making Parker stay up, plus I was so frazzled and didn’t want him hovering, watching as I struggled with the first aid kit while Iris sagged on the bed, as vulnerable as I’d ever seen her, so I said, “I think I’m okay here. You should go to bed. You have a full day of work tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
I nodded. He chewed on his lip for a bit, still hesitating, then finally nodded. “Wake me up if you change your mind about going to the hospital.” With that, he gave me a chaste kiss good night and padded to the guest room.
Iris was still in the same exact position as I left her. “I thoughtabout lying down,” she said when I came back in, “but then I thought I might get blood on your pillows.”
My face grew hot with tears. Now that the initial shock had worn off and it was just the two of us in the safe enclosed space of the bedroom, sorrow was finally catching up with me. I swallowed the lump in my throat and focused on laying everything down next to her. I unzipped the first aid kit, very much aware that I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Iris said, reading my mind.
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak. Iris reached into the kit and picked up a couple of alcohol wipes. “Use these to clean off the blood.”
I did as she asked, albeit with a shaky hand, pausing whenever she hissed with pain. After a few minutes that felt like a whole hour, I managed to get most of the blood off her face. It only made a tiny bit of difference; the awful bruises remained, blooming obscenely. I imagined them creeping underneath her skin like black mold, spreading until they took over completely. I shook off the thought and handed Iris the ice pack. She winced as she pressed it to her face, and I helped lift her legs up to the bed so she could lie down before I climbed in next to her.
A hundred questions crowded my head, but I stayed silent, staring up at the ceiling, wanting to give Iris some semblance of privacy without having to leave the room myself. When she finally spoke, her voice was small and young.
“The first time he did it was when I told him I was pregnant.”
I looked over at her but didn’t say anything. What could I say to that? I simply listened and let the anger take hold deep in my belly, an ember growing brighter with every word she said.
“He proposed then, and I laughed and said no, and that was when he grabbed my arm—hard. Yanked me to him and told me no child of his was growing up a bastard.” She snorted. “I thought it was sweet. Can you believe that? I was so stupid—”
“You’re not stupid. We’ve been taught that our whole lives. Whatever crumbs are given to us, we’re supposed to take.”
A corner of Iris’s mouth crooked up and she finally met my gaze. A world of pain was in her eyes. “Yeah, I suppose we were taught that. But I thought I’d managed to unlearn all of that shit.”
“It’s insidious. It’s everywhere. Even in the Western media, there is so much toxic bullshit. Don’t blame yourself for it.” Even as I spoke, my rage grew. Now that it was my sister I was talking to, and not myself, it seemed so achingly clear that we lived in a world built by men, for men. We were nothing but commodities for men to take and then break and then leave behind.
“Anyway,” Iris said, “I thought it showed how much he cared for the baby, and for me. I thought his passion meant devotion. And I also felt embarrassed. Like, why did I have to laugh? It was my fault. I should’ve been more sensitive. It was such a huge, serious subject, and I was the asshole who laughed. I agreed to marry him. It only got worse after that.” Her voice cracked then. “I didn’t know what to do. I was so ashamed. I could’ve left him before we got married, I could’ve—”
“No, Iris, stop!” I cried, propping myself up on my elbow and putting my hand on her arm. “None of this is your fault, okay?”
Iris blinked up at me, and for the first time, I saw my sister for what she truly was. I looked beneath the spiky, sassy facade and saw the fearful girl underneath, someone who’d cultivateda whole new personality to protect herself from the world, because our parents had failed to do that for her. The years flashed through my mind, and I saw everything Iris did in a different light. What must it have been like for her to be plucked from Indonesia at age fifteen and dropped in a whole new country with no one to turn to? When I’d first arrived in LA, she’d given me the best pieces of advice she could, albeit in her trademark acerbic tone, but at the end of the day, she’d been looking out for me.
Her face looked so young and vulnerable, but not for long. The next moment, the cold mask snapped back on and Iris rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Logically, I know it wasn’t my fault. But…” She sighed and rubbed her swollen belly.
