Page 2 of Persephone's Curse
(Of course, in practicality, I don’t remember saying this, I don’t remember anything about the night Clara was born; I was too young, everything I know came from Bernadette, a collective memory of sisters now.)
“This is your sister. Clara.”
“Clara.” We all practiced saying her name.
Then my mom took Bernadette by the hand. She rubbed herknuckles and pulled her in a bit closer. My mother whispered, so no one else would hear, “Have you ever met Henry?”
And Bernadette’s eyes grew wide, wide, wide.
And she nodded.
Of course she’d met Henry.
We’d all met Henry.
Henry was our ghost.
I know what you’re thinking. Shared hysteria, maybe, what Bernadette calledfolie à deuxafter one year of French in high school made her act like she’d grown up in the bell towers of Notre-Dame.
That’s certainly what our mother believed, what she convinced herself, even though she’d seen and talked to the little boy when my father had taken a quick pee-break and left her alone with the midwife, who’d been momentarily distracted by some rare type of bird out the window. (“One second, just keep breathing, holyshit,” she’d said to our mother, “it’s a western fucking tanager, wait until Eileen hears about this.”)
“Who areyou?” our mother had asked the little boy poking his head out from the as-yet-unoccupied fourth-story bedroom that would soon belong to Evelyn.
“I’m Henry,” Henry said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“Butwelive here.”
“Well, I live here, too,” he insisted. “Actually, I lived here first.”
“Are you real?” my mother asked, cutting to the chase as she usually did, trying to decide, maybe, if Henry was a figment of her imagination or a squatter or a friend of Bernadette’s who’d squirreled away when nobody was looking. I don’t thinkor a ghostwould have crossed her mind.
“Areyoureal?” Henry responded.
And then he’d disappeared.
This conversation was relayed to Bernadette by our mother in whispers, while she held both the naked, new Clara and Bernadette’s hand. “Have you ever met Henry?” she’d asked, and Bernadette’s eyes had grown wide, wide, wide, and she’d nodded, and Clara had fussed, and our mother had grown distracted and, it seemed, when she next looked up at Bernadette, she had made the decision to forget about the ghost entirely. Her expression softened and she let go of Bernadette’s hand to cup her cheek instead.
“You’re an older sister again, Bernie,” our mother said. “You have a new little sister to watch out for. I’m so proud of you.”
And in true Bernadette fashion, she had taken a step backward, shrugged ambivalently, and said, “I’m descended from gods, so, I won’t be changing any diapers.”
Once, when I was nine and Bernadette was thirteen and going through the worst of herI hate everyonephase, she’d slapped me,hard,for going into her room and looking at her journals without her permission. I hadn’t read them, Ihadn’t,I’d just wanted to hold each one in my hands, feel the smoothness of the leather or theway another one’s cardboard cover was so worn and soft that it was pliable, like water in my hands. Bernadette had always written in her journals incessantly, every day, filling up page after page with her innermost thoughts and secrets. It was an irresistible treasure trove for a younger sister.
Evelyn had been out at her weekly piano lesson, so after Bernadette slapped me, I’d gone into Evie’s room and flung myself across her bed, sobbing into her pillow. Evie would never yell at me for going into her room without permission. Evie would never slap me for touching her things. Evie would sit next to me and stroke my hair and tell me, quite clearly, how she could see both sides of the story and how, no matter what I’d done, Bernadette shouldn’t have hit me.
And even though Eviewasn’tthere, suddenly Henrywas,standing by the foot of the bed, looking translucent and ephemeral and (if I had to admit it), quite dreamy in his deadness.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I stopped crying right away and sat up on the bed. It was always Evie who’d been the closest with Henry, but that was inevitable, they shared rooms, after all, and Evie was the quiet, sensitive, sweet one, the patient, kind, and friendly one. Of course her best friend would be a ghost.
“Bernadette hit me,” I said, my voice hiccupping, my breath catching in my throat. In her bedroom next door, Bernadette had put on some toneless, loud, angry music and was singing along in a toneless, loud, angry voice.
Henry nodded.
