Page 15 of Swerve
“Can you tell me exactly what your sister was wearing when you last saw her?”
I describe the jeans with the holes in the knees, the sleeveless top with its hippy flair that Mia had been so taken with during a shopping expedition we’d made to downtown D.C. at the end of last summer. I mention too the hoop earrings Grace had given her for Christmas.
“Do you have a current picture of her?”
“Yes,” I say, opening my phone and clicking on Photos. I scroll up a few to the ones I’d taken last weekend when we’d both run in a 5K to raise money for victims of domestic abuse. I’d actually been surprised when she asked me to run with her. She and Grace normally ran together after school, and I realized then that maybe I had been a little jealous of Grace somewhat replacing me as Mia’s confidante and companion.
I tap on the best shot of Mia. She’s smiling, a water bottle held high in her left hand, her tank top wet with sweat. Her smile is the most beautiful thing about her. It always has been. She’s one of those people who can change someone’s day by simply smiling at them.
“What a pretty girl,” Ms. Middleton says. “It’s clear that you’re sisters.”
“Thanks,” I say, refusing the urge to tell her that Mia is far prettier.
She asks me a series of more detailed questions then, about Mia’s daily habits, whether she has a boyfriend, could she be pregnant, would she tell me if she were, has she ever disappeared before, even as a young child?
This question brings me up short, even as I start to say that she never had.
But there was that one time.
Mia had just turned nine. Mom and Dad had been gone less than a year, and Mia still cried for them every night. At nineteen, I had struggled with how to explain our loss to Mia. I’d been truthful with her, told her about the drunk driver, and when she’d asked where they had gone after leaving earth, I’d told her they went on to Heaven.
She’d told me many times that she wanted to go there too. That she didn’t want to stay on earth without them anymore. Most of these declarations had ended with me holding her until she cried herself to sleep. And then, one day, she just quit asking.
One afternoon after my classes, I returned to the house to meet Mia when she got off the school bus, as I always did. But she wasn’t on the bus. I actually chased it to the next stop a few houses down and insisted that the driver let me look for her in the rows of seats filled with children staring up at me with curious eyes, certain I would find her there asleep.
But she wasn’t there.
I ran back to the house to call her school, but as soon as I walked through the door, the phone rang.
It was Pastor Dennis from the church we’d gone to with Mom and Dad, the church I still tried to attend on a semi-regular basis, more for Mia than for myself. The voice on the other end was sympathetic and familiar, and I felt instantly guilty for not being more faithful in my attendance.
“Emory,” Pastor Dennis said with sympathy in his voice. “Mia is here with me. I know you must be frantic.”
Without answering, I started to cry, dropping to the floor on my knees, the phone in my hand. I’d barely figured out that Mia wasn’t where she was supposed to be, and my body was shaking with fear. Because it was then that I realized how alone I would be in the world without her. “Oh, Pastor Dennis, thank you. What happened?”
“She knocked at the front door of the church. She had come to see me.”
“But why?” I asked and then hoped the question didn’t sound disrespectful.
He was silent for a moment. “She wanted to know if I could tell her how to get to Heaven. She said she wanted to go there to be with your parents.”
The sob broke free from my throat so instantly and with such force that I couldn’t hold back the torrent of tears that followed. It was a full minute before I could bring myself to speak. “Oh, no.”
“It’s not your fault, Emory. You’ve been an exemplary sister, taken care of her as only someone who truly loves her could. She’s just missing them.”
“I know,” I said, my voice breaking again. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t replace them.”
“Of course not. And you wouldn’t want to.”
“What do I do?” I asked, feeling as helpless as I had ever felt in my life.
“You just keep loving her. And maybe let her know how much you miss them too.”
“I’ve been afraid to tell her that.”
“Because you don’t want her to think you’re not strong enough to take care of her?”
“Maybe.”
