CW 31: Go Do

I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.

Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.

Enjoy.

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Go Do

For Karina Meléndez. TQM.

On the first day of every summer, my little sister Bibiana put on warpaint and feather bracelets, and went to the hilltop behind our house with whatever she could find as a drum. Bang bang bang bang. Bibi dancing on the rise, pounding an empty suitcase, making a joyful noise with a stewpot and a spoon. Summer has begun! When our parents started locking up the bang-ables in anticipation, Bibi used her hands and her voice; her small body was all the instruments of celebration. Summer has begun!

Alicia, come with me, she said, every time. Come with me! But I was too embarrassed. Instead, I watched from our window as she marched toward daybreak in her pajamas and Fozzy Bear slippers, and threw myself back into bed when I heard my father come out of sleep with his standard solstice greeting: ¡Caray, ésa niña loca! Then he woke everyone up yelling at Bibi, grumbled at my mother for her part in the genetics of it, and ended by making us all pancakes for breakfast. Every year. And under her solemn child-in-disgrace warpaint face, Bibi would give me a wink. Summer has begun.

I asked her about it once it was clear she would go on doing it forever, in spite of my parents’ earnest family discussions every spring as the end of the school year approached. “How can you?” I said. “They get so mad.”

She shrugged. “I just go do it,” she said.

“But you get punished.”

“Alicia, what if the summer is waiting every year for me to shout it in? And one year I don’t do it because I’m worried what Papa will do? Then there’s no summer! Did you ever think about that?”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

#

I did all the normal things. Bibi did all the rest. My last two years of high school were a special hell; Bibi started her freshman year in her woolen hat with the raccoon face and little ears, and all I could do was put my face in my hands when I saw her, and hiss You are embarrassing me! in the cafeteria line. And she answered by chittering at me, and then pulled the wooly freakshow-alert off her head and said, I have to take off my raccoon hat to talk human to you.

“If you are doing that in classes, I will kill you, I swear,” I said. She grinned.

It just went on from there. I got used to adults saying, “Bibiana is very…creative,” and other kids telling me Your sister’s a fucking fruit bat. Now it was me who shrugged. I had problems of my own: making grades good enough for college, finding activities that made me cool to kids now and recruiters later, staying on the right side of the mean girls. I was busy. I had a lot to do. And so I didn’t protect Bibi much from the blank stares and snickers of the world.

#

And now I haven’t seen her for a while, and I wish she were here with her rainbow-striped kneesocks or the gossamer wings she wore strapped to her back for our father’s funeral, ignoring the whispers, placing origami butterflies in his coffin to take with him. I wish she were here with her eyes lighting up, I know! Let’s go do– She sends me email every so often; pictures of places she is, or snapshots of herself with girlfriends or musicians or men with feathers in their hair. Sometimes she is grinning at them; sometimes she is looking right into the camera, right at me, smiling a secret smile. Alicia, come with me!

I hope she still sends them. They discourage computers on the ward; maybe they’re afraid people under Close Observation are just itching to use the internet to figure out ways to kill ourselves or each other with materials on hand, like those science challenges to make a fusion reactor out of whatever is in the refrigerator. They do let us have visitors, but David doesn’t come anymore because the new girlfriend doesn’t like it; and I think my colleagues are embarrassed when a normal person stands up in the middle of a busy day, so much to do, suddenly stands up on top of her desk and yells, “Can I please get some goddamned tech support, I can’t make this fucking thing work!” and then begins to weep. But maybe one of them will be braver. Miracles happen.

Oh my god, miracles happen.

Bibi steps off the elevator, and turns, and grins. She is wearing the raccoon hat, and she pulls me close and chitters.

I say, “Take that off and talk human to me, you loca chick.” And then I hang onto her while she whispers into my ear, Está bien, Alicia, hermana, estoy aqui. And then, with her secret smile, my sister whom I love insanely says, Come with me.

#

So we get me out of there, and I go with her to a park overlooking the water, full of people on their lunch breaks who are not eating messy sandwiches because they’re afraid of spotting their suits.

Bibi solemnly hands me a set of child’s facepaints. “You know it’s February,” I say.

“I don’t think the summer will mind coming early,” she says.

And I won’t mind it either. So we put on our feathers. We clap. We shout at the sky.