When I was a child I slept in the same bed as my sister. I liked the way our bony legs wrapped around each other’s, linking together at the ankle. And I liked to fall asleep to the cadence of her breathing.
            My sister’s head was lumpy and misshapen, like a walnut. Sometimes I traced all the hills and valleys of her skull while we were lying there in bed, the white-blond down spiking up. Pop said not to touch her head. He was worried that touching would damage it even more, my fingers leaving trenches where they traveled.
            But I knew this wasn’t true. All the bumps were set and hard. I traced the same path in the same valley over again, and never felt any change.
            Pop liked to blame all of its irregularities on Ma. He said that Ma held her too much when she was a baby. He’d throw his glass bottle in the sink, point a shaking finger at my Ma and say, “Maybe if you hadn’t picked her up so much! Those are your fingerprints on her head!” And Ma looked away.
            “I don’t think so, Jack. I don’t think so.” Ma said she didn’t pick up my sister any more than she’d picked up me.
            I didn’t know who to blame. The only person I could think of was God. When I went to church on Sundays and the priest faded away into dullness, I looked up at the rafters. And sincerely I asked, Why?
           But I never got any answers from God. I guessed he was too busy with all the other people on Earth.
            Besides her head, my sister Clara was also blind. Her eyes were soft and gray, and they scrambled around, searching for the things they couldn’t see. My Pop didn’t like to look at her eyes. “Gives me the creeps,” he said. But I liked to look at them. There was a time when they could see, when she was a little baby. When she was a newborn her head was perfectly smooth and her eyes worked. But when she got older her velvety head turned all lumpy, and after that her eyes started rolling around and suddenly I had to start doing things like helping her into bed and making sure her frock wasn’t inside-out when she got dressed in the morning.
            I liked to look at her eyes because I thought maybe there was a hidden world underneath them. My eyes were the window to the world in front of me. But maybe, I thought, her eyes concealed a different world beneath. And I’d peer into her eyes, hoping to pierce through the pupils, but all I saw was my own intense expression staring back at me.
            I was looking into her eyes when she reached up, and her hand caught ahold of my cheek. I could see a smile twist her lopsided features. “Hi,” I said. “Hi.”
            She didn’t answer me. If I could have changed anything about my sister, I would have wanted her to be able to talk. I wanted to have a conversation with her. I wanted to know what her favorite food was. I wanted to know what she wanted for Christmas. I wanted to know if she even understood anything I said during those still nights in the dark.
            All she did, though, was make little babbling noises and mash her hands together. I would take her little hands in mine and close my fingers around them. Her nails were always lined with black, and I would press mine underneath hers to dig out the sooty paste.
            I kept looking down at Clara. She was lying on our couch, and her feet were gently kicking around. I grabbed them and squeezed the stubby toes, cooing like Ma used to do. She laughed a little, her eyes twirling around and around.
            We were sitting there waiting for Pop to come home, me on the couch and Ma at the table. It was very late for Pop to be out. We had already eaten, and Ma had put leftovers on a plate for him and left it in the fridge.
          I sat on the floor by the couch and lowered Clara down next to me. She was heavy in my arms. She had been easier to pick up when she was younger.
            I had a wooden boat I’d gotten for Christmas last year tucked under the flap beneath the couch, where Ma stashed our toys to keep them out of sight. I placed the boat in my sister’s hands. She dropped it. I picked it up and placed it there again, closing her fragile fingers around it.
            Then she dropped it again, and looking closer at Clara’s face I saw something wasn’t right. She’d started blinking, rapidly and over and over again, and down at the bottom of her frock there was yellow seeping through, pooling out from where she sat. Her right leg kicked out in front of her, landing directly in the steaming puddle, where it shook in place.
            “Ma?” I asked, turning to her. Ma just shook her head, watching the scene unfold wordlessly.
            At the door I heard the sound of keys turning in the lock, and that was when Pop came in.
            He was standing awkwardly, one shoulder hanging lower than the other as if the shiny glass bottle that he held in one hand weighed it down. His mouth sat in a grim, straight line, and his eyes swept the room before they landed on Clara.
            “What’s she doing?”
            Ma stood. “I’m not sure, Jack.”
            Pop slung his suit jacket across a chair and took a swig of the amber-brown bottle. “What did you do this time?”
            “I’m not sure, Jack.”
            I felt Pop turn his gaze to me, but my eyes were still on Clara, whose entire body had now begun to jerk and swerve around. She knocked herself over, and before anyone could stop it her lumpy head hit the floor with a hard thud.
            The room went silent. I didn’t even breathe. I just looked on silently as her eyes and mouth opened wide, and her limbs resumed their convulsing.
            Then suddenly I sprung forward, sliding my hand beneath her quavering body and cradling that poor misshapen head. I touched the soft velvet of her hair. “Are you okay?” I turned to Ma. “Is she okay?”
            “Something is wrong with that child,” Pop said, and his voice was so dripping with malice that it scared me a little. “I’m taking her to the hospital.”
            I looked back at Ma. “Is she okay?” She didn’t answer, just watched Pop with her eyebrows knitted together.
            “Do you mean to go alone, Jack?”
            Pop took my sister from out of my arms and hung her little form, still shaking, from his shoulder. “It’s late. We’ll be back soon.” And he walked out the door.
            I turned quickly to Ma. “Shouldn’t we go with him?”
            Ma just frowned and looked off into space. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she said distantly. She crossed the room and looked out the window.
            I felt like I was being left out of something. I jumped up from my spot on the floor. “Why can’t we go with him?”
            Ma closed the curtain. “Your Pop’s right. It’s late. You should get to bed.” And she sent me off to the bathroom so I could brush my teeth.
          I didn’t know what to think. I lay awake in our bed, with no one to wrap my legs around and no sounds of even breathing. I reached for her in the dark, but all that was there was a tuft of white-blond hair.     
            I lay awake, and I kept waiting for that noise I hadn’t heard all night, not at any point after Pop had walked out the door. And thinking about it made me so sick I thought I’d throw up.
            I never heard the car start.