Henry's Sisters. Cathy Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ and cold outside, I felt ice cubes in my gut.

      I met Janie downstairs. She was wearing a pink skirt, white blouse, and white tennis shoes, with her hair in two braids wrapped around the back of her head to complete her frumpiness.

      “You look like a cupcake.”

      She put her hands on her hips. “Nothing wrong with a clean, crisp outfit.”

      “You look like a clean, crisp cupcake.”

      She put her nose up a fraction. “I like my clothes.”

      “Me, too. Tasty.”

      “Funny. You’re hilarious, Isabelle. Hilarious.” She stomped toward the door. “We don’t all want to dress with suggestiveness!”

      I took a gander down my shirt. There wasn’t that much cleavage showing.

      Before we left the house, Janie checked the stove and the iron and the hair dryers. She locked the front door, got in the car, then ran back and rechecked all her checking, locked the door, tapped it four times, and ran to the car.

      “Tap tap tap,” I sang out, starting her Porsche.

      “Shut up, Isabelle. At least I don’t lay naked on my counters when I’m upset.”

      “I lay naked on my counters when I’m happy, too, so there, tap tap tap.”

      “You’re never happy, and at least I don’t show people in skyscrapers my boobs.”

      “They like my boobs.”

      “At least I don’t drink Kahlúa for breakfast.”

      “Kahlúa is yummy.”

      She put on Vivaldi.

      We drove toward town, no one else up and around at this time because they are sane. The sun even seemed tired, the golden globe slowly rising, as if she was getting out of bed and only now starting to slough off her hangover and begin thinking about the colors she would spread across the morning sky.

      Trees arched over the road and I saw familiar homes, remembering who lived where when I was in high school. Nice kids and mean kids and kids who got in trouble and kids who were trouble.

      It had been a long time since I was here for any length of time. I had run far and long in my work as a photographer. I’d lived for years in France, Israel, Lebanon, and London, with stints in various war-torn, war-crushed, war-raped, war-demoralized countries in the serenity of Africa and the sweet tranquility of the Middle East.

      Seeing people’s bodies blown apart in different directions—a foot here, a head there—because a few men have decided they can’t sit down at a table and figure things out isn’t pleasant.

      Arriving in a village that’s been obliterated by a tsunami isn’t, either, with mothers screaming that they can’t find their children and children screaming they can’t find their mothers. Running from the Janjaweed as they swish the jungles with their machetes is a heart-stopper. Famine offers up an especially lovely glimpse of how other people wait on the porch of death, barely able to stand, their stomachs swollen as if they’ve ingested a watermelon whole.

      Strange diseases that we never see here thrive in other countries, their symptoms cruel, debilitating.

      I’d photographed all of it.

      And it was actually here that I’d come to love photography.

      There was a photography class at school and only nerds took it. I took it because I thought it would be easy.

      The teacher was a nerd, too. His name was Mr. Sands. He had a friend named Mr. Reynolds.

      We all knew they were gay.

      I thought they were the nicest men, besides Father Mike, that I’d ever met. Mr. Sands gave me a camera and told me how to take photos. I used to go with Mr. Sands and Mr. Reynolds to take photos in the mountains and by the river. Cecilia and Janie tagged along, too.

      From an old, battle-weary perspective, I now realized they “got” our home life. They had met Momma one morning after she’d been in bed for two weeks. She had not showered, her hair was straight up and gnarled, her robe stained by food and grape juice and mental collapse.

      She took one shocked glance at the men and slammed the door. “How dare you bring men to the house when my hair’s not done!” She slapped me across the face, her eyes still fuzzy and unfocused. “What do they want with a young girl? They’re perverts, aren’t they? Perverts.” She slapped me again.

      No, Momma, I wanted to say, but they care if I live or die, which is more than I can say for you. “It’s my teacher and his brother. I’m catching up on my work.”

      She ran two shaky hands through her greasy hair before bursting into tears. “Fine. Go. Go!”

      Mr. Sands and Mr. Reynolds patted my arm all day and bought me a root beer float.

      I was soon hooked on photography. I think it was because when I was with them, I started to feel clean. Not completely clean, that couldn’t happen—I had a momma who appeared to hate me, a reputation growing uglier second by second, and cataclysmic memories I couldn’t shut down—but around their gentleness and humor I felt better.

      That afternoon I took a photo of my face from an arm’s length away with the river in the background. The area Momma had smacked was red, my eyes swollen and lonely from the tears I’d shed hoping she would love me one day. I stared at that photo for days. I still have it. I started to get interested in shooting not rivers and waterfalls and flowers, but people in pain. People like me.

      Which led me to a major in journalism in college and a minor in photography, which led me to newspapers and documentaries, which led me to war zones.

      Which led me to so many thousands of images of utter, abject, hideous suffering in my head that eventually my mind, on top of what was already there, split open and electrocuted itself.

      And that’s when that other thing happened last year.

      I shook my head, my braids swaying off my shoulders as I cleared out the memories.

      And now I was back, headed toward a bakery I’d hated working in.

      “I can’t believe I’m here,” Janie whimpered.

      Bommarito’s Bakery is a two-story brick building between the pharmacy and a bookstore on the main street of Trillium River. Momma had “revived” it two years ago after she closed it a year after Janie left for college. “The people of Trillium River begged for my desserts, desserts made my way. The River way,” she had told me, arching her brows.

      The bells jangled as I opened the door and we stepped inside.

      “Now, this isn’t gonna be fun,” I groaned.

      “Not good, not good, not good,” Janie moaned.

      There were five red booths and seven tables. They needed a scrub down. The floor was black and white checked and scratched and dirty. It needed a mopping.

      The СКАЧАТЬ