My Sister's Keeper

We'd all sit out in the warm weather, usually on Maryse's patio, which was right next to mine, keeping an ear strained to Rilka's back windows; her Shawna always screeched bloody murder when she woke up. Except when she loaded her diaper and played in it; then Rilka would go up to the nursery and find her daughter, thirteen months of mischief, lathered in a slippery chocolate stink. 

"Bloody little bitch" she'd say, bringing Shawna out washed and dressed in a ruffled playsuit. "I'm sure she does it to spite me."

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Rilka had this habit of plunking Shawna in front of the television set in her playpen so she could get something done around the house. Sesame Street, that was a good program. Even at that age Shawna did a crude pantomime of some of the characters. Because Shawna was so precocious in some ways Rilka thought she should be speaking already - at least momma and daddy. We told her not to worry. We also told her to stop calling her daughter a bitch.

"That'll be the first thing she'll pick up" we told her with the wisdom of having been through it all. She'd nod and ignore us.

Whenever Shawna picked up the telephone receiver to bash it on the wall, tried to hang from the drapes or made a beeline for the road, Rilka would snarl "cool it bitch!" and that would stop Shawna in her tracks. She'd come to a tottering standstill, incline her head toward her mother for a moment, grin as though challenged and take off again - faster.

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Our children were older, Maryse's and mine. It was fun to have a toddler around; laugh and enjoy her, then leave her to someone else to look after.

Rilka always grumbled but she was proud of her child's foxy cleverness. She loved her daughter like a tigress; raking her with verbal claws one moment, smoothing a loving tongue over her the next.

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When she told us she was pregnant again, Maryse and I were speechless. We thought she'd had enough with Shawna; heaven knows she'd said it often enough.

"Well, look happy for me, girls! Why the stunned looks? I'm legally married!"

"I'm surprised" I admitted. "After all, you've always said..."

"Never mind!" she laughed, a touch of hysteria. "Ol' Phil wants a Son-and-Heir and I'm about to do my duty! Here", she said, grabbing my hand, pressing it to her stomach, "Can't you feel? Already it feels like a boy!"

"Don't be silly Rilka ... two months pregnant and you're flat. Are you sure you want this one?" A glum look. I shrugged.

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It was only several weeks later that Maryse told us she was pregnant, too. "I wanted to be absolutely certain" she said. "That's why I waited to tell you."

This time Rilka and I looked at each other. Oh, there was no mistaking Maryse's happiness. We weren't about to ask her if she was sure she wanted another one. We'd told her she was crazy a month earlier, when she told us she was trying.

"My doctor recommended it", she'd said quietly. "He feels I need something to occupy myself with."

"You've already got two children" I reminded her. I didn't bother reminding her that the youngest, after a bout of Rheumatic Fever, had a weak heart, that she was married to a man who left the mundane affairs of hearth and child rearing to her, who could never be relied upon to be around when he was needed; a manly interest like his involvement with a semi-pro hockey team always uppermost in his mind. There was also the little matter of her high blood pressure and the radiation treatment she'd undergone a few years ago to remove a formation in her throat.

"I've been depressed since my father died" she said, as though that was explanation, a reason. I hadn't noticed any depression; she was always quiet and self-contained.

So we congratulated Maryse and our little ceremonies continued, conversation sprinkled now with bulletins on how the two pregnant ladies felt from day to day.

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Early one morning, before daybreak, I heard odd sounds under our bedroom window. I got up to look, saw the front light on at Maryse's house next door, an ambulance in the driveway. My heart caught in my throat, I stood there watching, like a disaffected stranger. But the form on the stretcher was not Maryse's. Marc's bald pate gleamed dully on the white sheets under the dim light, his face contorted with pain. Seeing him there, I felt relieved; curious but without pity.

In the morning she told me he'd had a gall bladder attack.

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"I get so tired of being alone", she'd sometimes say. But you couldn't criticize her husband. "We need the extra money."

As soon as their two boys, ten and seven, were old enough, Marc bundled them into uniforms and shoved them onto junior and peewee teams. The younger one, the one with the weak heart, cried. But his father insisted. "It's good discipline for the boys", she told me. "Marc says so."

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"I'd better keep my distance" I told them. "I'm not in the market for trouble. There's no way I'd go through all that again", and they laughed. All right for Rilka, she was only twenty-five. Both Maryse and I were twelve years older than her. And my youngest was ten.

"Anyway, I'd think seriously ... consider testing ... you know. They take a sample of the amniotic fluid ... to check if the foetus is all right."

"Wouldn't make much difference", Maryse said offhandedly.

"But you'd know .. if there were any abnormalities. The percentage of abnormal births among older women..."

She turned her serene face to mine. A sympathetic smile. "I'd never agree to an abortion, you know." No, of course not.

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We were well into summer. The neighbourhood was jumping with kids of all ages, ripping through backyards, over fences, ransacking kitchens for cookies and milk.

I could also count on Rilka bouncing into the house at any time, hallooing her way in. Just like a kid, first stop was always the cookie jar. She'd talk while she nibbled; later couldn't imagine why she was putting on so much weight.

She was teaching Shawna my name. Cookie Monster. Rilka had a playful name for everyone in my family. Our oldest boy, interested in astronomy and musical performance, was alternately "ass" (short she said, for astronomer) and "pied pooper". Our younger boy who was involved in his school's intra-mural sports program practised broad-jumping in our backyard, across from hers. He was the "asslete". Whenever she came around, they disappeared.

With our girl, it was different. She didn't mind Rilka calling her "Starin' Sharon". Sharon would listen with intent fascination to Rilka's conversation, not wanting to miss anything, not one little quip, malapropism, or grossly deliberate mispronunciation. And there was always Rilka's promise to my daughter that in another year she'd be acceptable as Shawna's official babysitter. Sharon was anxious; I was not.

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"I'm gaining weight like crazy", Rilka would say, complacently looking down at her ample bosom, her ballooning middle. "Phil says never mind what the doctor says, he likes my big boobs."

"What do you think about Maryse?" she asked, crumbs fluffing out the corners of her mouth as she reached over to pull Shawna away from my crystal bon-bon dish.

"I don't know. She looks all right. She hasn't had any more dizzy spells and her doctor says she's fine. In her place I'd be miserable, but she's obviously not."

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I had been feeling miserable myself lately and not because of Maryse. I had my unwelcome suspicions. It had been a long time, but I remembered the nausea, how my gorge would rise at the smell of meat cooking, and the persistent headaches. A visit to the doctor resolved nothing.

"You're definitely not pregnant Mrs. Glatt" he assured me with that infallible mannerism so many doctors affect. "Just take it easy for a while ... you may have picked up a virus."

A week later I was no better. In fact my nausea was worse. While I kept busy I felt I could control it, but in the afternoons I'd crawl into bed, hoping to kill the virus before it did me in. The children told their father that mom was sick. Despite what the doctor had said, I was convinced I was pregnant.

"Would that be so terrible?" Gerry asked. Yes and no. And so we talked about it. I'd go back and see the doctor again.

He was annoyed, the doctor. thought I was being stubborn. Maybe he thought I was desperate for attention. He made me feel guilty of something, I don't know what.

"I don't want to be pregnant" I told him, leaving no room for misunderstanding. "After all that's why I'm wearing an I.U.D. It's still there, isn't it?"

"Yes it is" he said curtly and went out.

I dressed and waited for him to finish the test. He was brisk and businesslike, the cool professional. "I can make arrangements for you" he said, giving me the name of a gynaecologist downtown.

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The office was in a new building at Bloor and Avenue Road. Very nicely appointed office. Full of women waiting. And me.

When my name was finally called I went in and a nurse told me to void, then to undress. She questioned me.

"There are other ways" she said. She was an older woman; she'd obviously seen plenty, knew things I didn't.

"My other pregnancies happened despite a diaphragm", I told her. "I'd been on the Pill for seven years. The doctor recommended I go off the Pill, use the I.U.D. as an alternative. What else is there?"

"Abstention" she snapped.

"But I love my husband!"

"Well, that's the alternative!" she whipped, and walked out.

I felt like dressing and walking out too. But then the doctor came in. And he was soft-spoken and kind, questioning me, examining me. As weary as I was of being examined he made it less an invasion than a gentle concern.

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Maryse and Rilka wanted to know, was everything all right? They'd discovered I hadn't been feeling well but I made light of it. I hadn't told them my suspicions; it was the company I kept, of course.

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A week later Gerry drove me to the Women's College Hospital. We filled out forms, waited for a blood test. He went upstairs with me, waited while I undressed. I came out looking like a mummy, dressed in a shuffling hospital gown, my head wrapped in an operating-room turban. I hated for him to see me like that but he didn't seem to mind.

Later, voices blurred at me as though coming from a great distance, saying I had to wake up. My eyes opened to a diluted light and I saw green shapes and hands were busy soothing me. There were dozens of beds lining the walls; people waiting in the recovery room. Someone retched. Someone else was coughing and over at a desk a telephone was ringing.

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That afternoon Gerry took me home and put me to bed. The children tiptoed around. Everyone helped make dinner. I had mine in bed. I was wearing a new white nightgown he'd bought for me.

Rilka was over the next day; nibbling, yelling at Shawna. A D&C of course. No questions asked. Just take it easy she cautioned me, spilling crumbs over the living room rug.

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In the late fall Rilka had a big healthy boy. Phil always means well. He's basically a decent person. He'd get a nurse for her the first two weeks at home, he promised. Meanwhile, he went around with a grin splitting his big face, handing out cigars and gratuitous advice.

When Rilka came home from the hospital Maryse and I went over to admire the new baby. He looked like his father. Shawna was allowed to touch his little head, gently, gently. She was fascinated by the new baby at first then jealousy wore away the gentleness, the fascination. She tried to whack the little red face with her toy telephone.

She was talking now. I was her living, breathing, Cookie Monster. When Rilka yelled at her, she called her mother a stupid bitch. Which she was of course; we warned her.

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Maryse was in labour a long time. We kept asking Marc what was happening. "Fine, everything's fine" he said. He'd let us know. Finally, ashen faced he said "Maryse doesn't want to see anyone yet." Oh yes, the baby was fine. A boy. But his demeanour bore no resemblance to Phil's and we wondered.

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"They look at the finger pads, and they can tell" she explained, composed. "At first I didn't want to see him so they kept him in the nursery. Then I thought, the poor little thing, it's not his fault, and they brought him to me."

What do you say? Congratulations? We looked at the dark smudges under her eyes and let her go on. She wanted to talk; a catharsis.

"The doctors think he may be brighter than many ... like him, but if we institutionalized him we wouldn't have to worry ... about expenses, things like that. But they told us he'd never reach his full potential in that kind of ... environment."

He really didn't look much different from a normal baby. Except that his responses were minimal, that he needed a lot of physical support. He hadn't much of a moonface, but had an oddly weak, mewling cry.

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From time to time during the winter I'd go and visit with her, see how he was progressing. He was lovable, like any other baby. Rilka came over sometimes; she didn't want to bring her little boy, but Maryse insisted.

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Once, the man across the street brought Maryse home. She'd been walking the baby down the street in his carriage and fallen over in a faint. Another time just before she fell she called my oldest child over to help her home. Her doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with her.

She obviously needed help, but what could I do? At any event, we moved soon after. We corresponded for a while.

Maryse wrote about her sons' scoring record in hockey; they were even going on out-of-town trips with their teams. Marc was away again, and little Robbie was getting along very nicely.

In another letter she told me an operation might be necessary to correct Robbie's heart irregularity. But through his constant illnesses he was a happy baby.

Just incidentally, she wrote, the people who'd moved into our house were very quiet, very nice people.

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Rilka wrote that Shawna was still a bitch, only getting better at it; that her baby was walking already, faster than his sister had done, and he was a sweet darling, nothing like Shawna. She was making arrangements to send Shawna to nursery school: "Kind of spread the joy of looking after the little bitch around a little", was how she put it.

Could I send a batch of cookies, express? They were what she missed most about me. She also wrote that it was so good of us to be as discriminating as we'd been; the new neighbours had lost no time stringing up a clothesline and it was forever dripping wash; very picturesque. "We desperately need that kind of quaint elegance around here."

P.S. Maryse looked haggard; she hardly ever saw Marc around anymore. Maryse's baby still couldn't grasp objects but he laughed a lot. She hated to go over there now, it was such a depressing scene.

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Well, you lose touch. It's been more than four years. Last night, looking through the newspaper, I saw a familiar little face. The syndicated column for child adoptions.

'Just turned five' the advertisement read. 'Robbie is an appealing child with soft blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. He is small for his age and is behind both mentally and physically because he was born with Down Syndrome. Robbie goes to a special school for below-average children.'

The smile on the child's face, wide and appealing, reminded me of his older brother's, the one with the weak heart who also smiled readily, a normal child who played reluctant hockey.