“ She never got lost under my watch”
older than I felt, my bossiness was now an asset. At school, I was let out of class early, winding down the long, gray hallway from the sixth-grade wing to the first-grade wing, high ponytail swinging with every determined step. I was in charge of fetching my sister for the bus. She couldn’ t be trusted to board alone, not since the incident where
she rode a wrong route and ended up at the bus barn defiantly proclaiming,“ I was just going to a friend’ s house!” I’ d open her classroom door, see her gap-toothed smile, and hold her hand as we walked out to the parking lot. I’ d wait patiently behind her as her little legs climbed those big rubber bus steps, her shiny mermaid-scale backpack glinting in the sunshine. She never got lost under my watch.
***
96
“ She never got lost under my watch”
i remember when i was younger, and my brother, mother and i would all sleep on the same bed, and would stay up talking all night, and i remember this one time the most right now. we were talking / thinking about where you were at that moment in time, she told about how your parents were really nice, and that she knew you were going to have a wonderful life, and i don’ t know if that really happened or not, i’ d like to think you did. email from Pickle, May 15, 2006
***
Downshifting into first gear, I pulled my two-door Toyota Echo into the parking lot of the generic blue-gray apartment buildings. Indian summer in the Pacific Northwest had extended into mid-October 2008. I’ d moved back to Seattle a few months prior, so there was no more putting off the inevitable. Enrolled in graduate school, with an emotionally supportive boyfriend and a part-time job with set hours, I was finally in the sweet spot I had been dreaming about since I was an angsty teenager. I reached out via text to my nineteen-year-old sister Pickle, saying,“ Hey, do you want to meet up in person?”
She had lived for the past few years with her best friend’ s parents, in the twobedroom apartment I stood in front of. Has she seen me from the window yet, I thought. Is it too late to run? I’ m not good with social interactions. I used to walk away mid-conversation leaving people standing alone, feeling like dumbasses. With racing mind, I summoned all of my Halloween trickor-treat practice and knocked.
The door swung inward, and I was staring into the face of an elfin princess. My Amazon frame took up much of the doorway, while we made stilted small talk. I bent down, gave her a hug, and felt the gap between