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As far as I’m concerned, everybody who counts is right here, exactly where I want them.
If I have to fight to keep my sister here, I will.
Late that night, I wake up to the sound of Frankie screaming.
“Daddy!” she’s saying. “Bo!”
And then, “Don’t!”
I peel back the covers and tuck Caroline in.
I walk to my sister’s room and stand in the open doorway. “Frankie. Frankie. Franks, it’s okay.”
After half a minute, she stops thrashing. Then I can hear her sniffling and rummaging around for the box of tissues we keep on the floor by her bed.
I grab her a tissu
e and sit by her waist. Hand it over. Rub my hand up and down her back.
“You’re okay,” I tell her. “You’re safe. I’m here.”
She quiets.
I run my fingers through her hair.
“Tell me what happened,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve asked.
Maybe I didn’t really want to know.
Maybe I was afraid of what I’d hear.
Frankie draws a deep breath. “I was at a sleepover.”
“At whose house?”
“Keisha’s.”
“Where’s Keisha live?”
“Bandon.”
“How’d you get home?”
She’s quiet.
“Don’t lie to me.”
She’s so quiet.
I miss my chattering girl who never shut up. My Frankie from before, who ran to me when I came in a door, who hassled me for piggyback rides and never got sick of sucking up as much of my time and attention as I could spare.
I left that girl to come here, and I never got her back.
What I’ve got now is this new Frankie, who sasses me, hassles me, ignores me, but never tells me what’s in her heart.
I want my sister back, and the only way I can think to get to her is to wade through all this mess between us. This story she doesn’t want to tell, these changes in her life she’s afraid to talk to me about, the reality she doesn’t want to face: that we’re not ever going back to Silt.
We’re refugees.
