Page 32 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

I don’t know how long I have been sitting on the bathroom floor with toilet paper pressed against my wound when someone knocks. I throw the bloodied tissue away and hide the bite beneath my sleeve, as if the intruder might be able to sense it through the door if I don’t cover it up.

“Your food is getting cold and I have to pee.”

“Go use the other bathroom, Harmony.”

“I can tell you’re not on the toilet. Open up.”

I do.

She is slumped against the wall with her neck lolled to one side. Whether she’s just tipsy or already roaring drunk, I can’t tell. “I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Do I look like I’m in the mood?”

“You look like shit. You’re sweating like you’re giving birth.”

I try to slip past her, but she blocks me by extending each of her spindly limbs toward a different corner of the doorframe, a spider upon its web. “Just a girl, standing in front of another girl, asking that girl to leave Grace the fuck alone.”

“Notting Hill? How drunk are you?”

“I mean it, Providence.” She hisses the last syllable of my name. “Leave Grace alone.”

“She’s my sister too.”

“And you will ruin her! She thinks you are a godsend. She thinks you are the sister she’s been waiting for all these years. Me, she already knows I’m a disappointment. But you? I’ve had to listen to her talk about howoh, Providence actually seems niceandoh, Providence came to help me when I got in trouble at school. Mom is gone, you come galloping in to save the day, and when you piss off back to wherever you came from, you will leave her alone, and hurt, and miserable. We all have the same parents, but you are not her sister. I am her sister. I am the one who’s always been there, through everything. I am not perfect, but I try, God damn it. You are using her to fill some miserable void in your life, and you don’t care that it will destroy her when you leave.” She blinks back tears. Her nose crinkles and her mouth twists into a frown. “Please. I have never asked you for anything, but I’m asking you for this. It’s the least you can do for me.”

She’s right. About all of it. There are the two of them, connected in ways I scarcely understand, and then there is me. I yearn for sisterhood; they already have it. They don’t need me. The same crush of loneliness I felt when Sara embraced me descends upon me once again. However the search for my mother ends, if it ever ends, I will eventually leave Annesville and I will have the luxury of trying to forget. For Harmony and Grace, their lives will steep in this calamity for years to come.

I dig my fingernails into my palms, channeling my anger into my skin instead of my voice. The only advantage I have in an argument with Harmony is my ability to stay calm. She’ll have me on the back foot if I get emotional. “If Grace wants me to leave her alone, fine. If she asks, I’ll do it. No questions asked. She has a right to keep me out of her life. But I’m not doing it for you.”

Harmony feigns interest in the notches hewn into the doorframe, where our mother measured us on every birthday. Most birthdays, anyway. We each have a few years missing. It was amaternal ritual she undertook only when she was sober. As Harmony’s arms fall to her sides, I catch sight of the engagement ring on her left hand. “You don’t have one decent bone in your body. You’re rotten right to your core,” she says. “You’re a killer. Least get the right parent this time. Do us all a fucking favor.”

“If you want him to die that much, do it yourself.”

“I have Grace to think about. Who do you have?”

Through dinner, the bite mark throbs. I slide my fingers along the avulsion and trace the shape of each individual tooth. By now I know exactly what shape each one makes, how the canines on my left side differentiate from the right and how perfectly spaced the dental work has made my front teeth. I return to the bite mark every time my father speaks; I bit myself exactly where he touched me.

My father allows me to help Grace with the dishes. He is three beers deep by the time he and Harmony retreat to the living room for the Rockies game, and I can tell by his bearish growl they are losing. He then says something else to make Harmony laugh.

When he excused himself for the game, she hopped up, grabbed two cold beers, and volunteered to join him. Peering over my shoulder, I see she’s not even sitting at the farthest edge of the couch, cowering away from his recliner like I would be. The only thing between them is the end table on which both of their beers rest. Harmony’s legs drape over the arm of the couch. She is within fatherly range. This is her defense mechanism: while Grace and I would move heaven and earth to stay away from him, she wins his favor by pretending to like him. If she doesn’t put up a fight, she’s not a tantalizing target. He likes it when we fight back.

“I should have played softball.” The running water overpowers Grace’s voice. The chokecherry pie, burnt on the top, cools on a wire rack beside us.

“For him?”

“It disappointed him when I wasn’t interested in it.”

“It wouldn’t change anything. He’d still be …” I trail off.

“He’d like me more.”

I let the words hang. I’m about to change the subject when I think of what Sara said earlier.I know you loved him, but he could have done more for you.“Is he nice to you?” The euphemism is worse than not asking at all, but the words wilt on my tongue when I try to be more direct.

“Yeah.”

“You can tell me the truth.”

She hands me a plate to load into the dishwasher. “Why would I lie about that?”

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