(yet another piece from my senior project)

I was four. I remember that because that was the day I became four. You left that day and I’m not sure I knew at the time what it meant. You were sick and sleeping in the extra room downstairs. I wore my white dress with the pink flowers, or the pink dress with the yellow and blue flowers. The cake was outside on the table, the glass-top one, isn’t that right? The hall to the kitchen was yellow and the carpet on the stairs was blue. I remember because I fell down once and ended up at the bottom, spinning and dizzy, but giddy from my trip. The carpet was thick and felt like maybe a very stuffed teddy-bear, or sandpaper clouds, puffy and not-a-very-bad-headache.

I remember I offered you a slice of cake, but you were sick and you smiled and said no thanks, but later Mommy told me you could only drink your pink milkshakes, which ended up being strawberry smoothies.

Mommy told me I was in the room when you left, and I think that is why my eyes get wet and blurry when I think of you. I always called you my favorite, you know, and I was only four. What does a four-year-old know about favorite? Mommy said she took me out of the room when you were gone, but I don’t remember. She said later the extra bedroom was empty, and I saw.

So I watched Star Wars with Conor. I’ve always watched Star Wars. You were the one with the original three. Now that’s ours, and I love them. Yoda went quiet and disappeared, and years later Mommy told me that I turned and told Conor that you did that.

“Uncle Kevin did that!” I said. But I don’t know if that’s true. It might be, like the time my brother stuck his foot in a long thin box, and hobbled around saying, “Grandpa Joe has one of these!” because Mommy’s Dad, the Judge, got his leg shot off in the war and had to wear a wooden one, except when he went swimming.

I remember we went to the Air and Space Museum in D.C. with you, I think, but I don’t remember now; I always thought it was the zoo, but I have this photograph and it says no. Do you remember my doll? I called her Broken Baby, but only after I bit off most of her tiny hollow fingers. You can see her in that photograph of you, the one where you are holding me, and I am wearing my navy-blue dress. I hardly recognize your face. I feel my body hanging down, the corduroy, the drooping tights, the soft canvas of Broken Baby’s torso…


… still your face fails to fade in. I cannot feel the tickle of your mustache on my cheek, or your breath on my pale hair. I cannot imagine the way you might have looked at me, or the way you might have looked at me a decade later, when I had grown up at least a little, and I might be your beautiful little niece.