The Good Sister by Jamie Kain Read Free Book Online Page A

the sort of weather any sane person would banish a four-year-old into. We had never experienced anything like this in our young lives, and we were frozen, unsure whether such a demand was meant to be taken seriously.
    â€œI’ll clean it up,” Rachel said. “Don’t make her go outside.” Until now she’d been the silent bystander, although it had been her game of leapfrog that had sent Asha careening into the table in the first place.
    â€œAll of you, outside now!” Our grandmother continued pointing at the door, her posture alone enough to convince us she wasn’t joking.
    So I took Asha’s hand in mine and we went, shuffling one by one out onto the front entryway, which had a shallow overhang that provided almost no shelter from the slanting rain. Rachel was the last to exit, and she was unable to resist slamming the door behind her.
    There we stayed, huddled against each other, teeth chattering until our father found us after what felt like hours later but was probably not so long. He insisted we leave Grandmother’s house that night, and we did. I’ve never stayed here again since, nor have I ever wanted to.
    But that was years ago, before Lena and Ravi divorced, and before Lena discovered that her mother was our only reliable means of financial support.
    So the last day that we visited her, I found myself sitting at her sleek, expensive teakwood dining-room table, staring out at the bay through the window, while my mother spoke in hushed tones to Grandma in the next room.
    This was the drill. I had to stay out of things unless Grandma started getting angry. Lena didn’t like being seen groveling.
    I was thinking about David (the love of my short life), wondering if he was out of his printmaking class yet, about to get out my phone and send him a text, when my grandmother wheeled into the room. I wondered for a moment if she’d finally gotten fed up with my mother and pushed her off the balcony, but I later learned that Lena had, at the last second, decided to tell my grandmother that I was the reason she needed money this time.
    It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had outlived everyone’s expectations, and my parents now found that their oldest daughter was about to go on to college, and they hadn’t bothered creating a college fund for me since I was supposed to die anyway. I’d gotten an acceptance letter from UC Santa Cruz the day before, and it had prompted me to ask my mother if she’d be able to help me pay for school.
    This simple question had sent her to bed in tears for the rest of the day, claiming she had a migraine. This was how Lena dealt with most problems. She wasn’t cut out for life off the commune, or life as the mother of a child with leukemia, or life in general.
    â€œSo,” my grandmother said to me in her slight Dutch accent, “you have defied all the odds and are going on to college. What a wonderful thing.”
    â€œI got accepted to three schools so far,” I said, adopting the pleasant, deferent tone I always used with her.
    â€œYour mother tells me you still want to be a nurse.”
    I nodded.
    â€œWhy not a doctor?”
    People had never asked me questions like this before now—what do you want to be when you grow up? Being known as the Kid Who Has Cancer was, for a long time, my lot in life, and even when it wasn’t, people still tiptoed around me, as if the shadow of death lingered near.
    â€œI want to help people in a hands-on way.” This was my simple, standard answer. I’d never had to try hard to make good grades in school, so perhaps my grandmother thought I should strive for the greatest academic challenge. Or maybe she was just being contrary.
    She gave a curt nod. “You’re too pretty to be a doctor anyway. No one could take you seriously.”
    I knew better than to react to this. Lena relied on me as the one who didn’t let Grandma push her buttons.
    â€œHow