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

are you feeling? Still sore from your fall?”
    I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, I can see that this was my subtle way of getting her back. While Grandma loved to talk about her ailments, anyone else’s bringing them up always made her feel weak and vulnerable. I watched her shrink back into her chair a bit, looking tired. Then I felt bad for my spite.
    â€œNo need to discuss an old woman’s frailties,” she surprised me by saying. “The more important matter is this issue of your college education. How do you intend to pay for it?”
    â€œI’ll work, I guess, and get college loans.”
    â€œAnd your father? Is he going to help?”
    I hadn’t been speaking to Ravi lately, not since I’d seen him walking down the street holding hands with a girl who looked to be about four years older than me at most.
    â€œI’m not depending on it,” I said, though I would likely ask him for help eventually, once I’d decided for sure which school to attend. He wasn’t comfortable with loose ends.
    â€œI’ll be very upset if I pay for your education and you go and die before you get to use it.”
    I hadn’t been expecting such a backhanded comment, and I sat there stunned, unsure what to say. How great did the risk of my cancer’s relapsing have to be before I wasn’t worth spending college-tuition money on?
    Part of me wanted to stand up and leave, tell her to stick her money up her ass, but I knew the real reason we were there wasn’t just about college money. It was about my mother needing money to pay the rent, and if I blew it now, we’d spend the next month eating nothing but ramen noodles and avoiding angry calls from the landlord.
    Also, because this often meant my middle sister, Rachel, and I coughing up our own money to pay for food and other essentials, I was doubly motivated.
    â€œI’ll try my best not to die,” I said evenly, meeting her eye and almost smiling as I said it.
    Satisfied with that, she nodded and wheeled herself back out of the room. A minute later, I could hear her and Lena talking again in hushed tones, probably haggling over the amount of the check grandma was writing.
    Because no one was yelling or slamming doors, I knew this visit had been a success.
    I got out my cell phone and began composing a text to David: R u free? I typed, then hit send.
    I used to think I wanted to be a doctor, but the more time I spent in hospitals, the more I saw that the people who made a difference were the nurses. A few of those who’d helped me over the years were my heroes, angels who’d swooped in and offered soothing words and gentle touches when I’d been in the worst pain of my life.
    I wanted to be one of them. When I was younger and still believed in God with a capital G, it was partly because I thought if I was a good enough person, maybe God would let me stay alive longer. Maybe he or she or it would make the cancer go away for good. I used to think we had to bargain our way through the world, trading good deeds for good luck, but now I know it’s not that way at all.
    I spent my whole life trying so hard to be good, and in the end it didn’t matter.
    My cell phone chirped to let me know that David had texted me back. I looked at the message: We r all free— his little bit of phonetically spelled philosophy.
    I wished I could be as hopeful as he was, but I wasn’t. I could hear Lena and Grandma de Graas still murmuring in the next room, two people bound by love and hate, tangled in family ties. Just like my sisters and me. Just like all of us.
    And here I am now, where we are supposed to be truly free (or at least that’s what we assume about death, don’t we?), still bound to the people I left behind.

Ten
    Rachel
    I have spent most of my life rolling my eyes at the spiritual-seeking crap that surrounds us in Marin County. Meditation and chakras and all that.
    But