Desar, Leonora

English

The Open Repository @Binghamton (The ORB)

ALICE AND LARISSALEONORADESARI’m Alice and my sister is Larissa. Larissa says we’re going to be bornnow any day.Larissa says a lot of things. She says she’s got Daddy’s looks andMama’s mystery and our Aunt Carrie’s sense of mischief. When I ask herhow she knows these things from inside Mama’s tummy, she just says,Because. Because I’m Larissa, and I just know.But I know things too. I’m the big sister—not big as in big, big as inolder and smarter. I know our daddy is making us a rocking horse for whenwe get born. It is blue like the sea, the sea I live in when I dream.In my dreams Larissa and I are whales like in the book Mama readsto us from the outside about Jonah and the big fish. I’m a big whale andLarissa’s a little whale, and we each have our own belly. I can feel the wetagainst my belly—it is mine and not Larissa’s too—and this makes me feelglad and guilty at the same time. In Mama’s tummy we’re attached fromthe neck down to our belly, our two heads floating like quail eggs from onespine. We can pass our thoughts over the blue bone of our rib.Like when Larissa thinks, When I’m born I'm going to find a babyboy to kiss. She eavesdrops when Mama goes out with the other mommies.She doesn’t hear how Mama’s voice can turn low and cold; she only hearsthe babies who have been born, the ones on the outside. She thinks, Thatone drools, and that one’s a mama’s boy, and that Kenny Brewster has thecutest bottom lip. She says she knows this by the way he cries and by hissilence.Desar 441Desar: Alice and LarissaPublished by The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB), 2015Some silence around here would be nice for a change, I say. Don’t you evershut up? But when she sleeps the guilt creeps back like firefish up my skin. Iwrap my arms around our neck, whisper thoughts to Larissa like kisses downour rib.Larissa whispers, What do you want to be when you get big? She says,When I’m big I’ll be an astronaut When l’m big I’ll have three husbands.When I’m big I’ll be a queen.I say nothing. How can I tell her I wish for the wetness of my dreambelly? To know what it’s like to be alone.I just say how strange Mama’s been acting ever since she found outthere are two of us with just one belly. She used to read to us about a lot ofthings—sleepy princesses and grouchy queens and some lady who lost herslipper. But now it’s always Jonah this and Jonah that Maybe it’s becauseDaddy is so quiet His silence is the color of the sea, of the rocking horse thatsits unfinished in the shedMama says, You have to have faith, Jim. She says, I believe in the good-ness of the Lord. She scares me—l imagine fish dripping from her lips, herarms coiled with seaweed. Her voice whispers like seaweed—Heavenly Father,I plead the blood of the lamb over all children.Larissa says we should whisper to Heavenly Father if Mama does. Shewhispers for boy babies with chubby kissing lips, for Daddy to paint our rock-ing horse pink now that he knows we’re girls. I whisper, Please give me mydream belly.When I wake up Mama and Daddy are fighting. Daddy says, What kindof life will these babies have? They’re never going to be able to do anythingon their own. Mama just keeps reading. Her voice is the lullaby of the whale,the way it must have sounded to Jonah when he was trapped.That night I tell Larissa to think of the softest kissing lip, of the soundKenny Brewster makes when his mama keeps him safe inside her arms. Itell her I will keep us safe. When she falls asleep I wrap my arms around ourneck, squeeze and squeeze until our rib doesn’t make a sound452Harpur Palate: a Literary Journal, Vol. 15, Iss. 2 [2015], Art. 17https://orb.binghamton.edu/harpurpalate/vol15/iss2/17

Alice and Larissa

https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2164&context=harpurpalate

Alice and Larissa

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