My Sister's Gifts

With only two days until my final ceremony at Claredon Hill Middle School, Christine finally found time to go graduation dress-shopping with me. It was the first sunny afternoon after two weeks of gray skies and endless drizzling, so North Michigan Avenue was packed with pedestrians. We had just walked out of Saks Fifth Avenue, where Christine had asked the woman to put a pale blue dress on hold for me.

It had been three years since Christine had told me she was a drug dealer.

Waiting for the crosswalk light to turn, I took a deep breath and turned towards my sister.

“I want to join your business.”

Christine glanced up from her phone. The pink-tinted Burberry shades resting in her hair glinted under the sunlight.

“For the money? Then I’m never buying you anything again, little sis,” she teased. A sharp ting from her phone’s messenger brought her attention back to it. She started typing.

“I want to spend more time with you,” I said.

Three years ago, when Christine had first told me she was a drug dealer, we had been taking the red line downtown because she had promised me a Haagen-Daz sundae to celebrate my graduation from Prospect Elementary. It had been the first week of June, and we had been sitting in the sunlight shining through the compartment windows because Chicago’s system is mostly elevated above ground. That day, she had tapped my nose and promised me she wanted to make extra money from dealing drugs only to buy her only sister more ice cream. Because I had been only ten, I had trusted her unquestioningly.

Now, hearing my response, Christine looked up from her phone and frowned at me.

“Serena, are you seriously asking to be drug dealer? It’s illegal – ”

Ting. She was interrupted by another ring from her phone. Frustrated, she typed a quick response.

“I don’t care if it’s illegal,” I snapped, and she hastily looked up at me again. “You had said it yourself that day. You’re not joining the mafia or living a life out of American Gangster. You’re just distributing to the kids at the local high schools and Northwestern University.”

Ting. This time, she ignored her phone.

“Dealing drugs isn’t something most people approve of, Serena. It’s just something I’ve decided to do because I want to make more money – ”

Ting. Ting. She now glanced down, reread the message two times, and started typing.

“Well, I want to do it with you now,” I retorted. “You used to come home every day on the school bus, and we’d lounge on the couch laughing at SpongeBob on the TV. When I struggled with multi-digit addition at night, you used to sit under the chandelier at the dining table and walk me through the problems. Now I go home from school every day to play Undertale in my room. I struggle with algebra homework until 3am every night. I don’t even see you at the dinner table – ”

“ – because mom stopped cooking for the family,” Christine interrupted. “You don’t see me anymore because we don’t eat together as a family anymore, little sis.”

For as long as I remembered, mom had always been fighting dad to move the family back to Phoenix to take care of Aunt Karen through her chemotherapy. We never did. When Aunt Karen had died two years ago, mom snapped from the distress and regret. Although she never went through with the divorce with dad, our family had fallen apart.

I had always wished that the divorce actually happened. Mom would go back to Phoenix, and I’d go with her and escape the bullying at school. Ever since I was young, I had been bullied. Mom had always said my random bouts of crying started two weeks after I entered Prospect Elementary, and in third grade I was always coming home with mud in my hair. However, she had always been under the impression that the kids had begun to treat me well in fifth grade. In reality, I had merely stopped crying in front of her, and I had started to sit in the bathroom during recess. But even now, every night I laid in the semidarkness of my room, anxiety fluttering in me like wing-torn moths as I thought about going to school the next day.

I knew that if I had told her the extent to which I was still bullied, mom would sign the divorce papers and fly me out of Chicago despite anything dad said. After all, the boys’ soccer team had started spreading rape jokes about me.

But I never mentioned a word to mom. I didn’t want the divorce to separate me from Christine.

Now, hearing Christine bring up our family, the same fluttering anxiety rose up, and tears uncontrollably dripped out.

“But mom and dad had always been fighting,” I cried, “and that didn’t stop us from being close. You knew I was lonely at school, so you used to take me up to Evanston every Saturday afternoon, and we’d try a deep-dish pizza from a new local place every time. Then on Sundays, we’d take the redline down to the Cermark-Chinatown stop for the Haagen-Daz ice cream. But the summer you became a drug dealer, I spent every single hot and sticky day lying on the couch with the lights out, waiting for you to be done picking up packages, making calls, or come back from parties.”

Ting. Ting. Ting. One ring after another erupted out from Christine’s phone. Tears were now glimmering in her eyes as she frantically tried to split her attention between me and the inundation of messages exploding like bombs on her phone.

“Serena, you know I love you, and drugs hasn’t changed that,” Christine begged. “For your eleventh birthday, I bought you a pair of the 700UC Bose headphones because I knew you started gaming. For your twelfth, I started paying for your premium Netflix account because you said you were bored. And for your thirteenth, I got you a notebook because I knew you liked to write.”

To be honest, the notebook had been a perfect gift. On the first page, Christine had signed, for her little sis, from Christine. The notebook itself was a little black moleskin booklet whose pages were the creamy shade of vanilla.

However, Christine was wrong that I still enjoyed writing. When I had been younger, I was always writing stories based off cartoon characters, and Christine had noticed that. But in in sixth grade, after Christine had stopped spending time with me, the thought of writing began to trigger me because of the way Jessica and Rose bullied me in our English final project.

Nowadays, on the nights I finished homework early, I’d sketch mythical characters from Undertale in that notebook. I’d always start with Toriel’s droopy ears and cute short horns, but by the time I got to her paws they would turn into claws that embraced the protagonist. I could never finish drawing the face of the protagonist. In the storyline of Undertale, Toriel was a mother figure gone wrong, and I couldn’t bring myself to give identity to the protagonist who was sealed in the cruel fate of eventually battling to the individual who once cared for her.

“Christine,” I sobbed, “my favorite part about Evanston wasn’t the deep-dish pizza but chasing the pigeons with you afterwards. My favorite part about the Haagen-Daz shop wasn’t the banana split dazzler but the we spent laughing about Kung Fu Panda there. I want to spend time with you. I want you to be sitting next you when you drive around delivering packages, I want to be listening when you’re making calls, and I want to be drinking next to you at a party.”

Ting. The longest message yet flared up on Christine’s phone like an explosion, and she took a few seconds to read it.

“Serena,” she pleaded, “I’m in the middle of a distribution emergency right now. This is why – ”

She held back a sob.

“This is why I can’t let you join my business. I don’t have the time to integrate and teach you the process.”

Although the sun was still shining down on North Michigan Avenue, it felt as though the world had gone dark. I was plummeting into the underworld, and Christine was still floating in the early summer sky. The memory of last Sunday finally erupted in my mind, and the anguish of it settled like smoke, reminding me why I had finally confronted Christine about it today.

I had finished my algebra homework at 2:05am in the morning and was going downstairs to grab some Oreos. That was when I saw Christine kissing with someone on the island in the kitchen. The faint smell of vodka was in the air. I don’t remember what the guy looked like, but I do remember that, even in the darkness of the kitchen, I could clearly see my sister. The small slants of moonlight that seeped through the shades glinted off the Tiffany necklace around her neck, and the curves of her legs and waist that she wrapped around her boyfriend shone pearly white against her dark red laced bra and underwear.

If I stayed in Chicago, I’d be bullied for the rest of my four years at Claredon Hill High School. I’d fail algebra, get left behind on every English project, and spend sleepless nights crying in my room. And Christine wouldn’t be there to help me. She had already left me for others who weren’t suffering in the dark like me.

I had to leave Chicago.

“I’m sorry, Serena, but I need to handle this distribution emergency.”

Christine released my hand panickily rummaged through her purse, pulling out a gel pen and a check book.

“I love you – ”

She was now scribbling in the check book.

“ – but I don’t have the time to take you to Millenium park – ”

She signed the check.

“ – or sit with you in the Haagen-Daz shop– ”

She ripped out the check.

“ – or finish graduation dress-shopping with you. I’m sorry.”

She tucked the check in my hands. Tears fell from her eyes as she put the pen and checkbook back in her bag.

“I have to go now, but please go back and buy that dress from Saks. I want to give it to you.”

By then, the cross-walk color had changed, and Christine ran across the street, disappearing into the crowd.

I looked down and saw the $20,000 check that Christine had written for me. Maybe all those extra zeros in the end meant she was truly trying to show she cared for me, but I knew this was the last present I was going to accept from her.

I tucked the check in my pocket, but instead of squinting to trying and find the glittering reflection of Christine’s Burberry shades in the distance, I took out my phone and dialed mom, finally ready to ask her to move to Phoenix for me. As I listened to the ringing, I closed my eyes and tilted my head back.

As the early summer sun washed over me, I thought back to the day Christine had first told me she was a drug dealer. After she had bought me the large tower of vanilla ice cream topped with frozen bananas and chocolate, we had gone down to Millenium Park to chase pigeons until the sun set. Tired, sweaty, and surrounded by the fading orange and purple streaks of twilight, we had stood under the giant and glistening archway of stainless steel, looking at our bright and shiny faces illuminated by the streetlamps. Although night had been setting in, I had thought I would be okay because Christine was holding my hand.

But then my mom picked up, and her voice jolted me back from my memories.

I was going to leave Chicago.