__siblings__ raze they hadn't talked in a while. she called to tell him she was grounded for a week. her older sister had been freaking out. acting like an animal, she said. she suggested to the rest of the family that they put her food on a plate outside. let her eat out there like the dog she seemed to want to be. her father didn't find the joke funny. he smashed an apple into her head. it became applesauce. the older sister punched her in the face. she hit back and washed her hair. the older sister was grounded for a day and allowed to have a friend over. the younger one got a week and no visitors. that sister, the older one, watched her while she was on the phone, a vulture smelling blood. who are you talking to? she hissed. who? tell me. i'm talking to my friend. what friend? dana. she didn't buy it. she lifted the phone in the kitchen and listened. she heard the voice of their brother. older and deeper than before, but familiar as breathing. dana my fucking ass! a young boy named bradley was sitting on the living room floor, playing with his toys, putting on a silent play for an audience of unattended furniture. the older sister turned to her mother in the kitchen. mom! she's talking to her brother on the phone! the mother knew already. didn't care. the younger one, the one who was talking to her brother, left her room with the cordless phone. she approached the mother. can you please tell her not to swear when bradley is around? he's just a little kid. don't be a squealer, the mother said. you're already grounded. if gathering storm clouds had a sound, the sound would be her voice. she was deaf to reason. back in the relative safety of her bedroom, the younger one told her brother how the older one would invent things to tell on her for. she was never chastised for being a rat. can i call you after school while i'm grounded? she asked. sure, he said. the older one appeared in the doorway. she pulled up her shirt. she smiled. she extended two middle fingers to her younger sister, one held over each breast. i don't ever want to be a teenager, the younger one said. i want to stay my age. i don't want to be like her. you won't end up like that. how old were you when you moved out? i was thirteen. two years older than you are now. sometimes i don't feel like i'm a part of this family. i think i'm more like you. my sister tells me i look like a guy, because i look like you. i think maybe i'll move out too when i get older. she went into the other room again. she asked the mother if she could visit her brother on saturday. maybe. we'll see how you are. someone else had to use the phone. she called back a little later. in the interval, her sister bit her with enough force to draw blood. she told her brother she still played the old keyboard he left behind sometimes. the older sister didn't like that. i was playing it downstairs one day, when she barged in and told me to stop, because it was yours. you don't even like my brother, i told her. you don't want to have anything to do with him. so what do you care? it's his keyboard. i'll play it if i want to. you're just like him, she said, really snotty. stubborn. you won't listen to what anyone else tells you. what did you say back? i said thanks. i take that as a compliment. he could hear the older sister and the mother arguing about something in the background. they sounded like the same person. 130624 ... raze she called three days later to tell her brother she'd made the school basketball team. she wasn't grounded anymore. she worked on her father, manipulating him, grinding him down. he would yell and hit things, but his belly was soft. there were ways of scratching it. ways to get him to bend. not like the mother. she was a nasty piece of work. there was no bend in her. fuckin' kids! her father said. always get what they want. you're the one who let me go outside, she said. he threw a tantrum. like a child. started screaming at the mother like it was her fault he'd given in. left to go on one of his drives. said he wasn't coming back. came back ten minutes later. i thought you weren't coming back. fuckin' kids! he screamed, and left again. he'd been going on these drives for years. since before she was born. he always said he'd be gone for good. he always came back. sometimes the mother told him she wished he wouldn't bother. 130624 ... raze she called on friday. asked her brother if she could come over a day earlier than they'd planned. she wanted to get out of the house. a friend didn't believe she'd made the basketball team. she was upset. today's a bit short notice, he said. i was planning on us seeing one another tomorrow. are you okay to wait until then? hold on a minute, she said. she put down the phone. he heard muffled talking. he wondered what was being said. the voices grew louder, and he didn't have to wonder anymore. if he wants to see you that badly, he can come see you in the park, the mother said. no! please! you said i could go over. you're not going over there, her father said. you keep it up and you'll be grounded. you wanna be grounded again? but you said i could! her father screamed something that didn't sound like it was in any language anyone would know. maybe bears. the older sister wasn't around. the younger sister started to say they would talk about this and she would call her brother back once they'd come to an agreement. her father cut her off. YOU WON'T CALL HIM BACK! NO! NO! NO! and then more fire from his throat in the language of bears. it was raining. there was a tornado warning. the park was bullshit. an unpolished bone to gnaw on. no one was meeting anyone there. she was crying when she picked up the phone again. it's no big deal, her brother said. don't worry about it. we'll get together next weekend instead. it was a kinder bone. the kind you wish on before you break it. but it was still just a bone. 130626 ... raze for a while after that, their conversations were stilted, soaked through with empty pleasantries. he began to suspect her parents were standing at her bedroom door, listening to what she said when she was on the phone. the better to use her words against her later as a form of emotional blackmail. they'd done it to him when he lived in that house. grilled him over what he said until he was a charred piece of meat no one would ever want to eat. there was a nervous energy in her voice that reminded him of that feeling of being a living specimen beneath a microscope slide. two months passed. then she let it slip that her parents opened and read her mail before giving it to her. they would reseal the envelopes so she wouldn't know. but she knew. she caught her father in the act once. when she asked him what he thought he was doing, all he had to say was, there's a gift in here. now she would make a run for the mailbox after school before anyone else got there, slipping anything that was meant for her under her shirt, hiding it on her way to her bedroom, to circumvent the screening process. she said her mother tried to control what she could watch on television too. she asked her father what he thought. i don't give a shit what you watch, he said. they were supposed to go fishing together, her and the father. they'd made plans. when he was getting ready to leave with an old fishing buddy, she asked him to wait for her. she reminded him he'd told her she could tag along. i don't remember saying that, he said. he left her at home. she said one night her older sister called her on the phone from inside the house and tried to convince her she was someone else. it didn't work. so the older sister threatened her with a steak knife. said she was going to kill her. this was how the mother meted out discipline. to the older sister with the knife in her hand, she said: don't do it again. to the younger one: go to your room. her brother rolled that around in his head a little. i'm not going to punish you, but don't stab your sister. parenting at its finest. 130707 ... raze eight months and a handful of phone calls later, she asked her brother if he wanted to move back into the house he hadn't seen the inside of in seven years. i'm not sure that would be a good idea, he said. you might like having me around, but i doubt anyone else would. besides, there wouldn't be any room for me. mémé's moving out soon, she told him. you can have your old room back. mémé was her grandmother on her father's side. she'd moved out of her own house to live with her son and daughter-in-law so they could care for her in her declining years, but it wasn't working out. it wasn't working out because this woman no one could remember once even sipping at a glass of wine during the holidays had chosen the winding-down period of her life to try her hand at being a raging drunk. the next day was going to be the younger sister's first day back at school after the christmas break. she hadn't been sleeping well, she said, because mémé had developed a habit of drinking late at night and banging on things. what's she banging on? her brother asked. is she trying to walk around and falling into the furniture or something? no. she just bangs on the walls. so, what...do your mom and dad go downstairs to see what's going on and maybe try to calm her down? no. they just let her bang all night. last night was really bad. i barely got any sleep because of the noise, and because i was upset. did she say something to upset you? no. it's just that i'm twelve years old. i shouldn't be around that sort of thing. he was without any words for a while, struck by the sad clarity of what she'd said. when he was able to find some words again, he formed a question with them and asked if the adults were at least trying to get mémé some help or working to get at the root of the problem. she told him they shipped mémé off to her nonagenarian mother's house for a while, so they could forget about her and her late night drunken wall percussion. as you do. oh, my cell phone died too, she said. her brother had bought her a phone for her birthday because her parents wouldn't get her one. maybe next weekend we can go to a movie or something and then we can take the phone in and get it fixed or replaced, she said. her brother said it sounded like a good idea to him. he listened while she asked her father if it would be okay. we'll see, he said. we'll see had been his favourite answer to every question ever asked as far back as anyone could remember. it was either we'll see, or if you asked for something that really got his blood boiling, he would tell you he'd give you whatever it was you wanted, and then one of his hands would make a fist and smack into the open palm of the other hand to let you know what else he was going to give you if you pressed your luck. we'll see was better than nothing. the next day she called her brother again. my dad says you have to send the bill for the phone in the mail, she said. there would be no visit. her father's latest story was that there were a lot of crazy people in the city, and he didn't want her around them. her brother thought about the last time they'd found a way to see one another. he remembered talking to the younger sister on the phone before she came over. he remembered the mother screaming and whining, her pre-pubescent daughter reasoning with the idiot tornado until it had spun itself out and agreed to give her a ride. the older sister didn't go along for the visit. she had other plans. she sent her brother an email saying she hoped the younger sister wasn't too much of a handful, thanking him for taking her off of everyone's hands for a while, like she was some kind of burden. he remembered that she wasn't a handful at all. they had a nice time. it was a friday. they ate pizza. they played in the park for a while. they talked a lot. she decided she wanted to make a movie with her brother's video camera. she filmed him acting out an improvised scene with stuffed animals, offering directions the story could take when she didn't like the way things were going. then she wanted to film an interview with him. she pointed the camera at his face and asked him questions. say something about your mother, she said. he could only think of one thing to say about the stranger the woman she called his mother had become. one thing that was both true and at least somewhat kind. he said: my mother is a woman who exists and she lives in the world. when he took his sister home, he couldn't set foot in the house he'd once lived in with her and the older sister and the mother and their father who was his stepfather and the dog who was always happy to see everyone and the cat he'd found as a child who was dead now. just seeing the outside of the house made him feel like throwing up. she took the video camera with her, to make movies. he would never see any of the things she filmed with it. he went home and smoked pot and wrote in a book to a girl his own age he loved in a stupid way, who would never give him her address so he could send it to her. and he remembered there were plans for him and the younger sister to get together again a few days later, to catch a movie. plans they'd set in motion a week or two in advance. again the mother threw a tantrum. again the younger sister was steady and calm and worked out the details while chaos swirled around her. just before they were supposed to meet, there was another phone call. i'm not going to be able to go today, she told her brother. i forgot that i was supposed to see a movie with my mom and dad. he could hear in her voice it was either a last-minute development made without her consent or a lie she'd been forced to deliver under duress. three years after, he still didn't know what movie they'd seen that day, or if there had even been one. it didn't matter. now her father just kept it simple and said no when she asked if she could see her brother. he pulled out his new excuse about the crazy people he didn't want his daughter associating with, failing to recognize that if he really cared about such things he would have included himself among them. 130914 ... raze it was the better part of a year before they talked again. she was thirteen by then, and a burgeoning animal activist. it went like this. she would find a stray cat. the mother would tell her she couldn't keep it. she would hide and care for the animal until she found it a home. and she was volunteering at a veterinary clinic. she went home whenever an animal needed to be put to sleep. she didn't want to watch something she loved die. the family had moved into a larger house on the river. there were three stories. the upper level was the younger sister's turf. she could access the roof from her bedroom window. she liked sitting up there sometimes. the older sister was on the next floor down. the parents beneath her. they were two days into a citywide power outage. the younger sister called in the afternoon, the landline drawing power through the wire. she told her brother she'd found a new stray cat. a polydactyl calico kitten with half an ear missing. she wasn't sure what name to give it. we have a new bird too, she said. a parrot. it calls me fuckhead. it learned that word when i was fighting with my sister. she said she didn't like the bird. not because of what it called her. because it bit her. but it bit her sister harder. that helped her dislike it a little less. their fights were growing more extreme. fist fights with scalding soup. cuts and scrapes. bruises and scars. threats directed at the new kitten. one day the older sister had some friends over. they were using the younger sister's room without asking. she tried to get them to leave. this isn't your room, they told her. you don't live here. she found a metal spoon. she threw it at the face of one of her sister's more belligerent friends. she chased them all away. the older sister tried to scale the house and climb back in through the younger sister's bedroom window. she couldn't make it. their father was made for climbing trees. she wasn't made for climbing anything. on a different day, the older sister tripped the younger one. she fell on her face. she thought her nose was broken. she told her father. he handed her a five dollar bill and told her to leave him alone. she said before she called she'd been cleaning the house. her older sister had cats of her own but she never cleaned up after them. the younger sister had to empty their litter boxes herself. one of her cats is so fat, it can't even lick its own ass, she said. it keeps trying. her other cat's always humping stuffed animals. the mother came home mid-conversation. what time are you and dad going to be back from that birthday party tomorrow night? the younger sister asked her. i don't know, the mother said. when we get back. her voice was a taut, ugly thing. i don't want to be left home alone again. if you go to school tomorrow, then you can have a friend stay over. she wouldn't be going to school unless the power came back on. she would need to find a way to conjure electricity with the power of her mind. failing that, she had another night alone in a dark house to look forward to. her brother asked if she knew any friends who'd be willing to spend the night with her. she came up with a few names. she didn't think any of them would be available. maybe sam, she said. you don't know how much it means to me. he didn't know who sam was. he didn't ask. she didn't tell. there were some good things. she was the lead singer in a band. they wrote their own material. he asked what their music was like. it's really weird and scary, she said. she was learning to play the flute. and she was writing a lot. mostly fiction. short stories. one story was about two girls who were murdered. her mother told her she'd be a published author someday. she said she still played the old keyboard, but it had a broken key now. the older sister did that. she got angry at the key for making her hit the wrong note. she taught it a lesson. the younger sister got back at her by castrating one of her male dolls. you're not a man anymore, she told the plastic pretty boy, desecrating his manhood with a pair of kitchen scissors. she said she had a friend sleep over one night. they found a running tape recorder hidden in her room. she'd been right. no more standing at the door eavesdropping on phone conversations. it was a more complex operation they had going now. as if to make amends for spying on her, the mother came into her room the next day with a present. a nintendo wii. she hadn't asked for a nintendo wii. she didn't want one. it was just as well. she never got to play it. the mother was always taking the system into another room and playing it herself, hammering at the control pad with her fucked up hands. i've been watching some of the videotapes from when we were kids, the younger sister said. i saw the one where you and my sister were playing power rangers. and the one where you and her were throwing that soft little jingly ball at my head to make me laugh when i was really little. i remember that, her brother said. there's some good stuff on those tapes. i wish there was a way i could see them again. i can send them to you in the mail, she said. my mom doesn't give a shit. the mother, her knees made decrepit by corticosteroids, her hands paralyzed by years of ergonomically incorrect typing, was talking about having another baby. nobody thought that was a good idea. 131011 ... raze a few days later he found out he was dead. she'd been talking about going to see him, she said, and mémé told her she couldn't. she asked why not. he's dead, mémé said. he's been dead for four years. the details of his death were a mystery to him. he didn't feel like he guessed a dead person would feel. he felt alive enough. so what's it like talking to a ghost? he asked his sister. she laughed. 140429 what's it to you? who go blather from