“Where?” I asked.
“In the forest,” she whispered. “She’s gone.”
“Gone where?” I asked.
My father rubbed his forehead.
“She died,” he said flatly. “Ella died. That’s all you need to know.”
But I never saw a body.
I don’t remember a funeral.
No small casket. No grave I was taken to.
One day, I had a twin.
The next, I was alone.
Her toys disappeared. Our matching clothes vanished. Her name was no longer spoken in our home.
At first, I kept asking questions.
“Where did they find her?”
“What happened?”
“Did it hurt?”
Each time, my mother’s face would close off.
“Stop it, Dorothy,” she would say. “You’re hurting me.”
What I wanted to say was, I’m hurting too.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I learned to stay quiet.
Talking about Ella felt like setting off a bomb in the middle of the room. So I swallowed my questions and carried them inside me.
I grew up that way.
On the outside, I was fine. I did well in school, had friends, stayed out of trouble.
But inside, there was a constant buzzing emptiness where my sister should have been.
For illustrative purposes only
When I was sixteen, I finally tried to break the silence.
I went to the police station alone, my palms sweaty.
