Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder

everything?
    We are slowing as we pass a stony lane, with the little grey house beyond the bare field of mud. Someone’s planted a few trees, must have been some time ago now, they’re tall, but weedy, not full grown, and the yard is still bare. The yard is still bare. It always was. That hasn’t changed.
    They’ve put a swing set near the field. A dog runs toward us down the lane barking. I know this place. I know it. My throat fills up with dread.
    THE HOUSE IS ALERT. The sun shines. The day is hot, for spring.
    Mother stays upstairs with Fannie in the room Fannie shares with Olive. Father goes to the barn after breakfast, a cold meal of sliced bread, fresh butter, and the soft white cheese that Fannie makes from the cow’s milk. Fannie herself heated and cooled and strained the milk to prepare this cheese she cannot eat, now. I scarcely swallow a bite. Cora and I carry the plates to the kitchen, cover the food. We stack the dishes in the sink but do not wash them, coming to silent agreement.
    Father does not come back.
    Cora and I pump water from the well, but it isn’t cool enough to cool Fannie’s fevered skin.
    I stumble from the yard into the house in a daze. I stop to sit at the table, and stare. I don’t climb the stairs to the bedroom where Fannie lies, thrashing and throwing off the bedclothes, crying out. I get up again to rip cloths with Cora and we place them in an enamel basin and pour water over top, and Olive staggers upstairs trying not to spill. She returns immediately. Mother has told her not to stay, not for one second. The danger is too near.
    Olive boils water in the kettle.
    Cora asks why? Why, when Fannie is so hot?
    Olive says she will make tea.
    Cora says, for who?
    Olive says, for the doctor. For George. For you, if you want a cup. For mother. For Edith if she thinks to come over and help. For anyone. For Father in the barn, you can carry him out a cup. For Aggie, look at her.
    I can’t see myself, but I see my hands laid out flat on the table before me, trembling, and I pull them into my lap and press them one on top of the other, changing back and forth, back and forth, trying to squeeze the fear out of them.
    Stop your arguing, says George. He sits slumped across the table from me. We look at each other silently, me and George, holding fast for a moment.
    Tea would be grand, he says, don’t you think, Aggie?
    I think I can hardly stand the noises coming from upstairs. The whole house is listening. The whole house is trying to keep Fannie breathing, to keep her wild rasps coming, the pauses between them growing ever greater. The fever has her and she is lost from herself. She is gasping out her sister’s name—Edith’s—and we are all pretending not to hear it. Mother’s voice rising smoothly against the tide of noise.
    I am only a child, but I know: I must never say what I know about Fannie. I must hold the terrible secret, because no one must ever, ever know. If Edith were to find out. If Father were to find out. Yet we hear it, over and over and over: Edith, I’m sorry, forgive me, Edith.
    She can’t know what she is saying. She’s that far gone. The words drift, slurred. A blur.
    Should we run for Edith, do you think? asks Cora.
    Edith can’t come here. She’s weak enough as it is. The flu would kill her, says Olive.
    George stands abruptly, shoving back his chair. Run for the doctor, he says. He is talking to me.
    What good would that do? Mother’s here, says Olive.
    We have to do something, says George. That’s my sister up there dying!
    Then you should go, says Cora. By horse would be faster.
    Aggie’s quick as a shot, says George. She can go through the backwoods. Go, he tells me. Run, Aggie, run.
    I feel the terror that has been pouring through my hands jerk back inside my body, suddenly useful and necessary. George is right. I’m quicker than a shot. I bang out the door and down the steps and around the back lane into the fields, my legs pumping like the pistons