Heavy Is the Fruit
Two days after the tornado, they were still without power. No telling when the work crews would come out. Kizzy woke that morning with a sour mouth and sweat pooling behind her knees and in the creases of her elbows. She drank some of the water she’d left on her nightstand but spit it back into the glass when she noticed a gnat floating on the surface.
Silence swamped the house—the air unit quiet, no television or freezer buzzing—though that wouldn’t last once she got the generator going. Kizzy caught sight of her sister’s curly hair above the couch arm—Shay must have migrated there during the night, now at the point in her pregnancy where she could never get comfortable. Shay’s cell phone lay on the floor, dead after another night of texting her boyfriend. There was enough gas to keep their phones charged and a fan going since they’d fed an extension cord through the window, but they didn’t risk running anything else.
It wasn’t hard for Kizzy to crank the generator anymore: hold the handle so she didn’t tip backward, then pull the clutch and let it kick itself into gear, all the birds scattering at the growl that ripped from it.
The yard didn’t look so bad now that they’d cleaned it up. Some roofing shingles, the rotten oak limb that rattled the floor when it fell, twigs and leaves and pieces of tree bark furry with moss—Kizzy spent the day before loading everything she could into a wheelbarrow, Shay trying to help but only getting in the way, unable to bend past her pregnant belly. They had suffered no serious damage. From the news they’d pulled up, most weren’t so well off.
Kizzy redid her ponytail so that the elastic tugged at her scalp. Her mother had worn high ponytails, or it seemed that way: the photo albums didn’t always line up with what Kizzy remembered. She dug at the pimple on her nostril until her eyes streamed, then prodded the bump of cartilage that stood out in the center of her nose. “You gave Shay everything and me nothing but this,” Kizzy told her mother, as if she were beside her and not long dead.
You’ve got a nice nose, her mother said. Regal.
“It’s huge.”
Just imagine you can smell things other people can’t, like sunshine or sadness.
“Sadness doesn’t have a smell.”
Be thankful you have a nose, her mother said. You might have been born without one, and then you’d look nothing like me.
* * *
At first, Kizzy thought Shay had begun sleep talking. It took a second to realize she was only babbling at the baby again. From where she’d sprawled across the couch, Shay stared upside down at Kizzy as she came back inside. “Any milk left?” Shay asked.
“Gone bad.” Kizzy grabbed the pastry box off the counter and split the last cream cheese Danish for their breakfast. Shay allowed her to sit down, then tossed her legs over Kizzy’s and accepted the half Kizzy offered her. The pastry crumbled when Kizzy bit into it but then somehow turned into a gluey mixture that made her jaw twinge. There wasn’t much flavor anymore, the box dropped off nearly a week ago when their dad headed out of state for work.
“What’s the plan today?” Shay asked. She picked her piece of Danish apart, sprinkling more on the carpet than she ate. When Kizzy didn’t reply, Shay dug a toe into her side until Kizzy slapped her foot away. “Brat. Really, what do you want to do?”
“We could listen to the radio.”
“Batteries died yesterday. Wanna look through old yearbooks?”
“Ours or Dad’s?”
“Dad doesn’t keep stuff like that. We can grab last year’s, I’m still in that one.”
Before the pregnancy, Shay’s plans were pretty generic: finish high school, attend college, land a steady job. Children were to be considered after marriage, the same as their parents, although their dad never made a big deal about the marriage part. But Kizzy didn’t know what came next now that Shay had bypassed most of those milestones. Would she get her GED and go to work? Put the baby in daycare and ask Dad to watch it when he was home? Her sister only shrugged or offered some bit of self-gained wisdom whenever Kizzy asked, as if she were thirty years older and not three; Shay wouldn’t even be legal until November.
“We could read. You said it calms the baby down.”
“Singing does. Anytime I read, Little Bean revs up.” Shay circled her hands over her stomach, fingers even now wrapped in rings—busted mood ring, thumb ring, wire ring, ruby ring. Probably too much swelling for Shay to remove them. Kizzy had spent the last months cataloging the changes in Shay’s body and feeling mildly horrified by her expanding stomach, the multiple inconveniences. After Shay noticed Kizzy’s unease, she’d started snatching her hand and placing it to her rounded belly on the chance of feeling movement. Kizzy couldn’t decide if the baby kicking out in anger, squatting on Shay’s bladder, was funny or frightening.
Shay managed two bites before she hurried to the bathroom and vomited.
* * *
Their dad had called shortly after the storm passed, when the power hadn’t been out but an hour and they’d unloaded themselves and their pillows from the bathtub. He’d talked to Shay first then asked for Kizzy. “You okay, Monkey?”
“Yeah.”
“Not scared?”
“I don’t guess.” Kizzy didn’t mention how short of breath Shay became at the smallest things or how Kizzy wanted him there, just listened as he told her where to find the generator.
“I can’t drive back until after I get to Des Moines, but then I’m heading home. Promise. Keep an eye on your sister for me.” He’d gotten in touch with Mrs. Dunbar, who lived a few miles from them and said they could come to her house if anything happened. Until then, they had gas in the car and plenty of food.
There was no escaping the heat as it slunk toward midday. After scrounging up something to eat—their options were limited: dented StarKist cans at the back of the pantry, black beans and ramen and soup that needed to be heated, jarred fruit gone murky with age—Kizzy plopped in front of the box fan with the marshmallow creme she’d found. It wasn’t long before Shay, lying on the couch talking to her boyfriend, Teddy, shooed her away. Kizzy left the marshmallow creme open on the coffee table because she knew it would make Shay nauseous. She was mostly indifferent to Teddy: he always made a point of trying to include her in things, but Kizzy never knew whether he just did it to impress Shay. He called daily to check on Shay and the baby since he was still visiting family for the summer; that had to mean something.
Kizzy didn’t go far, within shouting distance if Shay needed her. She tossed herself down beneath a tree and tried to get settled against the roots grinding at her backbone. Barely any wind stirred, so different than when she’d watched the flag on their porch tangling around itself and the tallest pines swaying into bows. Sunlight slipped behind the few magnolias not bruised or picked apart by the storm. Kizzy rubbed a piece of flower she’d plucked off the ground, a delicate thing that felt like human skin.
You’re going to get ants on you, her mother’s voice told her.
“I already checked. No nest nearby.”
As if her mother had summoned it, a sugar-crystal-sized ant popped up to tiptoe its way across Kizzy’s hand. She lifted her arm and watched its progress over her knuckles. Then the bug bit down between her third and fourth finger, first a tingle and then a flush of pain.
Kizzy squashed the ant with her thumb. Told you, her mother said.
* * *
Shay complained but made room when Kizzy slipped into her bed that night, either too tired to question it or familiar enough with their old routine. Kizzy hadn’t slept with Shay in years, not even when their dad started long-haul driving again last summer. Usually, a girlfriend of his stayed over. The current one, Fara, was in Cancún on some sort of yoga retreat.
Shay’s knee nudged hers. “I want air conditioning,” she said.
Kizzy thought about it. “TV.”
“A shower.”
“Ice.”
“Blue raspberry Slush Puppies.”
“No wonder you’re fat.”
“Twenty pounds is not fat! It’s all from the baby anyway.”
“Sure. Having something to do once it’s dark.”
“You ran your phone down, didn’t you?”
Kizzy tugged Shay’s hair. “Dad,” she said.
“Dad.”
* * *
“My boobs hurt. And my feet. My back.” Shay picked at a container of pre-cooked rice, salted and with the last of the butter spooned in. “It’s too hot to live. Isn’t that right, baby? Little Bean says it’s too hot.”
Playing a one-person game of Mancala, Kizzy ignored her.
Shay adjusted the pillow beneath her lower back, shifting to ease the pain she said felt like a full-body root canal. She made a garbled sound after a moment’s struggle and nearly hit Kizzy when she threw the empty rice container across the room, causing Kizzy to lose count of whether it was her turn to collect stones or her imaginary opponent’s. All she saw was that container and the roaches that would come for it. She’d have to throw it away, just as she had with the pastry box. “You don’t feel good, okay, I get it,” she said, “but quit whining about everything and making me clean up after you.”
“I’m not making you do anything,” Shay reminded her and scratched her belly. She’d stayed small except for her abdomen and ankles; it made her face seem bonier, features drawn tight from restless nights. “And you’re the only person to whine to. Word of advice, brat: don’t ever let a guy stick his dick in you.”
Sex wasn’t new. Shay talked to her about it long before their dad asked Fara to give her the rundown when Kizzy turned thirteen the year before. Dad wouldn’t touch anything like that, edgy at the mention of periods or the way Shay’s body changed to accommodate the baby. It should have been him going to doctor appointments with Shay and not Teddy’s mom or Fara, him picking up after Shay and helping her instead of Kizzy. Really, it should have been their mother, but she wasn’t here. Kizzy grabbed the rice container and winced at the butter-smeared bottom. “What do you complain to Teddy about?” she asked.
“God, what don’t I? He gets to hear all the gory details. But he’d rather look at baby toys and pretend he didn’t come out of a vagina.”
Kizzy flipped over and stared at the cracks that spidered off from the spackled-over hole in the ceiling, the one their dad made when he stepped through the attic floor years ago. She could remember tripping over Shay at the sound of something giving way, caving in, only to find his boot swinging above her. It hadn’t taken much to calm them down once he freed himself, though he limped the next few days.
She wondered if he’d reached Iowa yet, when he would be back.
“Kizz.” Shay’s voice, urgent. “Help me up.”
Kizzy got Shay to her feet and walked her to the bathroom. “Told you not to use butter.”
Head over the toilet, Shay heaved and flipped her off.
* * *
She waited until Shay was napping before opening the attic door, practically having to climb on hands and knees because of how steep the stairs were. Dad never liked them going up there when he wasn’t around, for fear of rotting floorboards or a tumble down the staircase.
Kizzy had no goal when it came to what she was looking for but always made a point of plundering. Through busted Halloween decorations and the dolls she’d left behind in fifth grade, old sports gear that no longer fit—cleats, her first mitt—and Shay’s stacks of Seventeen and Vogue. Crates blocked the storage closet, and she busied herself with lifting and shoving them aside until she could get through the door to one of the containers she’d noticed on a previous trip. In it were clothes: slacks, sundresses, blouses. A few boxes of size six heels. Kizzy wore a seven, but maybe Shay could fit in them once her feet went back to normal.
This was my favorite, her mother’s voice said as Kizzy held up a cranberry-colored skirt with pleats. I wore this on my second date with your dad.
“He shouldn’t have boxed your stuff away.”
He’s not that sentimental. And the closets aren’t big. He probably needed more space and just forgot about all this junk.
Back downstairs, Kizzy went to the bathroom and locked the door. The skirt didn’t fit right when she tried it on, bunching over her small hips. You’ll grow into it, her mom said, but Kizzy stepped out of the skirt and left it on the floor like some dead thing.
She made it toward the end of the hall before turning back to collect the skirt, holding it close.
* * *
“Coffee.”
“Anything besides tuna.”
“Snow cones.”
“What flavor?”
“Dill Pickle.”
“That’s disgusting. Dreamsicle.”
“School.”
“You miss school?”
“Sometimes. Getting to see everyone, not worrying about anything but tests and homecoming. You know what to expect. It makes no sense, Teddy still being able to go. Pretty sure that’s sexual discrimination.”
* * *
Shay started cramping the next day. “I think my pelvis is splitting in half,” she said on her most recent pass by Kizzy. “Fucking Braxton Hicks.”
“Maybe we should call Mrs. Dunbar.”
“No, no, they’ll go away.”
“I’m calling her,” Kizzy said, but she only got the answering machine. She picked at her phone cover, green plastic scuffed from afternoons at softball practice and the time Dad stepped on it. “We’re going over there if you don’t start feeling better.”
Shay didn’t argue. Kizzy pretended like that wasn’t worrying, Shay giving in so easily. Eventually, her sister stopped pacing and told Kizzy to get the car keys.
Mrs. Dunbar wasn’t their closest neighbor—there were others nearer to them, like the raw-boned couple Shay said probably ran a meth lab—but their family was friendly with her. Shay eased behind the wheel and pushed her seat back, squirming and driving more slowly than she would have otherwise. Kizzy hadn’t gone beyond the mailbox since the storm and couldn’t fully believe the destruction left behind: trees and power lines ripped up, snapped fence posts, pine needles pasted to the road. Nothing remained of the Methodist church but splinters and part of the steeple. They came across the bell half a mile later, just before the seatbelt bit into Kizzy’s chest as Shay pressed the brake pads.
Three pines hung across the road—small, but there would be no maneuvering past them.
Shay didn’t yell or curse. Just smacked the steering wheel once, twice, hard enough to make Kizzy jump. Kizzy thought about touching her but didn’t know if Shay would let her. She scratched the ant bite on her hand, now a ball of red-ringed pus. Quit, it’ll get infected, her mother said in her ear.
Shay looked at Kizzy and flashed a brittle smile. “Sorry. Ignore me.”
They went home.
* * *
“You think you and Teddy will get married? After the baby’s born.”
“He says we should. Might be his parents talking though. Honestly? I don’t know if I want to. I love him now, sure, but in a year? If we break up or get a divorce, we’ll have to deal with custody crap. What if he decides I’m not worth it and the baby’s not worth it and he finds someone else?”
Kizzy pressed her mouth to her sister’s shoulder. “You have me.”
* * *
Neither of them slept well anymore. The morning after they’d tried to leave the house, Kizzy woke alone in Shay’s bed and found her sister once again on the couch. She went to her room and pulled out Dad’s ratty Voltron shirt from the bottom of her dresser. It was where she kept all her pilfered relics: a cookie tin holding arrowheads and verdigris-covered coins, a cat-shaped bottle of perfume. Most recent was the skirt. Slipping into her rubber boots in the front hall, Kizzy tried to get through the door without waking Shay.
Outside, it was all purring locusts and birds crooning at one another, the purposeful clomp of her boots across the yard. She wove around to the peach tree at the back of their property and found two peaches that weren’t wormy, tucked the better one in her pocket for Shay and rolled the other between her hands before biting it. Kizzy licked the juice trickling down her wrist and wiped her mouth on the inside of her shirt.
A bee hovered undecidedly above one of the rotting peaches, eventually settling on the fruit to burrow in. White head, her mother’s voice whispered. It won’t sting.
Shay was waiting on the porch when Kizzy returned, one hand holding the back of a mildew-speckled patio chair. “So my water broke,” she said. “Either that or I pissed myself.”
Kizzy looked at the liquid darkening her sister’s shorts and shining on her legs. She closed her eyes, opened them. Watched splotches bubble up. Felt her head go light and hollowed-out, wind rushing around blood and bone. Breathed. Breathed.
“I will never let you live this down,” Shay told her minutes later. Staring up at Shay from the ground, Kizzy quickly assessed her head and limbs and couldn’t find anything that hurt. She didn’t know whether she was more embarrassed about fainting or annoyed that Shay saw it happen. “You just flopped over. I thought I killed you.”
Kizzy swatted at the closest part of Shay she could reach—her shin—before stopping. “You’re not due for another month.”
“Guess Little Bean’s tired of waiting.”
“So we go to the hospital.”
Shay rubbed her stomach in concentric circles. “Field doesn’t deliver babies. We’d need to get to County Memorial, but I don’t think I can drive for an hour, and you definitely can’t, not after plowing into that shopping cart. I’m okay for now,” she said. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
* * *
“A wedding maybe, someday. Old Hollywood-themed. Dahlias everywhere. Champagne.”
“Hips.”
“Seriously? Cherry Screwballs.”
“To make softball captain this year.”
“Mom.” Shay bumped their noses together. “Sorry. That’s not fair to you.”
“I don’t really remember her, so.” The glint of their mother’s nail polish, the pillowcase Kizzy’d liked to nuzzle into whenever she slept with their parents, musky-soft and tart with the scent of apple shampoo: her memories were jumbled sensations, shards Kizzy held to, like that half-empty perfume bottle she snuck before Dad packed everything away.
“I know you talk to her. It’s okay. I talk to the baby all the time.”
“The baby’s alive, though. Mom isn’t.”
“But it doesn’t seem real, you know? That there’s another person growing inside me. That I’m this incubator for someone else, someone I can’t see. It’s not that different: we’re both talking to people who aren’t here.”
Kizzy brushed a hand over her sister’s stomach and didn’t pull away automatically, gave herself a second to wonder at the baby. Her niece or nephew. Pointless as it was, she hoped they’d have her nose.
* * *
Waiting for Shay’s body to do something, Kizzy couldn’t believe how calm she seemed: her sister, the person Kizzy brought food and heating pads to and who had no hesitancy voicing demands. Shay laughed her off when Kizzy asked whether anything hurt. Wouldn’t be laughing if they’d run out of gas for the generator and their cell phones died—neither knew how to siphon gas from the car.
Shay crossed her ankles and leaned against the wall where the old landline once hung. “Just need to call an ambulance, and they’ll take care of everything,” she said and dialed 911.
Almost immediately, a male voice that sounded like dispatchers in movies—straightforward, carefully bland—came through the speaker. “What’s your emergency?”
For whatever reason, Shay started crying: the ugly sort of crying, her entire face looking as if it might fold in on itself. When the dispatcher repeated the question, she spit out a sound that terrified Kizzy more than the prospect of her sister going into labor did. Shay dropped the phone even as the man prompted her to speak, one hand trying to muffle her sobbing.
Kizzy snatched the phone. “Hello? You there?”
“I’m here, don’t worry,” the dispatcher said, voice much nicer than she’d first thought. Because he could tell they were kids? Shay would probably argue against that, but she’d slid to the floor and was too busy mopping at her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, my sister’s about to have a baby and it’s just us at home, and we can’t get to the hospital. I could drive, but I don’t have a permit and she said this would be better.”
“Good girl, she’s exactly right. How’s your sister right now?”
“Fine, I think.” Shay nodded at Kizzy’s prompting, even as she continued gulping back tears. “She’s good.”
The dispatcher didn’t rush Kizzy as she told him their dad was on the road for work, as she gave him their names and address and faltered to describe Shay’s condition. So many questions she couldn’t answer, but he only said, “Alright Kizzy, we’ve got someone on the way. Since you live pretty far out, it might take the EMTs a bit to get there. Roads are still a mess, too, so you girls hang tight. Take care of your sister.”
Kizzy glanced at Shay. She had a piece of hair caught in the corner of her mouth, upper lip glistening with snot. “I always do,” Kizzy said.
* * *
Shay grabbed at furniture, walls, Kizzy, anything to hold herself upright while they walked around the house. As if to make up for her earlier meltdown, Shay grinned after each contraction and assured Kizzy they weren’t bad.
Kizzy didn’t want to know what bad was.
“Final bets. You still saying boy?” Shay asked.
Kizzy followed her, phone in hand in case she needed to call 911 again. Ten minutes, fifteen since she’d spoken to the dispatcher. Was this how long it usually took, even with the storm damage? “Yeah.”
“Little Bean’s going to show you all when she’s a girl. I know my body. Mother’s intuition.”
“Fara said you’re carrying low.”
“Fara’s never had a baby.” A jagged inhale, then Shay’s fingers scrambled to clutch the kitchen counter. Kizzy stepped toward her but stopped when Shay shook her head. “Say something,” she instructed, voice stretched thin, “anything, just talk to me.”
For a moment, Kizzy was sure there’d be nothing she could do to distract Shay from whatever was happening to her body—a shifting of bone, a preparation for the baby to move—but then she blurted, “Mom used to sing to you, right?” Before Shay could answer, she’d started singing the first verse of Journey’s “Lights” because Shay hummed it to the baby.
The tension gradually eased from Shay’s back. “You can’t sing for shit. I loved it.” She pressed her forehead to the counter, slowed her breathing. Sighed. “I think I need to sit down.”
* * *
“I remember when Mom had you,” Shay told her. She kept making these noises like she was sipping air, giddy from the last contraction as she leaned into the couch cushions. It wouldn’t take much prodding before Kizzy had her in bed, whatever good that would do. “You came late. She made Dad walk with her around the yard for days. Said it helped. She cussed at him when they let him take me back. I get that now. If Teddy were here, I’d castrate him. God, I want him here.”
Later, while Shay rested and drank the water Kizzy’d brought her, Kizzy tried calling Teddy. He’d never set up his voicemail. When she called their dad and got the same result, she scrubbed her eyes and decided not to tell Shay.
* * *
Having a baby wasn’t supposed to happen quickly. Labor went on for hours, days, babies wedging themselves into place or getting twisted around. Yet Shay was already talking like she was ready to push.
“You’ve got to check me,” she told Kizzy and stripped her pants and underwear off.
The idea of her sister so vulnerable and open made Kizzy flinch. “For what?”
“To see how dilated I am.”
“The ambulance people can look.”
“Just do it for me, okay? And don’t you dare faint again. I need you.”
Kizzy shook her head. “I never went with you to appointments, I don’t know how to tell.”
The contraction that ripped through Shay had her screaming more from frustration than anything, but it still sent Kizzy running past her sister’s discarded clothes and toward the bathroom. She focused on the pulse beating in her fingertips as she pressed them to the door. Her hand itched, but digging at the bite would only hurt: she’d picked it the night before until it wept clear fluid and crusted into a scab.
On the other side of the door, Shay finally stopped yelling.
Kizzy smacked her hands against the wood until they ached.
* * *
“Kizz. Come on, open up.”
When Kizzy let her into the bathroom, Shay walked as if she were made of glass, threatening to fracture if she stepped wrong. That was a nicer way of thinking about it than saying she walked with pain. Thankfully, she wore her shorts. Dragging behind her was a pillow she positioned against the tub. She stopped breathing while Kizzy helped ease her down onto the bathmat. “Let’s not do that again,” Shay tried to laugh but was too short of breath for it to be anything but a ragged gasp.
Sweat slicked the hollow of Shay’s neck, her eyelashes spiked with leftover tears. During contractions, her face turned a throbbing red; the only color now was in her nose. Kizzy rubbed her knee until Shay’s legs fell open, head tipping to knock into Kizzy’s shoulder. One hand stayed spread like a starfish on her belly, but Shay knotted the fingers of her other hand with Kizzy’s, all those rings a momentary cold spot amid so much heat.
Soon Shay’s grip tightened toward painful. Kizzy winced at the dig of her sister’s fingernails but squeezed back. “Mama. Please. Please help us, please.”
Her mother said nothing. In the end, she never really did.
CORLEY LONGMIRE
Corley Longmire graduated with her MA from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her fiction can be found in Brink, West Trade Review, Stoneboat, Barely South Review, and is forthcoming in Passengers. She works on the editorial team at University Press of Mississippi. You can find her on Twitter @Corley_Longmire.