House of Stars

Daddy and the other men from the neighborhood came splash- ing down the creek toward our house, Daddy carrying Sissy in his arms and she writhing against him, raving. Mama cried into her hands. Above her, the cypresses were nodding their long gray hair. Mama ran into the house, shouting, “What’s she saying, what is she talking about?” while Daddy wrestled Sissy into the tub and showered her with cold water. She sat shivering and staring, no longer screaming now but muttering to herself. “Don’t you tell them,” she had said to me, “don’t you say a word.” And I didn’t. I just stood there in the door of the bathroom as Mama brushed her slick hair and scrubbed the dirt from her legs and ran her fingers over the red welts of insect bites. But I knew what she was talking about. She was talking about those games we played, about the star-nosed mole and the creek-side tea parties, our china cups filled with water from the creek because it was black like tea. No matter how many times Mama told us not to drink it, we always did. “Where the creek meets the river,” Sissy had said, “he has prepared his house for me.” She showed me the ring made of braided lovegrass. “When he kisses me the stars of his nose will tickle my cheek,” she said. She put a finger to her lips and a finger to mine, and then she leaped up and ran down the bank until she reached the bend and disappeared.