The Secret Sister Read Free

their sons who had died on a trip to New Guinea, a horrible death though the exact circumstances were unknown.
    The airplane has taken off. A smiling young woman with golden tiger eyes is serving fruit juice; I’m in Business Class, I paid a pretty penny for this trip.
    Horrible deaths sometimes lie behind donations and charitable foundations. I didn’t want to go to Blue Mountain. I had a bad feeling that day. I held my school bag tightly to my chest, as if carrying it to my side would cause all the misfortunes in the world to rain down on me. Walking beside me, without a care in the world, you were humming a tune. We all had the same plaid schoolbags; our school was ordered and respectable. It was Christmas and all we disciplined pupils, like the Magi bearing gifts, were to offer food and money to the most destitute of people. But for some reason, I didn’t want to be there.
Let’s go somewhere else, Amalia, come on, let’s go while there’s still time. Let’s go to the docks, let’s go down to Battery Park, let’s get on a boat, let’s take the Staten Island ferry, let’s soak up some rays, let’s see how the Statue of Liberty looks from the water. Let’s get out of here, Amalia.
I didn’t tell you anything. We stayed at the party. The residents of the shelter all stood together, wearing clean clothes and hesitant smiles, looking at us as awkwardly as we looked at them. We offered them the food and sweets. Our teacher gave them an envelope with nine hundred dollars. “God bless you,” came to our ears from every corner and then we all sang: “
Have a holly, jolly Christmas; / It’s the best time of the year . . . / . . . And when you walk down the street / Say hello to friends you know / And everyone you meet
.” Your voice stood out. Your divine voice, as Grandma used to say. And so the party was about to come to an end in such a lovely way, compassionately, generously, with a pleasant tune coming from the record player and the day gloriously ending. A sense of relief. Nothing bad had happened. I had been wrong to worry. That tightness in my chest had gone—and then it happened. A dark-skinned man, in his fifties, with a crazed look, a tense smile and rotten teeth, came up to me and, before anyone could restrain him, he grabbed my wrist with the strength of a prehistoric animal and held my hand captive in his own. I tried to pull away, terrified and repulsed, trying to take back my stolen hand, and then he whispered, but loud enough to be heard by everyone, and certainly by Amalia: “Son, you, you, my son, you are my boy.” I was struggling with the beast, I don’t know for how long. At some point I freed my hand. My plaid schoolbag fell to the ground. “Time to go,” said Miss Jones. She said it blithely, as if nothing had happened or in order to pretend nothing had happened. My heart was a lump of dry earth, one breath and it would fall apart. I bent down and picked up my bag, I held it tightly as if it was my earthen heart. And then Christo­pher my schoolmate’s voice was heard:
    â€œMa’am, that dark gentleman, that man who grabbed Jonathan, did you notice, ma’am, that he looked just like Jonathan, that he was his spitting image?”
    And nobody spoke, except for you, Amalia, your eyes spoke and said:
    â€œAre you crazy? That’s nonsense. That madman looked nothing like my brother!”
    â€œ
Yes, that’s exactly what I had said then, Jonathan. It was a lie.
”
    And then the visit was over. You stayed on at school for your music class and I went home alone. They were waiting for me and the table was set. It was dinnertime. I sat down in my seat, and when they asked me “What happened in school today?” I replied, “I met my father. I saw him today for the first time.”
    Menelaos was thunderstruck, Grandma went to the kitchen to get some water, and Mama kept