Heather Gudenkauf - These Things Hidden

We are complete opposites. Yin and yang. Where I am tall and solid, Brynn is smaller and delicate. I’m a big sturdy sunflower, always turning my face to the sun, and Brynn is prairie smoke, wispy and indistinct, head down, nodding with the breeze. Though I never told her, I loved her more than anything or anyone else in the world. I took her for granted, assumed she would always be at my beck and call, assumed that she would always look up to me. But I don’t seem to exist to her anymore. I can’t blame her, really.

Letter after letter I wrote to Brynn, but she never wrote back to me. That has been the worst thing about prison. Now that I’m free, I can go to Brynn, I can make her see me, make her listen to me. That’s all I want. Ten minutes with her, then everything will be all right again.

As we get in the car and drive away from Cravenville, my stomach flips with excitement and fear. I see Devin hesitate. “Maybe we should stop somewhere and get something to eat first, then get you settled in at Gertrude House. After that, you can call your parents,” Devin says.

I don’t want to go to the halfway house. I’ll probably be the one convicted of the most heinous crime there—even a heroin-addicted prostitute arrested for armed robbery and murder would get more compassion than I ever will. It makes much more sense for me to stay with my parents, in the home where I grew up, where I have some good memories. Even though a terrible thing happened there, it’s where I should be, at least for now.

But I can see the answer on Devin’s face. My parents don’t want to see me, don’t want anything to do with me, don’t want me to come home.

I get Allison’s letters. Sometimes I wish that I could write back to her, go see her, act like a sister to her. But something always stops me. Grandma tells me I should talk to Allison, try to forgive her. But I can’t. It’s like something broke inside me that night five years ago. There was a time I would have given anything to be a real sister to Allison, to be close with her like we were when we were little. In my eyes, she could do anything. I was so proud of her, not jealous like people thought. I never wanted to be Allison; I just wanted to be myself, which no one, especially my parents, could understand.

Allison was the most amazing person I ever knew. She was smart, athletic, popular and beautiful. Everyone loved her, even though she wasn’t all that nice. She was never exactly mean to anyone, but she didn’t have to try to get people to like her. They just did. She moved through life so easily and all I could do was stand by and watch.

Before Allison became Linden Fall’s golden girl, before my parents had set all their hopes on her, before she stopped reaching out for my hand to let me know everything was going to be okay, Allison and I were inseparable. We were practically twins, though we didn’t look anything alike. Allison was—is—fourteen months older than I am. Tall with long, sleek, white-blond hair. She has silvery-blue eyes that could look right through you or make you feel as if you’re the only one who mattered, depending on her mood. I was small and plain, with wild hair the color of a dried-out oak leaf.

But at one time, it was as if we thought with the same mind. When Allison was five and I was four, we begged our parents to let us share a bedroom, even though our house had five bedrooms and we could have taken our pick. But we wanted to be together. When our mother finally said yes, we pushed our matching twin beds together and had our father hang yards of pale pink netting above our beds so we could draw it around us like a tent. Inside, we would spend hours playing cat’s cradle or looking at books together.

Our mother’s friends would gush over our relationship. “I don’t know how you do it,” they would say to her. “How did you manage to get your girls to get along so well?”

Our mother would smile proudly. “It’s all about teaching respect,” she explained in the snobby way she had. “We expect them to treat each other well and they do. And we feel it’s important that we spend a lot of time together as a family.”

Allison would just roll her eyes when my mother talked like this and I would hide a smile behind my hand. We did spend a lot of time together as a family—meaning, we were in the same room—but we never really talked to one another.

Allison was twelve when she decided to move out of our room into a bedroom of her own. I was devastated. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you want your own room?”

“I just do,” Allison said, brushing past me with an armload of clothes.

“You’re mad. What did I do?” I asked as I followed her into her new room, which was right next to the one we shared. The one that would be mine alone.

“Nothing, Brynn. You did nothing. I just want some privacy,” Allison said as she arranged her clothing in her new closet. “I’m just next door. It’s not like you’ll never see me again. Jesus, Brynn, you’re not going to cry, are you?”

“I’m not crying,” I answered, blinking back tears.

“Come on, then, help me move my bed,” she said, grabbing me by the arm and leading me back to our room. My room. As we pulled and shoved the mattress through the door and into the hallway, I knew that things would never be the same again. I watched as she arranged her school and athletic medals, trophies and ribbons around her new room and realized we were no longer anything alike. Allison was becoming more and more involved with her friends and extracurricular activities. She had been asked to join a very competitive traveling volleyball team. She spent nearly every free minute exercising, studying or reading. And all I wanted to do was be with Allison.

My parents had no sympathy for me. “Brynn,” my mother said. “Grow up. Of course Allison wants her own room. It would be strange if she didn’t.”

I always knew I was a little different from the other kids, but I never thought I was strange until my mother said this. I started looking at myself in the mirror to see if I could see the oddness that others saw in me. My brown curly hair, if not combed into surrender, would spring wildly around my head. What was left of my eyebrows formed short, thin commas above my brown eyes, giving me a constantly surprised expression. My nose was average—not too large, not too small. I knew that someday I would have very nice teeth, but when I was eleven they were imprisoned in braces, being forced into perfect alignment like straight-backed little soldiers lined up for duty. Except for my eyebrows, I didn’t think I looked very strange. I decided it must be what was inside of me that was so weird. I vowed to keep that part hidden. I stayed in the shadows, watching, never offering an opinion or an idea. Not that anyone ever asked. It was easy to fade into the background with Allison around.

That first night, sleeping by myself in our room, I cried. The room felt much too large for one person. It looked naked with my one small bookshelf and dresser, a few stuffed animals strewn around. I cried because the sister I loved didn’t seem to want me around anymore. She left me behind without a backward glance.

Until she was sixteen and finally needed me again.

I wasn’t even supposed to be at home that night. I was going to the movies with friends—until my mother found out that Nathan Canfield would be there, too. She would have none of that. He had gotten caught drinking or something and he wasn’t the kind of friend I should be associating with, she said. So I was forbidden to go out that night.

I often wonder how different my life would have been— all our lives would have been—if I had been sitting in some movie theater that night, eating popcorn with Nathan Canfield, instead of at home.