Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

I had to be good at something. I was the older sister. That’s what I could do. My favorite older sister job with Betsy was when I was in charge of her bad hand. Before we played, she put her hand into my lap. I had so many ideas. We pushed it into Play-Doh to see the dents it made. We molded chocolate chip cookie dough around it to make a cookie that was full of air.

When Betsy was six, we were sitting in the yard, and I was holding her bad hand, wondering what would happen if we put on a sprinkler, when she took it away and put it in her lap.

“Why is it different on me?”

“What? What’s different?”

“Tell me.”

I repeated what our father had told me. You’re the same as me, you just can’t take piano lessons.

She began to bang her bad hand on the grass.

“Give me a thumb,” she said to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Come on,” she said. She put her bad hand into my lap.

I had no idea what to do.

I took her into our bedroom, and we looked through our closet. My Potato Head. Clue. Nothing seemed right. Our fifty-two-color marker set.

“Sit,” I said. I held her bad hand in mine, and I began to draw. Bumps of aqua, olive green, burgundy. I wanted to find the color combination that would make her fingers sprout.

When I was finished, Betsy had five colorful fingers drawn on her bad hand. We had a good day. I carried her around the yard; we sang. I lifted her up, she giggled, her bad hand raised like a beautiful flower.

When she woke up the next morning, the colors had run. Her hand looked like it had been beaten up. “What did you do!” I shrieked. I was afraid I had deformed Betsy in a new, horrible way; now she would also be purple. But as soon as we had cleaned her off, Betsy turned around and put it in my lap.

“Do it again,” she said.

BETSY’S HAND WASN’T EXACTLY A HAND. HER ARM JUST ENDED IN a point, like a tail end of whipped cream. I thought it looked like Betsy’s arm just didn’t want to stop when it entered the world. I thought her arm sensed something wonderful in the world and was shooting right out to meet it. Like Betsy. She seemed always to have some new way to leave me behind. A few days after we had been sitting at the gate, she stood up and said, “I’m going to the beach.”

That was an older sister’s idea. She went ahead and stole it.

Betsy headed out the next day. I couldn’t believe it. I sat in the backyard and waited; I was afraid of the world. I opened the gate and started walking, walked until I hit the busy street. At the intersection, I stopped, feeling the car wind on my arms. I stood there, hoping, lifted my arms. But I was grounded without Betsy. There was nothing to do but turn around and go home.

The next day, I let her pull me with her. We took the blue bus to Santa Monica. We dropped off the bus and looked. The sand rolled, bluish-white, to the flat silver of the Pacific Ocean. Betsy pushed out toward the water so fast I thought she’d belly-down the air, skid toward the sparkling blue.

I was slower. The fear started from nothing sometimes. I felt it rise through my body. Betsy looked fine, flapping out the towel; all I could think of was our father pulling at me, trying to bring me back home. “The ocean’s polluted, Sherylline Rivers said,” I told her.

“It is not,” said Betsy.

I started unfolding the bus schedule. Betsy chewed her hair, watching me. “Wait,” she said.

She grabbed my arm and started walking. She led me past a few lifeguard stations and up a hill. From the top of the hill, I saw a group of boys standing and pissing into a ditch.

“How incredibly gross,” I said.

The boys were standing in a zigzag row along the ditch, which was shallow but dark with something I didn’t want to think about. We were far enough away to lose the smell, but we could see the thin yellow lines go down into the ditch. We had put our towels on the top of the hill and had watched the boys walk up to the ditch. They had unzipped themselves quickly and stood, hips forward, all aiming for the same place.

Betsy pointed at her discovery. “The one on the right could be named Tim,” she said. “Beside him might be Gus, and across could be Harvey.” I was impressed; that was more information than I knew about any boy.

“Lie down,” said Betsy, and we did; she said we could hold them on the lengths of our arms. She said if we could get all the boys in our arms, they would be ours. We lay facedown, fingertips touching, but we couldn’t quite do it; there were a couple of boys that kept getting away from us.

I breathed slowly, my chest pressing into the sand. I decided that I needed these boys to turn all at once and call: Sally . I imagined their voices filling me until I rose above them all. But the boys just stood, holding themselves, looking into the air. “John’s cute. Will’s a grosso. I don’t know about Ed,” said Betsy. Her good hand was in mine, hot and sticky. I could feel the air in my palm, and she pushed toward them, let go.

WE MADE IT TO THE HILL BY TEN EVERY DAY; WE COULD SPEND FOREVER watching the boys. They came by twos or threes to the ditch and left quickly; after a few days, we knew them all. “There’s the cute guy we saw yesterday, the one who thinks he’s James Dean,” Betsy might say. “Okay. He’s. . I think he’s. . okay. He’s going. God, what did he drink this morning?”

That was the fun part.

“Grape Kool-Aid,” I said. “A gallon.”

“Minute Maid, instant,” said Betsy.

James Dean yanked his shorts shut. He was replaced by Fonz Wannabe.

“Lemonade,” I said. We watched, open-mouthed, as he went and went and went.

The hill was the one place in the world where I began to feel light. My father was far away, in the den with the curtains shut, but we were at the top of this hill. For a few hours a day, I felt like the manager of everything. The sun burned my arms gold. The sand was warm under my stomach. Sometimes I imagined a random cloud floating by and landing on my perfect hand. We sat for hours, waiting to see who would walk up next. Betsy and I made up things the boys would say if they liked us.

“You are a total foxy babe,” said Betsy.

“You are one hunk o’woman,” I tried.

“You are a chick from my dream life,” she said.

Betsy and I rolled close to each other. For a second we owned the boys. We owned the rumpled shadows on the sand; we owned the water, a scatter of diamonds; we owned the sun. We owned all of it.

She leaned forward and quickly kissed me on the lips.

“Ow,” I said, though it didn’t hurt.

She kissed me again. She didn’t bump my nose that time either.

“Ow,” I said, again.

Betsy rolled away. I loved her.

“Ow,” she said.

UP ON THE HILL, BETSY AND I NEVER TALKED ABOUT OUR FATHER. WE did that only on the long block between our house and the bus stop; then, we discussed our various theories about what was wrong with him.

One day I told her I thought he wasn’t doing anything because he was part of a contest. “Like how much TV you can watch,” I said. “He’s going to win a trip to Hawaii for four.”

“No,” said Betsy. “But maybe he’s getting ready to go on Anything for Money .”

“He’s going to win the car ,” I shrieked.

We hugged each other and jumped up and down. We were proud of our father. But the idea did not seem right when we got closer to the house. Our father was not going to Hawaii.

I moved closer to Betsy. “There’s a bug on your shoulder!” I shrieked.

“There is not,” she said.

“Yes!” I shrieked. I swatted an invisible bug off her back and left my hand there. She didn’t move.

We also had different theories about what would make our father feel better. That day, I decided the answer was French braids. Betsy pulled her Seventeen from her tote bag, and we sat on the curb, braiding each other’s hair. We marched up to the house, arm in arm, giggling. We looked like new people. He was going to love us. I began to knock, but Betsy grabbed me, hard.