Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

“He’s not going to like them,” said Betsy.

“Yes, he will,” I said.

“No,” she squeaked. “He’s not going to know who we are.”

I didn’t know why I believed her, but it seemed better than believing myself. We destroyed our French braids in a little thunderstorm of work, quickly and viciously. We stood by the front door, quietly. Betsy put her hand on my back.

“There’s a bug on you,” she said.

WHEN BETSY WAS EIGHT, I TRIED TO SUCK HER FINGERS OUT. WE SAT, backs pressed against old games of Clue and Candy Land in our bedroom closet, legs tucked so our knees hit our chins. First I kissed her bad hand. I was delicate as a suitor: a circle of kisses around her wrist. “Eat it,” she said. Her bad hand was spongy and a little salty. My mouth rode it as though it were corn on the cob. I thought of fingers. I bent down and tried to wish them out of her, making us, finally, the same.

“What?” she asked, excited.

I wiped her on the carpet and inspected: nothing.

“What?” asked Betsy. She was three years from becoming pretty. She put her bad hand in my lap.

“Please,” she said to me.

IT HAPPENED BY THE SNACK STAND. BETSY WAS PLUCKING STRAWS out of the container while I held our drinks. A row of boys leaned against a wall that said in loopy, black writing, NO FAT CHICKS .

Betsy was struggling with the straw container. One of the boys, with a cute cotton candy pouf of brown hair, walked right up to her. He slapped a hand on the metal container. A few straws rumbled down. He plucked them out, very gently; then he held them out to Betsy as though they were a bouquet.

Betsy looked at the straws and, slowly, at the boy. He was just standing there, being a boy, but that was too much for me. I stared down at the sand. Betsy took the straw from him. And then she ran to me.

“What!”

“He said his name was Barry and he hung out at Station 5,” she said.

“Oh my God,” I said.

We ran across the sand, the ice in our drinks jingling.

“What does that mean?”

“He likes you,” I said.

She shrieked. “Do you think he’s cute?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she said. She stabbed her straw into her drink top. The boy was still there, watching. It took too long for him to disappear.

BETSY AND I BOTH CRAWLED INTO MY BED AT NIGHT. SHE LIKED TO run her bad hand along my arms. Starting at my wrist, she slid it up to my elbow; then she stopped and slid back down again. We wrapped our legs around each other, Betsy smoothing me over and over, and often fell asleep like that, my mouth wet against her hair.

Sometimes, when we held each other, she would try to figure things out. “Daddy chopped them off when I was born,” she whispered. “He came into the hospital and chopped them off with a knife.” Or, “Mommy shoved them back in when I was a baby. Probably when I was crying too hard.” Her imaginary good hand was destroyed by can openers or car washes; it was savaged by parents or music teachers; but it was never ruined by me. I waited for her to say it—“You, Sally, slammed it in a car door”—but, instead, she just looked at me, waiting for my answer.

“That is totally whacked,” was what I usually told her.

“Really?” she asked me. “You think so, Sally?”

AFTER BETSY HAD BEEN PICKED AT THE SNACK STAND, I DECIDED there had to be a change in our boy-watching. “The one who could be Jake looks too much like Donny Osmond,” I said. “The one who could be Hugh has weird lips.” Now all I could see were the mistakes in the boys. Pat’s tubby stomach. Brian’s spindly legs.

Betsy seemed loosened from her body, able to fly out and away whenever the chance came. “The one who might be Fred is a total hunkola,” she said. “The one who could be Jeff has cool hair.”

I told her she was blind. Or just sick. I was the older sister. I knew these things. She shrugged. Since the day of the boy by the snack stand, she was spending a lot of time looking in mirrors. I think she was wondering why she had been picked.

The day she went down, we were debating the one who could be Earl. “The most disgusting thing on the planet,” I said. “I mean, if I were born looking like that, I wouldn’t ever leave the house. .”

“Oh, come on. He’s not that bad,” she said.

“Not that bad,” I said. “Are you crazy? Are you in love with him?”

Betsy stood up.

“Bye,” she said.

She turned and sailed down to the ditch. I leaned over the edge of the hill, as though I could reel her back, but she was already there, she was already walking. The boys saw her, and a few comments came, like the first zippy pieces of popcorn that explode inside a pan:

“Hey.”

“You have a name?”

“Nice day, sweetie?”

“Wanna come hold it for me?”

“Bitch,” I said, quietly, into the sand. She stopped. I hoped she’d run then, make a break for the parking lot, but she didn’t; she was brave. She zeroed in on one boy who had finished and was standing away from the others. He was thin-armed, freckled, pressing a boogie board close to his chest. Betsy walked right over and stood beside him. She kept the tube top wrapped right around her bad hand. You couldn’t see it, couldn’t see that there was anything different about her. She was just a really pretty girl who was trying to make this boy like her. The boy kept his eyes on the sand, and she kept talking. Then she leaned forward and touched his arm with her bad hand.

I thought he’d know it in a second, feel the bump through her tube top and run. I thought that would teach her, and all those boys would come running to me. But she had him. My sister made him like her. The boy toed the sand, smiling. And even though he wasn’t a very cute boy, even though he was probably named something like Earl, I had never wanted so much to be her.

I flopped onto my back and closed my eyes so she wouldn’t know that I had been watching. When I opened them, she was there.

“You know what?” she said.

“What.”

“I think he liked it.”

“What?”

And she held up her bad hand.

“ That? ”

Betsy smiled.

“I think he did,” she said.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN OUR FATHER FELL ASLEEP IN FRONT OF THE TV, we slipped in low, flat, to sit beside him. Once we made it, once we were finally beside our father, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Betsy sat, staring into the bright white of the TV; then she unwrapped her tube top and took out her bad hand. It glowed in the light of the TV set. I thought it looked as though it entered the world more purely, simply, than a complete hand would. Betsy pulled my father’s feet onto her lap; then she began to rub her bad hand back and forth along them. “Idiot,” I hissed. “What are you doing?” I thought this was it. She was going to be Queen of the Hill; now she would cure our father in some sick mutant way.

“Fine. Fine,” I hissed. “Wake him up. Just kill him, while you’re at it.” But nothing happened. Betsy stopped.

“Bitch,” she whispered. “I’m not doing anything.” Neither of us moved from our father. We looked at him for a long time.

AS SOON AS WE GOT TO THE HILL THE NEXT DAY, SHE ANNOUNCED, “I’m going to kiss a boy for an hour, and I’m going to tell him my name is Sally.”

She ran down the hill; I followed. She put me against a truck. I started to go back to my towel but stopped: I had to see what she was going to do with my name. Betsy steered clear of the boy she had picked the last time and found one I thought was cute. Clutching the boy with her good hand, she led him over to the truck. She stopped about ten feet from me, turned him around so he couldn’t see me. All I could see of the boy was his pinkish back. She stepped close to him, fiddling her good hand in his hair. I stood against the truck, pretending to look at the seagulls circling. Then Betsy, my sister, reached up and kissed him.