As Beth’s own chest blossomed, Meg warned her about boys harassing her even more than they might me. Meredith said that wasn’t true, that boys can harass any type of girl. I didn’t know which was true, but hoped that I never had to find out.
Meg used her looks to her advantage for sure. She always tried to give Beth advice on how to handle boys, but Beth always just blushed and shook her head, not soaking any of Meg’s words in. I figured Meg knew what she was talking about. Especially living in a town full of soldiers. Meg loved it. She always said that she loved a man in uniform. Like her boyfriend, John—
“What the hell?” Meg jerked up from her bed and let out a little scream, startling me. She looked around, clearly confused, her dark hair stuck to her mouth. “What the hell are you doing, Jo? You scared the shit out of me.” Her hands swiped across her face and tucked her hair behind her ears.
I covered my mouth with the books and tried to stifle a laugh. “I was playing Santa.”
Meg smiled at me and shoved her hand under her pillow. Her expression grew into excitement, and I remember thinking how young she looked when she pulled the book out. Her eyes scanned my gift, and even though it wasn’t makeup, she beamed at me, even squealed a little when she pulled the book to her chest. “Thank you.” I covered my mouth when I smiled, but Meg saw it. “It’s no Naked palette, but I knew you would come through, Jo.”
I liked the idea of that, that I would be expected to do something for my sisters. Beth was usually the one who would think of everyone before herself. Not this year; this year, it was me.
Maybe we would all get along that holiday, I thought.
“There, I did my good deed for the year.”
Back to form, she rolled her eyes. “You could have just gotten your license so I wouldn’t have to be the only one chauffeuring Amy and Beth around. That would have been a better present.”
“Beth never goes anywhere.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really.”
I stared at Meg’s poster of an actor she liked. He was in nearly every movie that year. She followed him on Twitter and thought she was going to meet him when he came to a convention in New Orleans that past fall. When he got engaged the week before, Meg gave away her meet-and-greet tickets.
“Just remind Meredith to take you to get your license. You’ve had your permit for seven months, dude.”
“Seriously, Meg, it’s seven in the morning, chill. I’ve asked Meredith to take me three times this week. She’s too busy.”
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “Doing what?”
I shrugged, stepping toward the door. I didn’t have an answer, and I still had three books to deliver.
“Meredith’s doing more than you, Princess,” I reminded her.
Meg stuck her middle finger up at me.
“You should read the book, really, this time.”
When I turned back around to look at her, she was opening the book at a random page. I was hoping the words would attach themselves to her the way they did me. Lately I had begun to feel like I wanted to get closer to Meg; I wanted to grow up. I wanted all three of my sisters to find themselves in the words of the artist. Especially Meg. She could relate to more of the poems than the rest of us, I was sure of it. Some of the poems made me crave to fall in love with someone; I even craved the heartbreak after.
Next, I went to Beth and Amy’s room across the hall. It was dark inside and the door creaked when I pulled it open. Amy had taped a SPRING GIRLS ONLY sign on her door last night when she got in a fight with her friend Tory. Amy never kept friends long, but when you have three sisters who love you unconditionally, it doesn’t matter as much. We had to put up with her bossiness, Tory didn’t. Neither did Sara, or Penelope, or Yulia . . .
Amy’s half of the room was a cluttered mess. It was worse than Meg’s and my sides put together. Beth kept her side spotless, and Amy’s sloppiness drove Beth half-crazy, and she cleaned it once a week. Amy always waited it out.
Amy’s bed was empty. I glanced over to Beth’s, expecting to see Beth snuggling our littlest sister in her slightly bigger bed, but, nope, Amy wasn’t anywhere.
I slid my fingers across the soft black cover of the book, stopping on the illustration of a bee on the front. Even the cover of that book was perfect. I loved every single poem inside.
When I lifted Beth’s pillow, she woke up. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and pressed my finger to my mouth to silence her. “Nothing, go back to sleep. Sorry.”
When I was done playing Santa, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I was happy to find the four stockings were stuffed with candy and surprised to see three gifts on the counter. They had been laid down in a straight line next to the empty fruit basket that my mom had bought for decoration but refused to put fake fruit in because somehow that would be ridiculous.
The three gifts were left unwrapped, so they were meant to be from Santa. None of us believed in Santa anymore, though Meredith refused to acknowledge that. She wanted her girls to stay as young as possible for as long as possible, which was hard when our world was so full of hate and war and injustice. But, I had to admit that when I was staring at the line of unopened gifts, my heart leaped a little when my eyes landed on the last gift, a book.
The words The Bell Jar were clear on the front in purple. I had mentioned wanting this semi-autobiography written by one of my favorite writers, Sylvia Plath—one of the only things I hadn’t read by her. Meredith didn’t care for my dark obsession with the woman whose name carries such a black flag around, but I had been utterly fascinated by her ever since I stumbled upon a post about her on Tumblr, before my dad made me delete my account. I hugged the book to my chest. Meredith came through this year.
She was doing the best she could with my dad in the Middle East for the fourth time in eight years. She had a lot on her shoulders, to be two parents instead of one. It was hard enough for her to be one, given that she had four teenage daughters. I grabbed the book and gently touched the woman’s silhouette on the cover. It was beautiful; my chest throbbed. Only books could make me feel this way. I wished I could write a great novel, even if I was more of a column writer. I wanted to work for Vice, or maybe e
ven the New York Times.
Who knows? If I can get out of this Army town, I can do anything.
Meg’s gift was a bag to hold more of her makeup, and Beth’s was a cookbook, which was really a gift for our mom, too, because this meant Beth was another step closer to being everyone’s servant. Beth literally did everything in our house and was hardly ever thanked for her servitude. Her quiet order just came and went so naturally around us—picking up Meg’s makeup, tossing my socks into the hamper, then washing all of our clothes. On the bright side, this book promised thirty-minute meals, so Beth would have more time to do everyone’s laundry.
The sound of the fridge opening startled me, and I dropped Beth’s book on the counter. Amy stood there, searching the shelves in the fridge for breakfast. A glass jar of jelly fell to the floor, hitting my bare foot. It rolled past me and under the kitchen island.
“Shh, you’re going to wake everyone up!” I scolded.
Amy’s Christmas-themed pajamas draped over her small frame. They were covered in snowmen and pretzels. The pretzels didn’t make much sense, but I remember loving them five years ago when my parents got them for me for Christmas. Sometimes I felt bad for Amy, the youngest of us all, because she always got stuck wearing all of our hand-me-downs. With each daughter born, my parents had to make their dollars stretch that much further. When we were younger, it was the reason Meredith could never work; a sergeant in the Army didn’t make enough to feed six mouths, unless he’s deployed, of course, so there was no way they could have paid for child care for four kids. Now that we’re older, Meredith’s lack of a degree meant she could get few jobs around Fort Cyprus anyway. Only a few of my friends’ moms worked, so it wasn’t anything out of the norm. A few moms I knew sold those scented-wax cubes or leggings, to make a little extra money for the house, but it still wasn’t much.