Mom came into the kitchen. In her arms she carried a small girl with blonde ringlets and large blue eyes almost the same color as hers. "Isn't she adorable, Jory, Bart?" She kissed a round rosy cheek while the big blue eyes looked from one to the other of us. "Cindy is exactly two years and two months and five days old. Nicole's landlady was delighted to be rid of what she thought a heavy burden." She gave us a happy smile. "Remember when you asked for a sister, Jory? I told you then I couldn't have more children. Well, as you can see, sometimes God works in mysterious ways. I'm crying inside for Nicole, who should have lived to be eighty. But her spine was broken and she had multiple internal injuries--"
She left the rest unsaid. I knew it was terribly sad for someone as young and pretty as nineteen-yearold Nicole Nickols to die just so we could have the sister I'd only mentioned casually a long time ago.
"Was Nicole your patient?" I asked Dad.
"No, son, she wasn't. But since she was a friend, and your mother's student, we were notified of her failure to respond to medical treatment. We rushed to the hospital to be with her. I suppose neither of you heard the phone ring about four this morning."
I stared at my new sister. She was very pretty in her pink pajamas with feet. Her soft curls fluffed out around her face. She clung to my mother and stared at strangers before she ducked her head and hid from our eyes. "Bart," said Mom with a sweet smile, "you used to do that. If you hid your face, you thought we couldn't see you just because you couldn't see us."
"Get her out of here!" he yelled, his face a red mask of anger. "Take her away! Put her in the grave with her mother! Don't want no sister! I hate her, hate her!"
Silence. No one could speak after this outburst.
Then, while Mom stood on looking too shocked even to breathe, Dad reached to control Bart, who jumped up to hit Cindy! Then Cindy was crying, and Emma was glaring at my brother.
"Bart, I have never heard anything so ugly and cruel," said Dad as he lifted Bart up and sat him on his knee. Bart wiggled and squirmed and tried to get away, but he couldn't escape. "Go to your room and stay there until you can learn to have some
compassion for others. You would feel very lucky in Cindy's place."
Grumbling under his breath, Bart stomped to his room and slammed his door.
Turning, Dad picked up his black bag and prepared to leave. He gave my mother a chastising look. "Now do you see why I objected to adopting Cindy? You know as well as I that Bart has always had a very jealous streak. A child as lovely and young as Cindy wouldn't have been two days in an orphanage before some lucky couple seized her up."
"Yes, Chris, you are right, as always. If Cindy had been taken into legal custody she would have been adopted by others--and you and I would have gone daughterless all our lives. As it is I have a little girl who seems so much like Carrie to me."
My father grimaced as if from sharp pain. Mom was left sitting at the table with Cindy on her lap, and for the first time since I could remember, he didn't kiss her goodbye. And she didn't call out, "Be careful."
In no time at all Cindy had me enchanted. She toddled from here to there, wanting to touch everything and then have a taste. A nice warm feeling rushed over me to see the little girl so well cared for, so loved and pampered. The two of them together looked like mother and daughter. Both dressed in pink, with pink ribbons in their hair, only Cindy had on white socks with lace.
"Jory will teach you to dance when you're old enough." I smiled at Mom as I passed her on my way to ballet class. Quickly Mom got up to hand Cindy over to Emma, then she joined me in her car that was still parked in our wide garage. "Jory, I think Bart will soon learn to like Cindy a little more, don't you?"
I wanted to say, no he wouldn't, but I nodded, not letting her know how worried I was about my brother. Trouble, trouble, boil and double . . .
"Jory, what was that you just mumbled?"
Gee, I didn't know I said it aloud. "Nothing, Mom. Just repeating something I overheard Bart saying to himself last night. He cries in his sleep, Mom. He calls for you, screaming because you've run away with your lover." I grinned and tried to look lighthearted. "And I didn't even know you play around."
She ignored my facetious remark. "Jory, why didn't you tell me before that Bart has nightmares?"
How could I tell her the truth?--that she was much too taken up with Cindy to pay attention to anyone else. And never, never should she give anyone more attention than Bart. Even me.
"Momma, Momma!" I heard Bart cry out in his sleep that night. "Where are you? Don't leave me alone! Momma, please don't leave me. Don't love him more than me. I'm not bad, really not bad . . . just can't help what I do sometimes. Momma
Momma .
Only crazy people couldn't help what they did. One crazy person in our family was enough. We didn't need another living under our roof.
So . . . it was up to me to save Bart from himself. Up to me to straighten out something crooked that had begun a long time ago. And way back in the shadowed recesses of my brain, there
were vague, unsettlingmemories of something that had troubled me years ago when I was too young to understand. Too young to put the jigsaw pieces together.
Trouble was, I'd been doing so much thinking about the past, that now it was waking up, and I could remember a man with dark hair, a man different from Daddy Paul. A man Mom used to call Bart
Winslow-- and those were my half brother's first and second names.
My Heart's Desire
. Wicked little girl, that Cindy. Didn't care who saw her naked. Didn't care who saw her sit on the potty. Didn't care about being decent or clean. Took my toy cars and chewed on them.