“She didn’t leave the house?”
“No, ma’am. Never.”
“Why wasn’t Miriam medicated all the time?”
“Joseph said if God wanted her well, he would make her well.”
“But sometimes Joseph gave her the medicine?”
“Yes, ma’am. When Ms. Amber Adler came.”
“The caseworker?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where did Joseph get the pills? If he didn’t take her to the doctor?”
“In the medicine cabinet. In the bathroom.”
“Yes, Claire, but how did the pills get there, if there was no doctor? You likely need a prescription for such medication. A pharmacy.”
I say that I don’t know. Joseph would tell me to fetch them, the little plastic baggies—she stops me there: “Plastic baggies?” she asks, and I say yes, and she scribbles something down on that notebook of hers beside the word z-e-a-l-o-t which I’ve been reading upside down for half an hour now, and still have no idea what it means. He’d pull some pills out and force Miriam to take them. Sometimes he had to pry her mouth open while I popped in the pills and then we’d wait, for as long as it took, for her to swallow. Miriam didn’t like the pills.
But once or twice a year, Joseph would get her to take the pills for a while, and she’d come out from the room and bathe herself, and we’d open up all the windows and it would be my job to get that god-awful Miriam smell out of the home before Ms. Amber Adler, in her junker car with the too-big Nike bag, arrived. He’d get out his toolbox and start fixing things around the house, paint over stains that had cropped up here and there around the home. Only when Amber Adler came to call did the dead lightbulbs get replaced, and squeaky hinges get oiled.
Joseph always had a new dress for me as opposed to the small, musty duds he dropped off in my room in a large white garbage bag, like he’d picked it up at the end of someone’s drive on garbage day. Once he even brought me a pair of shoes, patent leather which were far too big, but he told me to put them on nonetheless so Ms. Adler could see.
The caseworker brought letters from Paul and Lily Zeeger. She said she could give the Zeegers my new address, but after Joseph tore the photos of Momma into shreds, I said no thanks, that was all right, she could just bring the letters along when she came. Lily Zeeger wrote beautiful letters about my baby sister, Rose (Lily) with the name Lily always in parenthesis just in case I didn’t know who it was she was talking about. She said that Rose (Lily) was growing bigger and bigger every day, and that from the photos she’s seen, Rose (Lily) was looking more and more like our Momma, who was a stunning, sensational, dazzling woman (as if the many compliments might negate the fact that she’s dead). She said that Rose (Lily) was learning her ABCs, and how to count to ten, and that she could sing as well as the Yellow Warbler which, according to Big Lily, surrounded their Colorado home, and there were photos attached, of a charming little A-frame home snuggled right in the middle of the woods, with mountains in the background and a tiny dog, like a cocker spaniel or something, running around the legs of my Lily. And there she is, Little Lily, with the ringlets of black hair, black like Momma’s, that had grown longer and were clipped back in ladybug barrettes, and she was wearing a bright yellow sundress with ruffles and a bow as big as her head. And she was smiling. Paul Zeeger stood on a balcony in a shirt and striped tie, looking down at Little Lily, and I imagined Big Lily took the picture ’cause she was nowhere to be seen. Even the dog looked happy. The letter said how Rose (Lily) was taking a ballet class and loved to practice her pirouettes and relevés for Paul and Lily, and how she absolutely adored her cerise leotard and tutu, and that in the fall Rose (Lily) would begin preschool at the Montessori school in town.
“What’s a Montessori school?” I asked Ms. Amber Adler and she looked at me and smiled and said, “It’s a good thing,” while patting my hand.
I asked her why Paul and Lily Zeeger didn’t have any kids of their own. Why’d they need my Lily? And she said sometimes things just worked out that way. One or the other of them couldn’t have kids. It just wasn’t meant to be. And I thought of Joseph saying that if God wanted Miriam to be well, he’d make her well, and I thought that if God wanted Paul and Lily to have kids, he would have given them kids. Kids of their own. Not my Lily. Lily was mine.