Natasha Elander
ENGL 2250/Kilpatrick
Short Story Revision
“Black Rabbits”
I pulled the paddle brush through Chrissy’s charcoal hair, untangling the last knots before
using a sturdy comb to part the thick, damp strands to begin braiding. My hands criss-crossing
and delicately weaving, picking up one heavy layer of black after another, until I finally had the
slender plait laying long and complete down the 7 year old girls back, the shadow color
contrasting sharply with her pink and white striped pajama shirt.
“You’re all done!” I smiled, wrapping a hair elastic at the bottom. Tomorrow, when the
braid was let loose, Chrissy’s dried hair would be midnight waves crinkled against the baby blue
cotton sundress we had bought at the mall last week. Chrissy had seen it and exclaimed, “Look!
Mom’s favorite!” The blue glowing against the yellow-gold of her skin, white and periwinkle
forget-me-nots embroidered on the collar.
Chrissy’s mom, my older sister, had died one year ago yesterday; the quake whose
aftershocks left Chrissy with a crumbled mass of what had once been her entire life. That’s when
the girl came into my empty home, her shaking eyes like the pet rabbit I accidentally left outside
in an overnight frost and killed when I was 13. I had never been a good pet parent, first the dead
rabbit, then a lost lizard, finally a handful of starving fish floating in a glass bowl, all confirming
that I was too preoccupied with myself to watch over another living thing. I wasn’t destined to be
braiding hair and tucking a kid in at night, but there Chrissy was, and here we are now.
Chrissy reached her hands behind her head, cautiously caressing the piled hair, feeling
the slinky strands and the hard stretch in the elastic tie. She examined the hair in her pink vanity
mirror, turning away and checking the back with a little hand-mirror, a trick I taught her when
she first moved in and would cry that I couldn’t braid the obsidian threads correctly, not like her
mother, whose nimble fingers wove warmth and fullness into each plait. She would cry that she
hated me, that she just wanted to go home, to feel the soft bristles of her mom’s vintage Parisian
beauty brush in her hair.
I just couldn’t do it like her mother. I had always been horrible when it came to hair; it
was another area where Natalie’s strengths had surpassed mine. Her hair flowed in easy waves
down her back, holding all of the curls that my hair dropped. When I was seven, I took a pair of
safety scissors to my flat strands and hacked them off under the kitchen table. Thirteen-year-old
Natalie had found me and ripped the scissors from my hands, calling for our mother. At the hair
salon, she helped me flip through magazines, telling the hair stylist how to fix my mangled head.
Twenty years later, I still ask the stylist for almost the same exact cut.
It took me weeks to master the simple braid, the dexterity that completing the weave
required surprised me, and the anxiety of holding the reins on this little animal I had inherited
caused my hands to shake and drop the pieces of hair before I could knot them together. Chrissy
suffered many faulty braids, wonky ponytails, and hat-only days during those first weeks, the
weeks that had been the worst.
I lost my sister in what should have been a routine trip to the grocery store, which should
have resulted in string cheese, ingredients for peanut butter cookies, and eating breakfast for
dinner, but instead ended with her dark green Toyota 4Runner t-boned in an intersection.
Natalie’s car rolled twice before coming to a rest on the driver’s side, her head riddled with glass
and rear-view mirror shards, her blonde hair bleeding red.
She didn’t die quickly. The roses draining from her lips slowly in a gloom-filled hospital
bed. The late autumn-gold flecks in her mahogany eyes never to be seen again. She didn’t die
quickly. She died with cuts and bruises and internal bleeding and all of her family crying at her
bedside.
If we were all wrecks, her husband Wynn was a disaster. The hospital offered to keep
him overnight, to prevent him from killing himself, and to prevent us from killing him through
what would have been our own neglect. The shock was more than any of us could bear.
“You’ve gotten good, Aunt Caroline.” Chrissy admired her reflection in her vanity, then
bounded over to her full-length door mirror and spun circles, taking herself in from all angles. I
had gotten good, finally. We nodded approval together, our eyes full of that tiny lingering
disappointment that ebbs when you complete something that had taken up so much of your time,
and I saw that flicker of myself in her, even though she wasn’t really my own.
She technically wasn’t Natalie and Wynn’s either. Wynn never wanted kids; never felt
that raising a life could be as fulfilling as all those young parents preached. But he loved Natalie
passionately enough to give her any gift, and she wanted a daughter, so they tried. When the
fertility treatments didn’t work, they adopted baby Chrissy from some Asian village that
somehow seemed irrelevant now. All I really remember is that they boarded the plane as a young
married couple and returned home as parents. Nothing was complicated for Natalie and Wynn.
“Hey kiddo, let’s get you to bed.” I called to Chrissy, who was still spinning in her
mirror. She shook her head in my direction, her hands fingering the blue dress hanging from her
closet door. “Chrissy.” I tested my serious-mom voice, something I was still working to perfect,
like waffles and tea parties and getting her to school on time. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow,
right?” I regretted the words almost instantly; I hated using any of these memorial
responsibilities or obligations against her, hated reminding her that this game of dress-up wasn’t
just for a family party.
The smile that had stretched her cheeks in front of the crystal reflection straightened out,
her eyebrows furrowing in a serious way that must have been learned from those TV dads who
spent time doing bills at kitchen tables. I sighed, berating myself under my breath.
She hopped back to the bed, landing on my lap. In my arms, she was summertime.
Flowery no-tears shampoo and conditioner fused with that naturally sweet scent little kids had,
each different and tailored, distinct. She always smelled of over-ripe strawberries and the sticky
residue watermelon trickled down your fingers after each bite, familiar and comforting. Some
nights I would watch her sleep; her bill-paying brows curled at some dream, covers pulled up to
her chin, and just breathe her in, until I was able to find a dream for myself.
I held her tight and warm, my vision beginning to smudge as my eyes were overcome
with sea water salt tears, ones I’m sure were pooling in Chrissy’s eyes too. I held my breath and
then released it, freed it. “We’ll do good, won’t we?” I asked, pleading for confirmation. She
nodded into my belly. There was nothing more to say. Sometimes it got so quiet, it was easy to
understand why Wynn left and followed Natalie’s sound.
Wynn couldn’t find balance without Natalie. He had some sort of anxiety that left him
twitchy and nervous when she left his side. She spoke for him, creating worlds with words that
he couldn’t even imagine, expressing hours of what he wanted to say in a matter of a few
seconds. And Natalie loved him, loved that he’d reach to hold her hand first, and loved that he’d
spend days painting the view outside their front window, or hours cooking birthday dinners for
her and Chrissy. They worked together in ways that few people had understood, playing off the
needs the other had to form a whole person.
Wynn survived a week after Natalie ceased to be. He hung himself in their garage, drunk
off bourbon and loss and undying love. His dark hair was dirty, his face unshaved and rough. He
hadn’t even bothered to put on socks or shoes. I discovered him on what had become an
everyday stop by their home, to check on him and Chrissy, to see how they were enduring.
That day Chrissy was over at my mother’s house, baking cookies unenthusiastically and
trying to comprehend that her mother wasn’t there to help with the frosting. I searched the entire
place, my body buzzing and flesh prickling in anticipation of what I think I already knew. When
I discovered him, not even a sway left, no chance I could have been able to save him in time, the
surprise knocked me to the floor. For several minutes I had to sit and stare, tears finally
waterfalling down my face before I was coherent enough to dial for flashing lights.
I was right in believing that my hesitation would make no difference, unlike Natalie he
was gone almost instantly, his neck breaking in multiple places and severing his spine. But
anyone you ask now would tell you he had been dead that entire last week; that his last breath
left his body just as Natalie’s did. We had all seen it, together in that tomb of a hospital room, the
escape of his soul, the grey eyes. Nothing, not even having little Chrissy to think of, could bring
him back.
At his funeral, I swear I could see the purple, ringed bruise around his neck, glaring at me
beneath his white, pressed shirt. I wanted to scream and shake him awake, to curse at him for
even thinking he could leave Chrissy and me behind, but in the casket, he looked too pathetic for
even me to hate.
“I miss them,” the rabbit voice whispered from somewhere near my belly button.
“I miss them too,” I whispered back, working hard to disguise the burning in my sinuses,
the pools in my eyes. They had been two of my best friends, tutoring me through math in
college, helping me move when I had finally bought my own place, and setting me up on blind
dates with Wynn’s friends that always ended with the three of us laughing over brunch, my
flushed face describing the disastrous events from dinner the night before. When they both left, I
thought I had lost everything good I had ever known.
“But, really, they would be so proud of you, Chrissy,” a soft ghost of a smile on my lips,
thinking about my sister and her husband watching Chrissy in the school play, hearing the way
she begged for bedtime stories or sang the names of breakfast cereals every morning while I
made my coffee.
I stood up; still clutching the shaking rabbit to my heart, pulled back the lavender covers
on her bed, and set her in gently. Christina instinctively yanked the blankets up to her chin as I
tucked each side around her body like a cocoon. I then sat down beside her, my hand stroking her
forehead. Her strawberry breaths slow…in and out, in and out, her eyes closed and brows angled.
“Proud of us, Aunt Caroline,” the rabbit purred, her shallow breaths tapering off into
slumber.
“Oh, Christina…” my voice wincing and breaking, my eyes becoming clear springs of
water as I stared at the little girl that had become my Natalie, my other half, my balance. They
would be proud of us now, proud of the family that we had pulled together without them.
I fought against the angry thoughts almost every day. Cursing my sister for driving an
unsafe car and assuming it would be no problem for her because so little ever was, damning God
for cellphones, text messages, and careless drivers, and loathing Wynn for being so weak and
abandoning us here by his own free will. I wanted to condemn them all for leaving us here.
But as I stared at the finally sleeping Christina, I knew now the necessity of balance. I
understood that when Natalie died Wynn felt all of the beauty rot and leave the world; that all of
his hope had been rundown by a distracted driver in a Dodge Ram doing 40 over the speed limit,
and it could never be brought back. With this understanding, with my eyes fixated on their
orphaned child, I also realized how wrong he had been.
Chrissy’s hair was already shifting, wayward strands of silken coal freeing themselves
from their woven prison, shockingly dark against the soft purple of her pillowcase and the warm
gold in her cheeks. My little hope, with the sweet sensitivity and beauty of her mother, light as
the air in the early morning after a midnight rainstorm, was exhaling softly against my arm.
I’ll have to try a tighter braid next time, I thought, as my lips brushed her rabbit nose.