What I could never understand was how you got sick but I didn’t—how one glitch, one fraction of a difference for a fraction of a fraction of an instant, divided us forever, and suddenly instead of being part of me you began to drift away from me, unstoppable, and you became unknowable, ungraspable, unreachable, leaving me alone, and lost, and doomed

**

On Monday, Amy can’t speak Russian anymore

On Monday, Amy can’t speak Russian anymore. In class the letters wriggle out of her grasp and swim away. Amy realizes the world has ended for her now, and she can’t keep going to her classes. She considers going to the cafeteria for a piece of chocolate cake, but she discovers she’s too tired, and she has a big task ahead of her.

She tries to write a letter to her sister

As she struggles to summon any words in any language, she drinks all the little bottles of cough syrup, hoping they will help her know what she should say. They don’t help, though.

She starts to write about nothing—about the weather, about how dumb their parents are, about how much stupid homework they have—but she crosses it all out and wads up the paper and tosses it in the basket by the door. When she is done with the cough syrup, she starts in on the rest of the vodka. When the vodka is gone, she takes the pills.

She is wearing jeans and her best long-sleeved shirt, which is red and has a pocket on the left side and three buttons down the front at the top made of abalone shells.

For the first time since she moved into the Honors House, Amy takes her shoebox out and opens it. She looks at the pictures of Zoe, from before her surgery, at her raucous eyes and her flaxen hair all specked with leaves and grass. She wishes she had taken a picture of Sasha—even one. She wishes she had let their mother take a picture of the three of them after Sasha’s play.

There is the yellow string he brought and played with during an early class, and then forgot about and left behind. Amy never knew what it was or why he’d had it. But she kept it in her shoebox, and now she rolls it back and forth between her fingers. Then she takes a small scrap of paper with Sasha’s handwriting on it and folds it up and clutches it in her right hand. Then she takes the box knife and begins to work at her left wrist.

It isn’t easy, even though she has been practicing. The vodka helps, and the cough syrup, and the pills, but it still hurts, and her skin wants to resist. Amy begins to feel very tired. But she keeps on trying.

היא יודעת שהיא לא אמורה, אבל איימי מצפה לסופות טורנדו

כשאפילו ביום השמיים משחירים והרחובות מתרוקנים. והרוח מהפכת בעלי המייפל הכסופים והם זוהרים מלמטה.

כשיש התרעת טורנדו הן לא עושות זאת, אבל כשזו אזהרת טורנדו הבנות ממהרות ונכנסות למזווה, שם הן נדחקות בין פחיות השימורים, אבקות המרק, וקופסאות הקרטון, ומחכות עד שאחד מההורים מודיע שהן יכולות לצאת. המזווה הוא החדר היחיד בכל הבית שאין בו חלונות. וצריך להתרחק מחלונות כשסופת טורנדו מתקרבת כי הדבר האהוב ביותר על סופות טורנדו הוא שבירת זכוכית, ואם זה קורה ואתה נמצא באמבטיה ממש מתחת לחלון הקטן רוב הסיכויים שתיפגע.

כשהאזעקה מתחילה, איימי מארגנת אותן. היא פיתחה שיטה. כל אחת מהן יכולה לקחת שלושה צעצועים, לא יותר, ואיימי אחראית על הפנס כי זואי עלולה לשבור אותו. זואי תמיד מתמהמהת עם הבובות, מרגישה אשמה על כל העדפה. אבל איימי מסבירה לה שבחיים לפעמים צריך לבחור, ובסופו של דבר זואי תמיד בוחרת, אם כי לפעמים היא מנסה להחביא דברים בכיסיי המכנסיים הקטנים שלה.

כשהיא נתפסת היא פורצת בצחוק או בבכי, תלוי בפרצוף של איימי. היא תמיד נתפסת. ואז איימי מרגיעה את זואי, והן מתכופפות על הלינולאום המקומט, סוגרות את הדלת במשיכה, ומחכות.

מרגע שדלת המזווה נסגרת, הבובות של זואי מנהלות שיחות. לעתים קרובות הן דנות במזג האוויר. איימי רק מקשיבה, נותנת לבובות שלה לנוח, ומרגישה את הנשימות הקצובות והחמימות של אחותה על הצוואר שלה. גם אם החשמל במזווה לא נופל, איימי מתעקשת שהאור יישאר כבוי בכל מקרה. לאט לאט היא נעשית מנומנמת, כמו שקורה לה במכונית. וממש כמו כשהם נוסעים לאנשהו, ואיימי, שלא כמו זואי, מעדיפה פשוט לא להגיע אף פעם, מעדיפה פשוט להמשיך ולנסוע, גם כשיש טורנדו היא לא רוצה שהאזהרה תבוטל לעולם. ודווקא אז, דלת המזווה תיפתח לרווחה במהירות, ומעל לקצה שלה המחבת והמסננת וכל הסכינים ינצנצו וירעדו כאילו הם עומדים ליפול. ואמא שלהן תשלח יד פנימה ותתפוס בזואי, ואז היא תישא אותה משם.

Every word is untranslatable if what translation is is making something new that stays the same

Tudja, hogy nem lenne szabad, Amy mégis várja a tornado

Még azt is, hogy napközben elsötétül az ég és kiürülnek utcák és a szél felemeli az ezüst juharfa csillogó leveleit.

Ha csak sárga figyelmeztetés van, nem csinálják, de ha életbe lép a piros, a lányok kivonulnak a kamrába, bepréselik magukat a konzervek, lisztek és kartondobozok közé és ott várnak, amíg a mama szól, hogy előjöhetnek. A kamra az egyetlen olyan helyiség a nagy házban, aminek nincs ablaka. Tornádó idején ugyanis nem szabad ablak közelében lenni, mert a tornádó legjobban üveget szeret törni, és ha valaki mondjuk épp a kádban ül amikor tornádó van, pont a fürdőszoba ablak alatt, akkor biztos, hogy komoly baja esik.

Amikor a szirénák megszólalnak, Amy kezébe veszi az irányítást. Jól kidolgozott módszere van. Mindenkinél csak három játék lehet, több nem. Amy az elemlámpa felelős, mert Zoe eltörheti. Zoe mindig húzza az időt, évődik a babáival, bűntudata van, amiért csak a kedvenceit viszi magával. De Amy elmagyarázza neki, hogy az élet választások sorozata, és végül Zoe mindig dönt is, bár néha azért megpróbál elrejteni még pár dolgot a nadrágja kis zsebében.

Amikor lebukik, kitör belőle a nevetés vagy keservesen sírni kezd, ez Amy arckifejezésétől függ. Mindig lebukik. Aztán Amy megnyugtatja, lekuporodnak a hullámos linóleum padlóra, behúzzák az ajtót és csak várnak.

Ahogy becsukódik az ajtó, Zoe babái beszélgetni kezdenek. Általában az időjárásról. Amy csendben van, hagyja, hogy a babái pihenjenek. Érzi húga forró leheletét a nyakán. Ha az áram nem megy el, Amy akkor is inkább lekapcsolja a villanyt. Szép lassan elálmosodik. Pont, mint amikor autóval utaznak valahova. Amy, nem úgy, mint Zoe, mindig csak menne, csak menne és soha nem érkezne meg. Amikor tornádó van, akkor sem akarja, hogy a riasztás véget érjen - mert akkor a kamra ajtó hirtelen kitárul, a serpenyők, a szűrők és az összes kés megremeg a fejük fölött, mintha rájuk akarnának esni. És akkor a mama lehajol, felkapja Zoet és kiviszi a kamrából.

그래선 안 되는 걸 알면서도, 아영은 태풍을 기다리고 있다

하늘이 깜깜해지고 거리가 텅 비어버리는날이면 말이다. 몰아치는 바람이 단풍나무의 은녹빛 잎들을 뒤엎고, 떨어진 잎들이 어슴푸레 빛난다.

태풍 예보가 지나고 경보가 뜰 때면, 자매들은 부엌으로 발길을 옮긴다. 자매들은 부엌 한 켠 통조림병이며 밀가루 포대며 상자들이 쌓여 있는 곳에 옹기종기 앉아서는 어머니나 아버지가 이제 나와도 된다고 말하기를 기다린다. 태풍이 들이닥칠 때는 창문에서 멀리 떨어져 있어야만 한다. 왜냐하면 태풍이 제일 좋아하는 장난은 유리를 부수는 것이기 때문이다. 만약 그런 일이 생길 때화장실 창문 바로 밑 욕조에라도 앉아있다면, 우리는 분명 심하게 다치고 말 것이기 때문이다.

경보 사이렌이 울리면 아영은 착착 대처를 시작한다. 아영은 이미 비상시 대처 체계를 만들어 놓았다. 자매에게는 한 명 당 딱 세 개의 장난감이 허용되고, 그 이상은 안 된다. 손전등은 아영이가 책임지기로 정해져 있는데, 왜냐하면 동생 희은이는 손전등같은 걸 잘도 망가뜨리기 때문이다. 희은이는, 매번 미안하다고 하면서도, 아영이가 제일 좋아하는 인형들을 가지고 논다. 하지만 아영이가 희은이에게 우리는 삶에서 선택을 해야만 한다는 것을 설명해주면, 희은이는 그 말을 따르려고 한다. 때때로 호주머니에 무언가 숨기려다 들켜버리기도 하지만 말이다.

숨긴 것이 들키면, 희은이는 먼저 아영이의 표정을 살피고, 그 표정이 어떤지에 따라 깔깔거리며 웃음을 터트리거나 아니면 눈물을 뚝뚝 흘려버린다. 매번 들켜버리면서도 말이다. 그려면 아영이는 먼저 희은이를 조용히 시킨다. 그리고 자매들은 부엌의 살짝 꺼진 바닥에 쪼그려 앉아서, 문을 꼭 닫고, 기다린다.

문이 닫히면, 희은이의 인형들이 말하기 시작한다. 인형들은 자주 날씨에 대한 이야기를 나눈다. 아영이가 인형들이 편안히 이야기를 나누도록 조용히 듣고 있을 때면, 그녀의 목에 희은이가 따뜻하고 거친 숨을 내쉬는 것을 느끼곤 한다. 만약 전기가 나가지 않는다 해도, 아영이는 꼭 불을 끄고 있어야만 한다고 주장한다. 이내 아영은 차에 있을 때처럼 서서히 잠이 오는 것을 느낀다. 가족이 차를 타고 어딘가로 가고있을 때 아영은, 희은이와는 다르게, 어딘가에도 도착하지 않고 계속 달리기만을 바라곤 한다. 그처럼, 아영은 태풍이 올 때면 경보가 끝나지 않기를 바라고 있다. 그러면 언젠가 부엌문이 활짝 열려버릴 것이고, 윗쪽 후라이팬이며 냄비며 온갖 번쩍거리는 칼들이 곧바로 떨어질양 진동하기 시작할 테니까 말이다. 그러면 어머니가 들어와서는 희은을 잡아들어 데리고 가 버릴 것이기 때문이다.

But that’s not what translation is

Amy is found curled up in the corner on the floor in her room

It is Tommy who finds her. He has been looking for her all day. She expects for him to pick her up, but he keeps on asking her questions instead. What have you done? he keeps saying.

She doesn’t know. She falls back asleep. She wakes back up again, sort of, when the paramedics come, because the paramedics shake her and shout into her face, saying if she doesn’t go with them she’ll spend three days in lockdown.

Amy doesn’t know what lockdown is. She reaches for her octopus. It is filthy now, its arms worn down to loose nubs of fabric. Now she tries not to get any blood on it, but she holds it to her and buries her face in it and stays that way as they carry her down the stairs and out the door, and she ends up getting blood on it anyway.

The boys from the fraternity next door line up along the sidewalk to see what the commotion is, and Amy watches it from the window of her room, sees her body float down the drive on a slim white cot, sees it get lifted up and shut inside the back.

Tommy holds her hand. She tries to pull away from him, but she finds that she can’t move. The EMT shouts at them, asks Amy questions she can’t answer. She has forgotten all the answers. The EMT wants to know where she got the pain pills, says You stole them, says, So, you’ve been underage drinking. Amy goes to sleep.

Things go at a certain speed, and then they all slow down

Things go at a certain speed, and then they all slow down. Amy awakes in a white room with a minister who is holding her hand. Her eyes fight to stay open.

The minister keeps on talking. Amy thinks she hasn’t changed her pad in a long time, and she doesn’t want to mess her dress up.

But then the dress is gone. Instead of it, a paper-thin blue tunic. Plastic bracelets with words on them that she can’t read.

All music is important, says the minister, as though in response to something she has said. Then you can tell from the silence she’s been asked a question.

Amy passes back out.

Amy tries to get out of bed but she finds she’s tethered to machines

Amy tries to get out of bed but she finds she’s tethered to machines. Surrounding her bed there’s a big metal railing. The machines make sounds at intervals, like codes. Amy tries to make it out but can’t. Every stressed syllable hurts her arms and hands and splits her head.

There are curtains to keep her from seeing, but she can hear all the babies who must be next door. They cry and cry and cry, so hard she thinks they must be getting strangled, and yet they don’t stop crying.

Amy awakes in the dark where there is rain and women whispering

Amy awakes in the dark where there is rain and women whispering. A baby starts to cry. Out the window Amy sees lightning light up little cars. Amy is afraid of heights. Amy wonders where is Zoe. Maybe it’s the storm that she can’t come. Everything falls and streaks over the window.

Minors aren’t allowed inside Intensive Care as visitors, which must be why Zoe doesn’t come

Minors aren’t allowed inside Intensive Care as visitors, which must be why Zoe doesn’t come. Amy tries to count to ten in Russian, and then to twenty. The nurses have left a curtain half-drawn and she can see a clock that says 11. It doesn’t say if it is day or night.

Amy doesn’t know what to think about except for time and numbers. She can barely even keep the numbers in her head. Next to the clock there is a phone. Next to the phone there is a box of latex gloves and a chart that says the word Conversion and something else she can’t decipher. The ceiling is connected to the walls by bears and fire trucks.

Amy imagines Zoe sitting somewhere just outside Intensive Care, just like Amy used to do when it was Zoe on the inside, a coloring book blank and open in her lap. She feels guilty and important. She would like to send Zoe a message, but she doesn’t know how, and she has even less of an idea of what to say.

She begins to count again. She starts at zero.

Amy wakes up and sees her mom standing over her and flinches, and then her mom starts yelling

Amy wishes she was dead.

Every four hours she has to take a medicine that will reduce the toxins in her body

Every four hours she has to take a medicine that will reduce the toxins in her body. Now a nurse brings it in with a can of Coke. He mixes the Coke and the medicine together while breathing loudly through his mouth. Amy holds her nose with her fingers as she drinks it and tries not to taste. She chokes but does not vomit because if she vomits she will have to take the medicine again.

Another nurse has told her that her teeth are black still from the charcoal. Amy doesn’t know what this could mean, but she can see her fingernails are black.

A strain of Old MacDonald from a toy or something like a toy plays over and over and over off in the corner. The babies cry. Everything has sounds to make except for her—shrill sounds, alarms and sirens, beeps, the babies’ wails. And the odd, unpredictable clacking of her IV.

There are hearts on her window. A bedpan and a pink biohazard box on the sill. Amy looks out and watches the clouds drift from right to left. She crushes her octopus to her chest. For a second she thinks she hears the phone—that Zoe might be calling—but when she props herself up and peers around the curtain, she sees the receiver dangling forgotten from its uncoiled cord.

A sudden burden exhaustion knocks her back onto her pillow. Wires and sticky patches jab into her flesh.

A nurse wheels her down to the thirteenth floor

A nurse wheels her down to the thirteenth floor. They come to two sets of locked doors. The nurse presses the red button on the intercom and waits.

After a while something buzzes, and then the doors give, and then the first nurse hands Amy over to a second nurse and walks away.

The new nurse asks Amy a thousand questions Amy doesn’t know the answers to, and Amy tries to answer, but all she wants is to sleep and to ask if children are allowed inside the psychiatric ward. She doesn’t ask since she’s afraid she’ll get in trouble. Finally she’s left alone. She sleeps soundly, without nightmares. They wake her up at five.

They check her blood pressure and collect a urine sample and Amy keeps her brain blank as she pees into the plastic cup and snaps its lid on and takes it back out into her room. The nurses tear the electrodes off her chest and remove her IV, and she would like to take a shower now, before her sister comes, but she knows she can’t quite stand yet, and besides she has seen that there is nothing in her bathroom anyway, not even shampoo.

After breakfast they wheel Amy into group. There is a lady named Angela who likes to talk the most. She tells how when she was a little girl her uncle raped her and then when she was twelve or thirteen she started having sex with lots of different men. Then her dad found out and chained her to her bed at night so she would not do further sins. She is here in the hospital because now as a grownup she suffers from episodes of chasing her husband around with a rifle for up to hours although afterwards she has no memory of what she’s done. She says sometimes she gets mad and beats the shit out of him. She says that he does not want to fight back and that besides she is bigger than he is anyway.

There is an older lady who is calmer than the rest of them who is only here for a vacation. That’s the way she says it. She says that she needs a vacation because when her daughter got murdered she had to take in the kids, and it is hard to have kids again, particularly when they’ve just lost their mama.

The conversation happens clockwise, and Amy knows that soon it’s going to land on her. As always she gets nervous. Her mouth dries out. Her teeth are still gritty from the medicine she took before. She tries to think if she should tell them how popular he always was, how all those people came to see his coffin, how when he walked out onto the stage they all clapped before he even said anything.

There is a woman whose mom had a heart attack, and then her aunt died and then her best friend, and then her boyfriend. Now she hears voices, and—Amy knows before she says it—she believes that all these deaths must be her fault.

The first time, says the woman, when I found my mom on the floor in the living room, I just sat down on the couch, and I saw that my manicure set was sitting right there in the armchair, right by me. So I just sat there for a while, and I painted my fingernails. I didn’t even call the police or anything. I just sat there and painted my nails.

But now a strange thing happens: Amy talks. It’s not even quite her turn yet. Amy says, You probably didn’t do anything wrong, and the woman looks right at her and begins to cry. Amy wants to reach over and take her hand, but she’s still too scared. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. The nurse says, Amy, would you like to share your story? And Amy looks around the room and realizes it is her turn. She breathes in deep and starts.

Amy tells them secrets that she didn’t even know she had

Like that she wants to travel very far away and maybe not come back and that she wonders what it would have been like if her sister had never been born. Here she means to scan the faces of the nurses and the other patients, but what she does is close her eyes.

At night in the meadow at Camp Waluhili Zoe used to say she wanted stars with outstretched arms the way she’d say she wanted food or water, before she knew words. Back then her arms were fat, and she would topple when she tried to stand, and her hands were always dirty.

At first, Amy gropes for words, and then she grapples with them, but then when she finally opens her eyes again she knows she’s worked a miracle: the other patients and the nurses seem to understand.

Now the words come tumbling. Bioluminescence, a word she learned the previous semester that means when beings emit light, like squid and small crustaceans. Like Amy and Zoe.

Amy’s insides hum. Amy is a firefly drowning out the constellations, zipping quick from left to right then ding! and back again, word after word down the moonless cloudless night, every single syllable aglow.

I utrymmet i ambulansen har hennes syster tagits över av ett spoke

Deras mamma får krafter som en superhjälte och lyckas hålla henne nere. Amy förstår inget om vad som händer. Nyss var hon inuti i en bubbla där hon ordnade med siffror, och nu har hennes syster tagits över av ett spöke. Amy föreställde sig alltid att det skulle vara roligt att åka ambulans eller brandbil eller polisbil eftersom man skulle köra fort och kunde bryta mot alla regler och inte stanna för rött. Men nu är allt fel. Zoe kräks men vet inte om att hon kräks, så kräket bara rinner längs hakan och ner på den lavendelfärgade klänningen som varit Amys och som de fått av en vän, och kvinnan som arbetar i ambulansen tvättar bort det, men Amy är rädd att handduken ska rispa hennes systers ansikte.

Zoes ögon, alltid stora och bruna och glittrande som lägerelden, är vita. Hennes kropp rycker åt ena sidan i en rytm som inte är mänsklig. Amy skriker, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, men Zoe är inte där. Deras mamma blir arg och säger åt henne att hålla klaffen, att hon bara gör allt värre. Då skriker varje fiber i Amys kropp, tyst.  Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.

Oh Zoe