Читать книгу The Shyster's Daughter - Paula Priamos - Страница 11

THE INSANITY DEFENSE

My brother is born all yellow like his room. Two weeks overdue and with a bad case of jaundice, he is extracted from my mother’s body with the help of giant metallic tongs and a scalpel. By this time even her liver wants him out because it’s stopped cleaning red blood cells. Only my father is able to watch the birth. My mother is out cold.

Nicholas weighs in at nine pounds even with a tuft of dark wet hair and puffy little hands. My sister and I catch a glimpse of him from behind the glass in the nursery. The nurse cradles him as if we should be impressed. But his face is still unrecognizable, still swollen and squished from fitting for so long inside the walls of our mother’s uterus. His ears are pointy like Dr. Spock’s, and his tiny mouth is twisted in terror at being cut out and cut from her body. He’s my baby brother.

“He looks like an alien baby,” I say.

My sister shrugs me off. She doesn’t seem too concerned that our new brother is sick. It bothers me enough for both of us. Two other babies, two healthy babies are red-faced and squirming in their plastic bubble basinets. Especially under the fluorescents, I can see that Nicholas is the wrong color.

“I hope Mom’s okay,” Rhea says turning toward the hall. “Dad shouldn’t be the only one who gets to see her.”

Neither of my surviving grandparents is at the hospital. My mother didn’t want my yia yia or Uncle Gil here. Can’t say I blame her. Yia Yia’s face could scare the life out of any newborn. Her wrinkles are deep and unforgiving, from a lifetime of holding grudges. She was widowed young at forty-four; her husband fifteen years her senior had been hand-picked by her father one summer on a trip to the islands. Their love was learned, practiced over time through the birth and raising of three boys. But his heart was bad and when he was taken from Yia Yia too soon, it made her old and bitter beyond her years. This is how my mother explained it to me one night after she caught me dipping into her Oil of Olay night cream, slopping it all over my cheeks and forehead. Since I was half Greek, I figured I’d better start early, seeing I stood a fifty-fifty chance of one day looking like my yia yia.

In order to be fair and avoid my father sulking, my mother also didn’t ask her mother to be present for the birth. Both of their fathers passed early, my mother’s father from cirrhosis of the liver and my father’s from a heart attack. “It’s a man’s job to provide for his family, then die before retirement,” my father often says, usually when paying the bills.

He appears from behind the swinging doors. The paper booties he wore in the operating room still cover up his dress shoes. This morning he had been called out of a bail hearing after my mother’s water broke.

“Have you seen Nicholas?”

My brother is named after our Greek grandfather, our pappou, a man my father still mourns decades later at holidays, especially Christmas. Pappou delivered more than fresh fruit to the Central Market in downtown L.A. for his wealthy brother-in-law who owned a produce company. He delivered the best one-liners that kept his family both in hysterics and in check. He had a practical habit of using a bar of Ivory soap on his head full of white hair, claiming the suds were why he never went bald, a habit my father eventually picked up. But what pappou is known best for is the time he grew desperate at the thought of his unmarried youngest son at twenty-three still living at the house. Somehow he snowed Helena Stamapolous, the bright young daughter of a family friend, into marrying Gil by telling her that a boy who never strays far from home is one who will never stray from his wife.

My mother doesn’t even get to choose Nicholas’s middle name because he’s named after my father. Obviously, I am too, with just an added vowel attached at the end.

“How’s Mom.” Rhea says this more like an accusation than a question, as if our father is to blame for the birth being forced and unnatural.

My father sneaks a look at the other babies, maybe hoping his own will somehow be lying in a plastic bubble on wheels too instead of where he really is, his tiny vitals all wired up in an incubator.

“She’s fine, but she won’t come to for another hour or so.”

Rhea takes a seat. When the news hit, she was pulled out of first period at her new school, a Christian academy in La Verne. She tells our parents she likes it, but she tells them a lot of things she doesn’t mean. She tells them she eats too, and I’ve caught her twice tossing out the noodles, finishing only the broth.

“You two go,” she decides for us. “I’ll wait.”

On the way home, my father pops a cassette in the tape deck. It isn’t Pavorotti or even his favorite country singer, Eddie Rabbit. It’s a foreign sounding voice, broken from nerves, from his Middle Eastern accent. It’s the voice of Bared Garrata, my father’s client, who has just been arrested for murder. Intermittently, his voice is interrupted by the loud creak of an office chair, the interrogating cop leaning back. They never give the comfortable, reclining seat to the suspect.

“Again,” the investigator states louder into the speaker, for the record. “You’re waiving your right to counsel.”

There’s mumbling and then Bared blurts out, “I have no choice. I have to shoot.”

“Bullshit,” my father says. “You hear that, Paula Girl?” He points to the cassette player. “That’s exactly the place where I can get this tossed out. He’s a goddamn foreigner. He’s not even sure what they’re saying.”

I’ve heard this man’s confession before, and I find that part hard to believe. His English sounds crystal clear to me. It’s my father’s first homicide and he’s played the tape countless times since the murder occurred. He’s moving up in the legal world, from the DUIs and drug offenses, where nobody pays much attention, to a murder that has made the local paper in Orange County. Even the birth of his first son can’t stop my father from thinking about the case, debating whether he should try and get the confession thrown out or use it toward an insanity defense. Either way, my father is behind the eight ball. The hearing earlier today was for Bared and because he holds dual citizenship in Armenia, a country that is considered by many to be the northern extension of the Middle East, bail is set at half a million.

Bared works as an assistant manager at a fan manufacturing plant in the city of Orange. He is not a terrorist. Neither is he a religious zealot. He is a family man with two daughters and an American wife. One afternoon Bared is set off when he’s convinced he overhears subordinates and his boss laughing in the break room about his small penis. He must not be able to sexually satisfy his fair-skinned wife, they say. She needs a white man or a Mexican or Black, like them.

The next morning Bared shows up at work, walks right into his boss’s office and fires one shot, square in the chest. The bullet blows clear through, burying in the back of the dead man’s chair. Security doesn’t tackle Bared on his way out of the building because he never runs. There are no other casualties since the act, as he sees it, has little to do with violence. He is defending his manhood, defending his marriage. Talk of pleasuring another man’s wife in his culture calls for immediate and unrelenting measures. After the shooting, Bared leaves the weapon by the body and waits in his office where he phones his wife, explaining that something has come up. Save him a plate. He won’t make it home in time for dinner.

My father wants to argue that the voices Bared heard are really his own, that he’s a paranoid schizophrenic and needs psychological help, not incarceration.

“He isn’t crazy,” I say. “You’d better come up with something else.”

We’re almost home and out on his front porch, I see Moses Murillo, our neighbor, dousing the grass with his own brand of weed killer, a can of gasoline. He’s chosen the worst possible time to pour flammable liquid on his yard, considering it’s early fall and everything is still hot and dry from summer and the Santa Anas have already begun to stir.

But nothing Moses does ever makes any sense. He’s a Vietnam War vet with irrational moods that must make his family want to duck from the swing. Even with the windows closed, we can sometimes hear him yelling at his two boys with the kind of rage that has made my parents anonymously call the cops more than once. In the Murillos’ one acre backyard stands a baseball diamond with real bases and a pitcher’s mound, and by the time the police arrive, Moses will be crouched behind home plate, catching his sons Cheech and Rigo’s slow pitches, patiently instructing them how to improve their throw. Moses used to beat on his dog too, a beautiful German Shepherd named Dexter, until my father convinced him to sell it for big bucks to a client of his who owned a guard dog business.

I point to Moses.

“Now that’s crazy.”

My father chuckles and waves. In response, Moses lifts up the gas can like he’s making a champagne toast.

Bared’s rambling confession is still playing as we pull into our driveway. “They want to take her from me. He say they sleep with my wife. I buy handgun for two hundred dollars. A Filipino man, by bakery. Say it’s okay, I buy for protection. Those people, they insult me, they come for my family.”

The cop grills Bared some more, getting him to admit he purchased the stolen gun the night before the shooting off of some gang bangers while cruising the streets of Artesia. He conceals the gun in his Tupperware lunch box.

“What makes you think he’s sane?” my father asks.

He sounds irritated at hearing the prosecutor’s likely argument out of his twelve-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

I’m surprised he’s even listening, and I open the car door, sorry I brought it up.

“He sounds too nervous,” I say. “You can hear it in his voice. He knows what he did is wrong.”

At dusk, my father orders me out of my room to go and feed the horses. Through the chain link fences, I can see Rigo and Cheech are still out playing ball. Rigo’s at the plate and Cheech is pitching. Overpowering the hard pop of a Louisville Slugger or the even harder punch of a caught ball is the electric sound coming from the oleander bushes. Not to be mistaken for high tension wires, these are horse flies, a genetically pumped up version of the house variety, that buzz and bat against the leaves. It doesn’t matter that they don’t bite. They are dangerous in other ways. They live around horses, hoping to swarm on any scratch, laying eggs inside until the scratch turns into an infected flesh wound. If even one fly gets tangled in my hair, I’m petrified it might feast on my scalp, and I may just have to grab the horse clippers my mother keeps in the hay barn and the Murillo boys can watch me shave my head bald.

With my hands flying overhead, I rush down the steps, then stop before I reach the bottom so they don’t see. The doors to the hay barn are latched yet unlocked. My horse, Boo Boo, an Arabian trail horse, whinnies and paces back and forth in his pipe corral. The other horse, named Lou, is a former prized Saddlebred. My father bought him for my mother on their first anniversary. The horse is too old now to do more than toss his head impatiently in front of his aluminum feeder.

I hear the two-fingered whistle, coming from one of the Murillo boys. My face feels hot and tight like it’s sun burned, and all I can think to do is pretend they’re not following my every move.

In order to scare off the mice, I kick the door a couple times, then pull off two pre-sliced flakes and balance them, one on each arm. I’m allergic to alfalfa, and if I’m not quick I’ll wheeze like an asthmatic and my arms will rash up and itch. Just as I’m hoisting the flake into Boo Boo’s feeder, something rustles in the alfalfa, something alive. At the first sight of gray fur, I drop the flake between the pipes, piercing the air with my squeal. The mouse scurries off into a puff of dirt.

Behind me, a Murillo boy laughs. I toss the other flake at a hungry Lou, and make a bee line for the house.

“Shut the hell up,” Cheech shouts at his little brother.

I’m on the phone telling Tomoko what happened with the Murillo brothers when our call gets cut short, an emergency breakthrough from the Orange County prison. Whenever it’s a collect call, I know to accept the charges. The client in jail will pay for it later, getting double-billed for calling collect, let alone our home number.

I’ve never spoken to a murderer before, and although my father slept with a hunting rifle by his side when Cooper had escaped, this killer is different. He’s my father’s front page client and I’ll get into trouble if I’m not polite.

“May I speak with your father?” The precise way in which he forms each syllable makes him sound successful, like one of my father’s business clients. Even murderers have phone manners.

“Just a second, please,” I say.

My father is in the living room, the TV on, tuning out the ten o’clock news with the aid of a Walkman. He wears headphones, listening again no doubt to Bared’s confession.

Scattered across the table are black and whites of the crime scene. One shot is of the victim’s head thrown back against the chair, his eyes bulging. On the front of his shirt is a small hole where the bullet had entered, and I am shocked at how little blood there is.

I mouth Bared’s name as I hand over the phone.

My father slides the headphones back a little to make room for the receiver. From his end I’m able to put together half the story. Bared has been roughed up at the jail. A broken nose and finger. It’s race related. While being struck and kicked he heard somebody call him a sand nigger. At twelve I’d heard “nigger” used solely as an insult to a black person. In time I’ll learn the offensive word will do even more damage being used as a root slur against all races.

My father promises that tomorrow he’ll have pictures taken and will use them at the emergency bail hearing.

“The guards beat him up?” I ask after my father is done talking.

He hangs up and shrugs.

“Hard to tell. Usually it’s the arresting cops. He looked fine this morning. Sometimes a client will do it to himself if he thinks an ass kicking will help get him out sooner.”

I hear my sister unlocking the front door. She looks satisfied, refreshed, her lips abloom in bright fuchsia. She takes a long sip of her thirty-two ounce McDonald’s cup, leaving no print.

“Mom finally woke up.”

I wonder if our mother came around on her own or if Rhea helped.

My father removes the headset as if the foam parts impede his hearing.

“How is she?”

“They’re releasing her tomorrow morning.”

My father tosses the rest of the Walkman onto the coffee table.

“Goddamn it.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.” My sister passes us in a burst of Poison, her favorite scent, getting his reaction all wrong.

My father shakes his head at the circumstances he can’t change, at the toxic relationship the two of them share and how what just happened with Bared has ruined his chances of being the good husband. No matter how fast he is at the bail hearing, all my mother will see is that she’s just given birth to his son and he’s late in picking her up from the hospital.

The next morning I’m pouring a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios when my father knocks on Rhea’s door, open handed. In his other hand is a cup of coffee.

“Time to get up,” he calls at the closed door.

Though I should be going to school, my father has decided that I’m to go with him. He doesn’t want to have to worry about picking me up after school. An emergency bail hearing has been granted. I’m not sure how my father is able to pull this off so soon, but he did and we’re already late for it.

By the time I’ve finished the Cheerios and have bussed my bowl in the dishwasher, he’s dressed in a suit and tie.

Dabs of toilet paper stick to the red nicks on his face where he cut himself shaving. He reeks of my mother’s last Christmas present, Drakkar Noir. His open hand on my sister’s door has turned into a fist.

“Get up now,” he says. “I’m not paying nearly a grand a month for you to sleep away the semester.”

My chest tightens at the beginnings of an argument, so I break in with the white flag.

“Okay, Dad,” I say. “I think she heard you.”

A couple of minutes later my sister emerges on her way to the bathroom. Her short hair is smashed along the side of her head where she’s been sleeping, her face cracked in places with dried Calamine. From her skeletal shoulders, her nightgown hangs as if being held up by a wire hanger. She doesn’t look herself and hasn’t for some time. The pills her L.A. shrink prescribed aren’t working.

Before she shuts the bathroom door, she faces our father dead on, calling up energy from down deep.

“Mom told me what you did to her.”

Whatever Rhea claims he’s done to our mother, it must be true because my father backs off. He snaps at me to get in the goddamn car and as we leave, it’s anyone’s guess if she’ll make it to school or simply head back to bed.

Although my father is over forty and a good fifty pounds overweight, I have trouble keeping up with him in the courthouse halls. My Van slip-ons squeak at every turn on the shiny floors, grabbing the attention of a few men in suits who look a little puzzled at seeing me, a seventh grader, tagging along with her father to court. It’s impossible to tell which of the men are attorneys and which are cleaned up drug dealers, murderers and thieves.

Inside the gallery, my father seats me in the last row. The Drakkar Noir he sprayed can’t mask the smell of our brisk walk because he’s all worked up now.

“Don’t you move,” he orders in a hardened whisper. “And don’t talk to any men, especially if they aren’t holding a briefcase. They’re the criminals.”

I nod, hoping he’ll go away soon because I’ve been holding my breath all this time, and I’m positive my face is turning blue.

Court has already started and once the judge sees the back of my father’s head, it’s as if he recognizes it and calls Bared Garrata’s name next.

“Counselor,” the judge begins. “I understand there’s reason for you and your client to be in my courtroom again?”

“Yes, your honor. A very disturbing reason.”

On the way to the defense attorney’s table, my father stops to touch the shoulder of a woman with dark blond hair pulled back in a bun. Gratefully, she takes his hand, and I don’t see how my father stands it, all that emotional pressure from defendants, from their loved ones, looking up to him as their only chance at being cleared of the charges levied against them by the entire State of California.

From a side door, a bald man in an orange jumpsuit appears. His beard is dark and bushy. He stands inside what looks like a jury box except there’s no jurors, no chairs, and there’s metal mesh screen separating him from the rest of the courtroom. Even at this distance, one of his eyes is visibly swollen and closed. A thick scab covers the bridge of his nose.

“Your Honor.” My father levels his arm dramatically toward Bared, leveling his accusation. “Look at my client. He is an innocent man unless proven guilty. Bail must be reduced if he’s to survive until his trial date. Who protected his rights last night while he was getting his face rammed against a steel sink, being called a sand nigger?”

“Enough, Counselor,” admonishes the judge, raising his voice and lowering the gavel. “You will not play the race card in my courtroom.”

My father nods, and something passes between them, the certainty that as a defense attorney it’s my father’s job to be a showman. To distract and offend. The judge looks a little familiar, and I think I’ve seen him once at a party at the home of my Uncle Dimitri—also a lawyer.

The prosecutor, a woman that’s model tall, with short dark hair and pointy glasses, speaks up, forced to deal with my father’s underhanded move.

“If Mr. Garrata surrenders his passports, I find nothing wrong with reducing his bail to three hundred thousand.”

My father cocks his head.

“Three? How about one and a half.” He points again at Bared. “This man has no priors. He’s a family man with two young daughters. He’s an assistant manager at a fan manufacturing plant.” Now my father turns his attention on the prosecutor. “Ms. Tomkins needs to stop blowing hot air, so to speak. My client doesn’t have that kind of collateral.”

Some minor wrangling occurs before the judge ultimately rules in my father’s favor, increasing the bail to one hundred and seventy-five to save face. And although I’m happy to see my father win, it feels like he’s lost. Not only has his client, Bared Garrata, shot and killed someone pointblank, he must’ve blown a hole in the heart of every member of his victim’s family.

Quickly, I turn and head out into the hall before I happen to recognize any of them by their grief.

That afternoon my mother comes home and three days later we are given my brother, all pink, with a clean bill of health, plus a birth certificate with his tiny footprint. Because my mother is still sore from the caesarean and because she wants to keep a closer eye on baby Nick, she has my father move my old mattress out of the garage and into Nick’s room.

At least this is the story they tell me. I want to believe them, yet I can’t help thinking about what Rhea said, how it sounded like he’d done something to hurt our mother. Whether out of necessity or penance, my father sets up my old bed in Nick’s room. He screws in the last bolt of the bed frame, screwing himself, as he must’ve known, along with it. The nights he’d spend alone in the California King for months to come, maybe longer. Last spring for my birthday, my mother was insistent on buying me a waterbed. At the time I was blinded by having been given something so extravagant that I hadn’t even asked for, that I had to actually fill up with a hose. But I see now she might’ve been planning on moving out of her own bedroom since then and the extra bed was no more of a gift to me than it was for herself.

Later in the night I hear them keeping their voices down, and this time it’s my mother who speaks in the low roar.

“You at least could’ve told me what you did. I had to find out from the nurse. You had no plans of ever telling me.”

“Jesus, June. I was only thinking of you.”

“You were thinking of yourself.”

“They already had you open. I didn’t see the point in making you go through that again.”

“It wasn’t your fucking choice to make.”

Rarely have I heard my mother use the F word and when she does, I know at least for her, the fight is over.

Uneasily, I close my eyes as if pretending that I already am might help me fall back asleep.

Within a week my family slips into a certain pattern of taking care of Nicholas—feedings, cradlings in the rocker, late night pacing up and down the hall. He seems to fall asleep to my off-key version of Duran Duran’s ballad “Save a Prayer” so long as I don’t spike my voice toward the high notes I can’t reach. Diaper changes are round the clock, and I quickly learn the hard way, when changing him, to throw another diaper over his privates to stop the geyser that spurts on instinct as soon as I rip off the soiled one. Even my father pitches in when he gets home from work. All of us do except for Rhea.

Her pink window blinds stay clamped shut night and day. She sleeps for the rest of us who aren’t getting much of it because of the baby, and with our mother in full nesting mode, Rhea has no reason to ever emerge from her own isolated nest she’s created out of bed and blankets. If she’s made any friends at her new school, like she claims, we’ve never met them. She even missed her last appointment with her shrink, using Nick’s homecoming as an excuse. It seems she’s even reduced her intake of Diet Coke just so she won’t have to get up and use the bathroom.

One morning around my brother’s third or fourth week home, my mother is in the kitchen fixing breakfast while my father is getting dressed for work. For once he doesn’t have to bang on my sister’s door. She’s already showered and there is the muffled whirring of the blow dryer in the bathroom.

When she appears in the kitchen, she is dressed for school, her short hair finger-styled. The hot pink blouse she’s wearing is new and matches her favorite Clinique lipstick. My mother’s face brightens as she stands over the stove scrambling eggs, with my brother gurgling in his carrier on the floor, her bare foot tipping him contentedly back and forth. One less child she needs to worry about.

“You look pretty,” my mother says. “I like the shirt. That’s a flattering color against your fair skin.”

The compliment makes Rhea’s eyes shine and in those few seconds, I see them, really see them, before she retreats back into herself, into the morning routine of slinging her backpack over one shoulder and passing on breakfast.

“I’m glad you like it, Mom.”

“Paula,” my mother orders. “Give her a piece of your toast.”

While I’m biting into a piece smothered in strawberry jam, I hold another one out to her, one that is only buttered, fewer calories. Rhea ignores it and leans down near my face. Instantly I raise my hands, expecting her to pinch or smack me like she usually does when she’s in a good mood and wants to give me a hard time.

Instead, she kisses my cheek.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, forgetting my mouth is full. “Are you on your period or something? You’re acting weird.”

Rhea laughs as she pulls away, a laugh that doesn’t sound like it comes from her, no trademark snort that leaves the rest of us going in her wake.

After school I break out the bareback pad and the bridle and put them on Boo Boo. Going on Tomoko’s advice, this is my prime opportunity to catch Cheech’s attention.

He’s outside swinging the bat at his own pop-ups, knocking the homers into the neighbor’s backyard nursery on the other side. His father and little brother are nowhere in sight, probably at Rigo’s Little League game.

Leading Boo Boo to the side of his corral, I climb up and keep him steady as I ease onto his back. The pad feels puffy and soft under my bare legs. If my mother were home she’d kill me, knowing I was riding this way, in nothing but a pair of shorts and my Vans. When she gives me lessons, I’m forced to wear jeans and riding boots, sometimes even gloves.

Right now, though, I’ve lucked out because she’s not around. All I found after my father’s secretary, Nora, dropped me off from school was a note she left on the fridge, instructing me to stay put and wait for my father. Nora wasn’t much help either except she did stop off at McDonald’s and buy me a Happy Meal before depositing me curbside.

The oleander bushes are abuzz, the hard shells of the flies reflecting in the sunlight, and I make sure and steer Boo Boo as far away as possible while still making a ring in our backyard of pure dirt. First I make kissing sounds, the cue for him to trot, keeping my back straight, squeezing with my thighs, so I won’t slip around on the pad.

With each lap, I become more and more tense as I no longer hear Cheech swinging at anything. He’s watching me, and I think twice if I should head back into the house and change into a pair of long pants. He’s doing exactly what I wanted him to do, checking out the summer tan on my bare legs.

But there is no wave, no cat calling, not even a two-fingered whistle, and the rhythmic sound of bat connecting with ball resumes. Being ignored frustrates me into kicking it up a notch, and I touch Boo Boo’s flank with my heel, feeling the slide and pull underneath me as his front legs extend into a gallop. I shorten my reins and somehow this accidentally brings Boo Boo too close to the oleander bushes. This is when I feel it land, as light as a barrette: a horse fly right on the side of my head.

Although I stop from screaming, I can’t stop my hands from striking and slapping at my head like a lunatic. Maybe it is the commotion that startles my horse, or maybe it is the fact I drop the reins. In a matter of seconds Boo Boo lunges one way, and I slide off in another. The number one lesson my mother has drilled into my head is that if I’m going to fall, I need to drop, then roll away fast, so I won’t get hoofed in the face.

I roll more smoothly and farther than perhaps a stunt double even could, stopping face down near the lower steps that lead up to the house. Dust is thick and powdery on my tongue, and I’m afraid to see if Cheech has just gotten a front row view of me eating dirt. Boo Boo grazes nearby, weeds poking out from the steel bit in his mouth, the seat of the bareback pad now hanging under his belly.

“Man, that’s some wipeout,” Cheech hollers from across the fences. “You okay?”

As I climb up to my knees, what feels like a relatively safe landing turns out to be anything but. I open my mouth to breathe, to answer Cheech, yet nothing comes in or out. The air is pounded from my lungs, and it seems with every gasp that they’re clamping tighter and tighter. Breathing feels like an act I’ve never tried before, and I wonder if this is how Nicholas felt when he was first pulled out from the womb. I’m convinced that at age twelve, I’m dying of a heart attack.

Suddenly the back door opens and my father stands at the top of the stairs. From this angle, he strikes an imposing figure, blocking the sunlight.

“Paula, stop screwing around.” My name explodes from his mouth in that same voice I’ve heard Moses use on his kids, his Vietnam voice. Though my father never served, it’s as if he, too, is threatened and shell shocked by the sound of his own fear. Apparently me on all fours, all scuffed up on the ground doesn’t seem to faze him. He comes down the steps. “Get up. We need to go. Your sister,” he says. “She’s tried to kill herself.”