The Ballad of Two Sisters

Darci Schummer

The Ballad of Two Sisters

Copyright © 2023 Darci Schummer

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Unsolicited Press.

First Edition.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The Ballad of Two Sisters is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance in this novel to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Attention schools and businesses: for discounted copies on large orders, please contact the publisher directly.

For information contact:

Unsolicited Press

Portland, Oregon

www.unsolicitedpress.com

[email protected]

619-354-8005

Cover Designer: Kally Lane Muenster

Cover Art: Orchid Cabinet by Madeline von Foerster

Editor: S.R. Stewart and Kristen Marckmann

ISBN:978-1-956692-96-9

—For my father, Jerome Francis Schummer (August 14, 1938 – August 22, 2018), and my sisters, the true loves of my life.

Chapter 1: The End

In the basement of the Bells & Stone Funeral Home where the dead were embalmed and staged, the Mortician pushed play on his portable CD player and stared at a picture of Helen and Stella. He paused for a second, listening to the music. No, it wasn’t right. Billie Holiday wasn’t right. It was Ella they needed, the brightness of her voice. He went back to the player and changed the CD. Then, fingertips at the very edges, he examined the photo first directly under the florescent light of the preparation room and next in the glow that radiated around it. He held it so close to his face he thought he could see the individual strands of the women’s perfectly coiffed hair and then far enough from his face so that Helen and Stella looked like women he had gazed upon only from across crowded rooms or across crowded streets. In the photo, the women were standing in front of a glass-doored china cabinet full of plates, bric-a-brac, decorative spoons. Their arms were intertwined, their neutral-colored skirts and flowered blouses neatly pressed. A point of light shone between them, the nearly invisible shadow of their photographer behind it. As the music played, the Mortician held the photo against his chest for a moment, then searched it for something he had not yet seen. This time he noticed the way Helen’s head leaned slightly toward Stella. You dear women, he thought, you wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. 

The sisters, ages 76 and 78 respectively, had died on the same day.

He started the CD over, put on his gloves, gown, and mask, and began his work, regarding the women as he would have his own sisters. It was how he treated all his clients. The first thing he did was close their eyes; it was better to start that way, he thought. He mixed the necessary fluids, then placed modesty cloths over the gray hair of their sexes, avoiding eye contact with their breasts as much as he could without affecting the quality of his work. He hummed while washing their bodies and gently massaging and flexing their arms and legs to eliminate rigor mortis. When he stumbled upon the sisters’ tattoos—blurs of black lines on their wrinkled torsos—he dabbed thick lotion on them, which made them grow brighter, more defined. Ah, birds, he said, pulling the sisters’ skin taut. What is the story behind these? I know there must be a story, a good one. He smiled, thinking of the secret their skin held—a secret now just between the women and him. He reviewed the women’s picture again before setting their features. He wanted the faces of his clients to look natural; it was such sensitive work. Carefully, he sutured their jaws shut, first placing cotton in their mouths to fill the hollowness that age and death had gifted.

Occasionally, like any doctor or dentist would during a procedure, he stopped to ask each woman how she was doing. Are you comfortable? Can I do anything to make this better? he said, waiting for a response that wouldn’t come. Still, it made him feel better to ask. 

After remembering how Helen’s head had leaned toward her older sister, he was careful to handle her with extreme delicacy, for he could sense she was the more fragile of the two. While a machine replaced her blood with embalming fluid, he massaged her again, distributing the fluid throughout her body, patting the top of her head occasionally as if to say, It’s almost over, sweetheart. Caring for Stella, he imagined she would have suffered through the process sighing but perhaps cracking a one-liner here and there at his expense. He chuckled a few times imagining the undertaker jokes she probably knew, her face flush in his mind.

Next came the part he disliked most—cavity embalming. He hated making another incision, hated puncturing the organs, but he had learned to do it quickly, had learned to temper his dislike for it. So he worked through the process, not engaging with the women, distancing himself from the task. When he finished, the women were more lifelike. They looked more like the women from the photograph, and he felt better.

Finally, it was time to bring the sisters’ faces to life. This, perhaps, was his favorite part of preparing the decedents: whereas they had been lifeless canvasses, when the work with his palette was done, they were vivified, the dimensions of animacy restored to them. He was a masterful painter, a constant critic of color. Never did he use one lipstick or blush straight out of the package; rather, each was blended so that no two people ever wore the exact same shade. It was the least he could do for them, this final act. For Helen, he used subdued pinks. She was paler than Stella, and the picture showed that her cheeks were rosy, a quality that belied her age. For Stella, he used deeper tones, hues tinged with orange, which complimented her olive skin. Based on their skin alone, it was hard to believe they were sisters, but after he had vivified them, he could see the ineffable quality they shared. He rolled his chair back to the edge of the room and propped an elbow on the green Formica countertop.

Did I do well, ladies? he asked. 

That evening, as the Mortician and funeral director looked on, the small number of the sisters’ family members who were still alive said the usual things, slanting their lives into unadulterated sunlight. It all seemed so orchestrated to the Mortician that he felt he knew the women better than their family ever had.

They were good aunts, good friends, good...well, good people, an old man said, staring at note cards. He cleared his throat and shuffled them, having lost his place. And, he stammered, And...we were all a damn sight lucky to know them. He fumbled through the rest of his speech. After, he shook his head and took a seat next to a gray-haired woman who, in a consolatory gesture, ran her manicured nails across the back of his neck.

The Mortician began to pace. Why did he even bother attending the funerals? Every one of them was a worse incarnation of the last. They were full of disingenuousness, devoid of actual emotion. There was no wail, no desperation. He had done all this work to give families, friends, lovers the opportunity to howl loud and long, to crawl on their knees and beg God and Satan to stop the endless game and give them back their dead. 

It’s not right, he mumbled.

What? the funeral director said, appearing behind him.

It’s not right, he said louder.

Shhh... 

It isn’t. I know those women better than they do. These people aren’t even saying anything worthwhile.

What did I tell you? If you keep getting this—this agitated, you can’t come up here anymore. Understand?

You don’t understand.

What don’t I understand? The funeral director led him by the arm around the corner, out of the guests’ line of sight.

It’s just a show.

It’s supposed to be a show.

No one up there is being honest.

The funeral director positioned himself so that he stood between the Mortician and the guests. How many times are we going to go through this before you have to get another job?

As many times as it takes for you to understand my point.

Listen—you know what I know about you. Do we have to have the conversation?

The Mortician ran a hand through his hair and looked down at his feet. It was the same conversation he had in Florida, in Texas, in Georgia, in Mississippi. The reason he had moved north was to escape those conversations, which were a steel wreckage consuming so much space in his mind that it had taken all the self-control he could summon just to present himself as a new man, a new mortician in Illinois.

During his interview at Bells & Stone, I do excellent work, he had said. I treat them like my own family. 

That’s what your references said about you, the funeral director replied. But they also seemed to have some concerns about your level of involvement with the families. I share those concerns as well. 

The Mortician’s jaw tensed. Concerns? But he knew the concerns well. He could still picture that last funeral in Florida: a wife coffined in her wedding dress, a Rembrandt of vivification. Her husband, dry-eyed, wore a white t-shirt with yellowed arm pits and liquor on his breath. Their children were weeping raw, completely true in grief. The young girl had wrapped her arms around herself and was rocking back and forth with each new wave of sob. The boy stared at the floor, continually running his hands down the length of his khaki-covered thighs. Quit crying, the husband had said. Just quit your crying. It won’t do you any good. She’s gone.

The husband thought only the three of them were in the room, but he had failed to realize that the Mortician, anger rising, was behind him. Watching the man stealing his children’s right to grieve, to partake in a necessary ritual infuriated the Mortician. The theft endangered the children, for how would they move on if they did not first purge themselves of all that darkness?

It won’t do you any good, the husband growled. You hear me?

After he said it, the Mortician was upon him, and even now the Mortician did not clearly remember what had happened, just that he and the man were suddenly outside the room alone, and the man was on the ground, and...

Did you hear what I just said? the funeral director snapped.

Yes. I heard you.

Do you like your job, son?

The funeral director was always calling him son, although the Mortician, age 35, wasn’t sure the funeral director was old enough to be his father.

Listen, I know you like your job, son. You’re good at it. You want to keep it? Then you need to let go a bit now, don’t you? You deal with the dead. I deal with the living. That was our agreement.

Right, the Mortician muttered, sequestering every last thread of his anger. Right, he repeated. Then he turned and walked away from the funeral director, away from Stella and Helen and the guests, but he walked slowly, listening to another subpar speech get quieter and quieter until he was in the preparation room again. He inhaled deeply, the sound of his own breathing the only noise, the room, devoid of the two sisters, as silent and insulated as a tomb.

Chapter 2: War

Though Helen was a young girl during World War II, battles fought with airplanes and tanks and atomic bombs across the sea would not shape her; rather, battles fought in her parents’ two-bedroom apartment in Chicago affixed themselves to her heart. Helen and her sister Stella, who was less than two years older, often woke in the middle of the night to insults firing out of their parents’ mouths. Mornings after, Helen’s mother hid her face; her back was always toward Helen, but when she had to turn partway to hand over a bagged lunch, Helen saw purple beneath one of her eyes, a red split down her lip, or some other remnant of violent engagement. She knew to avoid her father that day, for the days after a fight he rarely spoke or looked at any of the females he lived with, as though he knew he had wronged all three of them but did not have the strength to admit his transgressions. On those days, some extra sweet always appeared in both Helen and Stella’s lunches, a freshly baked cookie or piece of pie. Neither Helen nor Stella had any appetite for it and would often trade it to a classmate for something else—something store bought. As she ate what she had bartered for, Helen swore never to be like her mother and never to marry a man like her father. 

At school, she trailed Stella like a fraying ribbon. Having no real friends, she played and ate lunch with Stella and Stella’s friends, a rag tag group of girls with downturned eyes and stringy hair.

Don’t you know they’ll tease us if we’re always together? Stella said as they got off the train and walked toward Darwin Elementary one morning. Everyone will think we’re freaks if we just hang out with each other. You have to find your own friends. Start talking to people.

Tears welled in Helen’s eyes. Her hands and arms tingled like they often did when she sat in the classroom. Unable to pay attention to the teacher’s lesson, her mind galloped across the landscape of what had happened at home the night before or what would happen that night.

You have to stop crying at school, too. You’re in 4th grade now. 4th graders don’t cry at school anymore.

Helen looked at Stella, but Stella looked straight ahead. Her cheeks were red, and she kicked a rock as they walked. I’m sorry, Helen whimpered.

It’s OK. I’m just telling you.

For the rest of that day, Helen did as Stella asked, forcing herself not to look for her sister at lunch. As soon as she was dismissed for recess, she ran to the swings, pent-up thoughts diffusing through her muscles. She pumped her legs hard, soaring up and up until at the highest point in her swinging the playground vanished, and she felt as though she might simply disappear into the sky itself. In the rapture of her motion, she did not notice the group of girls gathering around below her. When she did see them, she automatically slowed her pace, a primal voice whispering danger inside her head. Then came the sudden jolt as a girl on each side of her grabbed the swing’s chains, knocking her off her windy throne. Helen knelt in the snowy gravel beneath the swing, her palms stinging, tears forming in her eyes. But she did not cry out. 4th graders don’t cry, she heard Stella say.

She hoped she could simply get up and walk away. When she stood, however, Margaret Anderson, a girl universally feared and followed by all 4th graders, was in front of her. Helen put her shoulder forward and tried to pass, but Margaret blocked her. 

Stay off these swings, she said.

The buttons on Margaret’s winter coat strained across her stomach and her skinny long legs pointed slightly inward at the knees. Helen looked into the girl’s narrowed black eyes, over which a single lock of brown hair sailed in the early winter wind. At first she was afraid, but her knees were burning and her palms were stinging and last night her father and mother had argued