SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 112
SINE QUA NON
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. “I just pinched my arm a little,” she adds as she rubs her arm.
——
My father is crying. I can’t remember the last time he cried.
“Girls,” my father says to me and my sister, and my mother sits beside him on the bed.
It’s Pappaw, I think to myself. His heart hasn’t been well lately.
“Yesterday, Pappaw came home and he found Mammaw unresponsive,” my father pauses
after small gasps escape our twin lips. “He performed CPR for thirty minutes before the
paramedics arrived, but it was too late. She was gone. He thinks she had a heart attack,” my
father’s words slowly stumble out of his mouth.
“Noooo,” my sister wails, her pink cheeks an unusually bright shade as small tracks of tears
begin to form. “But… but… we just saw them—her.”
“I know sweetie,” my mom says, her own tears mixing into the splatters of freckles on her
cheeks. “But, we are so glad you had those last days together. She loved you girls so much.”
I stay silent as a record drills a tune through my skull.
It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your
fault.
——
Alex sits behind me, and he is no longer the lanky boy I grew up playing “Cowboys” with—
he always added me to his team against Dominic, sparing me the pain of feeling unwanted.
The three of us would race up and down the carpeted staircase at Mammaw and Pappaw’s
house, toting our plastic weapons like first-class gunslingers.
Now seventeen years old, he still makes sure that I do not feel left out, letting me play
Minecraft on his spare phone and showing me the newest episode of Rick and Morty—or
that scary clip of It that I begged him not to play.
He knows I am afraid of clowns.
My black dress sticks to the back of my kneecaps that are tucked tight into the edge of the
chair. I have finally reached the height where my feet rest comfortably on the ground.
Does he know? Does he know that I could have saved her? I should have known.
I tilt the weight of my feet into the heel of my black shiny shoes—they only have a few
scratches—and then seesaw the weight back into the rounded tip of the shoe.
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