Step Sisters

My hand covers Sissy’s three-year-old mouth as we cower under the basement stairs.

With no electricity,

flashlight, or candle to guide the intruder down into the damp, cold, blackness of the stone cellar, I’m certain we’ll remain undiscovered, if we stay quiet. There is nothing down here to steal.

What is this person doing way out here in the middle of nowhere, far away from civilization? No one has been in this house for years. I know this because you can see the Big Dipper through the roof at night and the walls are still standing because the termites are holding hands between the slats. At least that’s how Daddy describes the shanty’s weathered boards.

I’m five years older than Sissy and look after her when our parents leave for town to work and bring back supplies. They have no car to go places, so walking gets all of us here and there and wherever we decide to wander.

Momma and Daddy went to town today. It’s about five miles away, so we won’t see our folks until way past sundown. Sometimes they don’t come home until morning and they always smell like stale licorice whips. I know they like to party, carouse and drink. Daddy says Momma is really good at her work and tricks a lot of men, whatever that means. But no matter what they do in town, they always bring us a treat. Last time they brought a bag of lemon drops so sour my lips puckered tighter than a spinster’s kiss.

With the folks gone to town, we’re left alone to fend for ourselves, picking around the dusty old shelves for a scrap of moldy bread or half-eaten apple as our stomachs grumble. Finding

only crumbs to eat, we are now forced to hide in a scary old basement full of spiders, rats, and creepy crawly things, cowering in fear for our lives with noisy, empty bellies.

Our racing hearts pound almost in unison while trying to breathe quietly. I know Sissy’s scared, but I am too. I do my best to be the older, braver sister, clutching her to my side, but secretly wish Daddy were here to save us instead. The voice inside my

head screams over, and over again, “Please go away, please go away, please go away.”

Whenever the wind howls biting your cheeks to rosy red, bending the trees tops to the ground and stripping them of their dying leaves, I know it’s time to move on. We pack our meager belongings and head to warmer lands. But if this stranger finds us

hiding down here in the darkness, we’ll be forced to leave long before the trees turn color.

Steps creak at the weight of not one, but two strangers dragging something that sounds heavy, jingling and clinking at every drop. I tighten my hand on Sissy’s mouth and pull us deeper into the darkness, pressing my back against moist, cold stones. Why are they coming down here?  

Tiny, hairy legs tickle my hand. In an instant I fling it away and swallow a scream that if I let it out normally would have scared the feathers off a chicken. If I had seen the spider, I would have squished it without hesitation, flatter than a pancake on a hot griddle. The spider’s lucky to live another day. I’m hoping Sissy and me will get lucky too and not be found.

One man strikes a match and points to the far corner where I know a boarded-up coal chute is wasting away. I hear them stumble to the corner to rip and tear the boards from the wall. Pulling on the old boards gives one man a splinter and he curses in pain. The other calls him a nasty word I’m not allowed to say. If I do say the nasty word, I have to suck on a bar of soap for a period of time to cleanse my palate, as Momma says.

The men keep working until one says, “far enough.” Another match is lit and from its brief glow I see one man drag a large sack full of things clinking and jangling together. They count, “one, two, three,” as more clanking and jingling rings out with groaning

grunts, then suddenly end in a crashing thud. Boards scrape and more cussing comes from the men as they scuffle about. Whatever they are burying in the chute under splintery, termite-infested boards, they must not want anyone to find. No one would ever think to come down an old shack’s rickety steps to a crumbly basement with a top house ready to fall down at the blow of a kiss,

unless they were looking for gold, buried treasure or hiding one.

When the scraping and piling noises end, feet shuffle to the bottom of the steps. One man lights another match and his face glows like a jack-o-lantern as he sucks on a cigarette, then

freezes.

Sissy and I stop breathing.

Sweat dribbles to the end of my nose and other unmentionable places. The spider returns and is crawling up my arm, but I am forced to ignore my fear and stay frozen, to save our lives.

The redness of the lit butt reflects in cigarette guy’s eyes.

My heart stops.

He sees us.

Before I’m forced to breathe or pass out, the other man gives cigarette guy a kick in the butt and they rush up the stairs without another bad word.

It seems like hours before I feel safe to move us from our hiding place. I fetch a lantern from our stash upstairs as curiosity pulls me to the coal chute. Sissy watches as one by one, I pull stacks of boards away to reveal the bag with letters stenciled on it. I recognize the letters but can’t read yet.

My hand traces each one of them individually.

B

A

N

K

I don’t have to know what they spell to know where the bag came from and why the men hid it. I know they’ll be back and when they return, we can’t be here.

We are Grifters. We have no roots. Some call us Gypsies. We wander freely from place to place with nothing to tie us down. But if we leave now, we could settle someplace far away and have a life like normal people.

No more tricks.

No more being left alone in broken down, abandoned shacks, hiding, worrying about strangers gonna hurt us.

No more wandering.

I take a gold piece from the bag and hold it up against the light from the lantern. There's hundreds and hundreds of them in the bag and jewelry too. It shines like its the golden sun, smiling down on me from heaven. Tiny hands reach out to me and I put the

treasure in my curious sister’s hand.

“Sissy," I whisper.

"Can you keep a secret?”