Charlotte

There was a fetus named Charlotte, and they say she did not live. She could’ve been a Catherine or a Cassandra. She could’ve been a Carlos for all we know, but I like to think of her as Charlotte, my baby sister with a gurgling laugh. Not that it matters; she did not live. My shoes that lit up would’ve been hers, as well as my books. The demon of gravity took her, the one that threatened to take me twice. I survived, she did not.

I do not know what Charlotte looked like, only what the demon left behind- a mass of blood on the bed and between my mother’s legs. I do not know what the demon looked like, only that it came in the night and took away my sister. I imagine it was red and had horns.

I looked for my Charlotte. I asked the doctors, banged on their chests and pulled on their pant legs, screamed, told them to bring her back. I asked my mother, my father. No one searched for Charlotte. They all said she was gone.

My father told me to calm down, for babies were lost all the time. I had gotten a medical book for my birthday. Stupid book, I thought. It said nothing of demons or carriages that took away babies who did not live. He told me another sister would come. We waited for years. Perhaps she was frightened: she never came.

What does gone mean? Missing. Away. Hiding. Taken. As a child, I did not understand. What do you do when you’re missing? How far is away? The time came when I resigned Charlotte to share the fate of Jemima, my favorite doll lost one day among the clutter of this old house. It was too hard to look for something missing. It was too hard to fight demons only I believed existed.

I used to think it was easier to forget, pretend to live, live like nothing was wrong, like a demon never came into your house and stole your happiness. I was mistaken: You can never forget. You may try to push the pain away, but it will latch on and suck, suck on your heart until your chest is an empty cage of thorns.

Last night, I found Jemima up in a cupboard behind the wedding gift lamp my parents did not want, still in her reddish brown hair and plaid dress from 27 years ago. I held her in my hands, the dust staining my hands, that cupboard smell in the air. Only then did I realize: Gone does not mean dead. Gone only means we are not looking, whether hard enough or at all.

I shall once more look for my Charlotte. Perhaps she is still alive, her beauty saving her from the death the demon intended when he took her. Perhaps I come too late, the demon having killed her in envy of her beauty, my ignorance costing us all. I do not know. It does not matter. She is my sister and she deserves a search, a rescue, a story.

I hear her voice.