My Parents Left Me in a Retirement Home at Nine

I was nine the year my mother moved me into a senior living community.

She said it like she'd thought it through. "This way, your sister gets to be the only child." Three miles from our house. Everyone in that building was waiting to get old.

I was the only one waiting to grow up. I was born five minutes before my sister. She came out prettier. Fairer. Smarter. The only thing I ever beat her at was not getting sick.

I could roll around in the mud all afternoon and wake up fine. Cece was allergic to pollen in spring, to mosquito bites in summer, to cold air the rest of the year.

The year we turned nine, I petted a stray cat. Cece said she couldn't breathe. I remember her eyes were bright when she said it. My mother beat me half to death that day.

Her eyes were red. "Are you trying to kill your sister?" "Kill her and you'd be the only child in this house!" That winter, they sent me away.

Chapter 1 My parents came out to Pine Creek again. This time it was for my tenth birthday. They brought a cake and a little dress and sang to me.

Then they asked, "Bea, what are you going to wish for?" I said it without thinking. "Let me sleep at home. One night." That was my birthday wish. To sleep in my own house.

My mother's face shut like a door. "No." "Beatrix. We agreed. You live here." "With you out of the house there are fewer germs.

Your sister doesn't get sick." In storybooks it's the father who's strict and the mother who's soft. In our house it ran the other way. My mother was the hard one.

My father always caved. He looked at her and dropped his voice. "One night wouldn't hurt anyone." "It's Bea's birthday.

Let her be happy." My mother slapped his arm. "No means no." "And if Cece has a reaction? Then what?" "She still has her party tonight." We were twins.

But today my sister had a party, and I had a cake. Cece stood up. Her face crumpled. "Mom, Bea's room smells. I need air." Cece had a very sensitive nose.

When she needed air, she needed air that second. Otherwise she got dizzy. On bad days she went down on the floor. So my mother said, "Okay, sweetheart.

I'll come with you." I still had the party hat on. I hadn't blown out the candles. I watched the little flames move and couldn't work it out.

I didn't know what part of my room smelled. I showered every day. I changed my clothes every day. My father caught the look on my face and smiled and rubbed my hair. "Come here.

Dad'll cut you a slice." Fine. All right. With my mother and Cece gone, every strawberry on top of that cake was mine. So I pointed, and he cut, and I pointed again.

He laughed at first. "Slow down. It's all yours." Then he watched me shovel it in, and he sighed. "Your sister hasn't had any of this yet." "Bea.

Why don't you know how to share?" My mouth was full of frosting. It went sour all at once. Cece and I are twins. I was born six pounds one ounce. She was three pounds five.

She fit in two hands and weighed nothing. You were afraid to breathe on her. And she was weak. A month in an incubator. Spitting up, pneumonia, fevers.

Every day another piece of bad news. Meanwhile I was at home, eating and sleeping and filling diapers. That was when my mother stopped wanting to hold me.

She cried when she said it. "Bea is a selfish child." I was not yet a month old.

Chapter 2 "If she'd given Cece half the nutrition, Cece would never have had to go through any of this." Eventually Cece came home.

My mother nursed her and only nursed her, to build up her immune system. But my mother's milk was thin, and the more Cece ate the smaller she got.

Meanwhile the nanny gave me formula and I got fat as a little submarine.

My mother cried again. "Why couldn't she have waited for her sister?" "Her sister is that frail and she is that plump.

How am I supposed to live with it?" Cece did fill out a little, in the end. But the allergies stayed. Pollen in spring, mosquitoes in summer, cold air the rest of the year.

She'd go white over nothing and stop being able to breathe. And I rolled in the mud, went out in the wind and the rain, and never got sick.

That was around when the difference in our faces started to show.

My mother would hold Cece on her lap and study her like an expert. "High nose bridge, big eyes, double lids, thick black hair, and look how fair she is.

That's my daughter, all right." Then her eyes would move to me, and she'd sigh. "Flat nose. Single lids. So homely." "Doesn't look like me.

Doesn't look like Cece either." My parents loved each other. He could see what was eating her, and he'd put an arm around her. "That's on me. All of it." "Two girls.

Bea got my face, Cece got yours." And my mother would laugh again. But the question of why I was so healthy while Cece was always sick ate at her for years.

Long enough that she went looking for the answer in places that don't have any.

The time I remember best, she came back from a psychic and walked in the door and fixed her eyes on me. "She says with twins there's always one that takes." "Takes in the womb.

Takes the nutrition, takes the oxygen, takes the life." "Beatrix. Do you know whose you took?" By then I hardly cried anymore. Because Cece cried better than I did.

When she cried it came fast and hard and mean. The weaker kid is always in the right. My parents said it to me constantly. "Beatrix. You're the older one.

You give in." I was older by five minutes. Then my mother remembered Aunt Rosalind. Rosalind Kwan.

My grandmother's cousin, living alone three miles away, Unit 214 at Pine Creek Senior Living. My parents filled out a form. A caregiver's authorization affidavit.

Once it was signed, Aunt Rosalind could handle my medical records, my school enrollment, my three meals a day. They hadn't lost me. They'd just put me somewhere else.

Then they came up with a hundred reasons to sell it to me. It was only three miles from the house.

Aunt Rosalind's apartment had two bedrooms, and the one facing south would be mine. And the one that mattered: with me gone, my sister wouldn't get sick.

All three of them looked at me and waited. So I nodded. "Okay. I'll go." I didn't want to go. But it made them happy. My third month there, Aunt Rosalind fell in the bathroom.

They wheeled her over to the memory care wing on the far side of the same campus. She never knew my face again after that. The affidavit stayed. The signature stayed.

Nothing on the form changed at all. My parents didn't come get me. A caseworker came once. She saw a clean room. A packed backpack. Hot food in the fridge.

Then she asked me a few questions. I got every one of them right. I didn't know what would happen if I got one wrong. I only knew that getting one wrong probably meant going home.

I was a little past nine when I moved in. Pine Creek had never had a resident that small. My neighbors came out to look at me. Some of them made a face. Some of them frowned.

Then one of them started it. "We came here to retire, not to babysit." "That child does not cry, does not disturb our rest, and does not touch our things.

Or she goes." They figured out fast that I was easy. If anyone was nearby, I didn't talk.

In the dining hall I waited my turn in line, and then I ate everything on the tray in big fast bites. After school I went out back.

It was a vacant lot, waisthigh in weeds, and nobody looked after it. I'd stay out there for hours, until it got dark, and then go up to my room.

When I got back I put one mark on the wall behind my door. Four strokes and a slash across them. Five days to a set. One mark, one day.

I'd draw it and wonder whether anyone at home was counting too. What number they'd have to reach before they came for me.

Chapter 3 I did everything I could not to be a problem for anybody at Pine Creek. So the mood turned around fast. They started talking to me.

They dug out toys and waved them at me, badly. "Bea, how come you don't smile?" "Kids are supposed to smile!" But I really didn't seem to know how.

And all at once I understood why my mother liked Cece better. Cece could smile at her with an IV in her arm. And then my mother would pull her in and kiss her and kiss her again.

If I wanted to be held, my mother pushed me off. "Beatrix, your sister needs me more than you do." "Stop bothering me.

Please." But at Pine Creek there was no Cece, and nobody treated me like a bother. I learned to laugh out loud. You could hear it down the whole hallway.

The harder I laughed, the happier they got. They competed over it. "Why did 201 get a laugh out of you and I don't?" "Bea. Louder.

Let everybody hear it." I asked them why they kept trying to make me laugh. The woman in 105 said, "Because you're small." The man in 401 said, "The old spoil the young.

That's just the natural order of things." Was that why I was supposed to give in to Cece? But I was good to the people here too.

I refilled their water pitchers, rubbed their shoulders, carried up their packages. So why wasn't Cece good to me? I really don't think I liked my sister. I still don't.

However many times my parents said the older one gives in. Cece looked at me with her nose in the air. Like being my sister was something to be embarrassed about.

If she didn't want me, I didn't want her. So why was I supposed to save her any cake? I asked my father, mad about it. "Okay. My birthday's over.

When are you leaving?" "I've got friends to play with. I don't have time for you." Something complicated moved across his face. He rubbed his hands together. "Beatrix.

If you were half as sweet as your sister, we'd want to spend more time with you." It did hurt, hearing him say it. But I told myself it didn't matter. They'd be gone soon.

Even if it was once every three or four months. Even if they only stayed half an hour. Every time they left, I felt it a little.

And then I'd think, why can't I live at home like Cece does. Except my unhappy stretches were getting shorter. Because I had Julian Zhou. He was 202's grandson.

He'd come to visit her a while back and the two of us got in a fight. After that we were friends. Julian brought me comic books and played violin for me.

I caught him butterflies and dragonflies out of the tall grass. Summer nights we went up on the roof and looked at stars. Every time we raced, I won.

He'd be bent over gasping. "Bea, you run like wind. I can't catch you." I knew he was letting me win. Not saying so made it better. Julian was good to me.

Whatever I said, he answered. I said my parents never remember I like fish and hate chicken. He said that was awful of them.

I said all my clothes were my sister's rejects, and I'm bigger than her, so nothing ever fits. He said I looked good in anything.

I said I'd decided to stop missing my parents, because they definitely didn't miss me. Julian asked how I knew.

I said, because the last time they came was a hundred and thirtyseven days ago.

Chapter 4 Julian asked me carefully. "Bea, why don't you go home?" "Everybody lives with their mom and dad." "Old people live in places like this because they don't have a mom and dad anymore." I got it out in pieces. "Because my sister thinks I'm dirty." Almost every time I got near Cece, she said her chest was tight and she couldn't get air.

The thing I dreaded was her voice going high. "She's been playing in something filthy again. I'm having a reaction." Maybe there was something to it.

After I stopped living at home, my sister did stop getting sick.

But Julian came up off the bench in one motion. "Bullshit." "Bea, every one of them is pushing you around." "It's fine. From now on I'm your big brother.

I'll look out for you." He had the kind of smile that put things back together. When summer came and there was no school, Julian moved into 202 too.

We were together morning to night. Which meant the old folks at Pine Creek stopped seeing me at all. The light went on for them.

They started working their friends and their relatives. "Bring us every kid you've got around ten years old." "How did we forget. She's a child.

She needs somebody her own age." But you could bring me a hundred kids and Julian would still be different. He was my friend. He'd help me celebrate my birthday. He would.

I carried the cake out to the garden, half skipping, looking for him. Then my feet stopped. Because Cece was sitting on our bench. The one Julian and I liked best.

And Julian was standing beside her, handing her his violin. The thing he treated like treasure. The thing he never let me put a finger on. Cece had her hands all over it.

She was smiling up at him. "The grain is so unusual.

Was it custom made?" "How long have you played?" "I've been working on Bach's Sarabande." In the sunlight Cece's small face looked painted.

Something soft and clever in the way she tipped her chin up at him. And I watched Julian's eyes light. And then he was off, talking and talking.

I stayed behind the big tree and listened, and listened. Waiting for him to say my name. He never said it once. I don't know how long they talked.

I know the frosting on the cake in my hands had gone soft. It got on my fingers and it would not wipe off. I waited until Cece left before I went over.

He still had that dazed smile on.

He saw me and his eyebrows went up. "That's your sister, right?" "She's so much better looking than you." "…Like something out of a story." I already knew Cece was better looking than me.

Kids who get fed love come out looking like that. I held the cake out and acted like none of it had landed. "Here. It's my birthday.

You get cake, my sister doesn't." "That's what she gets for always calling me filth—" But Julian's eyes had gone to my hands.

He put the violin away, slow. "She's not wrong." I froze. And he was perfectly serious about it. "You're too dirty. Of course your sister can't stand you." "But it's fine, Beatrix.

Your sister can't stand you. I can." That moment, my whole world was one long rainstorm. I wiped my face and told him, and I was not kidding. "I'm announcing it.

Starting today, I don't like you." And I stuck to it. That night I counted the marks on my wall. I'd been living here four hundred and three days. I'd known Julian a hundred.

It took him less than one afternoon to end up on Cece's side. Chapter 5 After that, when I passed 202 I said hello to his grandmother and nothing at all to Julian.

Even when he came after me calling my name. Even when he admitted he'd said the wrong thing. Summer ended and his mother came to take him home. He flat out refused to go.

It made her furious. "Whoever heard of a child living with old people. This is ridiculous.

At your age you should be working, getting ahead, studying!" She was still talking when she noticed me listening. The silence between us got very heavy.

Julian's mother cleared her throat. "Bea, honey.

I wasn't saying anything against your parents." "I'm sure they had their reasons for putting you here." "Every family has its own troubles." I waved it off. "It's okay.

I don't mind." Julian finally got loose from his father and ran over to me. "Beatrix. Say the word and I'll keep the room in 202. I'll see you every day." He meant it.

You could see he meant it. I didn't know what I wanted to say. Then he pulled two wrapped books out of his backpack. "These are goodbye presents." "One for you.

One for your sister." I bit my lip and took one of them. Julian's mouth went flat. "What kind of big sister are you.

You keep everything good for yourself." I said, "I'm giving Cece hers. I just don't want mine." He glared at me and then he walked off.

The last thing he ever said to me was this. "Beatrix. No wonder your parents don't like you." I watched him go. There was a piece missing somewhere in my chest.

I couldn't have told you which piece. It felt like something had been cut out with a dull, rusty knife. I didn't get much time to feel sorry about it.

Because the man in 201 had overheard what Julian's mother said. So all of Pine Creek knew by dinner. The light went on for them again. "How did we forget.

She's exactly the age for learning things." "Her parents can't be bothered. That doesn't mean we can't." And then I had a brand new schedule.

School during the day, and after that I reported to the common room. 101 taught me chess. He'd taught logic at three universities. 104 taught me writing.

She wrote obituaries for a newspaper for thirty years. 404 taught me to draw. Her paintings hang on the second floor of the public library. 203 taught me how to build a rocket.

She ran trajectories for the Apollo program. The schedule rotated. New one every month. I asked, "Is there violin?" Everybody looked at everybody.

Then 306 smacked his own knee. "My grandson gets back next month when his tour wraps.

He can teach her." He said it with his eyebrows up, pleased with himself. "He's better looking than that Zhou boy too.

Bea, one look and you'll be thrilled." I hadn't cared one way or the other. But the way 306 said it, I was a little curious.

Except the grandson got held up by something and kept not coming. After a while I forgot about it. Later the chess lessons stopped and 205 wanted to teach me etiquette.

I asked what etiquette was. She said it was how to stand, how to sit, how to be a lady.

She'd been a career diplomat in the Foreign Service her whole life. "Bea, you don't have to do any of it.

But you have to know it." "Knowing the rules is how you keep your options open." I didn't want to learn it. But I knew my parents had Cece signed up for a lot of things. Ballet.

Flower arranging. Horseback riding. Everything she learned was so she'd look good. Everything I learned was so I'd survive. Back then I didn't know there was a difference.

Chapter 6 Some of it was for refinement. Some of it was for character. Which was why Cece got more and more polished every year.

My mother posted videos of her lessons in the family group chat every day. She was proud about it. "She was so tiny when she was born. Look at her now.

A real beauty." "Oh, the years I've put into raising that girl. Every bit of me." If I could do all those things like Cece, would they come see me more.

So I carried a folding stool over and I paid attention in every lesson. They came less and less. They had a lot of reasons. "It's too sunny today.

Cece gets dizzy in the sun." "She's been talking about that concert for months. If we visit you, she misses it." Then one morning my parents showed up with no warning at all.

And what floored me was the rest of it. They were taking me home for a day. I stared at my mother. She squinted back at me and looked me over. "Well.

You almost look like a girl now." "But that hair has to be cut. It's a bird's nest." "The dress we bought you this time is silk.

You take care of it." Then she got to the point. "Our friends. Uncle Nelson and Auntie Colette, you remember them? The whole family moved back from London last month.

We're taking you to their house. You behave. Don't embarrass us." I said okay. Then I said, slowly. "Isn't Cece enough?

You don't need me." My mother said, "No." "The Fengs have twin sons." "When they see you and Cece together, two sisters, it'll feel like family to them." It had been over three years since I'd been home.

I wasn't looking forward to it much. My parents didn't speak to me on the drive either. They were busy with each other.

My father said, "If we land this partnership, the company goes up a whole level." My mother said, "How hard can it be? The older boy met Cece before.

He looked after her." "And now the younger one's back. If he likes her too…" She put a hand over her mouth. "Honey, which one should she marry?

The older or the younger?" My father laughed with both hands on the wheel. "Well, we do have Bea." "Two sisters, two brothers.

If it worked out—" My mother made a sound in her throat. "Don't be ridiculous." "Look at Beatrix.

Nobody's taking that home for a daughterinlaw." You could tell the whole family had a lot riding on this visit. My mother didn't wash out my suitcase.

She was afraid I'd carry dust and germs into the house. Cece didn't have a reaction either. She didn't even have time to look at me.

She had a little notebook in her hands and she was memorizing something out of it. On the way out the door, the two of us put on matching dresses. Hers pink. Mine pale green.

I opened my mouth. Cece laughed before I got a word out. "What. You want my dress again?" "Beatrix, with that moon face and that flat nose, red wouldn't help you either.

Be realistic." My mother had to look us both over to get our hair right. Then she said, "Beatrix has grown into her face lately.

From a distance there's something of Cece in her eyes." The little bubble of pleasure in my chest hadn't finished forming.

My mother added the rest of it. "Nothing close on poise, obviously." And Cece's face cleared right up. I was used to it. Cece got every high point there was.

Right before we left, my mother pinned me in the entryway and went through it line by line. Don't talk over anybody. Don't laugh loud.

Don't reach for the dish farthest from you. "Beatrix.

You only have to do one thing today." "Don't let them see you were raised in this house." Chapter 7 But my parents' friends turned out to be far too warm about all of it.

Auntie Colette took Cece by one hand and me by the other and could not stop praising us. "You are so lucky. Two girls, both of them flowers about to open." Really?

Was I a flower too? Cece was the flower. I was more like a weed. Tangled, not nice to look at, no use to anybody.

Only good for growing wild in a field and taking whatever the weather does to you. I put my head down and traced the carpet pattern with my toe.

Across the room my mother was busy praising the Feng boys. She had a hand on her chest. "So these are Adrian and Theo? They're beautiful.

They put our Cece to shame." I rolled my eyes inside my head. My mother did love to exaggerate. And then I stopped. Because it was the first time I'd seen boys that good looking.

Two of them. They had the same face, give or take. Except the older one was quieter and more contained, with something bookish about him.

The younger one had two sharp little eyeteeth when he smiled, and eyes bright as anything. It hit me that my mother favoring Cece did make a kind of sense.

Good looking children are easy to love. It comes free. Adrian and Theo, for instance. They were beautiful, and even I couldn't stop looking. But I'd learned a long time ago.

Whatever my mother and Cece want, I don't touch. So I locked my jaw and said nothing at all. I watched Cece talk to Adrian about music, painting, philosophy.

And talk to Theo about sports and mech models. Then it clicked. What Cece had been memorizing that morning was these two boys' interests.

My mother must have put the list together for her. At the table I couldn't get a word in. I didn't want to. Then a cat cried outside the window. Both boys changed color.

They pressed against the glass. High up in the big tree, out on a branch, stood a small black cat. The whole family started running. Uncle Nelson went for tools.

Auntie Colette explained it to us. "We only just brought Soot home. Those two are insane about him." The branches were too thick to get a ladder up.

The cat paced back and forth, and his voice kept getting thinner. Everybody was sweating. Even Cece looked worried. "He's shaking. Poor little thing." Liar. She doesn't like cats.

The year I turned nine I petted one stray cat. She said she couldn't breathe.

That day my mother held my arm with one hand so I couldn't run and pinched the inside of my thigh with the other. "Beatrix.

Are you trying to kill your sister?" "Kill her and you'd be the only child in this house!" It hurt so much. But my mother looked like she was in pain too.

She marched me into the bathroom. She didn't even wait for the water to warm up. She just took the showerhead to my bare skin.

If it really was cat hair on me that set Cece off, then fine. I was sorry. But when I came out of that bathroom shaking, I saw Cece sitting up straight on the couch.

She made a face at me. And something bright and pleased with itself went through her eyes. I was nine that year.

It was the first time I understood that a person can breathe another person right out of a house. Three days later my mother called Aunt Rosalind.

And then she asked me about it. "Bea. How about you go live at your greataunt's?" I think what came back to me was all of that. The crying and the rest of it.

Sitting there in a pretty dress, poised, well behaved, held up by my mother like a doll on a shelf, suddenly stopped making any sense at all. I got up so fast the chair went back.

I kicked off the shiny sandals. My mother's hand came out. My mother's hand did not catch me. I pulled the dress off over my head. Chapter 8 With everybody in that room shouting.

I went up that tree like something shot out of a slingshot. The cat came down. The whole thing took a minute. My face gave them nothing.

I had the cat in both hands, and I held him out to the Feng twins. My dress was still hanging in the tree. My knees were bleeding.

Every person there was looking at me. "Which one of you wants him?" They reached out at the same time