The Inheritance

Delisia considered herself to be the good daughter. Blond and slight, she had majored in economics before going on to get a master’s degree in architecture, her ambition driving her to apply for scholarships and marry her way into a higher income bracket. Even an early divorce had not lessened her stature in the family hierarchy as her parents reacted kindly by saying that they hadn’t really liked the husband all that much. Aline, three years younger, was certainly no black sheep, but she didn’t work as hard as her elder sister and was not as accomplished, a factor that concerned her parents. She was slight as well, with dark skin that took after the maternal line. Her family treated her with both a tenderness and hesitation, as if they were uncertain where her real sentiments lay. 

The sisters had grown up in a small house in Westchester, a two-bedroom bungalow in a suburb of Los Angeles that had been built in the fifties. Delisia had made her way to a more upscale suburb post-divorce where she had bought a condominium and Aline had landed in Washington, D.C. although she traveled often for business. They  kept in touch through Zoom so they could show off their new clothes, consult about changing hair fashions, and even on one occasion, introduce a new boyfriend. But Delisia had recently come to prefer the disembodied voice of the phone. In sound alone there was an intimacy, a caring that seemed to be lost with the addition of visual information. In the last few months she had accused her sister of playing to the camera. There seemed to be something amiss and she couldn’t quite figure it out.

Even last night when Aline phoned to say she’d take a cab from the airport she had thought she heard a tension. “I don’t want to stress you out, Dee,” Aline had said. “I know we have a lot to do, but we should be able to have some fun.” Delisia had nodded out of reflex; she knew Aline couldn’t see her as she sat on her bed and kneaded her feet. The condo was spare with a few vintage ‘60s pieces and the walls were painted stark bright colors. It was the aesthetic opposite of her parents house, but it was not far from home.

            Taking care of their aging parents had become Delisia’s job since she lived so close, and it had surfaced as an issue between the sisters. When Aline told her that she couldn’t come out to help pack up the house, Delisia had grown frustrated with her sister and angrily told her that her job was important too. Aline had missed both the house packing and the neighborhood farewell.  But at this moment, Delisia was just glad Aline was coming. She now knew they were in the period of the long good-bye in which each family visit might be the last.

            At the door Aline gave her a hug that lasted just a little too long and as Delisia pulled away she saw that her sisters face was tight in the jaw. She led her to the guest room and perched on an armchair nearby, watching as Aline unpacked her things and placed them in the closet dresser.

            Aline pulled jeans and a black blazer from her bag, then dug around in the bottom of the suitcase until she pulled out a wad of newspaper. She slowly peeled it back to reveal a piece of pottery that she handed to her sister.

            Delisia re-positioned herself on the chair and entwined her arms across her chest. 

“I’m not getting a good feeling from you, Lina. Is something wrong?”

            “I had to take a sleeping pill last night and I still feel slightly hung over. What has mom been saying about the move?

            “She says she’s glad its finally happening. But now we’re both worried about Dad. He seems to have veered off into sadness. Mom says he putters in the backyard endlessly, clipping the plants and mowing the lawn.” Delisia watched her sister carefully and noticed the shaky hand.

            “Shall I get you a cup of tea?” she asked, and with Aline’s nod, she moved off slowly towards the kitchen.

            It had been difficult to get her parents to let go of the family home. It wasn’t much, a small stucco building of fourteen hundred square feet, but it was fully paid off and it was theirs. Bud and Jessie had aged rapidly after seventy but every year it was next year, next year, we are still doing fine and we want to live on our own. Then her mother had the accident and everything seemed to change. She had grown listless about cooking dinner, something she had always done with pride, and the house, when Delisia visited was often dusty and unkempt. The next step had been a family conference call and long months of looking for a suitable retirement home. Aline was consulted by phone and even flew out for the ultimate decision. But she wasn’t there the last Saturday after all the final papers had been signed and Delisia took her father out to lunch. 

As they ate their crisp cobb salads, her father lamented the large down payment he had made on the new space in Woodlake Gardens. The facility would care for Jessie and him until the end of their lives, but they had given up a good portion of their savings to gain entrance. Bud had gone on for a while in a tremulous voice, his glasses tipped down his nose as he took bite after bite. Then, holding a fork mid-way to his mouth, he had paused. “But really,” he had asked Delisia, “how much longer do you think we will live?” Delisia had kept her head down and paid close attention to a small lettuce leaf that had slipped over the edge of her bowl. When she finally did look up, her Dad had averted his eyes. “I wanted to give that money to you and your sister,” he mumbled, and she had reached out to grab his hand. Her father had always wanted to give them more than he could.

When Delisia returned Aline was laying stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She turned to her side and pulled herself reluctantly up to sitting as Delisia carefully set down the tea and went back to her chair side perch.

            “I’m not sure what’s going on Dee, but for the last two nights I just haven’t been able to sleep.” Aline stretched her hands up towards the ceiling, brought them down and wrapped her arms in a self embrace. Then she touched her chest with her left hand. “I wake up and there is a tightness right here, a panicky feeling and I can’t breathe. I get up, I walk around, I do some yoga.  But nothing seems to help.”

             “Do you think it has to do with the move?” Delisia said, spreading her hands wide and gesturing around the room. “This is the only thing I’ll have now. No home to go home to.”

            Aline sank back to the bed and pulled her knees to her chin. “I seemed fine when Jason left and everyone commented that I was doing so well. So together and ready to move on.”  She stretched her legs and got up to continue unpacking. A muscle twitched in her cheek and Delisia sensed her fear. “It just can’t go on much longer.  I’ve got to get some rest.”

            You are angels, their mother had always told them in times of difficulty, and that was a phrase Delisia thought now to herself but didn’t say out aloud. And the times of difficulty had been many when she and Aline were growing up. It wasn’t just the big crises that took their toll on Jessie -- Bud’s loss of a job, her lingering grief over a miscarriage, her brother’s early death from cancer. Jessie despaired over even the little things. Her sole job in life was to run the home and take care of her girls, but too often they ended up taking care of her. A broken washing machine would push her into despair and the girls had often come home from school to find her angry or out of sorts. When they were elementary school age they would crawl into her lap and she would touch their faces and caress their hair. As they got older, they learned how to distract their mother with school news and triumphs or coax her to go for a walk. And then when she had a complete breakdown, they went every day after school to the hospital for a visit. You are my angels she would tell them as her mood brightened, and she would brag to the nurses about her lovely girls.

We are angels, Delisia thought now to herself as she touched her sister lightly on the back and whispered good night. She took the stairs to her room in twos and breathed in deeply until the oxygen swirled in her belly and stretched her rib bones out to the sides.

***

In the morning the sun shone and large swaths of light filled the small condo, breaking into patterns on the yellow walls. Delisia struggled for consciousness around seven, rising up through thick layers of fatigue to hear Aline already in the shower.

She put on a robe and quickly prepared coffee and bagels.

            “But I can’t eat,” Aline said when she finally came to breakfast. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m a mess.”

“It’s not going to be an easy day,” Delisia warned. “We’ve got to pack up the few last things and then drive them to the Gardens. I think a little extra energy might be useful.”

“But I didn’t sleep,” Aline said.

“I need your help,” Delisia pleaded. “I can’t do this by myself.”

shelves where they had sat for years and placing them in four cardboard boxes open on the living room floor. The moving van would come later to take the furniture and the forty other boxes that held all their worldly goods. Delisia hugged her mother first, then stepped aside as Aline reached out to hug Jessie, who disengaged quickly and pointed out the window. They could see Bud slowly making his way around the garden, a pair of shears in his hands.

“Your father’s lost it,” Jessie huffed. “He thinks he’s going to have a patio garden at the new place.”

“He can do that, Ma,” Aline said. “It will give him a sense of purpose.” She stretched up to help her mother get the last ceramic cat from the top of the built-in bookshelves, dusted it with the tail of her shirt and put it in one of the boxes. Delisia put some newspaper on top and they closed the box and taped it. 

 “Sit down there for a minute,” Jessie said, motioning to the plastic covered sofa. “I want to get something for you.”  She rubbed her hands on her apron and left the room, returning with two small boxes and stood before them to emphasize the delivery.

 “I have decided it is time to give you my jewelry,” she said, her voice heavy with feeling and the somberness with which she often bestowed gifts. She spoke quickly, the words tumbling over each other as she remembered out loud the stories of how she had become the owner of each piece. To Aline, she handed a long and narrow red box and presented Delisia with a square blue one. “I’m giving my pearls to Lina and the necklace with the locket to Dee.”

Delisia had not seen the jewelry in over twenty years as her mother kept it buried away in a special box in her top bureau drawer. She did remember her mother wearing the pearls at Aunt Sophie’s wedding, recalling Jesssie in a dove grey silk dress, her hair curled for the occasion as she had been happy as the maid of honor. But mostly the necklace unlocked a memory of deep shame and anger. Delisia had been eight years old when she and Lina found their mother’s jewelry box while she was napping. They were intimidated by these prized possessions but put them on anyway, completing the dress-up with smeared lip-stick, eye shadow and that wonderous womanly accessory, the high-heel. Without thinking, they had woken Jessie up to parade in front of her, giggling while they shuffled their feet awkwardly in shoes three sizes too big. But Jessie was not amused and had, for the first time in their lives, hit them. Across the bottom, and over their chests, she had been in a near hysterical rage only to calm down later and beg their forgiveness for her anger. Yet it wasn’t until they were twelve and ready to go to junior high that their father had finally explained to them how their mother suffered. Depression, he had told them, is a very difficult state of mind.

Delisia looked over at Aline to see if she was registering the same emotions, if perhaps she was connecting this long-forgotten event to the reception of her pearls. But Aline had slumped on the sofa and her breathing was heavy. Her left hand was pressed to her chest and her eyes were closed.

 “Another one, Lina?”

“Yes, but not too bad.”

***

Delisia and Aline never met their maternal grandfather but knew him from old photographs and the stories told by their mother’s sisters at family occasions. Jessie’s father had owned a clothing shop in a small town in Ohio that had been hit especially hard during the Great Depression. On a number of occasions their aunts had praised their grandfather’s generosity by explaining how he helped many of his neighbors, extending them credit until his own earnings were deeply at stake. They had heard how Grandpa had been tough on his kids, getting them to rise early in the morning for exercises --“jumping jacks before breakfast means you are lively all day,” Aunt Doris had explained.  And Delisia had also heard the rumor that old man Jenkins wasn’t all there in the later years and had committed arson to get the insurance premiums from the clothing store when things got so bad all the family had for dinner was soup and bread. 

As a teen-ager, Delisia had often wondered about the connection between the Great Depression and the sickness of the same name, that insidious darkness of mind that seemed to inhibit her mother’s ability to enjoy. The fear of going hungry, the angst of simple wanting weighed their mother down in ways that neither her husband nor daughters could understand, although Delisia often thought Aline took her mother’s erratic feelings to heart. The doctors finally uncovered the reason for Jessie’s moods before the girls hit puberty, but even with her medications and an improvement in Bud’s income during their teen-age years, Jessie always looked on the dim side of things. The girls stopped talking to her about anything but the most pleasant of events, as did relatives and friends. What Delisia found so infinitely hard to bear was her mother’s reluctance to spend money. Each plastic sandwich bag was washed and hung to dry. Only every other socket on the overhead hanging fixture was fitted with a light bulb. And shopping trips for clothes were never-ending skirmishes that ended with loud voices and tears. Delisia knew that deep down, her mother counted every penny, and every penny spent seemed to draw an ounce of blood from her mother’s veins. The passing on of her jewelry was both a hardship for her mother and a great relief. 

As the moving van drove away with the greater part of their furniture, clothing and other household staples, Delisia gave Jessie another hug. Then they packed the boxes into the car and closed the door at 15 Harding Avenue for the last time.

***

“It’s really nice Mom,” Aline says as she puts a box down in the new apartment.

“It’s adequate,” Jessie responds, stepping behind the muted draperies to run her fingers along the windowsill. Woodlake Gardens is three tall towers of small residential units surrounded by a couple of acres of parkland with gardens and walking paths. Bud and Jessie have chosen a one-bedroom with tall ceilings, soft ivory walls, wooden kitchen cabinets and a new dishwasher. It is half the size of their bungalow.

“Shall we help you unpack?” Delisia asks, but knows what the answer will be as soon as she sees her mother’s face. Jessie shakes her head.

“We need to rest.”

“Don’t forget that dinner’s at seven. You pay for that meal so you better go eat.”

But Jessie is already moving to the bedroom and Delisia sees through the sliding glass doors that her father has found a pot in which to plant his cuttings.

***

“Dee…”, Lina hisses to her sister, stopping in the doorway to her bedroom, the hall light glowing behind her. But Delisia sleeps on her blond hair splayed against the pillow, her body angled haphazardly in the bed.  It is nearly two in the morning.

“Dee…, can you wake up?  I can’t sleep.  Please?” Lina pads in and stands near her sister until Delisia’s eyes open. Startled, she sits up. Aline kneels next to her and takes Delisia’s hand and puts it over her heart. It throbs.

“Can you feel it? It’s bad Dee.  I almost can’t breathe the adrenaline is rushing so fast.”

“Shall we go to the hospital?” Now awake, Delisia is afraid.

Aline shutters and shakes her head. “But I’m not mom, Dee, I’m not mom,” she sobs.

It is their worst fear, a familial anxiety. It is a concern they know is murmured among relations and close friends. The worry that one of them will collapse and come to share with their mother her despondency, her sadness, her gloom.

Delisia pushes back the covers, moves over and pulls her sister into bed. It is a sleep time ritual they have not engaged in since they were small. Aline turns on her side, clutches her pillow tightly and snuggles her foot beneath Delisia’s leg. Her breath comes in surges, then slows and recedes to slow gusts. Delisia, awake, stares at the ceiling. Then, once again drowsy, her lashes dust her cheeks.

There appears a flap of wings, a quiver of light and the sisters sleep entwined until dawn.

BIO

Sylvia Sensiper is an artist and writer. She has published in Intima, Glacier Hills Review, and The Autoethnographer and her scholarly work has appeared in Current Psychology and Children and Youth Services Review. Her photographs are in the collection of the UC Davis Health System