MUSSEL-STOMPING
EMMA ROWAN

I.

​

Trace and I were mussel-stomping on the sandbar when a fawn slipped into the creek. As quietly as a sunflower seed dropped in soil, it sank. I watched its little head dip under the water before bobbing back up, the tips of its soft ears damp and pointed. It started flailing its limbs under the surface, its splashing causing less ruckus than a piece of driftwood. I heard the tiniest cry. Mussel spit shot up at my calves as I ran to the sandbar’s edge. It was Trace that taught me that. How to be a god. She always said though how important it was not to go digging for them. They’re not for us, she said, just let them be. Which was funny to me because she used to scoop up handfuls of periwinkle snails like popcorn kernels and chuck them out into the water just to hear them pop. 

​

“Trace,” I called. Only our parents ever called her Tracy. 

​

She was crouched down studying some fiddler crabs, folded up like a paper crane. Her auburn hair was pulled into a loose French braid, runaway strands splayed across her sunburnt shoulders. The mud on her heels was leaving neat splotches on the back of her shorts. The sun was beginning to set, and I watched the shadows on the tiny bumps of her spine move as she poked and prodded at the ground. Just a year older than me and two inches taller, but the gap between us felt filled with a pool of knowing I couldn’t so much as dip my toes in. She told me that fiddler crabs shed their shells as they grow, absorbing the nutrients from them as they molt and make new ones. I always pictured crabs finding their shells like lost treasure; I liked the idea of making them all on your own.

​

“Trace!” 

​

“What?” she asked, not turning around. 

​

“A fawn just fell in the water.” 

​

“Huh?” She shot up and ran to me, brushing her palms off on her thighs. 

​

“Look.” The baby was holding its head just barely above the surface. I expected to see more panic in her eyes, but there only seemed to be genuine confusion, as if she was surprised to have to fight for her life, surprised that the water didn’t cradle her. She continued to cry. 

​

“We should go save it.” I started lifting my shirt above my head when Trace swatted my arm. 

​

“No wait, Fran,” she said. “There’s the mom.” 

​

A doe appeared out of the reeds, looked out at the sound with vague concern. We watched her slip into the water and swim over to the fawn with the grace achievable only by wild animals. She nudged the baby’s head, circled it for a bit. The fawn watched and slowly began to move more purposefully. After a few minutes, we watched their white tails shrink to cotton balls as they made their way down the creek, headed to the next marsh. 

​

-

​

That was the year I learned we only had each other. 1979. I was thirteen. Trace was fourteen. Everyone called us Irish twins—she said it was because of our red hair and my freckles. That summer, we were both working as camp counselors at the preschool, getting matching tan lines from our uniform t-shirts. Dad was still taking the train into the city everyday, coming home a little more tired each time. Mom was focused on our older brothers, John and Chris, and finishing that day’s bottle of red as she ironed our father’s shirts or made a pot roast. 

​

She didn’t have time to fret over her last two girls. I think she knew—or at least she hoped—that if we had each other, we’d be alright. 

​

Trace and I shared the attic, and we didn’t mind at all. Nobody really went up there since the stairs were so steep, and you’d have to fold yourself damn near in half just to fit under the doorway. Dad always used to say if he didn’t take his back out coming in, he’d break his neck coming down. We stayed up late at night trading secrets across our twin beds, bundled under scratchy wool blankets. 

​

We split the vanity in half. I got the left, and Trace got the right. Her mascara and lipstick and face creams and perfume sat scattered on top like buildings in a poorly planned city. I kept my lip balm and powder tucked away neatly in the drawer. It had a three-paneled mirror, the wooden frames gnarled into knots of daffodils at the corners. I loved that vanity. It used to be in our parents’ room. 

​

When we were little, we’d spend whole afternoons climbing on it, playing with our mother’s makeup while she feigned annoyance, watching over from the window seat, blowing smoke from her cigarette out onto the milkweeds. There was a matching stool with a seat of woven wicker, the kind that would leave imprints on the back of your thighs if you sat on it for too long. I used to sit, pouting, at the edge of my bed waiting for Trace to finish putting rollers in her hair for what felt like a million years. In the mornings, I’d wake up a half hour before her just to have it all to myself. When I was done getting ready, I’d pull that little bench over to one of the crank windows and watch the cardinals flutter in and out of the big oak tree on the lawn and the sparrows zip through the juniper bushes that lined the street like sewing needles through cloth. Just beyond those bushes was the ball field and the playground where rumor had it that if you could get to the last ring of the monkey bars in under ten seconds, you’d have your first kiss before summer’s end. And beside all that was the beach, not much bigger than a school gymnasium. Barely a three minute walk from our front door. Already at seven in the morning, I was counting down the minutes Trace and I could be back down there. Ruling over our saltwater kingdom, the only two people on the planet. 

​

-

​

I hated September. It meant summer was over. It meant no more bare feet on hot asphalt, no more ice cream cones for dinner, no more manhunt with the other kids on the block getting bit up by mosquitos and skinning our knees, no more mussel-stomping. It meant school. I hated school. I hated having to wear that ugly uniform and cross my right ankle behind my left under my desk. I hated the boys that were always trying to flip girls’ skirts up in the hallways and burning my palms on the ropes in gym class and pulling gum off the bottom of my Mary Janes. 

​

This obnoxious kid, Thomas, used to tease me. He’d throw things at the back of my head in class, slap my books out of my hands, call me a “ginger” and whatever worse things he could come up with. I just ignored him. Trace told me that giving him attention would’ve been exactly what he wanted—but that if she were there she would clobber him. Our brothers were all in high school at the time, not that they would’ve looked out for us anyways. I was dreading next year when Trace would be joining them, and I’d be stuck here without her. 

​

One day, early November, right after school, Trace and I stood at the curb, shivering in our jumpers. Trace had cut her hair short like Molly Ringwald’s, and Mom almost went into conniptions. She also started smoking cigarettes and sneaking beers on the bleachers after sunset with the rest of the kids that thought they were too cool for eighth grade, but Mom didn’t know about that. We were debating walking over to the deli for hot chocolates before going to the bus stop—we had to take the town bus since we lived so far. I was digging in my backpack for quarters when I felt a tap on my shoulder. 

​

“Hey, Fran.” 

​

I turned around. It was Thomas. I was surprised; he never called me by my actual name. A couple of his friends stood behind him, smirking. 

​

“Hi?” I said. He had both hands behind his back, and I squinted at him. “What do you want?”

​

My stomach turned. Behind me, I felt Trace’s eyes turn to bullets. Thomas grinned. “Nothing.” 

​

“Get lost,” said Trace. 

​

“Let’s just go,” I said, turning back around to pick up my bag. 

​

That’s when I felt my collar pulled tight against my throat, the autumn wind sting the top of my spine, and freezing chunks of ice slither down my back. I screamed. The boys went into hysterics. I swung around with tears in my eyes to see Thomas doubled over, an empty ice bag dropped to the sidewalk. Shrieks of laughter erupted from the other kids hanging around outside.

 

Wordlessly, Trace lunged forward and tackled him to the ground. I couldn’t believe it. The look on his face—I’d never seen anyone look so scared. She started yelling all sorts of obscenities, swinging at him so fast her arms blurred, but that weasel squirmed out from under her and ran. Everyone went nuts. Trace’s lost it! She’s gonna kill Thomas! I just stared, my mouth hanging open. She chased him around the parking lot for a couple laps until he made a beeline for the fields. Trace followed him all the way to the back of the school, hurdling over the waist-high hedges in glorious leaps. That’s when I snapped out of it and ran after them. We ran through a pick-up game on the basketball courts, past the JV tennis matches, and onto the concrete track. Almost colliding head-on with three cross country runners, I ended up thirty yards from the finish line, dizzy. 

​

Somewhere I heard an adult yelling. My eyes scanned the inner field until I spotted Trace. After jumping over some kids stretching on the grass, she finally got him. She chucked her backpack at him like a shot put, and he dropped to the ground. She was on top of him again, swinging. I caught up to them. He was crying. Someone was yelling at her to stop, and I didn’t realize that it was me. A whistle blew, and within minutes the track coach was pulling her off him. Thomas’ swollen cheek was a McIntosh and his nose was gushing blood, dripping down his chin. I stared as some kids helped him up and followed Trace, still kicking in the coach’s arms, into the school. I stood, shivering, wiping sticky tears off my face with my sleeve. I realized that the back of my sweater was soaked. I pulled the hem, shook out what half-melted ice I could, and went inside. 

​

-

 

Trace was grounded for a month. It was almost two, but Mom talked her sentence down with Dad once she knew why she nearly committed manslaughter. I’d gotten to Mom first, waiting for Trace to be escorted from the nurse, skirt dripping wet in the cushioned chairs of the principal’s office, taking the blame and apologizing for the whole thing, trying to prevent the screaming match that had become second nature to the two of them. Later that night, she came up to our room after dinner. Me and Trace were pretzel-legged in my bed, holding frozen peas to her knuckles. Mom sat across from us. I watched the moonlight seeping through the window dance over her blonde hair. I would’ve thought she’d look huge, so grown-up sitting at the edge of Trace’s twin bed like that, but she didn’t. In fact, it looked exactly her size. She looked like a

teenager again. I could picture her waking up in the morning, assessing her reflection in the vanity, putting on her pantyhose and a long plaid skirt, grabbing her backpack off the railing. I imagined her in high school, leaning against her locker, chewing gum, skipping class to smoke in the courtyard. I wondered if we would’ve been friends, which one of us she was more like. Then I saw her frown. The deep lines around her mouth and the crinkles at the corners of her eyes. The gray threads that had sprouted from her scalp. The sun spots on her chest from summers of burns under a small, gleaming gold cross. 

​

“I know I’ve always told you girls to look out for each other, but violence is….” She shook her head. The wedding ring on her finger flashed as she crossed her arms. “You don’t think I dealt with kids like that? Of course I did. That’s life.” 

​

She sighed, a sigh filled with an entire lifetime. She looked at me and Trace like we were two fledglings fallen to the ground, and she, perched on her nest of twigs and feathers, knew everything that was going to happen to us and was powerless to stop it, but was sorry nonetheless. 

​

“You have to learn to control that temper of yours, Tracy.” 

​

Trace muttered something, scowled into her lap. I picked at a loose thread on my sheets. I knew that if we were sitting closer I’d be able to smell the wine on my mom’s breath. The cigarette smoke stuck to her blouse. I realized that there was so much I didn’t know about her. And so much she didn’t know about me; she never asked. I realized that my mother might’ve raised me, she might’ve changed my diapers and rocked my crib, but it was Trace I looked up to. She was my best friend. She was the only person that really looked out for me. It could be us against the world, and I wouldn’t care. 

​

“You need self control,” Mom said, “or you’ll get yourself into trouble.”

​

I thought maybe I could be the one to help with that. The same way Trace has always looked out for me, I could look out for her. I never wanted to be the reason for such chaos ever again. I could stop the bad things before they happen. I could keep the world spinning. 

​

​

II.

 

After high school, Trace went to a two-year school for bookkeeping. She always liked biology, but she thought she’d get a job easier that way. I started teaching at the preschool full time and took some classes on the weekends to get certified. A few years later, we moved into a two-bedroom apartment together in Doenam, not thirty minutes from where we grew up. It was 1991. 

​

Trace got to have the vanity in her room since she was, after all, still a year older. It was ridiculous to me that, at twenty-four and twenty-five, we still deferred to those rules, but I let her have it. I thought the lines between our bedrooms would end up blurry anyways. She assured me I could use it whenever I wanted. She had a boyfriend now. I didn’t like him. I thought he was a bum. They met at a bar one night when she went out with some friends. He was a mechanic’s apprentice and always reeked of gasoline. Trace always fell for the wrong guys, but it never lasted long. They flitted in and out of her life like moths to a flickering bulb.

​

-

​

It was that autumn that I found the bottles in her room. So many glass bottles. I lost count after a dozen. I sat on the floor and lined them up in neat rows, in size order, in circles, in one long awful sentence. I rearranged them so I wouldn’t shatter them. I forgot about the shirt that I came in looking for—this old Yankees crewneck our dad had gotten her one Christmas, one I stole so much we basically had joint custody over it. I had spotted a dark sleeve poking out from under her bed and lifted the comforter, and there they were. 

​

Of course I had noticed something was off. I noticed she was having a glass of wine with dinner every night—which didn’t seem that weird; our father would have the occasional beer while he sat in the armchair, watching the game, but we never did that before. And then it became three or four glasses. I noticed she wasn’t talking to me as much. She used to come into my room to interrupt my lesson planning—cutting up construction paper alphabets or counting pom poms—with some story from work or distract me from doing the dishes with a dramatic reenactment of what happened while she was in line at the pharmacy. I noticed how moody she’d gotten. How quickly she’d snap at me if I asked her something simple, how quickly she lost her patience opening jars or looking for the remote. She went through a pack of cigarettes fast, but she always did. I thought maybe she was just stressed because of work. 

​

I wanted to cry. I kicked myself for not realizing sooner. I couldn’t fathom how long this could’ve been going on. What kind of sister was I that I couldn’t tell something was seriously wrong? That I couldn’t see this coming? That I couldn’t stop it? I blinked away hot tears and grabbed a cardboard box.

​

-

​

When Trace came home that night, I sat the box filled with bottles on the kitchen table. I plopped down in a chair and waited for her to speak. I felt my heart beating in my ears. She laughed. “What’s this?”

​

I went over what I was going to say in my head so many times, took notes in blue ink on a legal pad, but I fumbled for words. 

​

“I found these under your bed. I promise I wasn’t snooping. I was just looking for something, and—” I took a shaky breath. “I just wanna talk.” 

​

“Fran, c’mon. Are you serious?” 

​

I didn’t blink. 

​

“Those aren’t mine,” she said. 

​

“They’re not?” 

​

Her mouth twitched. “No.” 

​

I felt a lump form in my throat. “Then whose are they?” 

​

“Nick’s.” The boyfriend I didn’t like. 

​

“Ok. Then what are they doing under your bed?” 

​

She bit the inside of her cheek. I couldn’t believe she thought she could lie to me. 

​

“You know, it’s really none of your business.” 

​

I smoothed the tablecloth with my hands. “I don’t wanna fight with you, Trace. I want to help you.” 

​

“There’s nothing to help me with!” She threw both hands in the air. “It’s nothing.” 

​

I stared at her. She had our mother’s eyes—bright blue. They both gave me the same look when they wanted to be left alone. I thought about calling my mother then, crying to her on the phone like a scared child, but I didn’t. What could she do? And forget Dad, this would kill him.

​

“Fine. If you say it’s nothing, it’s nothing,” I said. “But I’m throwing these bottles out, and they better be the last ones I see.”

​

I’ve thought about this moment a lot. Wondered if I had tried harder, if I didn’t let it go, maybe things would be different. Maybe it never would’ve gotten so bad. 

​

-

​

She got good at hiding it. At least, for a couple years. I became a dog sniffing around the apartment for alcohol like old bones. I bit my nails to stubs in a way I hadn’t since high school. There were moments I had my sister back—when we’d split a pizza in the living room, watching Seinfeld or when we’d go grocery shopping and she’d make me laugh so hard I’d cry in front of mountains of oranges and grapefruits. But we got into so many fights. She thought I didn’t trust her. I didn’t. I thought she was hiding something. She was. I thought she lost her job, but she wouldn’t tell me. She spent more time at Nick’s place. And when she did come home, it was late at night, after she’d thought I’d gone to bed, but I heard her slamming cabinets, dropping things. I scoured her room, but I never found anything, only Listerine in the pockets of her jackets. She stopped coming with me to visit our parents. They’d ask about her once before dropping it. 

​

I went to the creek alone. I saw new squealing children stomping across the pavilion, new babies sitting on the beach, new parents swatting their sand-filled hands away from their mouths. I walked on the sandbar and traced the etched paths of horseshoe crabs into the water until I couldn’t anymore without falling in. The whole thing felt smaller and bigger at the same time, like a snow globe cracked open. Except instead of glittery liquid seeping out, it was black mud squelching under my bare feet and caking under my fingernails. 

​

More times than I’m proud of, I’d catch her and not say anything. Smell it on her breath at three in the afternoon. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to scare her off. I wanted her to know I was there for her. I started leaving brochures for addiction counseling on the coffee table and sticking AA flyers to the fridge with big yellow smiley face magnets, the only ones we had. I’d find them crumpled up in the garbage the next day. 

​

-

​

Two years later, I pushed her door open not three inches to find her grabbing a bottle of vodka from the bottom of her hamper. Stupidly, I’d never thought to check there. I cracked. 

I crashed through the door, darted across the room, and snatched it from her hands. She jumped. 

​

“Fran, what are you doing?” 

​

I was holding the bottle away from her like I held toy cars away from my toddlers when they misbehaved. I could tell she was already drunk. 

​

She began to claw at me, her eyes wild, cheeks flushed. I couldn’t believe my sister could look so unnerved, so desperate. 

​

“Stop it!” I cried. 

​

“Just give it to me!” 

​

I pushed her off of me with my left hand, but she wouldn’t give it up. She started hitting me, my chest and my shoulders. Even when we were little, our fighting was never physical. She never so much as pulled my hair. Now, I was running from her. Racing into the kitchen as she lunged for my back. I got to the edge of the sink and tried to open the bottle. Realizing what I was doing, she stopped and pushed me to the floor. 

​

I landed hard on my wrist. The bottle shattered. Glass shards littered the kitchen tiles. Clear liquid seeped under my palm and spread to my shorts. I didn’t move.

​

She looked at me like a dog would’ve, shocked at herself as if she bit me when she got scared and only realized it hurt when I yelped. 

​

“Fran,” Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m…” She covered her face with her hands. 

​

Careful not to touch the broken glass, I sat up. Using my good hand, I reached for the counter and stood. I tiptoed over and pulled her into a hug. She sobbed into my shoulder. With my hands on her back, I realized how skinny she’d gotten. So small. 

​

-

 

After that she admitted she had a problem. She started going to AA every Thursday night. She stopped seeing Nick. She came with me to the laundromat, would hold my quarters and help me pair socks. She took up running. The sight of my sister on a Sunday morning, coming through the front door, sweaty, face flushed, ponytail looser than before she left, kicking her sneakers off on the rug filled me with such ridiculous joy. My wrist healed nicely. My nails grew back. She came with me to visit Mom and Dad again. We walked down to the creek sometimes, climbed onto the sandbar despite Trace saying we were getting too old for it. She’d say that, but I could see the way her face lit up at the smallest things. A hermit crab hiding behind a rock, the ospreys calling overhead. I would see my sister’s long arm make a perfect comma as she tossed snails into the sound, laughing, and think that I had done at least something right, that maybe we were gonna be okay. These were the best years.

​

-

​

I’d been seeing Sonya, another teacher at the preschool, for a couple years then. She wanted to move in together. I was nervous about leaving Trace alone. She’d gotten a new job, was a few years clean, but I was still terrified. It still felt impossible to me that I even had Sonya, that I had somehow made room for someone else in my life. A part of me knew it was time for Trace and I to go our separate ways, but I didn’t want to admit it. We ended up moving into a duplex. A house just two towns over on Sycamore, split top and bottom. Me and Sonya got the top, Trace took the bottom. 

​

Those were good times too, at first. Trace used to come upstairs on Sunday nights, and I’d cook dinner for everyone, eggplant parm or quiche, Trace’s favorite. Then, our mother died. 1996. Lung cancer. She didn’t even tell us she was sick. Only Dad knew. John, Chris, Trace, and I stood at the funeral, barely breathing, unspeaking, like props. The bouquets of flowers, the cards with a photo of my mother I’d never seen before and a bible verse I’d never read, even the priest felt fake. Like I could’ve walked up in front of the pews and pushed the whole scene over, coffin and all, in one swift motion, like a cardboard backdrop on a movie set. 

​

Not long after, Trace relapsed. It was Sonya that had a feeling. When she told me so I was furious. I almost kicked her out right then. There’s no way, I said, she wouldn’t. But I was lying to myself. I knew. We were seeing her less and less. I’d get up while the sun was still heaving itself above the trees, look out the living room window just hoping to see her run down the street, but she never did. Nick’s truck had started showing up again. It blew up in a huge fight. I wish I remembered exactly how it started. But maybe it doesn’t matter. 

​

I had followed her downstairs to her apartment after she threw a can of Hunt’s tomato sauce at the wall. Surprisingly, it didn’t burst and splatter all over the kitchen but dropped to the floor with an underwhelming thud, squished up on one side as if it were made of foam. She wasn’t aiming for my head, so I wasn’t scared. I was determined not to let this go like the first time, not to let her make it nothing. 

​

“You’re drunk,” I said. 

​

I was standing in the middle of her living room as she zig-zagged around me from room to room, grabbing miscellaneous items and stuffing them into an old duffel bag. 

​

“I can’t believe you.” My eyes welled with tears. “Trace, this needs to stop. You’re ruining your life. What are you doing?” 

​

She’d grabbed a backpack from her bedroom and was shoving a winter coat inside. It was August. 

​

“I don’t have to take this,” she muttered. “I’m outta here.” 

​

She was breaking my heart. I was learning that’s all she did. She couldn’t help herself. “What would Mom think?” 

​

She paused, slammed the backpack down on the coffee table. The filled ashtray shook. She looked me in the eyes and laughed. 

​

“That’s rich.” 

​

I scoffed. For the first and only time, she repulsed me. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” 

​

She just shook her head, went back to ignoring me. I followed her around the apartment, taunting her, sliding past our reflections in the old vanity. 

​

“Where will you go? You can’t be on your own. You’ll run yourself into the ground.” Somehow I stopped myself from asking what I’ve been doing wrong, why I wasn’t enough of a reason for her to stay clean, what the hell she wanted from me.

​

I followed her as she staggered up the stairs to the front door. Sonya watched from the kitchen, a hand over her mouth. Trace dragged the duffel bag behind her, put on that stupid backpack. Like she was off to sleepaway camp. 

​

“Trace, stop it.” 

​

She had her hand on the door knob. 

​

“You can’t leave.” I went back to pleading. My voice cracked. “Please. Please don’t leave.” I held onto her shirt hem. “Let me help you. We can—” 

​

“I don’t need your help!” she screamed, shaking me off. “I don’t want it! I never asked for it!” 

Her eyes were so glassy, her cheeks flushed. She looked right through me. “Just leave me the fuck alone.” 

​

She left, slamming the door shut behind her. I was stunned for only a second before I ripped it open and chased after her. I saw her back slip into the passenger seat of Nick’s truck, watched it speed away. I stood in the driveway for a while waiting for the sky to collapse in on itself. Eventually Sonya came out and got me. 

​

-

​

I tried calling her. I called her office—I didn’t even know if she still worked there. I even called Nick. I would’ve gone to his house if I knew where he lived. I drove around the neighborhoods looking for his ugly pick-up. I called my brothers. I called my dad. I still couldn’t bear to tell him. He hadn’t heard from her. Nobody knew where she was. For weeks and weeks I filled voicemail boxes to the brim. Nothing.

​

​

III.

 

It’s been six years since then. That was the last time I saw her. I searched and searched and searched. I still try calling every now and then. Sonya tells me she definitely changed her number, but I can’t help but try. 

​

We have a little girl now. Janie. My mother’s name. It just felt right. She’s two. I take her down to the creek every once in a while. I point out the house I grew up in, the attic window I looked out of, the clover and the boulders that line the driveway. Dad moved down south a couple years ago to be closer to my brothers, but the new buyers haven’t changed much—at least, not on the outside. 

​

At low tide, I carry Janie down to the sandbar. She’s scared of the fiddler crabs, but I’m trying to show her they’re not so bad. When I stomp and the mussels spit, she shrieks with joy. She tries to copy me, but she’s not big enough to scare them yet. Her favorite are the deer. I point out the slivers of them I can see between the reeds across the water, and she calls them puppies. It’s a gift to have someone to show these things to, to give this place to. I tell her everything I know comes from my sister, from her aunt, from an old friend, but she has no idea who I’m talking about. Trace exists to her as the changing tides, an idea, something that as far as she knows might not even be real. But I know Trace’s the drifting force that makes the whole thing breathe; the inhale, exhale of the creek itself. Maybe she’s somewhere in the sound, in the marsh, the reeds, in the pale white foam that hits the shore. I know she’ll come back in with the tide. I’ll be here, at the edge of the sound, waiting.