and I'm sorry

The softer side of you is riddled with holes. You left it in the closet, dark and neglected for so long. I think mice got into it. There were a lot of mice in our old bedroom. You'll probably laugh when you hear it, but I liked to call that place my childhood, now. Remember when we used to play in there? Not in the closet - there were monsters in there - but in that little room, with those two beds crammed in on either side. Seems like just yesterday. Seems like a million years ago.

When we were little, it seemed a lot bigger. So did that closet. We used to stuff everything in there, remember? When I quit ballet and you said you wouldn't do it without me, we just put all our tutus and dance shoes and little pink leotards right in there. We shut the door and we never looked back - not until you stole Avery Challen's baseball mitt and hid it in there before Daddy could come and find it.

Daddy never went in that closet. I think he was scared of what was in there, too. I think that, maybe, he knew a little more than he let on about what was in there.

When we were seven years old, I told you that if you came out with me at night, the trees would whisper to you the same way they whispered to me. You told me I was stupid, remember? You told me I was crazy. That I shouldn't go out there, and when I did it anyway, you told me you were scared.

I remember you dragging me back to the house. You didn't want to be friends with the trees, and I didn't know there was something wrong with hearing their voices in the night. But you did, and you dragged me back inside and told me to push it down. Put it away. I wasn't allowed to be crazy, and we had to hide it from Daddy or they might take me away. That's what you told me, and I believed you even when the trees said you were lying.

And when we were growing up, I was too caught up pushing down my own weaknesses to see that you were pushing something down, too. And while we shoved our closet full of stolen trinkets and abandoned pursuits, old shames and forgotten toys, we made a closet for ourselves in that shared heart of ours, too.

I never looked in that closet, Sissy. I was always too scared that if I left the door open too long, something would jump out and grab me. So when I ruined your favorite dress with holes and grass stains after I fell out of that tree, I just threw it in and slammed the door. And when we burned Daddy's tie - the one he said our mom bought for him - I let you hide it in there, way in the back. I never looked. The things that were in there, Sissy, I wanted to forget. And maybe if I'd looked every once in a while, I would've started seeing things that I hadn't even known you were hiding. Like that evil picture Mark Dwyers drew of you in seventh grade. Like those bottles of alcohol you used to sneak from our uncle's room. Like those pregnancy tests that you were too scared to throw away, so you put them in the only place you knew I wouldn't find them.

And I never did. I never looked in that closet. I never guessed that you were hiding more than what I watched you hide. And I haven't been back to that room since I got married, Sissy, but I remember when you told me to put it away like you knew exactly how to do that. Like you'd done it a thousand times. And maybe you never heard the trees whispering your name, but that doesn't mean you didn't have your own demons.

When we hid it from Daddy, I thought you were protecting me. When we tried to keep him from finding out there was something wrong with me, I thought I was the only one. That it was the one way we would never be the same, because I saw things where you didn't.

I never looked in that closet, Sissy. I never saw the things that you had in there. I never saw your broken hearts. I never saw those books about winter girls or the angry letters or the shirts-stained-red from those hot long-sleeve days. When I was young, everything you did was normal because you were all I knew.

I never looked in that closet. Maybe if I had, things would be different. Maybe I would've found all the love you've been putting away for so long. Maybe I would've found the hate. Maybe I would've found out just how scared you really are, and we coud've brought it to the surface and dealt with it the same way Daddy dealt with the trees when he found out.

But I never looked in that closet.