The scratching sound had been getting louder all morning. She was in the office now, at the top of the house, her legs tucked up onto her chair, rocking a little. There was no way she could get farther away from the scratching and still be in the house. Leaving the house meant walking past the scratching. She couldnât even force herself an inch nearer.
It has always been gruesome: a finger in a box. When her little brother had his accident -- no, when she chopped off his finger with a hatchet, and then lied about how it happened -- they both told everyone the finger was gone. A frantic search of the garage with bags of ice at the ready turned up nothing, and no attempt at reattachment could be made. Secretly, sheâd pocketed it. All those hours in the emergency room, it was seeping blood into the back pocket of her jeans. A few days later, she put the tiny, withered bit of him into a small jewelry box, and kept it.
It was one small evil of many. She was a bad sister, always spoiling his moments and demanding more attention, always snide and insulting, always ready to pick a fight. When she got older and knew she was bad, she didnât know how to mend it, let habits take over, remained adversarial while hating herself for it. Sometimes, months would pass without them speaking. Sometimes years went by where she didnât think of the finger.
She carried it with her, all these years, because how do you give it back? How do you even begin to process decades of injury and cruelty, embodied and disembodied in that little scrap of bone? So she kept it in the battered jewelry box, from one house or apartment to another.
Theyâd been fighting more, lately. He was getting married to someone wonderful and she, as usual, was making everything terrible. She was so happy for him and hated the attention he was getting, and that discomfort and jealousy often won out.
She didnât know what finally tipped the scales. What word or slight or insult or bit of meanness finally slid things into action. But this morning, when she went downstairs to make a coffee. she heard it. A thin, wintry sound, a scraping. Nail in the inside of the little enamel box. Impossible and insistent.
She sat in the office, rocking. She could still, barely, hear it. She wondered how long it would take decades old child bone to wear through enamel, and the wood of the drawer she kept it in. She wondered how she could possibly walk right by that drawer in the hall table, the scratching separated from her only by inches of wood and enamel and air. The scratching, she thought, was getting a louder.
