Her flaming auburn hair was a flat sheet of red against the white linens. Charlotte. Better known as “Charlie,” my serial-dating bisexual foster sister let it all hang out, and often, depending on her mood.
I lay there for several minutes held between the arms of two women I adored as if they were my very own blood relations.
There were eight of us in total. Foster sisters. Well, me and Sonia were related by blood. The other six came from all different walks of life. One thing remained the same. We’d grown up together in Aurora Kerrighan’s house. Since we were little it had always been the nine of us.
Me. Sonia. Addison. Blessing. Liliana. Charlotte. Genesis. Tabitha. And last but not least, Mama Kerri. She’d taken each of us in and since I was around eight, the entire house had been filled with females. From then on, we were just sisters…a family by choice. We celebrated birthdays, holidays, graduations, jobs, and everything in between just like any other family.
Our lives weren’t normal by any stretch of the imagination, but we made it work and it was filled to the brim with love and sisterhood.
I’d have it no other way.
I lifted my arms and put both of them around the two women. The jostling woke them and each one stirred. Liliana smiled huge, her dark gaze twinkling.
“Dios mio, you had us worried, hermana.” She leaned forward and kissed my bandaged shoulder, and I could have imagined it, but I believed it did take away a little of the burn.
Sisterly magic. Worked like a charm.
Charlie on my right lifted my bandaged hand and brought it to her cheek, pressing lightly. “Mama Kerri said you’d been shot.” Her voice cracked, and her eyes filled with tears.
“When did you guys get here?” My voice was hoarse, and I tried to clear it of all the cotton I felt coating my throat. Pain meds did a number on the body. Damn. Everywhere felt sluggish and lethargic, not to mention the aches and throbbing at my shoulder, hip, and hand.
“We rushed right over when Mama called,” Liliana explained. “You were asleep when we got here. We didn’t want to wake you up.”
I tugged them close, closed my eyes, and breathed deep, allowing their presence to fill me up and give me the comfort I needed this morning.
“Are you really okay?” Charlie asked.
“How can I not be? I woke up warm and comfy to two of the best sisters in the entire world.” I smiled and sighed.
“I see three little chicks cuddled up in bed,” Mama’s lilting voice came from the room’s entrance.
The three of us glanced over where she leaned against the doorjamb, her purple fluffy robe in place, her long strawberry waves down around her shoulders. She had a pair of multicolored reading glasses on and a book tucked under her arm, a steaming yellow mug in her hand.
She was the sun. The moon. The bringer of everything good in life.
“Morning, Mama.” I smiled.
“Girls, I see you couldn’t stay away even though I told you not to rouse her. She needed her sleep after the night she had.” She tsked but smiled through it.
“We didn’t bug her, just cuddled up and crashed like old times,” Charlie stated.
“Mmm, well come on my little chicks, let’s get some tea and cookies into you. Nothing like a sweet in the morning to wash away a bad night, eh?”
I smiled and looked at Liliana and then Charlie. The three of us started giggling like the teenagers we once were. Every time we had a bad night, we’d wake to tea and cookies instead of eggs or oatmeal, which was normally on the menu. Mama Kerri had a firm belief that a sweet treat could solve any hurt, at least for a time.
Seemed to work as we grew up. Definitely wouldn’t hurt now.
She clucked her tongue and disappeared.
The girls helped me get out of bed.
Charlie hissed as my panty-clad form was revealed. I should say, more that the bruise on my hip came into stark view. It was hideous. Black and purple and about the size of a salad plate.
Liliana and Charlie both studied it.
“Does it hurt really bad?” Liliana asked, her eyes filled with worry and concern.
I shook my head. “Not if I don’t touch it.” I grinned and she shook her head as though she were used to me blowing things off and making light of a bad situation. Part of my sparkling personality. Though I will admit yesterday took the cake for shitty days. I was more than ready to start today fresh and let go of all that came before.
“Come on, ladies. Remember, each new day is a gift.”
According to Sonia anyway. She’d always tell me that, especially the first couple years we lived here after our parents died.
“Be grateful for each new day. It’s truly a gift.” She’d say that when I’d grumble about waking up, or having to go to school, or waking early on a weekend to go to my part-time job as a teenager.
I grabbed Sonia’s old robe hanging off the back of the door, feeling instantly comforted by something that was worn by my big sis, who—knowing her—would be arriving any time now.
The three of us did our bathroom routine, the door completely open, one peeing, one brushing her teeth, and one washing her face before we’d switch. When you lived in a house with eight girls, you learned how to share space. That didn’t change even though we were tipping the scales toward thirty.
One by one, we each took the staircase down to the kitchen where shocker of all shockers, my sister Sonia was already sitting at the table, phone plastered to her ear. The second she noticed us coming down the stairs, she barked into her phone, “Gotta go. Simone’s awake. Yes, I’ll tell her…mmm hmm. I’ll tell Mama too. Got it.” She set her phone down and set her gaze on me. “That was Genesis. She’s freaked out to the max. Her and Rory will be here this evening. She didn’t bring her over today so Mama could focus on you.”
Genesis was the second oldest at a whopping thirty-one, a social worker in downtown Chicago, and a single mother of Rory, aptly named Aurora after Mama Kerri. We called her three-year-old daughter Rory for short.
“Aw, she didn’t have to do that. I would have loved hanging out with my niece.” I frowned and winced as I sat on the padded seat at the large picnic-style table in the rectangular kitchen.
Mama stood by the metal sink, plants dangling around the window, herbs sitting in neat little pots at perfect clipping distance, though it didn’t hold a candle to the enormous garden in the backyard.
“That’s what I told her. Don’t keep my grandchild from me, but Gen never listens. Uses that degree in psychology and social behavior to determine that we shouldn’t have more to deal with, when our Rory is not something we deal with but enjoy to the fullest. You can tell her I said so too.” Her tone was indignant but not irritated as she poured milk in some teas, sugar in others, and both in mine because I loved most things in life. If it tasted good by itself, it likely tasted good with it all mixed in together too.
“Anyway, how’s the arm?” Sonia asked her blue-eyed gaze running over my bandaged arm and hand as though she could see through the dressings and determine if they were healing right herself.
“Good, good. I mean…” I canted my head from left to right. “It burns a little and the stitches pull but overall it could have been a lot worse.”
“Yeah, as in dead worse. Simone, Mama told us that the cops think it was the Backseat Strangler.” Charlie slumped into the seat across from me.