She died on
April Fool’s Day, which seemed so profoundly appropriate that I thought God
must share her sense of humor too. I
remember when I was told the news; my initial reaction was laughter. I just laughed out loud and shook my head, as
though the information was most assuredly false and this was all just another
one of her clever pranks. No one pulled
off a better prank or told better jokes than my sister. Our mother always complained that she needed
to take life more seriously, but I thought why bother? My sister always seemed to be having more fun
than anyone in the room. Who would want
to change that?
“Mom! Mom!”
I yelled out, running toward the house to retrieve her. “Maggie fell off the tree! Maggie fell! I
think she’s really hurt!”
My mother was doing the dishes then, and she
pulled her hands from the water, shook them quickly off, and then dried them on
her faded jeans. “What happened?” she
asked, already in motion towards the back yard where we constantly played at
climbing and building forts.
“She fell, Mom, she fell,” I faked fear, “I
think she hit a rock at the bottom.”
When Mom and I arrived back at the scene of
the supposed accident, Maggie was lying in the grass with her legs splayed
awkwardly about and her forehead smeared with the fake blood we bought at the Ben
Franklin.
“Mom, mom … is that you?” she dramatically whimpered
and cried.
Mother began
crying too and leaned down to assist her eldest daughter. “Oh, Maggie, honey, what happened?” she
began, but then I ruined it when I started snickering and spit out an uproarious
snort I had been trying to hold back.
“Dang it,
Tay! You ruined it!” Maggie yelled, and shot up from her position of portrayed
injury. She wiped the red, sticky substance
from her face with one quick movement and then jerked her hand out toward me,
splattering the green grass red.
Mom shook
her head and expressed her frustration that this was just another one of Maggie’s
poor jokes. “One of these times you won’t
find this funny anymore, Maggie,” she warned, “You’re going to get yourself in
real trouble.” She sent us both to the
house then and made us copy information from our set of Encyclopedia Britannica
for an hour, hoping we would stay occupied and out of trouble.
That’s what
childhood was like with Maggie. She
called me Tay for short, her affectionate version of Taylor. She was the only one who used that nickname,
and it made me feel that we had a special connection that would last
forever. I was always her co-conspirator
in our youth. She’d come up with a plan,
I’d perform my role, Mom would be worried and then angry, and then we would sit
together at the kitchen table trying not to make eye contact, because we knew
we would both end up snickering and Mother would only extend our punishment
then.
When she
became an adolescent, the four years between us now became a gap as great as
the Grand Canyon. She wasn’t at home
much anymore; she was always out with her friends. It seemed like everyone in the whole world
wanted Maggie to be their best friend forever, myself most definitely included.
Although I was more often excluded now,
I still admired Maggie. Her smile and
laughter were a teasing sort of magic to me.
When Maggie
got her license, she became even more popular. I remember one night when I was
moping around the house, wallowing in my own self-pity because my friend Jamie
was having a sleep-over without me. I
got a better grade than her on our spelling test, and this made her upset
because I didn’t even try and she studied so hard; this, she said, made me “suck”
and she didn’t want to spend the weekend with a “lame, sucky, suck-ass.” Maggie noticed my mood and she lobbed an old
Rainbow Brite doll at me from across our shared bedroom. “Earth to Tay,” she hollered, as Rainbow grazed
across my shoulder, “What’s eating at you, kid?”
“Well, come
out with me and my friends tonight then,” she said, after I explained my current
crisis. I was so excited as we drove off
in her used Ford Tempo. We joined four
other girls at Deb’s house. Deb’s mom
was out of town and all the girls, including my sister, arrived with their JanSport
backpacks full of bottles. My sister pulled
out a bottle of Fleischmann’s and handed it off to me, “Here, Tay, you take the
first swig.” I looked up at her with
apprehension, but then joined as the other girls too took pulls from their Apple
Pucker and Boone’s Farm bottles. I
cringed as I struggled to swallow the liquid, but tried not to let on. “Jamie is a dumb little slut anyhow,” Maggie
added, and patted me on the back, apparently proud that her little sister was
hanging with the big girls now.
I stuck to
Bartles and Jaymes the rest of the night, slowly sipping the wine coolers as
the other girls played asshole, bullshit, and quarters with the heavier stuff,
all giggling the night away. “Hey girls,”
Maggie asked after taking another shot upon being called out for bull-shitting
about the cards in her hand, “Why do most guys like big boobs and tight asses?” She paused a moment to ensure she had their
attention, “Because they have big mouths and tiny little dicks,” she announced pantomiming
at length with her thumb and forefinger.
Maggie was the definition of “life of the party.”
I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache. Maggie told me, “It’s called a hangover, Tay. Get up and get over it.” The drinking from the night before seemed to
barely have an effect on her as she sat at her vanity making up her Maybelline
eyes. I hated the dizziness and nausea,
though. Even though I loved my big
sister, I decided I wasn’t up for hanging out with those girls again.
Maggie didn’t
change her habits though. She would come
home late, trying to be sneaky, but then she would fall down the stairs or trip
in the hallway and just lay on the floor laughing. I laughed too. Maybe I didn’t know better, but I think there
was just something contagious in her laughter.
It was hard to be mad at Maggie.
Even Mother, though she yelled at her, didn’t really try hard enough to
stop Maggie’s drinking and partying. And
then it was just too late.
Mother came
into the room and sat down beside me on the bed. She then told me she had just gotten off the
phone with the police. Maggie was in an accident,
and she didn’t make it. Then she asked
why I was laughing and said, “Oh, Taylor, don’t be like Maggie. Like isn’t always a joke. Life is precious.” She started bawling then and took my hands in
hers. I saw all the colors drain out of
her face; she was white except for the black mascara streaks that stained her
cheeks. I realized then I would never
hear Maggie’s beautiful laughter again, no one would ever call me Tay again, no
one would pull pranks on our parents, and no one would try to cheer me up with
dumb, dirty jokes ever again.
In the weeks
that followed, it seemed everyone just tried to make an example out of my
sister. They treated her like she was
just the poster child for some damn drinking and driving campaign. They forgot about the wonderful human she had
been. What about Maggie’s smile? What about her laughter? What about her joy and compassion and strength? Didn’t that matter too? Maggie always said yes to life, and now she
was only being used to convince others “just say no.” I know my sister made a mistake, but I wish
others remembered her the same way I did.
I’ll carry her laughter with me for the rest of my life. I’ll keep Maggie’s smile forever safe in my
heart.
