Christmas and my little sister

The last time I saw my sister, Melinda, she was ringing a Salvation Army Bell outside a local store. I dropped some money in the red kettle and said, “How you doing?” She looked the other way. I waited, hoping she would look at me, acknowledge me, till I began to feel awkward standing there. I went inside the store and cried. She was thinner than usual and wore clean but too large jeans and a sweat shirt. She needed a jacket. She probably needed a meal too but there was no way she would let me buy her food.

I was four years old when my parents brought Melinda home and I was enchanted with the tiny baby and the birdlike noises she made. In time she grew to be my little shadow and followed me wherever I went. We were best friends, my little sister and I. We loved the beach where we lived, hiding in Nana’s big house and walking “up street” with our mother and aunts to buy ice cream cones. We measured ourselves by the tall hollyhocks that grew in Nana’s yard. Melinda and I shared three years as
the only children in our small family. I remember them as golden days.

As we grew we behaved as most sisters do. We laughed and played together and we fought over who knows what? We tattled on each other and sometimes swore to be “best sisters” forever. When our younger sister, Annie, joined us alliances were made and broken and sometimes we liked each other and sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we called each other nasty names and, behind our parents’ backs, we hit each other. But when bedtime came the three of us had a ritual that had to do with love and a secret “gopher hole” and I always went to sleep knowing Melinda loved me and I loved her.

We went to the same schools and took music lessons and did all the normal things sisters do. I didn’t always want Melinda around when I was a teen but she wanted to watch this sister she was not familiar with… this sister who dated boys and shared secrets with close girlfriends. After high school I moved to Las Vegas and a year later, Melinda joined me. We were young women who dated young men with serious intentions and for a while we even shared an apartment. We married and Melinda
left with her husband when he went into the Army while I stayed behind. She
came back with a baby boy, my first nephew.

As young mothers Melinda, Annie and I brought our husbands and children together for holidays, birthdays and sometimes just for fun. We enjoyed each other’s company and spent a lot of time laughing. We were family.

Melinda was a tiny, beautiful woman. She wore exquisite dresses and loved tasteful, delicate jewelry. She was soft spoken and well mannered and lived in a lovely house with her husband and son. But something always seemed to bother her; made her feel incomplete. She could not name it.

I don’t know when or why Melinda found drugs. I only know she was soon hooked and there was no going back for her. She lost everything except her son. He was hooked too. Together they lived in a deserted apartment on Stewart and 13th Street with no air, no heat and no water. You would have to be from Las Vegas to know what kind of neighborhood this is. One hot summer day I saw them walking across a parking lot carrying jugs of water, my little sister and her son. I did not stop to talk to them. I did not want to embarrass her.

Sometimes Melinda called me and asked for money. I always told her I would help her find food and a place to live but she wanted money. She became incensed when I said no. She called Annie too and Annie and I talked about what to do but we agreed giving her money would be a mistake. And we felt bad. And guilty. And sad. And Melinda was angry with us. I always believed she would someday turn herself around and we would be sisters again.

A few days after I saw her ringing the Salvation Army bell, I received a note from her. She wrote the Salvation Army was helping her and while she knew her family thought of her as trash this was her life and we could accept or forget her. She wished me Happy Holidays.

I never saw or heard from her again. The following March my beautiful, delicate sister died in the deserted apartment. Her son was with her. That was 15 years ago. She was 48. There is no moral to this story, no message.

It’s just that this time of year Salvation Army bell ringers are everywhere and they bring me vivid memories of my little sister, Melinda.