The Ones Still Here

That morning, the house woke before she did.

The old floor gave its first complaint. A pipe knocked once behind the wall, then regretted the sound. Outside, someone dragged a bin over gravel, its wheels stuttering like teeth. A dog barked twice and seemed to remember the hour.

Wyona opened her eyes. The ceiling was still there. The crack above the light fixture was still shaped like a river.

Perla was awake. The kitchen had begun to speak in her sister’s language — cupboard, spoon, kettle, cup. A small ceramic click. A drawer closing carefully, as if the house were a patient that could be startled into pain.

“Do not bring me tea,” Wyona called.

From the kitchen: “Too late.”

Wyona closed her eyes again. Eighty-two years old, and still no one listened to her when it mattered least.

Perla came in carrying two cups, one in each hand, moving slowly enough to prove she was not old and carefully enough to prove she was.

“Still alive?”

“For now.”

“Good. I made tea.”

“I heard the whole country making tea.”

Perla set the cup on the table beside the bed. Steam leaned toward Wyona as if it had something to say.

“You were talking in your sleep,” Perla said.

The morning changed. Not loudly. Nothing fell. But in Wyona, some hidden animal lifted its head.

“What did I say?”

Perla did not answer quickly. That was worse. She sat on the edge of the bed and adjusted the blanket over Wyona’s knees. Her fingers were bent at the joints now, but still precise. Still the fingers that had braided Wyona’s hair when they were girls, before either of them knew how long a life could become.

“You said, ‘Wait,’” Perla said.

Wyona looked at the tea. “Everyone says wait.”

“You said it like a doctor.”

Wyona smiled before she could stop herself. A foolish thing, a smile. It opens a door in the face.

Perla saw it. Of course she saw it. “You were good,” she said.

“I was employed.”

“You were good.”

“That is a dangerous word.”

“Only for people afraid they might deserve it.”

• • •

Wyona lifted the tea instead of answering. The steam touched her face, and for one bright second she was somewhere else.

A corridor. Forty-eight years old, hair pinned too tight, shoes still wet. The overhead lights buzzing like insects. Antiseptic and boiled rice and wet cotton and blood hiding under alcohol. A young nurse running past with a metal tray. Someone crying behind a curtain, trying not to be heard.

Bed Seven.