Lorain
We just moved into 5005 a couple of days ago. There’s boxes and stuff piled around in the dining room. I look around in them and find a bag with a bunch of pictures.
I dump them out on the table. There’s all kinds. A picture of me in my sailor suit when I was maybe 4 or 5. A bunch with Mama dressed up for the costume parties she went to when I was little. There’s a couple of Tata when he was in the Army.
Then I see a picture of a baby in a little casket. The casket is white and has frills all over it. The casket is on the ground. There is snow all around.
The baby’s eyes are closed. It is dressed in a white lacy dress. I can see a tiny ring on the baby’s hand. There are holy pictures in the casket, too.
It looks like it is sleeping, but I know the baby is dead.
I never saw the picture before. I go to where Mama is sitting in the front room making a rag rug. I show her the picture. “Mama, who is the baby in this picture?”
Mama holds the picture for a little while, looking at it.
“It’s your sister Lorain. She was born before you were, Heniu.”
“She was my sister? She died?” I take the picture and look at it some more. “I don’t remember knowing about her.”
“Oh, I think we told you about her. But maybe your forgot,” Mama goes back to braiding strips of rags. “She did in 1925. She died of pneumonia.”
“That’s what I was sick from when I was little.”
“Yes. That’s why Tata and I were so worried. You were sickly so much. You had the chickenpox and scarlet fever. And always had colds. Then, when you caught pneumonia, Tata and I were really worried.”
“She looks nice in the picture. All white and fixed up.”
“Yes, she died in the winter and there was snow on the ground, so everything was white. She looks nice.”
Lorain Lukasik. Born August 22, 1924. Died January 12, 1925. An innocent soul plucked from this earth. Taken, according to her death certificate, by “convulsions, possible pneumonia beginning.”
There is something so gripping about her short existence. I imagine what my life would be like if she had survived. I would not have had to endure all these lonely years of being an only child.
Did all these years of aloneness in some way force me into this often frightening need to be self-reliant? Resourceful. Watchful. Cautious.
Tears and pain fill me. I don’t try to understand why God, why life moves to take the soul of an innocent.