I am sleeping the the room that belonged to the sister that nobody speaks about.
I sit at her desk and study her books--Dostoevsky, Dickens, and many French-Mandarin dictionaries.
I am staying with her family, living in the room she grew up in, sleeping in her bed.
I don't dare ask about her. They didn't even tell me her name, and this place is only referred to only as the sister's room.
I wonder if they can't speak about her or if they won't speak about her.
Her niece and nephew, my charges, are staying in their mother's old room.
It is all shades of pink. Pepto-Bismol pink, hot pink, pastel pink, dark
reddish-pink. I thank my lucky stars I am in the sister's blue room. It's
larger as well, and has a big window. She was the older one, I suppose that
is why.
I am lying in bed, thinking about the girl who grew up sleeping in it, when it starts to rain. The skylight is open and the rain comes in.
I see that there is already a stepstool leaning against the wall, and I can climb and close it. It thunders.
I take a picture of Bordeaux out the window in the storm.
I still babysit her niece and nephew, and two years later still know nothing except that she is not dead and lives in Taiwan.
That explains the dictionaries but nothing else.