Injury Information: Homicide

Ona Gritz

Word Count 458

I remember the chase through the house to our back bedroom. How you landed on the bed across from mine. How Mom cornered you with that copper dustpan behind her back like a surprise. And I was surprised. The way she lifted it up. Her fury in bringing it down on your thighs.  Afterward, the two of us huddled on the island of mattress where it happened, and I was the one who cried, who needed comforting. 

Next, the hole in your smile when we came to see you at the reform school. Your front tooth with its pretty twist extracted by a dentist known for creating makeshift braces for the inmates out of bamboo. I can’t believe that witch insisted on pulling it, you told us through nearly closed lips. Your mouth now a secret source of shame.

The big brown scar on your back after that, as though your skin was delicate cloth and someone left the iron unattended. A seizure, a fall, your back pressed against a scorching radiator when you came to. I was told this story, but you’d been marked by so much by then, I barely took it in. The pain, the fear, the searing smell of the brand. 

I’m tempted to stop here. Leave out the car that sent you flying. Your broken bones and body cast. The crutch that was temporary. The limp that wasn’t. Tempted to leave out the brutal end just four years later. The yellow towel still tied to your neck when they found you. The document with its icy language for the unsayable: “Cause of Death: Apparent ligature strangulation. Injury Information: Homicide.” I’m tempted to stop because, at some point, I did stop. Displaying your photos. Saying your name. Remembering. Sibling-specific amnesia that lasted longer than you did. 

Until one night, I—your baby sister, now middle-aged—felt my earring drop into my blouse. I fished it from my bra, went to slide it on, and the hole was gone. I’ve never seen anything like this, my husband marveled, fingering the split. But I had. On you. The tear, a guppy’s mouth, on your stretched, elongated lobe. Somehow, that tiny matching wound became the crack in the dam. I remembered. Let myself mourn all you had been through and all I had lost. Wrote and dreamed of you. And, truth be told, wouldn’t stop talking of you. 

Did your earring snag on something? The plastic surgeon asked. Did a baby pull it? Did you?  No, no, and no. I had no explanation. It was fine until it wasn’t. As though, tired of failed attempts to call me in the wind, you found a small tab you could somehow grab, actually breaking skin. Finally, breaking through.

Ona's new memoir, Everywhere I Look, is about sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. Her nonfiction has appeared in Brevity, Dorothy Parker's Ashes, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Utne Reader, and been named Notable in The Best American Essays. She teaches creative writing to teenagers with disabilities.