To dwell once meant to lead astray

For Christmas they get matching pairs of tennis shoes from their grandparents

The shoes are the same dark orange as their mom’s car only with black zigzag stripes. They have Velcro instead of laces because Zoe hasn’t learned to tie her shoes yet. The best thing about them is they have tiger paws on the soles, which means the girls get to leave paw prints wherever they go. They intentionally track mud into the kitchen even though they know they’ll get in trouble. Zoe forgets about her cowgirl boots, except when they dress up to go to church.

In the backyard they play with the roly-polies that live at the trunk of the tree. The roly-polies bustle around like quicker caterpillars, but when you pick them up and hold them gently between your fingers they turn into hard little gray balls. The girls collect them in a bucket and then let them loose.

They no longer take their baths together because Amy doesn’t want to. Zoe’s tantrums only result in a reduction in bath times for everyone because their mom says it’s just not worth it.

Their dad loses his job and at first the girls are thrilled. Their mom goes and works in an office, and the girls spend days on end poring over their dad’s atlas sitting on either side of him, asking questions over every picture on every page. They learn all the animals on Madagascar and make mazes they refer to as Black Forests with coded maps that Amy hides around the house for Zoe. Their dad lets them use his big old t-shirts as saris. They check out cassette tapes from the library with Japanese flute music and salsa from a Forbidden Island Kingdom the girls assume has treasure in the coves. Zoe points out that no one’s proven there aren’t fairies living there. They would likely fit inside your pocket and you’d just have to be careful not to squish them when you’re sitting down, but otherwise they’d take you to the treasure probably. Amy informs Zoe that fairies don’t exist. But she says what there could be is species considered erroneously by the scientists to be extinct.

Then their dad starts interfering in things and covering Zoe’s eyes when kissing comes on TV or when one person shoots another person and there’s blood. It used to be they could do whatever they wanted because their mom was always reading mystery novels in the other room. Now Amy runs out of time for Kumon, and Zoe runs out of time for her plastic animals. The girls confer and adopt a strategy that consists in pretending they want to take a nap in the middle of the school day, which allows them at least a couple of hours of freedom in their room. Amy’s pretty tired of sharing, but she’s been told on numerous occasions that there isn’t any way for each of them to have a room. Amy explains to Zoe how when she grows up her room will have the make-believe grass they use on football fields and walls the color of the sky, with clouds, but Zoe says she doesn’t want her own room and gets a look on her face like she’s about to cry.

After naptime he takes them on bike rides or drags them to the racetrack to teach them about luck, which he calls probability. They start going to the mall to ask the salesgirls if they can have a free sample of perfume. Whatever they get Zoe uses up her share of in a day, spraying herself in the face every few minutes until she stinks. Amy holds the tiny vials up to the ceiling light and peers inside. Then she tucks them away inside the shoebox in her fossil drawer like relics.

Sometimes they go to the Medex around the corner from the Tulsa Teachers Credit Union to look around. Zoe wants everything, and sometimes their dad says she can have anything she wants that costs less than a dollar. One day she gets a bone for the dog. One day she gets a barrette. Her hair is starting to grow back now, although it isn’t long enough yet for a barrette. As it grows it gets darker and darker, and one day their grandma says they don’t even look like sisters anymore, what with Amy being so blonde. So Amy tries wearing her sister’s hats, but she finds they give her headaches.

The next Christmas the girls discover they no longer fit into the teepee. They ask for a new teepee knowing they are asking for something impossible. They build themselves a fort in the living room out of chairs from the dining room and out-of-season sheets, and afterwards they stand together in the entryway surveying their creation. That night they stay up all night talking in their fort, and the next day after stockings they nap all morning in the soft light of the Christmas tree filtered through the lake-colored cotton.

Their mom learns about Munchausen syndrome by proxy and teaches the girls about moms who make their children sick on purpose

What isn’t clear to Amy from these stories is how a person makes another person sick. She dismisses recollections of the witches in the stories in their grandma’s book. Magic words is just a joke that has to do with please and thank you, made often by their grandpa. She finally decides it must be poison.

But now she’s left to wonder why a person makes another person sick. It occurs to Amy that perhaps the moms are sick themselves. They might have brain tumors that are inoperable, or even undetected. Zoe has some tumor left because the doctors couldn’t get the rest unless they hacked into her memory, but what is left is minimal, and shouldn’t interfere.

In the light that oozes out of the aquarium, Amy observes her sister while her sister sleeps, just making sure. Their mother has told them about kids who tie firecrackers to kittens’ tails or throw them into pits where starving dogs rip them apart. Amy knows not everything can be attributed to tumors. But she wonders, as she stuffs her head under her pillow, striving for quiet: if it isn’t that, then what is it because of?