Sugar-sweet

After my mother killed herself, Mizha locked herself in her room for three days. I found out later she went out through the window, bought a dime bag of pot, and smoked it in a sitting. She also marathoned Netflix's entire cache of Mythbusters.

I tried to become the primary chef in my house, since Mom was a homemaker, but unfortunately, I can't cook anything but souffles (go figure). I was trying to cook something to coax out Mizha, but everything, from scrambled eggs to brownies, turned into a black pancake. I ate a lot of sandwiches and spaghetti that week.

And my dad turned into a character from a Lifetime movie. By which I mean he adopted a troubled black teenager, apparently thinking we would learn a valuable life lesson. Or maybe he  wanted to throw money at something until he felt better.

***

He told me while I was constructing the most epic peanut butter, banana, and marshmallow fluff sandwich in the history of creation. He sat down at the dinner table—which was odd enough, because Dad usually worked until late in the evening, long after everyone else ate—looked at me, then at what I was making, and sighed like I was scarfing shit out of the garbage.

I, naturally, took a huge bite. Even though I only had three layers of marshmallow and peanut butter. (I was aiming for six.)

My father put his hands on the table. "Tama, I have an announcement." He paused. "I wanted to tell your sister at the same time, but she didn't answer her door."

I almost told him that Mizha's door didn't lock, and that for all he knew she could have committed suicide in there, too. However, even I knew it was too soon. I was itching to get at my dad, don't get me wrong. I knew why Mom downed all the Vicodin in the tri-county area at a go, and so did he. But I didn't want Mizha roused from her room by a shouting match. So, for once, I kept my mouth shut. Instead, I slathered more marshmallow on my sandwich.

"I've…" My father cleared his throat. "Well, as you know, one of the women I work with volunteers at a local shelter for troubled youth." He said "troubled youth" like a man sounding out a foreign word. "She told me about a sixteen-year-old who'd been living on his own for a while. She said he had real potential—a committed student, very focused, very bright. But…"

My father drew out the conjunction so long I had to frown. "But?" I said. I had no idea where this was going. My father can be described with many words. None of them are "humanitarian." Sure, he gives guilt money to charities every year, but his secretary takes care of that. I don't think he could even name them.

He cleared his throat again, like when my mother and Mizha talked about periods or Johnny Depp. "But she didn't think he had any chance of getting adopted because of his age and his—background," again, foreign word, "and, as you certainly realize, he has almost no chance of ever developing that talent if he does not settle into a stable home. And… well…"

I stared at him in shock because I had just caught on, and, like I said, it wasn't something my dad would ever do. Ever. Ever. "Dad… did you—"

My father got to his feet, wearing the expression he did when he closed a business deal. "He'll be coming to live here next week, as soon as they finish going through my background. I thought he could have the spare room next to yours, the one we use for guests. It's large enough, don't you think?"

Like most of my father's questions, that was not actually a question. He was already walking away.

***

When Mizha came out of her room, she was dressed in her favorite suit-and-skirt combo, complete with rainbow scrunchie. She threw her arms around my neck and told me how much she appreciated my attempts to cook for her. When I told her what Dad was planning, she squealed like I said Dad was getting a puppy and went to go decorate the guest room.

I thought about asking her why she hadn't come out for Mom's funeral, but I know when a question won't get an answer.

***

The boy came a week later, just like Dad said. I wondered what the people at the agency found in Dad's background, but I've always known people will ignore anything if you've got enough dollar signs in your bank account.

The boy was wearing a tattered dress shirt—probably the best thing he owned—and jeans that were too short. Both sneakers were worn through at the toes and mended with duct tape. He had his eyes down, clutching his battered backpack. My father was walking beside him, one hand poised just above his shoulder as though he wanted to rest it there but didn't quite dare.

"Zhiro," said my father in an overly cautious voice, as though Zhiro were a felony waiting to happen, "these are my children, Tama and Mizha."

Mizha waved, bouncing on the spot; I couldn't tell if she was faking it or not.

I just nodded. I didn't know what to make of this kid yet, and I wasn't going to play nice just because he'd had a rough life.

Zhiro nodded back. He smiled—cautiously—at Mizha, because no guy can not smile at my sister, but didn't make eye contact with either of us.

My father stood there for a second, as though he was expecting one of us to make a heartfelt speech about our feelings. He coughed. I wondered if he was already regretting this little act of charity. "So, Zhiro, your room is next to Tama's—"

Mizha squealed. "Oh, let me show him, Papa! It's so cute!" Before waiting for an answer, she cleared the distance between her and Zhiro in three skips—yes, skips—and seized his hands. "I did the decorating myself—I made little paper chains, and you have your own tree—but I can take it down if you're Jewish—"

As Mizha dragged Zhiro away, he shot me the kind of look boys always do when they encounter my sister in squealing mode: panic, spiced with a dash of "Why do I still think she's so hot?" I just smirked at him.

***

I let Mizha deal with the new kid. She tried to get me to interact with Zhiro, but now that I knew Mizha was okay, I felt like indulging my grief (best expressed through eyeliner, screamo music, and Nietzche, of course). She seemed to have thrown herself into "making Zhiro part of the family," which made me happy because Mizha would be okay if she had a project to work on.

And Zhiro was a project, all right. She took him shopping—which Zhiro protested until Mizha stole his sneakers and dropped them in the frozen pond. (He borrowed mine to go to the mall.) She made him help her make Christmas cards, which was a lot more fun than it sounds. And together they conquered the upstairs attic, which hadn't been cleaned since Einstein-knows-when.

But it was almost Christmas, and Mizha insisted that we had to make a big deal of it, since it was Zhiro's first at our house. And, though she didn't say it out loud, since Mom always made a big deal of Christmas. Dad wasn't home this year; he was taking some kind of business trip.

And Zhiro had never done anything Christmas-y at his house, which only made Mizha worse. We went full bore on our place. Paper chains. Snowflakes. Nutcrackers.

And somehow, I ended promising to dress up in a homemade elf costume. I drew the lines at pictures, but I still wore it. I have the hat somewhere, complete with jingly bell.

***

On Christmas morning, my sister woke me up by marching past my room singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of her lungs. (My father is a devout Catholic, but my mother was a hippie, so the religion never stuck to Mizha or me.) I attempted to tackle her and drag her out into the snow, but then Zhiro came out of his room, looking confused. I settled for giving Mizha a noogie.

"Merry Christmas!" my sister cried. I expected her to tackle him, but apparently she was trying her restrained approach with Zhiro.

Zhiro blinked. "Oh. I forgot about that." He looked at his pajamas as though worried he should be wearing a three-piece suit.

Mizha blinked. "You forgot?" She blinked a few more times, looking like it was the saddest thing she had ever heard.

Zhiro caught my eye over the top of Mizha's head, clearly terrified. What can I say? I took pity on the guy. And I knew my sister's breakdown would be exacerbated, since, of course, it was Christmas, and thus we were constitutionally required to be smiling.

I put my hand on Mizha's shoulder. "Sis," she looked up at me, on the verge of tears, "I tried on my shoes, and they don't fit right. Can you fix them?"

She blinked a few more times, but the request broke her chain of thought. "…Oh. Of course."

As Mizha dragged me into the other spare bedroom—which she used as her sewing room—I smiled at Zhiro, who still looked baffled. Poor kid was so far out of his depth.

***

While Mizha made the final touches to the tree—she had barred us from the living room the day before so she could decorate everything in secret—I decided to attempt chocolate chip cookies. We had a package of the kind that come pre-made, with caramel in the center and everything, but I was feeling ambitious. Mizha was in a good mood, Dad's charity case wasn't annoying, and Mom had to have passed her baking skills on to someone.

I decided to get the ingredients assembled first. We had them, since Mom always started baking about a week before Christmas. When I groped around in one of the cabinets for a package of chocolate chips, I found a grocery list in her handwriting. She had each type of cookie she was planning to make. Chocolate crinkles, because they always made Dad smile. Ritz crackers and pretzels dipped in white chocolate for Mizha because they were the only thing she would eat without complaining it made her fat.

Snickerdoodles for me.

That was a downer. Almost bad enough to make me give up on the enterprise entirely. I was staring at the mixer, wishing I hadn't already dumped white and brown sugar into it, when Zhiro came in.

For a moment, we just stared at each other. Despite living in such close proximity, we had never been in the same room alone. I didn't feel like talking, not when I was just shy of choked up, so I unwrapped two sticks of butter and stuck them in the microwave.

Zhiro, apparently convinced I was not going to eat him, slipped past me for a bowl and some cereal.

The microwave went off, and I inspected my butter. Not soft enough. I knew from previous cookie experiments—which we do not speak of in our household—that butter is tenacious and nasty stuff which does not like playing nice with sugar. As I set the microwave for another twenty seconds, Zhiro slipped past me again with a spoon in his mouth. He paused next to the fridge, looking at me oddly. "…What are you making?" His voice suggested that no, he still thought I might eat him.

"Cookies," I said, glaring at the microwave.

"…Are you melting the butter?" he asked, after a long pause.

"Mostly, yeah. Otherwise, it just gets stuck to the mixer blades, and I have to spend twenty minutes scraping sugar off them with a spatula." I glanced at him. Mizha would kill me if I wasn't nice to him. Unfortunately, when other people want me to do something, my first instinct is to go in the other direction. "Why? Are you an expert?" I only put a little sarcasm in my voice—if I really upset Zhiro, Mizha would kill me—but the kid still flinched.

But, to my surprise, he didn't back down. He sucked on his spoon for a minute before replying, but still. "I had to do all my own cooking." He looked at his cereal. "And if you melt the butter too much, you'll ruin the cookies."

I stared at him. It was the longest speech I'd ever heard him make. Then I turned off the microwave.

***

At first, Zhiro just gave me tips, but after I almost dumped the entire flour mixture in at once—our mixer's big enough for it, after all—it was too much. He took over.

Which was for the best, because he was good. He moved with quiet confidence, measuring everything without checking the recipe. After he set the first batch in the oven, he glanced at me like he wasn't sure what to do next. I was cleaning off one of the beaters—with my mouth, of course, because there is no point in washing perfectly good cookie dough down the drain. I passed him the other beater and pointed at a chair. After a moment, Zhiro sat and ran his finger over the side of the beater, sucking on it like he had the spoon.

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. "Will you cut that out?" I wanted to sound grumpy, but it's hard when your mouth is full of sugar. "I'm not scary. I promise. Isn't the elf costume convincing enough?"

Zhiro snorted. I stuck my tongue out at him, and he finally relaxed. I'll admit, I'm not a nice guy. But he was going to be living with us, so I saw the merit in not biting his head off. Zhiro ate another bit of batter, glanced at the oven, glanced at me. I raised my eyebrows. Zhiro shut his eyes, as though he were about to rip a band-aid off his chest hair. "What happened here?"

I wanted to be surprised that he didn't know. And I couldn't, because it was just like my dad.

Zhiro cleared his throat. "Before—before I came, I mean. Your dad won't talk about anything but my grades and my 'life plans,'" he glared at the beater, just for a minute, and despite my growing temper, I was glad to see a little spirit, "and you—" My eyebrows went higher, and Zhiro shrugged. "Well, there's got to be a reason you spend all your free time listening to Simple Plan."

I dropped the beater in the dirty bowl. The sugar tasted awful now, and I wouldn't be able to enjoy the cookies when they came out. My dad does that to me.

"I want to say I can't believe he didn't tell you," I said, crossing my arms, "but, really, that's just what we do in this family." I let my head fall back on my shoulders. I hadn't realized it, but I hadn't told anyone what happened to my mom yet. "…My mother killed herself. About a week before you came."

Zhiro's eyes snapped to mine; he stared at me in shock. I set my jaw and stared back at him, waiting for the pity. Waiting for the "I'm sorry" he didn't mean. Waiting for the shit, because if there's one thing I know about people, we're all knee-deep in it.

Zhiro dropped his gaze. "Is that what's wrong with Mizha?"

I was so amped for a crappy apology that I almost snapped, "Yeah, I'm fucking sorry too, but that doesn't make her come back." But what he said got to me.

Nobody ever sees through my sister. They see the perfect clothes, the perfect hair, the perfect grades. Her perfect friends who wear cable-knit turtlenecks and skirts that never creep above the knee. Her chaste flirting with clean-shaven, well-dressed boys. And they believe it. I've always been the only person who knows how hard she has to work to keep that up.

I nodded. "Yeah. That's what's wrong." I licked some flour off my finger, sullenly. "She… she always puts stuff away like that. Mizha, I mean. And she was really close with Mom. I don't…" I sighed again. "I don't really know how to bring it up. I've been gone too long, and—well—you see it."

Zhiro nodded back, looking thoughtful. And sad. I wondered, for the first time, what his deal was. But I didn't ask. Like I said, I'm not a nice guy.

But… well… I'd like to think I'm not mean, either. And he had made Mizha smile. Not the fake one she wore in school pictures and when Mom and Dad fought. The real one. Like when she sews or recites a poem she loves.

I sighed. "It's good that you're here, though." Zhiro looked at me, confused. "Mizha'll be okay now that she's got someone else to look after. That's how she is."

I paused, glaring at the tabletop. "Like I said, that's how we all are. We put things in a box and don't talk about them, and when the box is dusty enough, we pretend it all never happened." Zhiro's mouth twisted to the side, and he looked away. "Don't tell me you didn't notice. My dad's not a nice guy. I'm sorry to burst your bubble if you've got one, but he didn't take you in from the kindness of his heart. You're a charity case."

"I knew that," Zhiro muttered. The timer went off; he peeked in at the cookies. They were perfect: not soft, not burned. He took them out and set them on top of the oven, staring at them like he thought he might find all the answers in the chocolate. "…So Mizha's really okay?"

"Of course she isn't. None of us are. In case you haven't noticed, we are the Spoiled Rich Family with Emotional Issues. Someday soon, Mizha will marry a nice rich white boy," Zhiro flinched, though I wasn't sure if he really was nursing a crush or if it was the mention of skin color, which Mizha had implicitly made off-limits, "have two-point-five children, a dog, and a home just like this. And then one day she'll stick her head in the oven."

Zhiro looked horrified. I stared straight back at him. "Don't think I don't know. And don't think I don't care. I just don't know what to do."

Zhiro poked a cookie; it held up. He moved them one by one, with artistic precision, onto a cooling rack and began laying out new blobs of dough. "…Have you tried talking to her?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Have you?" Zhiro shot me a look that said, "I'm not her brother here." I shrugged. "If I tried it, her response would be 'fine, just fine,' and then she'd find something Christmas-y to do. You don't know how good my sister is at distracting attention from herself. All I can do is wait for the meltdown and hope I'll be there to help."

Zhiro put the next two batches of cookies in the oven. Only when he was satisfied they were arranged just so inside did he take one of the finished product. He bit into it and sighed.

"So this whole living with us thing isn't exactly what you were expecting, eh?" I said. I knew I was being nasty. I couldn't help it. If this guy wanted to dig into our dark secrets, he had to expect a little pain in return.

Zhiro snorted with a surprising amount of bitterness. "I wasn't expecting anything. He finished the cookie, frowning.  "And… it's not bad here. Your dad is nice to me. I know you don't like him, but he is. He thinks I can get my GED early instead of trying to get into one of the schools around here and start college online or something. And Mizha's been really sweet." He blushed. "I mean, I knew it was just because she was trying to hide something, but still. It means a lot. Even you're nice."

I stared at him. First, I'm not used to someone not rising to my bait (well, except Mizha, but Mizha's conflict-averse). And second… Nobody's called me nice since grade school. I haven't done anything to deserve being called nice.

"Really!" said Zhiro. "You're honest. I appreciate that. I'm glad I'm not the only one who is fully aware how weird this is. Mizha acts like we'd totally be friends if we met somewhere else." He shook his head. "Point is, no matter how weird this is, it's better than living in a shitty apartment with no money and no friends. And I… I want to help. However I can."

I did my best to smile at him, because he was a nice kid. "You are. Really."

Zhiro looked like he didn't believe me, but then Mizha bounced in. She was wearing a Santa hat and a necklace made of jingle bells. "Tree's done!" she said, grinning. "Ooh! Are those chocolate chip?" She snatched one off the cooling rack and took a bite, looking at Zhiro like he was a god. Zhiro stared at the floor, blushing. "Oh, these are fantastic! Thank you!"

She finished her cookie and seized Zhiro's hands—Mizha does not believe in asking someone to follow her when they could be dragged against their will. "Come on! You have to see the living room!" She shot me a perky grin that promised pain and destruction if I did not obey. "You too, big brother. Get dressed, get dressed!"

Zhiro looked back at the oven. "But—" Mizha was already pulling him away.

Don't worry. I took the cookies out for him. And I had one, too, because at some point during my conversation with Zhiro, the sour taste in my mouth finally left.They were excellent.

***

Mizha did take one picture of us, after promising it would never leave her room. Zhiro smiles nervously, a box of fancy macaroons in his lap (Mizha bought him food, because she insisted he had to have presents to open, and everyone likes cookies). I am across the coffee table from him, head to toe in green and red. And Mizha is between us, one hand on each of our shoulders.

She's smiling, really smiling, because Zhiro thanked her for the whole big Christmas thing right before the timer on the camera went off.

I love that picture.