Sleep the Night

Please note: This post includes sexual and violent content which some readers may find disturbing. This started as a longer piece that I edited down to under 1000 words. I think the feel of it still comes through. As always, you can let me know in the comments whether it works for you.

We grew up in a two-bedroom apartment so my sister Nikki and I shared a room. We even shared the same bed until I was twelve and she was ten. Then Mom started throwing a fit every day. “It just ain’t right. It ain’t healthy,” she spat at Dad. We couldn’t afford a bigger place and Dad wasn’t about to give up drinking beer and watching TV till all hours so I could sleep in the living room. Instead, he found an old pair of twin beds and put them on opposite sides of our room.

Nikki and I never understood what the big deal was. We couldn’t remember a time when we hadn’t curled up together to sleep and it made no sense to us that we suddenly needed to stop. And we didn’t really. Our parents would check that we were in our own beds but in the middle of the night Nikki would climb in with me. Amazingly, one of us would always hear when my parents were getting up so she was back in her bed again every morning.

Nikki lost her virginity when she was fourteen. I know because I was there. The boy’s name was Danny. He climbed in through the window to be with her. I could tell he was surprised that I was in the room, but when she took him by the hand and pulled him onto her bed he found it easy enough to ignore me. I just put my head under my pillow until they were done. When he left I asked if she was okay. She said yes and then asked if it was okay for her to sleep next to me for a while. It was the only time she ever asked. She kept her face turned away from me and I think she was crying a little bit. “I’ll always take care of you,” I told her.

Danny never said anything about us sharing a room, but he told anyone who would listen that he had slept with Nikki. He never came back. It was a couple months before Nikki invited another boy through the window. That one looked at me, shook his head and left right away. He did tell people about us sharing a room, but no one ever said anything to my face. There were lots of snickers and whistles behind our backs though. Then began a pretty steady stream of boys. Some boys she would see only once. Some she would continue to see for a few weeks. I never asked whether it was her choice or theirs when she moved on to the next.

The one I remember best from that time was Scott. The first time he snuck in he stared at me for a full minute and I thought he was going to bolt. It was pretty common knowledge around school by then that Nikki and I shared a room. Maybe he just didn’t believe it until he saw it for himself. Anyway, every time after that he brought his little sister Dawn with him. She was almost the same age as Nikki. I was nervous as hell the first couple times she got in bed with me. She would tongue kiss me and let me put my hands all over her before we actually did it. And that’s how I lost my virginity, screwing the little sister of the guy that was screwing my little sister. She seemed to be really into it, but when Scott stopped showing up so did Dawn.

Nikki started seeing Matt when she was sixteen. For the first time, she started sneaking out at night to be with him instead of him always coming into our room. I would never sleep a wink until she was back home. Sometimes she would stay in her own bed all night after being with him. I hated everything about him, but Nikki said he was really very sweet. I couldn’t see it. He was twenty-two years old, a two-bit hustler and small time drug dealer. When Nikki got pregnant she moved in with him. I finally had a room to myself but I couldn’t sleep the night all alone. I’d pace in tiny circles in the space between our beds until I finally dropped from exhaustion.

I still saw Nikki almost every day and she seemed happy enough. And then one day I saw bruises on her arm. She said she just bumped into a door, but it sure as hell looked to me like someone had grabbed her hard. The next week her left hand was all swollen and wrapped in a bandage. The week after that she was limping, but still she told me it was just an accident and not to worry. When I saw her with a black eye I wasn’t buying her bullshit any more. I went up to her place and found Matt sitting there with a beer in his hand. For a second I thought it was our Dad; he had the same kind of alcohol-glazed look in his eyes and a know-it-all smirk on his face. I had a baseball bat and the element of surprise.

It turned out to be pretty easy for everyone to believe his death was due to a drug deal gone bad. Mostly because no one gave a shit that he was dead anyway. Nikki and I alibied each other at a bar a couple miles away. Now we share an apartment. We’re fixing up the second bedroom as a nursery. Sometimes I put my hand on her belly and tell her and the baby, “I’ll always take care of you.” Nikki nestles under my arm with her head on my shoulder and once again I can finally sleep the night.