Free Lucky by Alice Sebold

had withdrawn. In the elevator of my sister's dormitory was a crude ballpoint drawing of her with her legs spread open. A group of male figures were waiting in line beside her. The caption read, "Marcie pulls a train."
    I was crammed in the elevator with my family and Penn students going back up for another load. I stood with my face to the wall, staring at the drawing of Marcie. I wondered where she was and what would become of her.
    My memories of my family that day are splotchy. I was busy performing, thinking that it was for this that I was loved. But then there were things that hit me too close to the bone.
    The black man squatting on the sidewalk in West Philadelphia, or the beautiful boys at Penn, throwing a Frisbee, the bright orange disc arcing up and down into my path. I stopped abruptly, and one of the boys ran recklessly to pick it up. As he stood back up, he caught sight of my face. "Shit," he said, looking at me, stunned for a moment, distracted from the game.
    What you have after that is a family. Your sister has a dorm room for you to see. Your mother a panic attack to attend. Your father, well, he's being ignorant, and you can shoulder the burden of educating him. It is not all blacks, you will begin. These are the things you do instead of collapsing in the bright sun, in front of the beautiful boys, where, rumor has it, Marcie pulled a train.

    The four of us drove home. I rode with my father this time. Now I realize that my mother must have been telling my sister everything she knew, the two of them bracing for what might be ahead.
    Mary brought her essentials inside the house, and went up to her bedroom to unpack. The idea was that we would all have an informal meal, what my mother called "seek and ye shall find," and afterward my father would go back into his study to work, and I could spend time with my sister.
    But when my mother called for Mary to come down, she didn't answer. My mother called again. Bellowing family names upstairs from the front hall was common practice for us.
    Even having to do it several times wasn't unusual. Finally, my mother went upstairs, only to come back down a few minutes later.
    "She's locked herself in the bathroom," she told my father and me.
    "Whatever for?" my father asked. He was slicing off hunks of provolone and feeding them, slyly, to the dog.
    "She's upset, Bud," my mother said.
    "We're all upset," I said. "Why doesn't she join the party?"
    "Alice, I think it would mean a lot if you went up to talk to her."
    I may have grumbled about it, but I went. It was a familiar pattern. Mary would get upset and my mother would ask me to talk to her. I would knock on her bedroom door and sit on the edge of her bed while she lay there. I would do what I called "cheerlead for life,"
    sometimes rallying her to the point where she would come down for dinner or at least laugh at the obscene jokes I culled for just this purpose.
    But that day I also knew that I was the one she needed to see. I wasn't just the mother-appointed cheerleader; I was the reason why she had locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out.
    Upstairs, I knocked tentatively on the door.
    "Mary?"
    No answer.
    "Mary," I said, "it's me. Let me in."
    "Go away." I could tell she was crying.

    "Okay," I said, "let's deal with this rationally. At some point I'm going to pee and if you won't let me in I'll be forced to pee in your bedroom."
    There was silence and then she unlocked the door.
    I opened it.
    This was the "girls' bathroom." The developer had tiled it pink. If boys had moved into the house I can only imagine, but Mary and I managed to work up enough of a hatred of the pink ourselves. Pink sink. Pink tile. Pink tub. Pink walls. There was no relief.
    Mary had gone to stand against the wall, between the tub and the toilet, as far away from me as she could.
    "Hey," I said. "What is it?"
    I wanted to hold her. I wanted her to hold me.
    "I'm sorry," she said. "You're doing so well with it. I just don't know