Free Getting Near to Baby by Audrey Couloumbis

yesterday.”
    â€œThat was real kind of you,” Liz said. “Nobody in town will play with that snake Cynthia.”
    Aunt Patty managed a crooked little smile before she went back inside. Guessing that she was hovering somewhere inside the door, Liz and I only looked at each other and rolled our eyes.
    Isaac pulled at Little Sister’s arm. “Want to fight Charlie?”
    â€œWho’s Charlie?” I asked, wanting to keep Little Sister out of fights.
    â€œThe enemy,” Isaac said, and made his arm into a gun. “Ak-ak-ak-ak-ak,” he cried, spraying imaginary bullets around the yard. Little Sister looked thrilled.
    Liz and I settled into watching Isaac and Little Sister play together. He told her he was in the jungle and that she was in the jungle too. Together they crawled around the shrubs at the side of the patio while Isaac rat-a-tatted a few Charlies. Little Sister did her part by holding her ears at the sound of gunfire. After a while they stopped shooting and sat quietly in the shade of a bush with long pink sweet-smelling flowers and talked.
    The manner in which Isaac talked with Little Sister interested me. He never asked her a question, not even the kind that could be answered with a shake of her head. He simply told her things. For instance, he told her about a TV show he enjoyed and told her she liked it too. Little Sister didn’t appear to mind going along with whatever Isaac told her.
    After a time of sitting in the heat and letting the sun bring out freckles on my back, I realized they weren’t talking any longer. I looked over to see they had moved out into the sun. They squatted on their heels at opposite sides of the cardboard from a Twinkies package.
    They were counting the ants that swarmed over the crumb coating left from the Twinkie. Both of them were busily flicking their fingers at each other, Little Sister so sure of herself, Isaac just learning. He would sign a number to her and wait to see the agreement on her face. I was struck by the beauty of the napes of their necks as they bent over the ants. As sweet a curve as you could ever want to see. It made me miss Baby something fierce.
    I swallowed noisily, thinking I might be about to cry again. I didn’t want to. Liz saved me; she reached over and pinched me right below that tiny round bone in my knee and grinned. I pinched her back, right above the knuckle of her pinkie finger. She pinched my cheek and I pulled her ear, and before I knew it, we were rolling around together in the grass, shrieking with laughter.
    Little Sister and Isaac fell upon us, eager to tickle and pinch and roll around. We finally lay in the grass, breathing hard as we looked up into the blue of the sky. That always makes me dizzy. It’s a funny thing how I don’t much notice gravity when I walk around. It is only when I lie flat in the grass that I have any sense of the earth spinning around and around, carrying me with it. It is only when I am flat to the earth that I feel the looseness of the grip in which we are held. Any one of us, at any moment, might be floating free.
    A couple of days later at supper, Aunt Patty had another surprise for us. “The Baptist church has a Bible school day camp. They have two places open. You and Little Sister can attend.”
    Even Uncle Hob looked surprised. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea, what with Little Sister having decided not to talk,” he said.
    â€œOh, she’ll get over that,” Aunt Patty said with a wave of her hand. “Maybe she’ll get over it faster if she has so many children to talk to.”
    Uncle Hob didn’t have an argument for that.
    As evening came on and the air cooled, Little Sister decided to exercise her june bug. It was a wonder it had lasted three days. I sat there with my chin cupped in my hands, watching her run up and down and back and forth.
    The light faded, and Little Sister turned the june bug over to