A Casualty in Crushed Silk
Adriana is already so tired, and she hands her new baby to Alexandria, who holds her as carefully as if she were a porcelain doll. Maria stares up at the new baby with uncomprehending eyes, and Mackenzie is nowhere to be found. When Katrina asks about where her big brother had been, Alexandria tells her the same story.
He was being the man of the house, she'd say, brushing her long hair and braiding it with ribbon. He was being the father Johnny's never been.
Katrina grew up in a house full of chaos and money problems, and that was how she knew life. Her big brother was tall and strong with a smile like the sun and eyes like Papa's, and her mother was a ragdoll with a spine made out of steel. She followed her big sisters around and only knew what to do with herself because she would copy Alexandria and Maria.
Alexandria was the sister she always viewed as her second mother. She was kind and caring and protective, and whenever boys in the neighbourhood were rude to the Moore sisters, and Mackenzie wasn't around to chase them off, Alexandria would stand up to them and make them feel shame.
Maria was the wild child, grinning and laughing and growing too tall for her age. All the boys looked at Maria as if she were one of their pin-up models that they'd sneakily look at and blush over. She was sensual and saucy and Katrina always knew Maria was going to end up in trouble.
She never got along with Elizabeth after she was born, and Catherine always had her head in the clouds. When Alexandria left to get married, and Maria disappeared doing God knew what, Katrina stayed by her mother's side.
Katrina had never been strong. When she had been born, her mother had not been the only Moore woman tired. Katrina had been too weak and exhausted even to wail, and only whimpered pathetically; worrying her big sisters and her brother when he finally reappeared. Her father, she rarely saw, and Adriana made sure that Katrina and Johnny were never in a room alone together.
In 1923, Katrina developed a cold that wracked her body so terribly that she was left unable to leave her bed for a week afterwards. Her sisters would sit by her bedside and read her books, and her mother would sing in her native tongue to soothe her. Mackenzie was gone by then, and she missed him terribly but kept her woes to herself.
When she got a little older, Katrina tried to earn some money to help her family. She watched over children, playing with them and making sure they stayed safe. The neighbours trusted her little, because of the colour of her skin and the house she came from, but she was good with the children, and she was well liked. It was only when she started to become too sick that Katrina could no longer do her job, and had to stay home.
Home, where Alexandria was not anymore. Where Maria finds work that she can never talk about. Home where Elizabeth has already run away and Catherine is growing up too fast for her own good. Home where her mother is so tired and her father is so drunk.
Home where Johnny starts to look at her differently.
She had begun noticing it soon after Alexandria was engaged and Maria was distancing herself. Johnny would look at her, and she'd feel a shiver crawl down her spine, like slime dripping slowly down her skin. Adriana noticed, too, and kept Katrina close to her at all times, glaring at Johnny and swearing at him in Portuguese.
But Johnny never let that deter him. And in 1926, he began to buy Katrina little gifts. Trinkets and things. Little items that people would expect a father to buy for his daughter, but when they saw how he presented them; how he only bought them for Katrina, they would become suspicious.
Katrina kept the gifts in a box, which she hid under her bed. She thought maybe if she kept them there, the monsters that lived in the dark would devour them, and she'd forget all about them eventually.
In 1929, she thinks it's all over when she begins seeing Douglas, a boy from the neighbourhood. A sweet boy, who thinks Katrina's pretty and gave her flowers that were slightly wilted and worn, but still beautiful. And she thinks she can be happy with this boy, and she holds his hand. And she's all of fifteen years old when her father chases Douglas away and forbids her from ever seeing that blasted, goddamn boy again.
Katrina cries for a whole week afterwards, locking herself into her room and only letting Catherine near her. Catherine, who's still too young to understand the sickness in their father. Who she sings to and hugs close and whispers her secrets to.
Catherine, who notices first when Katrina begins to develop a fever.
It is 1931. Alexandria lives in a home with a man as sick as their father, and Maria is dead. Elizabeth is gone, long gone, forgotten in the neighbourhood and called 'the Missing Moore Girl'. Catherine doesn't go to school anymore, and the economy has collapsed the year before, leaving the destitute worse and the rich in a panic about the poor.
It is in these times that Katrina finally succumbs to her final illness.
Over the course of two months, Katrina's strength wilts away. She's kept in her room, where only Adriana and Catherine can enter. Should Johnny ever try, the two women left healthy would yell and scream at him and chase him away. But Katrina didn't notice.
Katrina noticed very little.
When she knew she wasn't going to be okay, she gripped onto her sister's hand, and her mother's, and stared up at the ceiling
And she wished that her family was together again, just for that moment, but she knew. Deep down, she knew she'd never have her family together ever again.
They'd never been together in the first place.
