Before My Eyes by Caroline Bock Page A

chapped lips and peeling nose, almost confirms this for me. I don’t easily remember what she looked like before.
    â€œYou do. You look exactly like her.”
    I have to get her to sleep. I don’t want to have this conversation. Not now. I don’t want to think that to Izzy I look like our mother. I’m not her. I don’t want to be her.
    Izzy flops back on her bed and slips her hands behind her head. “Where do you go when you die, Claire?”
    â€œI told you.”
    â€œI forgot.”
    â€œYou don’t have to worry about dying.”
    â€œBut I want to know. When I die, will I go to heaven? Will Mommy be there when I get there? Will she be all better?”
    I can’t do this tonight. I just can’t. My father should be home. He should be the one answering these questions, or not answering them, as is usually the case. I’ll make us dinner. Do the laundry, even. But not this.
    â€œMommy isn’t dying so soon, and neither am I, and neither are you.”
    â€œWhat’s heaven like, Claire?”
    â€œWhy are you asking so many questions?”
    â€œI like asking questions. You do, too.”
    â€œLet’s talk about something else. Did you have fun today?”
    â€œI always have fun at the beach. But I am going to have more fun tomorrow.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œEvery day I try to have more fun,” she says, as if I’m the six-year-old.
    â€œWe’re both going to have more fun tomorrow.”
    â€œBut Claire, I still want to know. What happens when you die? What happens to your skin? Do your bones become like dinosaur bones?”
    Everyone says that Izzy is one of the most verbal kids they’ve ever met. Sometimes, I wish she were a little less verbal. “You don’t have to worry about that for a long, long time.”
    â€œSometimes I dream of her, and it’s before she had the stroke.”
    â€œIzzy, you have to go to sleep,” I say with desperation. I want to go into my room and be in the dark on my computer.
    â€œWhen I die, will she be in heaven?”
    â€œShe’s not dead. She’s in the rehabilitation center.” My voice has an edge. I don’t want to talk about anyone dying.
    â€œI know that. But when I’m dead,” she persists, “will she be there? Will Daddy? Will you?”
    â€œYes. But no one is dying.”
    â€œEverybody will be in heaven with me,” she says, happy and matter-of-fact in her logic. “Guess what I’m going to wear in heaven?”
    â€œYou’re not going to heaven for a long time. You have time to plan your outfit.”
    â€œJust guess. What am I going to wear in heaven?”
    â€œElizabeth.” She knows I use her full name when I’ve had enough.
    â€œI’m going to wear my bathing suit in heaven—not the one with frogs that I wore today, the pink one. Are you allowed to do that? Is there an ocean in heaven?”
    â€œElizabeth, there’s an ocean in heaven, okay? Now, I’m going to my room. Shout if you need anything,” I say, and what I think is: Please, please, go to sleep already. Please let me go. Please let me be for the rest of the night by myself, alone, without dreams of my mother, or dying, or even heaven.
    Izzy scoots under her blanket, made up of alternating squares, berry purple and yellow, knitted by our mother in the last months of her pregnancy, the needles tapping and clacking every evening for weeks. She didn’t have to look at each stitch. She didn’t even have to stop and count her lines. She never knitted things with holes in them, never got frustrated, never had to unravel lines and start all over again. I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to knit like that again. I press my face into Izzy’s blanket, baby-soft and lavender-scented, my mother’s scent. Her knitting runs across my face in perfect, tight stitches.
    Izzy tugs the blanket to her chin. I kiss