My Sister Disappears: Stories and a Novella

Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1996 by Kathy J. Whitson

My Sister Disappears: Stories and a Novella by Lee Merrill Byrd. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993. 185 pages. $22.50 cloth; $10.95 paper.

Alligator Dance by Janet Peery and My Sister Disappears are two volumes of stories about the Southwest. Both arc first collections in which the authors carve out fictional territory in a style that is clear, crisp, and fresh. They both have the wonderful familiarity of stories by women writers--the focus on relationship and domestic issues, the gnawing pain of the silent struggle to live both within and without the boundaries of female stereotypes. But for all their similarities, the volumes are very different.

My Sister Disappears is a collection that is hard to bear. The stories are dark and painful to read, especially "Major Six Pockets" and "Hotter Here Than It Ever Was in New Jersey." These stories, about children who have been burned in terrible fires, are told from the mother's perspective. The narrator of "Hotter" is a strong, boldly drawn character who comes to a powerful self-understanding. But "Major Six Pockets" is told in such a curious way that the reader is well into the story thinking the narrator is a third-person omniscient presence only to find the tiniest suggestion that the voice is that of a first-person narrator so submerged and distant that she barely asserts her first-personhood. Halfway into this lengthy story the first clue emerges that the narrator is the wife of the title character, when the intrusion of the pronoun "we" causes an immediate questioning of the narrator and the events and relationships of the story. The plural pronoun is used twice again in as many pages and then disappears for another 10 pages. The story closes four pages later with no more mention of the narrator. While these details may seem insignificant, they create an uncomfortable distance, a disconnection from both the narrator and the story. The narrator's disappearing act is disconcerting, to say the least, but Byrd's technique here mirrors the content of her other stories about vanishing women, including Bunnie Gottisman in "Order and Disorder" and Emily Field, the disappeared sister of the book's title.

The Emily Field stories begin with "My Sister Disappears," which tantalizes with its lack of information about why Emily disappears. Unresolved, the story is frustrating, but in a realistic and ultimately satisfying way. After all, we are confronted daily with the unexplained, the inexplicable twists and turns of human behavior. But in the two stories about Emily Field that follow--"Am Entering Woods" and "Plans for a Wedding"--the character grows more ill and less capable. As Emily becomes more sluglike and dysfunctional, it is difficult to identify with her, to feel compassion for her, and finally, to want to keep reading about her. The pathos of her situation is turned one notch too high, and she becomes simply pathetic.

Still, "Am Entering Woods" merits attention if for no other reason than the strength of the metaphor in the title. From her childhood on, Emily's father has gone into the Maine woods for a month each November. Where "the telephone lines ended" and "the woods began," Mr. Field would send a postcard that simply said, "Am entering woods." Nothing more. This place where all communication ends and wilderness begins is precisely the point of emotional engagement where the reader must dwell within the story. There will be no more communication; Emily Field's problems will remain unexplained, and the reader is left turning the story over and over like a well-worn postcard.

The stories in Byrd's collection are about illness and horrific accidents, about women and children who are physically and psychologically scarred. The stories are important because they have as subjects those who are usually ignored. The strength of the volume may be that it forces us to examine the unthinkable and the unpleasant, as Byrd shows us images that make us instantly turn away in a revulsion that diminishes us until we consent to take a second, more compassionate look. Perhaps the greater strength of the stories is the courage that Byrd exhibits in making us face the painful inevitabilities that are a part of all but the most charmed lives.

While Byrd asks us to learn our lessons in the midst of physical and psychological disfigurements that don't necessarily improve, Janet Peery allows us to move through the temporary disfigurements of immaturity and ignorance to a satisfying growth and wisdom. Peery's collection, Alligator Dance, is most striking for its authenticity of voice. The first, fifth, and tenth stories are all controlled by a third-person omniscient narrator, a method that serves Peery well in that the reader doesn't too soon attach herself to a strong first-person voice that will beg for preeminence throughout the collection. The framing and anchoring of the third-person stories allow Peery to explore the full range of first-person narratives that are sandwiched in between. Her control of the first-person voice is remarkable. She portrays with equal finesse the voices of a 13-year-old boy, an 18-year-old lower-class hired girl, a young Mexican girl, the cool and refined voice of a 13-year-old girl coming of age amidst country cousins, a fourth-grade girl dislocated by a family move, and even the voice of a 15-year-old boy who is lured by his rednecked and racist environment. Though many of Peery's narrators are teenagers (or teenagers in retrospect), they have the grace not to be affectedly precocious. Her unattractive narrator in "Whitewing," for instance, says, "I would like to say that her remark stung me, made me see how stupidly I was behaving. But I was fifteen."