200 CCs - June 2016

The Grown-Up Answer
by Casi Scheidt
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes stinging and
throat aching.
“Was it because she was sick?”
“That was part of it.”
“Why did my sissy die?” she asked, her blue
eyes dull, tone flat, looking older at four years
than she ever would again.
“Because it was her time, baby,” I said.
“I want the grown-up answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want the truth.”
“God decided to take her back.”
“No.”
“Baby, please.”
“No. Tell me why,” she said, glaring at me.
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“What’s the other part?”
For hours she followed me, demanding an
answer to the same question I’d been asking
myself since it happened.
“Tell me why. I won’t stop until you tell me
why.”
“Because she wasn’t like you,” I said, both my
voice and my will to shield her breaking.
She watched me, waiting, sensing there was
more.
“Because you came screaming into this world,
yelling so loudly the whole building could hear
you. Nothing could quiet you, nothing could
make you still. But not her. She came as if all
her demons had already defeated her. She gave
up. That’s why anybody dies, baby. Because
they have nothing left.”
Sandra has been a director, a business owner, a project manager, a bookbinder, and a mother.
Her current passion is reading and writing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where she lives with
her husband, two amazing children, and a gecko named Captain Doug.
10