Two Days Ago
My mother hovered over me, shaking me. “Ruthie, wake up.”
I opened my eyes. Daylight streamed in from the window, and I looked at the clock. Yep, it was late. Way late. My body craved sleep, craved the comfort of my bed, the comfort of unconsciousness. I think I’d finally dozed off right as I had to wake up. “Mom, I don’t feel so well. I didn’t sleep at all.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going to have you…unsupervised. You’re going to school.”
“Unsupervised?” The word was so accusatory. Like I was a mental patient or a ward of the state.
“I’m not getting into this with you right now.”
“Then when?”
She shook me again.
“Jesus, Mom. I get it. I’ll catch a ride with Theo.”
“I wish you’d clean up in here. It’s just beyond.” My mother moved from the bed and picked up a few articles of clothing from off the floor. She held out an outfit for me to wear. “Theo’s not here. He got up early.”
My first reaction was surprise, then anger for leaving me, and finally understanding: Sasha. He’d gotten up early to get her out of the house before everyone else woke up.
I rolled out of bed, my feet on the hardwood and took the clothes from her outstretched hand. “Are you gonna stare the whole time?”
She crossed her arms. “Yes.”
I was becoming more a prisoner than a daughter.
I dressed, as it was too late to take a shower. From the hallway, Mr. Scronce said, “I’m heading out, Julie.”
“Love you,” she replied.
Silence echoed back, his non-response awkwardly hanging in the room. I heard the front door open and close, followed by the rattle of his aged Subaru and then he was gone.
I could tell my mother was hurt. “Mom, I’m not doing this on purpose.”
Her stance softened, the clenching of teeth relaxed. “Neither am I.” She paused and then added, “You were right about one thing. Jose is missing. His father hasn’t seen him since before school yesterday.”
“So who’s looking into it?”
“The sheriff, obviously.”
I sighed. The logic was all backward, but I didn’t want to argue.
I finished my morning routine as quickly as I could, my mother herding me along. We walked out of the house together. As she got into her car, she sighed, resting her head in her hands. “I know it’s been tough. There’s been a lot of change and you didn’t ask for any of this, but…one day I hope you’ll see that I did my best.”
Her comment surprised me. But what surprised me more is what I said.
“I know.”
“Although, I admit, if you ever have kids, I hope to God you have a girl. A vibrant, opinionated, stubborn girl like you.” She smiled to herself. “That’d be something.” She closed her door, started the ignition, and drove off.
I walked to the bus stop and it was odd how normal everything looked; just another wet day on the island, another overcast day like any other. That unsettled me, as if I was the oddity, the flaw in the fabric of the universe.
Moments later, a yellow school bus rolled up to a stop. The doors opened with a creak, and the bus driver smiled down at me. My mind drifted, kids staring from inside, and I didn’t move. Couldn’t move.
I’d seen a kid murdered; my family was unraveling; there was no way I could pretend everything was normal. No way I could walk onto that bus and go to school and listen to lectures as if this was just another ordinary day.
It wasn’t.
“We don’t got all day, Ruthie,” the bus driver said.
To her surprise, I turned and walked back to my house.
I opened the lid to my hamster cage, a few bits of dried food in my hand, when I noticed something wrong: the four babies were missing. Figuring they were hidden underneath the wood shavings, I gently swished my fingers back and forth, trying to turn them up.
No luck.
I checked again, running my fingers along every inch and corner, feeling only the dampness of hamster urine. There was no way the babies could have escaped, so what had happened?
Van Helsing and Igor moved lazily in the cage and they looked different. Bloated, fat hamster Santas. I thought I might’ve overfed them but their food dish was full. Looking closer, their faces were moist with blood. I pulled my hand from the cage, and my fingertips were stained red.
A sick realization dawned on me. Van Helsing and Igor. They’d eaten their own babies. The babies who had suckled at Igor’s side.
I nearly pushed the cage over.
I couldn’t look at them. I could never look at them.
I lifted their cage and carried it down the hallway, through the front door and outside. I rushed to the edge of the yard and set the cage on the grass and tilted it on its side. The hamsters tentatively ran down the glass side, their noses crinkling, and then they dashed into the yard. Soon after, they were lost in the underbrush.
Once inside, I flipped on my computer. My stomach was in knots and I suppressed a gag. I had to find out if what the hamsters had done was normal or not. I did a search and learned it had a name: Animal Behavior Infanticide. Basically, adult animals sometimes eat their young to ensure the survival of the species.
The world was filled with disturbing things, but this was Disturbing with a capital D. Adults killing their young? Their very own and sometimes others? It went against every natural law. And yet, it wasn’t unnatural at all. Except for humans.
Or was it?
I thought of Miss Lauer and her missing niece and nephew. The sheriff killing an unarmed teen. The Solomon’s family dead, maybe by the father’s own hand, and the kids defending themselves.
I was about to turn off the computer when I remembered the oil spill. The oil spill that was miraculously “cleaned” with a new type of dispersant. A new chemical lauded for its ability to clean the uncleanable.
I looked up the company, and of course, there was no listing on the chemicals used, as it was a secret proprietary blend. But buried in the fine print was an interesting tidbit: the product had been recently recalled—something about “unintended effects in animals.” No specifics given, nor an ETA when it would return to the market.
No, I thought. One chemical spill does not make adults kill young people. Just let it go.
But I was my biologist father’s daughter.
I remembered the thalidomide babies we’d studied in environmental science class. In the 1960’s, mothers had taken a supposed “wonder drug” to combat depression and insomnia. Those who had given birth while on the drug had babies with deformed limbs or no limbs at all.
Curious, I Googled more about drugs and birth defects. Sure enough, in the 1980s, Accutane, a drug made for acne, was responsible for severe birth defects in mothers who took it while pregnant.
It didn’t prove anything about the oil spill, but it did prove that even something approved by the FDA and deemed safe could later turn out to be harmful. Very harmful. If that was true, then what about the consequences of a chemical made for cleaning oil spills never meant for human consumption at all?
My mind ran and ran, an idea taking form.
What if the dispersant leaked into the water or soil, like the things I’d seen about fracking and it infected someone who drank or ate it? No, I thought, no one would just eat the chemical.
But over time, fish or vegetables in the soil would absorb it. The same way mercury in the ocean was eaten by small fish, and they were eaten by bigger fish and so on until they were caught and ended up in some restaurant or family dinner table.
Someone on the island would eat that fish.
Someone like Mr. Solomon.
I didn’t have certainty, but it was the only thing that made sense, even though some part of me knew I was grasping for anything. How do you make sense of the senseless?
It was a crazy theory, and no better than any other. But if I was right—God help me if I was—then no kid on this island was safe.