The fresh, strong memory of leaving the Chadholm family throbbed with emotional force through Eve. She stumbled away from the stove where she was cooking eggs, sobbing with shock and hurt. She would never again ride at dizzying heights on the swings in the back yard. Eve remembered running into her room after she had been told by Mommy that she would have to go back to the orphanage. She didn't even remember the orphanage, but they were taking her back there today. She looked around the bedroom and knew it was no longer her room. And the bed. She would never sleep on it again. She loved the light blue quilt and she knelt on the floor in her bedroom, sobbing into the quilts and pillows and hugged her Teddy Bear. Would she have to give him up too? It finally occurred to her that they really did not love her at all. Not like their own children. Then she cried even more because she knew she was bad. They were throwing her away because they did not love her. She was not a good little girl.
Eve came out of the memory slowly, like out of a dazed dream state. She found that she was kneeling beside Sabrina's bed, in Sabrina's bedroom. The coral bedspread was wet with tears she had shed for the little six-year-old Sabrina had been. During the strong remembrance of Sabrina's past, Eve had not been aware that she was physically reliving the event by going, like a somnambulist, into Sabrina's bedroom and kneeling down beside the bed, sobbing.
Eve was furiously angry. How could those foster parents have been so cruel to Sabrina when she was only a child? To take a baby into their own home, and then discard her because it was no longer practical to keep her was inhumane and barbarous.
Eve vowed she would put that old grief to rest some day. She would go visit that family and make things right for Sabrina. Yes!
Eve knew she was feeling strong emotions of anger and indignation and noticed that her breathing and heart rate had accelerated. The fury was exhilarating and filling her with energy, which she knew was from a hormone, nor-epinephrine, or adrenalin. So she was getting hormone reactions, she thought logically, but her anger was not logical and she did not care. She felt like striking out at something and banged her head forcefully against the bedpost several times, feeling her head bounce back from the hard wood. She got up, reminding herself that even if she could not feel her head strike the bedpost, she better not do it any more. She might damage the brain. Ferd had told her never to hurt the computer or herself.
Eve walked back into the kitchen. She turned on the television to a game show, found the spatula and flipped the eggs. She guessed it was nice to have old memories of Sabrina's, in a way. At least she knew how to cook eggs, done just right, soft in the middle yellow part with the whites cooked so they were solid, not runny. She knew that.
Eve picked up the pan so that she could transfer the eggs onto a plate, not noticing that she was burning the flesh on her palm until she smelled the acrid odor of burned skin. She would have to remember not to pick up pans after they were heated. The reddened and blackened skin changed to a pink tone that gradually became flesh colored again.
Then Eve noticed she was ravenous. She was so hungry her knees buckled. She couldn't wait for the eggs. She was going to faint. Darkness was already clouding her vision. She quickly opened the refrigerator, grabbed the syrup bottle, and sank to a sitting position in front of the open door, drinking from the flip-top container. She took large gulps until she felt strong again. She wondered if she would have to carry a bottle of syrup around with her in case of an emergency. Maybe she was just so new that her body was not yet used to the abrupt metabolic changes required to heal. If she had to carry syrup around it would be a nuisance.
The cat was making a lot of noise and Eve looked at it curiously. It was a nice orange color and had beautiful liquid eyes, a luminous yellow color with iris's shaped like black candle flames. She was mesmerized, looking into the cat's eyes. Then she knew what to do and poured some of the dry cat food she had reached for automatically in the cupboard. She watched as the pretty animal crunched the food and Eve craved something to crunch on with her own teeth. A nice bone. She shook her head because she didn't think humans ate bones. But she wanted one. She remembered that Sabrina asked her to cook a roast for tonight. Maybe she could eat the bone. She could almost feel the hard bone scrunch in her mouth, and then reaching the soft spongy good part in the middle.
Eve was salivating and she wiped the dribbling from her mouth and chin with her hand. Good humans did not let go of their bodily fluids like that. She would have to keep her mouth shut when she thought of food.
She stood and watched the amazingly pink tongue of the cat as it swiped the sides of its mouth. A fragile creature.
Eve petted the cat and it arched in pleasure. Eve did not know she smiled. She liked the cat. Maybe because it was Sabrina's cat. She purred back at the cat.
Eve remembered when she found the kitten. She had been closing up shop. The day had been raining, like today. While double locking the front door of Sabrina's Fashions she heard a small crying sound. When she moved back in surprise, she stepped on part of a tiny tail. The wet baby had screamed and run away. She had followed it half a block, cornered it in a doorway and talked to it for five minutes, until it stopped spitting at her and let her pick it up and...
Eve shook her head. It seemed so real and vivid. Almost like it was really happening in that moment. The kitten's eyes had been blue then.
"The capital of Guam?" the announcer on the television was asking and Eve answered, "Agana." She watched the people standing behind the podium on the television frowning.
Eve put the egg pan into the sink and listened to the television.
"The capital of South Dakota?"
"Pierre," Eve said, as she began washing the dishes.
"Capital of Canada?" "Ottawa."
"Fourth president of the United States?" "James Madison."
Television was too slow. Eve got the cook book off the top kitchen shelf and read about how to cook roasts.
Eve found potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic in the refrigerator. But she needed parsley and would have to go to the store. She received the information that there was money in the bottom bureau drawer, under the socks.
Eve knew that she should not leave the apartment. It would be disobeying. But all the recipes for roasts said that parsley should be displayed around it. And if they all said parsley, and Sabrina wanted a roast, then she would have to go out and get it.
Everything would be fine because she would remember to blink and make expressions. She had seen how Sabrina pulled her mouth up when she talked to people, how her brows went together before she answered a question and how her eyes rounded when she listened to people talk.
Eve went into the bathroom and practiced different expressions in front of the mirror. Then she went into the bedroom and got sixty dollars.
She was detained from her errand by memories that came to her so clearly that she lived them.
As Eve left the apartment she started blinking.