Velveteen Page 4

  I knew I should say something to my parents about Ben Nicholas’s and my sickness, but I knew it was already too late because of what Miss Ronica said about there being no cure once we started getting sick. Also, I guess it still didn’t seem real. I mean, I knew about death from my little baby brother dying, but it still didn’t seem like it could happen to me.

  I slept most of the way there in the car and don’t remember much of the ride except when Mama pointed out to Daddy the people who were working on the sides of the road. They looked like dead people to me, and I said so. Mama turned around and gave me a frown. She must’ve thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I lifted my head and stared at them as we passed, my curiosity overcoming my sleepiness, but as soon as they were out of sight, I laid back down in the back seat again and drifted off.

  I don’t remember the security gate at Laroda Island, where Mama and Daddy work, or even getting out of the car after we got to Islip Beach. I faintly remember walking down to the water’s edge and Shinji running and snapping at the waves. Also, I definitely do remember going swimming with my bubble ring. The ocean water felt very good on my itchy skin, cool and wet and oily and waking me up a bit. At least until something happened inside of my head, like a click or a timer going off or something, and suddenly I didn’t want to be anywhere near the water no more. Not even just my toes touching it.

  I got out and stretched out on the sand to one side of where Mama and Daddy were sitting, staring at the sky with their sunglasses on and the flies buzzing around their knees. The ocean hadn’t been able to wash away the smell of my sickness, and the sun only made it stronger, more rotten. The smell coming from Mama was even worse.

  Coming back home in the car, I buried my nose in Shinji’s wet fur. He had a nice smell to him, a little like cinnamon and salt water, and he laid real still so I could sleep. He was always a good dog, and it made me sad when Mama didn’t take to him the way I took to Ben Nicholas.

  The last thing I remember about that day is waking up in the middle of the night seeing Mama put a new bandage on my heel. She didn’t say a word, just seemed real sad. I knew then that Miss Ronica had finally gotten the call and had told Mama what had happened a couple days before. And that’s when it really finally did hit me that I was dying, and it made me sad because I knew how much Mama would cry when I did.

  “It wasn’t the rabies that actually killed Ben Nicholas. It was our next door neighbor, Mister Sam.

  “He’s lying, Mama!”

  “Cassie! You apologize right now to Mister Locke for talking like that!”

  “I don’t believe it, Mama! I don’t believe it that Ben Nicholas is dead.”

  “That rabbit killed another of my laying hens! A rabbit!”

  “I am so sorry, Sam. I don’t understand how it got in your yard.”

  “Under the fence is how. And it’s not the first time, either, Lyssa. A few weeks ago, I found two of my chicks dead, slaughtered but not eaten. I didn’t say nuthin then, because I didn’t know what happened. Figured it mighta been a possum or raccoon. But now I know. You shoulda put a better latch on that rabbit cage of hers!”

  “I locked it, Mama! I promise I did.”

  “Hush, Cassie!”

  “I’m gonna need stitches, too, Lyssa. Did it have its shots?”

  “No!” I screamed, breaking away from Mama and charging straight at him. “Ben Nicholas wouldn’t hurt no one! He didn’t kill any chickens.”

  “Cassie!” Mama tried to pull me off of him. “Cassandra Lynn Stempler! You obey me right—”

  “Get— Ow! God damn it! She bit me! First her rabbit, now her!”

  “Cassie! Oh, Christ, Sam, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.”

  Mama grabbed me by the arm and jerked me away. “You get yourself inside that house right this instant, girl! You are in so much trouble!” I tried to get away, but she wouldn’t let go of my arm.

  “I dunno how much it’s going to cost to get my hand stitched,” Mister Sam shouted at our backs. “And I just got them chickens! They were forty bucks a pop!”

  “Where is he?” I cried, struggling weakly against my mama. “I want to see him! I want to see my Ben Nicholas!”

  Everyone froze. Finally, Mama whispered, “He’s gone, Cassie.”

  All the strength went out of my body. “Please, Mama. I want to see Ben Nicholas.”

  I could feel her anger. I could feel her shaking with it, could smell it coming off her, thick and heavy, like scorched meat. She bent down and wrapped her arms around me and surprised me with the softness in her voice. She said it would be better if I didn’t see Ben Nicholas. “He’s gone, honey. I’m sorry. Mister Locke, he . . . .”

  She couldn’t finish. She didn’t need to. Now I knew why the rusty pipe was lying on the grass behind Mister Sam. Except I also knew it wasn’t rust on it, it was blood. As Mama held me, I watched Mister Sam pick up a lumpy plastic garbage bag I hadn’t noticed before. He cinched the top, and I suddenly knew what was inside.

  With a wail of despair, I broke away from Mama and ran to my room, slamming the door behind me. I cried into my pillow for what seemed like hours. All the while I was wishing my insides would tear out of my body like they felt like they were trying to do, but they stayed put, even when my breath started hitching so bad I was choking.

  Sometime later I heard Mama’s voice and realized she was talking with Daddy on the phone, begging him to come home. “Everything’s falling apart,” I heard her say. “Cassie’s rabbit is dead . . . . Mister Locke . . . . No, I know. The roads are a mess. I don’t know what to do, Rame.”

  A longer pause, then:

  “I don’t care, Rame. Cassie needs her father. She needs us both right now. And I– I think something’s wrong with her. I’m serious this time. Please. We both need you.”

  But I could tell by the way her smell changed from yellow to brown, and then flared bright red, that Daddy wasn’t coming home anytime soon. I didn’t have to hear their conversation to know what he’d said to her: “Stop babying Cassie. She’s fine.”

  Only this time, I really wasn’t.

  I woke sometime later to the sound of Mister Sam’s voice drifting in through my window and realized Mama must have opened it while I’d slept.

  The sun was low in the sky and it was shining yellow on my wall.

  “I thought it was a raccoon,” he was saying. “That was my first thought when it happened last time.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. What raccoon? What happened?

  And who was he talking to?

  Then I remembered.

  “I’ve lost half of my new prize layin hens now,” he said. “Spent good money for them! Eggs are supposed to sell for two bucks-a-pop. That’s why I put out the poison, Lyssa. Next thing I know, your rabbit’s under my coop with blood on its face. What else am I supposed to think?”

  “No rabbit’s going to go after baby chickens, Sam. You’re not thinking right.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I tell you it had blood on its mouth. All I kept thinkin was, What the hell is going on? Why’s a rabbit killin chickens?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Mom finally admitted. “The world does seem to have tilted off its axis in the past few days.”

  “You can say that again. What a mess over in East Islip, eh?”

  I rose up out of bed and floated over to the window. That’s the only way I can describe it, like I was floating, even though I felt like I weighed a million pounds and it was taking every ounce of my strength just to move myself one inch across the floor. I was so tired, tired and hot and feeling like something was inside of me trying to eat its way out. I felt like a giant red-hot star moving very slowly across the sky.

  “But poison, Sam?” Mama replied, low and quiet, like she was afraid someone might hear.

  Me, she’s afraid I’ll hear.

  “What if Cassie had gotten into it?”

  “No chance in hell that girl could
have come in contact with it.”

  “But I think her rabbit did, Sam. In fact, I’m pretty sure it did. Cassie said the other day that his breath smelled funny and he wasn’t acting right. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, and . . . . Christ, I should’ve listened to her better.”

  I could hear her voice rising, the way it does right before she and Daddy start fighting.

  “Naw, it wasn’t that. That rabbit’d be dead if he had gotten into—”

  “Well, he is dead, Sam! You killed it and my daughter’s bawling her eyes out now!”

  “Whoa, hey, that ain’t my fault! I was just defendin myself. If your rabbit hadn’t dug under my fence and attacked me, he’d still be alive. That thing was actin crazy when I tried gettin it out from underneath the coop, kickin and squealin!”

  “You were pulling it by its legs!”

  “Well, it was going after my chicks!”

  “It’s a rabbit! They don’t eat chickens! They—”

  suck the blood out of people

  “—eat vegetables!”

  “Ain’t supposed to bite people, neither.”

  “You were hurting it!”

  “All due respect, none of this would’ve happened if it’d been better watched. Besides, I had every right—”

  “To bash its brains in?” Mama shouted. Her next words were quiet, but just as angry. “You had no right to kill it, Sam! Not like . . . . Not like that! What were you thinking? Are you sick or something? It was Cassie’s pet!”

  “And you ain’t hearin me, Lyssa. It attacked me!”

  “Oh, I hear just fine, thank you. It didn’t fucking attack you, you sick murdering prick. Don’t give me that bullshit!”

  bad word, mama

  “Hey, you can’t talk— Are you callin me a liar? Did you look at these bites? And your daughter, too! She needs to be muzzled!”

  “Oh, that’s it! Fuck off!”

  mama!

  “You know, I wasn’t going to say nuthin before, because I ain’t judgmental, but all them rumors swirlin around about what you people do up there on Laroda? Those people out front here? Maybe what everyone’s sayin is right.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I heard about that guy who works with you up there flippin out and attackin the cops. You think that’s a coincidence? And now I can’t even go out my front door without them tryin to—”

  “That has nothing to do with me or my family!”

  “Nonetheless—”

  “No! You’re the crazy one! You’re a monster! Rabbit murderer! You stay away from my family. I don’t want you looking at me, you sick bastard! Or my daughter. Do you hear me? Don’t you look at her. Don’t speak to her. If you so much as set one foot in this yard or say one word, so help me, I’ll—”

  “What?”

  “Call the police!”

  “Go right ahead. I ain’t done nothin illegal!”

  “And give me back her rabbit. Give it to me!”

  “It needs to be tested. You said it ain’t never got its shots, so—”

  “It doesn’t have rabies, asshole.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I’ll test it, okay? Just give it back to me. Now!”

  Mama cried when she buried Ben Nicholas in the garden that night. I remember seeing the tears on her face in the moonlight. She cried just like she cried for my little brother Remy, and it made me so terribly sad that I couldn’t watch no more.

  I remember getting up and going outside much later. The moon was full and the grass was wet with dew and glistening like diamonds. I remember crying over the mound and digging my fingers in the soft dirt, but I don’t remember anything after that until the next morning, not bringing him inside, not tucking him into bed with me.

  When Mama came to wake me up, the sour smell of her sickness suddenly grew big and large and dark when she pulled back the blanket and saw him. Then she screamed.

  Daddy came and took him away without saying a word, and I couldn’t even argue with him because I feared the anger rolling off of Mama in huge black waves would come crashing down on me until I couldn’t breathe no more.

  She made me go and wash out my mouth and brush my teeth until my gums bled. Ben Nicholas should’ve been filthy, coming straight out of the dirt like that, but I don’t remember cleaning him either.

  In the days right after Mama came home from the hospital, I thought I knew why she’d been so sad and crying for Remy all the time, but now I know I didn’t really understand it at all. Because now that Ben Nicholas is gone, now I really know the sadness she felt, how big it is and how it both fills you and empties you out. After he died, all I wanted to do was die, but all I could do was cry because it was taking too long to happen.

  I guess it must’ve been the same with Daddy, not being able to understand, and maybe that’s why she’d made him leave, because although he knew about Mama’s sadness, he didn’t really understand how big it was or how deep inside her it went.

  I think he really only finally did understand it after I died.

  I stayed in bed for the next several days, except to go to the bathroom or to eat. Mama and Daddy had stopped going to work, but not because of Ben Nicholas (or any of the other animals), and also not so they could stay with me. They were scared.

  I could hear their voices, low and serious in the kitchen, not fighting anymore. They smelled only of fear then, not anger. And I guess they finally got tired of the endless ringing of the phone because they turned it off.

  But they couldn’t turn off the people waiting outside of our house.

  A couple times I got up out of bed to peek out the window, and I could see in the faces of them out there that the world was getting sicker and sicker.

  Eventually, with all our curtains closed all the time and no one going in or out through the front door, they must’ve gotten bored and wandered away. For maybe a day or two it was quiet.

  Then they started coming back again, except this time they weren’t shouting no more. They moaned.

  I went out into the garden one night after everyone had fallen asleep and I found where Mama had buried Ben Nicholas the second time and I dug him up again. His belly was fat and smooshy like a balloon and he smelled different, less like the sickness he’d had and more like dirt and old garbage. But I didn’t mind this smell, because it wasn’t so bad to me anymore.

  This time I didn’t bring him inside for Mama to find and take him away again. Instead, I made him a nice little secret bed behind the shed and covered him up in fresh leaves until I could figure out what to do. Poor, little Ben Nicholas. Dead, just like poor little Remy.

  So much death.

  Why couldn’t there be such a thing as a vampire rabbit?

  The people in front of the house looked just like the workers on the side of the road that time we’d gone to the beach. I watched them for the next couple days, keeping the window closed like Daddy told me to. Keeping the curtains closed and the lights off, too. I watched them bite someone who tried to run, but he fell down and I knew he was dead. No one came to pick him up or take him away. No one came to bury him in the ground, like they did Remy. But they didn’t have to. He finally just got up on his own and walked away.

  He was all better.

  I knew Ben Nicholas wasn’t going to come back, not like those people outside, because

  there are no such things as zombie rabbits

  he’d had the wrong disease— we had the wrong disease.

  It was too late for me to make Ben Nicholas not dead, but that didn’t mean it was too late to help him. All I needed was

  a long, long time

  more time. Enough to make him Real. Because that’s how nursery magic works: it takes

  forever

  a long, long time.

  And the right disease.

  I don’t remember Mama and Daddy putting me in the car, the day we tried to leave the island, but I do remember the drive. The windows were rolled up tight
because they were afraid that the people would try to get in. The car was full of my dying smell, full of Mama’s sickness — and Daddy’s, too, because he was also sick by then — though it was still sleeping inside their bones. They were talking low and fast in the front seats, not exactly arguing. Even so, their sharp whispers felt like fingernails on my skin. I tried not to listen, but I didn’t have my pillow and couldn’t block my ears.

  “We have to turn around, Lyssa!”

  “We’ll all die if we don’t get off the island.”

  “We’re going to die if we keep trying. We waited too long.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “They’re checking IDs at the bridge. You know we won’t get through, not now. Not us.”

  I wanted to tell them to turn around. I didn’t want to leave Ben Nicholas behind. But I was too tired, too weak.

  Then, sometime later:

  “—one bite. No cure. That’s how it goes.”

  No cure. Just like Miss Ronica had said. They were talking about me.

  “No, Rame! I won’t believe it. There has to be some way.”

  “There isn’t.”

  We were surrounded by then. The cars weren’t moving and they were all around us. I watched the walking ones stop a man who was running. He was quickly pushed down as they bit him. He didn’t stay down for long before he got up and started biting someone else. Then that person wasn’t sick no more, either.

  “Don’t look, honey,” Mama whispered. I thought she was talking to me, but she was talking to Daddy. He was quietly crying as we drove very slowly across someone’s front yard, pushing people down and rolling over them. It was a very bumpy ride.

  The next thing I knew we were home again, and I was in bed. Shivering, even though it was baking hot in my room. My mouth was dry. The sickness outside was beginning to go away. Now there was more sickness inside than out.

  Mama and Daddy were hiding somewhere upstairs. Not yet quite