Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

“Was I saying, ‘Oh, pretty please, Mommy, please let me out!’?”

I giggle from the bathtub.

Mom smiles. “Yes, exactly like that, and I said, ‘Patience, baby, I need you to have patience.’”

“Because you weren’t at the hospital yet. You were at Walmart.”

“That’s right.”

“You and Sissy, but Sissy was my age.”

“A few years younger, but yes, Sissy was with us.”

“What were you buying?”

“A pizza, because—”

“—The meat was frozen!” Bobby says, excited. “The meat was frozen!”

She nods. “I’d laid out a package of hamburger meat earlier that morning to thaw, but after work it was still mostly frozen, so we decided to have pizza for dinner instead.”

“Where was Daddy?”

She hesitates, chewing on her lip. “I don’t remember.”

“Why wasn’t Daddy with you?”

“I don’t remember, baby.”

Bobby turns toward Dad. “Daddy, why weren’t you with Mommy and Sissy when I was born?”

He remains motionless on the toilet.

I lean over the tub, unable to prevent myself from whispering, “He was drunk at the bowling alley.”

Mom glares at me with icicles for eyes. “Mel… not now.”

Dad still hasn’t moved.

“What happened then, Mommy?” Bobby asks, maybe realizing the potential for disaster if we continue prodding the subject of our father’s absence.

“Well, you know what happened,” Mom says. “Why don’t you tell it?”

“I started kicking you! Real hard and fast!” He pedals his legs out at nothing, demonstrating his expert kicking abilities.

“It felt like a little Bruce Lee was inside me, fighting off a dozen bad guys.”

“Who’s Bruce Lee?”

“A guy who knows karate.”

“Where does he live? Maybe he could help us get free?”

“He’s dead, baby.”

“Oh.” Bobby exhales loudly and rests his feet back on the floor. “I wish I knew karate.”

“Well, maybe after this is all over, we can sign you up for lessons.”

“Karate lessons?”

“Sure, why not?”

“When are we getting out of here, anyway?”

“…I don’t know, baby. I don’t know,” Mom whispers, petting his head and trying not to cry and failing.

At night it’s impossible to determine if my eyes are opened or closed. All I see is black. All I hear inside the bathroom is heavy breathing and soft crying. All I hear outside is wind. No animals or anything else with a heartbeat exists. It hasn’t rained since the storm. Sometimes I fantasize a flood will pass through our town, into our house, and lift this tree in my parents’ bedroom and carry it far away from here. And if it can’t do that, maybe it will at least have the common courtesy to drown us.

A strong itch interrupts me from starvation/ meditation. On my arm, under the bandage that’s somehow managed to remain attached to my flesh. I rip it off in the dark and let it drop into the unknown. A thick scab welcomes my fingertips like satanic braille. When Amy had cut into it, she hadn’t been gentle, not like how I’d been with her own arm. Afterward I had feared it would never stop bleeding.

Now I fear it will never stop healing.

Never stop itching.

I bite my tongue and squeeze my hand into a fist, trying to talk myself out of scratching the source. This one-sided negotiation lasts another minute before I surrender to temptation and dig into the wound. Something wet bursts and I don’t care, it itches so bad, I can’t stop scratching, not for anything. The more I scratch the stronger the itch intensifies. My fingers probe my flesh until they’re knuckle-deep and I can’t understand why the pain hasn’t hit yet. Then I feel something in my wound, something moving. Tiny little legs scuttling against my fingers. I squeeze them and pull it out. An insect of some sort. Hundreds of thin legs. The body’s long and thick, like a slug. Slimy with blood or something else, who can tell? I scream but noise refuses to escape my lungs. I try to throw the insect but it clings to my hand. It refuses to let go. Please stop, I silently beg it, and after so long only one solution makes sense, so I bring it back up to my arm and push the insect back into the wound. It buries itself into my flesh and disappears. All night long I feel it moving inside me. Eventually I start to welcome the sensation. Then I feel nothing, and all I want in this world is for it to return and keep me company again.

In the morning, I hold my arm next to the door opening and inspect the damage.

The bandage is still on my arm. I peel it off and find the scab, nearly healed at this point.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asks.

“I think I’m going crazy,” I tell her.

And Dad laughs, sitting on the toilet. “Join the club, baby.”

“I used to be a cutter,” is the first thing Amy ever tells me, long before the incident with my dad passed out in the front yard. We’re sitting side-by-side in ISS—or, in-school suspension. A second ago I was moaning in the bathtub, rubbing my gut, and praying for death. Now I’m where? Back at school? I didn’t go anywhere. I can still feel the porcelain against my sweaty flesh, but I can also see Amy next to me at the table. Existing in two different places, two different times, simultaneously. Why am I in ISS? I don’t remember. It’s not important. What matters is Amy. What matters are her arms. I tried not to stare but she has her sleeves pushed up to her elbows and the farther up her flesh my eyes travel, the more the scars stick out. And she’s caught me peeping. A deep shame overwhelms me and I roll over in the bathtub, I look away and try to avoid eye contact, but I can still feel her watching me, waiting to respond. I glance back and her attention has yet to drift elsewhere. If she didn’t want this conversation, then she wouldn’t have said anything, right? She wouldn’t have pushed up her sleeves. Or maybe she was just hot. Maybe I wasn’t even on her radar until now, and she’s planning to make me pay for my impolite behavior.

Somewhere in another place, another time, Bobby’s complaining that he’s hungry—so, so hungry—and Mom’s saying she knows, everybody’s hungry, but there’s nothing she can do about it right now, so he’s going to have to be a big boy and wait a little longer—and I’m maintaining eye contact with Amy as I ask her, “Why?”

And she smiles when she says, “Because I used to be dead.”

I don’t know if she’s joking or genuine. I don’t know if I realize yet that I’m in love. I don’t know if we’re ever getting out of this bathroom. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where Amy is. Are we still meeting for the first time, or has the tree separated us yet? Has the lightning cracked the sky? I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I can’t stop crying. Mom gives me the thermos and tells me to drink, that we have to stay hydrated, that we have to fight.

“I’m so tired,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m telling this to Amy or my mother or both or no one.

Bobby can’t stop laughing. Like, laughing so hard he can barely breathe. Snot shakes from his nose and spills into his mouth and still he laughs. “What’s so funny, baby?” Mom asks, concerned. We’re all concerned. “Why are you laughing like that?”

“I don’t know hahaha,” Bobby manages to shout through laughter, “I don’t know I don’t know hahaha I don’t know.”

“Well, stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I can’t help it,” he shouts, almost crying now, and doubles over.

Behind us, Dad starts laughing too, almost just as hard.

“What is your problem?” Mom asks him, and he shakes his head.