One Bloody Thing After Another Read online

  When the stranger opens the door Ann sees a baby gate across the doorway. There’s a formula bottle on the counter, and a blanket on the floor. The woman’s got a kid in one arm, and you can bet there are more in the house somewhere, in behind the walls maybe.

  Ann fakes a lovely smile for the woman and she gets into character. Oh my goodness what an adorable baby. Oh my goodness look at these kittens. Have you ever seen anything so adorable? Couldn’t you just eat them up?

  “We didn’t think we’d find someone willing to take them,” The woman with the baby says. “Not this quickly, anyway.” Her baby is spitting up on her. “Are you sure your mother’s okay with this?” she says. Ann smiles. The woman wipes at the vomit a bit, but misses half of it. It just sits there on her shoulder.

  “We’re in town today to see my uncle,” Ann says. The trick is to keep touching the kittens. Keep your hands on them all the time, like you can’t get enough. Aren’t they wonderful? It makes you look tender. “My mom and I have a place out in the country. There’s mice in the house at this time of year, and these guys will have plenty to keep themselves busy.” It’s important to talk to the kittens, too. “Won’t you?” Ann says. “Won’t you be busy? Chasing little mousies!”

  “They’re great, aren’t they?” the woman says.

  “Is this all of them?” Ann asks.

  The black kitten doesn’t like Ann at all. All the other ones are as stupid as this woman, rolling around like they can’t even remember to stand up. But this black kitten is looking at Ann like he’s heard about her.

  “That sounds really nice,” the woman says. “Living on a farm like that. Do you want a glass of juice or something?”

  Ann brought a carrier with her, and she starts dropping the kittens inside, one by one. The black kitten tries to escape, to climb out of the cardboard box. When she gets her hand around him, he bites her. This is not going to be enough. They’re so scrawny. The woman is still smiling at Ann from the doorway, bouncing her plump little baby on her shoulder.

  “Maybe a glass of lemonade,” Ann says. They go into the kitchen, and Ann feels right at home. It is time to be practical here. You have to put food on the table, and these kittens are too small. That baby has got way more meat.

  There’s a knife on the counter, laid on the cutting board, like farm equipment.

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  Ann gets back outside and everything is so bright and open. Everyone is busy going to work. Coming home from work. The carrier is heavy in her hand, and the kittens are mewling. The baby, too. They don’t like the sound of the cars. And when she peeks inside, the black kitten is just looking back at her. She likes him, she realizes. He doesn’t trust her at all, and it makes her like him.

  Back at the house, Ann locks the door behind her, and the kittens and the baby are still making noise. Margaret can hear them from her room, and it drives her crazy. She can hear them and now she is pounding on the wall. Ann looks through the peephole, into her sister’s room. The chains look solid. So she opens the door and goes in.

  The kittens are quiet now. They can hear Margaret, and have no idea what to make of those sounds. The baby keeps crying, of course. It isn’t as smart as the animals. It doesn’t have the instincts. Margaret hasn’t eaten in two days, and she is desperate. The words are coming.

  “Homework lonely makeup mother ice cream,” she says, and the words sound wrong. Ann doesn’t look at her. Right beside the door is a CD player, ready with Margaret’s shitty music, and Ann presses play. The volume is up full blast.

  Then Ann opens the top of the carrier, and reaches in for the fat arms of that woman’s baby. She sets him down on the floor, and pushes him with her foot to where her sister can reach. She pulls out the mewling white kitten, then the grey. The other white one.

  Outside in the hall, she leans her back against the door. The music is so loud that it drowns everything else out. The kitten carrier is on the floor beside her, and inside it, the black kitten is still sitting. He looks like he expects her to pull him out, too, and toss him into that room, but she doesn’t.

  He’s wrong about her. He ought to look grateful. Inside the room, though, Margaret is getting louder. You can hear her over the music now. More words.

  There’s blood on her shoes and Ann feels a bit sick. She doesn’t like the words, but after a while Margaret calms down and the music is the only noise again. The little black kitten is mewling and Ann closes her eyes and pretends she is just home from school. Her sister Margaret has the music up too loud, even though she knows Ann has to study. As soon as Mom gets home, Margaret’ll turn it down. Of course.

  But what can you do? You can’t just tell on her, she’ll deny it. She’s so aggravating. Look at her, look at the look on her face, behind Mom’s back. Smug and self-satisfied. Human.

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  In the morning, Ann wakes up on the couch thinking that she’s just fallen asleep. She thinks it’s late afternoon. She’s had a nap after school. Her mother is in the kitchen, cooking macaroni and cheese for her and Margaret. Everything is right for a few seconds, but dreams don’t last. Their mother hasn’t come back to them.

  The morning newspaper has a picture of that woman on the cover. Ann sits down to read it on the front step, with the kitten on her lap. It’s the cover story and they are aghast, downtown in newspaperland. Aghast! A young single mother, murdered! And her baby has been kidnapped. It doesn’t mention the kittens at all.

  “They don’t mention you at all, Jackie,” she tells him, but he doesn’t seem offended. What does he care? In the kitchen she opens a can of wet food for him, and he perks up when he hears the sound, like Margaret when she hears the door. Ann wishes her sister would eat wet cat food. But they tried that with their mother, back before their mother got loose. They tried that first. Then they tried raw steaks. Bloody. It still wasn’t fresh enough.

  After breakfast, the kitten follows her down the stairs, padding along the hallway to Margaret’s room. Darling little sister Margaret will still be sleeping. She was up all night, howling and upturning furniture. But it’s quiet time, now. Ann unbolts the door, and pulls it open. She puts the bucket down, and she cleans up as best she can.

  There’s blood everywhere except a big half circle, where Margaret’s chains let her reach to lick the floor. But out past where the chains extend, there is blood, and there are chunks of kitten. Chunks of the poor missing baby. Margaret is curled up in the corner, and she looks peaceful. Her shirt is ripped, and underneath it, you can see the holes, where their mother took her organs. She isn’t breathing, either, but she is pawing at the floor, lost in some dream. The trick is not to look at her face.

  Her face is bent out of shape, but still recognizable. There are too many teeth in her mouth, now. It is torn open at the sides. Split along her cheeks, so the weird, jagged stones of her teeth can breathe. It would be better if it was just a twisted mess of a face, but it still looks like Margaret. The mouth has split in a small twist on the left side, like her old smile.

  When it was their mother chained in the corner like this, Margaret and Ann would argue. This was when she was still Margaret. But Ann didn’t mind the arguing. At least, when they were fighting about it, they were sisters. It was just the two of them, taking care of the thing their mother had become. Only, they couldn’t agree about how exactly they should care for her.

  The first time they gave their mother a live animal to eat it was a dog they stole. Mitchie. He was from the apartment building down the street. They used to see him all the time, on their way to school and back. Every day, he went out for a walk with his old man owner, and every day Mitchie would run into the woods. He was old, and he couldn’t run very fast. But he would run into the woods anyway.

  Ann and Margaret would walk home from school, and that old man would be standing there at the edge of the woods, stooped over, hollering and hol
lering. “Mitchie, you get out here right now. God damn it, Mitchie.” And eventually Mitchie would come stumbling out of the woods. They were cranky, blind old men together.

  When the two girls realized that their mother needed live food, Ann wanted to buy birds from the pet store. Or maybe they could try to trap pigeons, she said. They were animals but they weren’t pets, you know? They weren’t a part of someone’s family.

  “Do you know how hard it would be to catch a pigeon?” Margaret said.

  So they came home with Mitchie, and they put him in the room with their mother and ran upstairs to get away from the sounds. Ann turned on the TV, as loud as it would go.

  They didn’t talk about it until late that night when Margaret knocked on her sister’s door and climbed into the bed. She put her head on Ann’s shoulder and she said, real quiet, “Do you think he’s still out there calling for Mitchie?” And in the morning, Ann woke up early to clean up what was left of Mitchie so that Margaret wouldn’t have to see.

  Now there’s no arguing. There’s nobody to argue with. Margaret will wake up when the sun goes down, and soon Ann will have to feed her again. Right now, Ann just wants to sleep some more, but there’s always more work. She has to clean this up. The kitten sits in the doorway and watches as Ann cleans up drying chunks of baby, and he yawns.

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  Jackie puts her hand on the walrus and she can hear the warm, rushing blood. She doesn’t know if it is a boy or a girl. A girl maybe. Her blood is warm. Her eyes are full of blood and she is pink pink pink. She’s staring at Jackie with those eyes, and Jackie is smiling at the zoo security guard like she’s not terrified. The guard is yelling something or other.

  “Blah blah blah,” he yells. “Blah blah blah blah.” Jackie’s classmates are crowded around him now, watching her. She looks crazy up here, but they’re the ones who think that a little fence like that can stop them. Her teachers look tired, but they are always tired.

  Well, Jackie has decided that she’s not going back to school today. No prison can hold her! There is a whole entire world out there that she can see, but every day all she sees are the same classrooms and the same hallways, all day long. Her mother did just fine without high school. Jackie can get a tire iron, too.

  The walrus is still looking.

  She stands on the edge of the walrus pool and waves goodbye to her classmates; she will never see them again and it is polite to wish them well. But mostly they just stare at her blankly, like they’re lined up in front of the sea cucumber tank. Jackie is not a sea cucumber, though. She waves to a mother and a little boy. She waves especially to a little pink girl. Pink hat. Pink dress. The little pink girl points her finger at Jackie, so Jackie makes a funny face just for her. The little girl shrieks with laughter. The boy laughs, too. For one second Jackie is a hero up here. For one second she feels like even crazy people can be heroes.

  And Jackie jumps into the water. It goes up her nose and right into her brain and then everything is white. Her eyes hurt and she can hear people whispering. Jackie rolls onto her side and throws up on someone’s feet. A man leans down next to her and puts his hand on her back.

  “You’re okay,” he says. “You swallowed a lot of water.”

  Everyone is standing too close. Jackie throws up more water. The light is so bright. She is beside the walrus tank now, sitting in a puddle of thrown-up water. Everyone is crowded around her, but nobody good. She can’t see the little pink girl or her family. She can’t see Ann. The paramedic pats Jackie on the back again.

  “I’m okay,” she tells him. “I’m okay. Go back to bed. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

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  Ms. Garcia can’t keep still. She keeps asking, “Are you warm enough?” Jackie is wrapped in three blankets, sitting with her back against the wall in the security office. She’s more than warm enough, but she likes when Ms. Garcia asks. They called Jackie’s father more than an hour ago. They’re waiting.

  “Are you sure she doesn’t need a doctor?” Ms. Garcia asks the security guard again. He shrugs his shoulders, which isn’t an answer at all.

  “I have to go do my rounds,” he says, after a few more minutes. “I’ll be back.”

  “We’ll hold our breath,” Ms. Garcia says, and then he’s gone. It’s just the two of them now, sitting in the office and waiting. The other students and teachers are all gone. She’s very beautiful.

  “You’re very beautiful,” Jackie says. It could be the sort of thing that a scared girl says, when she sees another woman being strong. But it isn’t, not the way Jackie says it. She says it very clearly, and very simply, and Ms. Garcia’s face flushes with surprise. She doesn’t answer, and she turns away to check her phone, but not before Jackie sees the smile.

  Then Jackie’s father is in the doorway. He wraps his arms around Jackie and kisses her on the top of her head.

  On the way home, her father doesn’t say anything for a long time. When they get home, he comes around to open the door.

  “I was going to take us out to a movie tonight,” he says. “If you’re still up for it.”

  “I’m not in trouble?” Jackie says.

  “What good would it do?” he says. He shakes his head. He’s not smiling, and she can’t tell whether he’s angry or not. “You are your mother’s daughter, Jackie.”

  She loves him for saying that.

  35

  Jackie stands under the department store’s enormous sign. She remembered the name, even though her aunt only said it one time on the telephone to someone else. This is the department store where Jackie’s mother worked. Whenever she goes to her broken-arm tree or any of her trees, she thinks about this department store.

  There’s a mother and daughter here, too. They are standing outside one of the big picture windows, looking in at the elaborate display. The little girl has a fancy scarf wrapped around her neck with little pink pom-poms dangling down from the ends.

  “How do they make them fly?” the little girl says. She swings around to look at her mom, and the pom-poms whip through the air. Her mom points up at something in the window.

  “They use wires,” the mom tells her. “Look, you can see them.” Jackie looks, too, and there they are, little wires ruining the illusion. The little girl has her face pushed up against the window now, straining to see. She’s up on her tiptoes.

  “Oh,” says the little girl. She sounds disappointed.

  “No they don’t,” Jackie says. “It’s magic, how they fly like that. It’s a miracle.”

  “But I can see the wires,” the little girl says. Her mother doesn’t say anything, she just stares at Jackie. “Look, you can see the wires,” the girl says.

  “Those are puppet strings,” Jackie says.

  “Puppet strings?”

  “Yeah. There are people who live up in the ceiling there. That’s all they do all day, is make those mannequins dance and fly.”

  “What do they eat?” she says. Her mother is already pulling her away.

  “They eat children,” Jackie says, and the little girl gasps. She puts the scarf over her face in little pink horror. Then she’s being pulled away. Mom to the rescue. The little girl looks back at Jackie, and Jackie gives her a small wave.

  “I’m here to visit my dead mom!” Jackie yells after them.

  36

  All night Ann hears her down there, screaming and thrashing. Margaret needs to be fed again. The little black kitten doesn’t like those sounds at all, and he burrows under Ann’s arms. Margaret needs to be fed. But Ann can’t do it tonight. Tomorrow night. Margaret’ll be screaming and crying and she’ll start to use words again. This is what always happens.

  She’ll say, “Ann,” in the middle of some string of random words. That will be too much. And Ann will be right back out there, finding her little sister something to eat. But not tonig
ht. Tonight she sits with the kitten in her lap, and she tries to remember the words to old songs while Margaret screams. When she falls asleep, she dreams that she can remember all the words perfectly.

  Ann wakes up with the kitten pushing his cold little snout into her neck.

  “Oh, hello,” she says. “Good morning, Jackie.” She feeds him in the kitchen, and makes herself some breakfast. She sets him and his dish on the kitchen table, and sits in her usual seat. It’s good to have someone to eat with.

  “Slow down,” she tells him.

  Downstairs, she pulls open the door, so she can watch Margaret sleep, and the air inside is cold. Too cold. The window is open, and Ann feels this rush of excitement. Maybe her sister got out. Maybe it’s over.

  But Margaret hasn’t escaped. She’s right there, on the floor, curled up in their mother’s arms. Their mother’s face is twisted and bloody, and there’s fur on the floor from whatever they ate last night. It’s a mess of blood and bone and strips of flesh. And they’re sleeping peacefully, wrapped around one another. They look so calm and quiet.

  Ann doesn’t know what to do. She could chain her mother up now. But then what? Then she’s taking care of two of them. It’s hard enough finding food for Margaret. Their mother is bigger. She needs more food. And when will it end? How long will she have to go on hunting for them?

  While Ann watches, Margaret nuzzles her torn, jagged face into their mother contentedly, and makes a sound almost like a cat purring. Something inside Ann flips like a switch.

  She takes the kitten upstairs, and she opens the front door and sets him outside.

  “You should go,” she tells him, and he just sits there. “Go,” she says again. But it’s not her problem. She closes the door. He’ll leave eventually. And if he doesn’t, well, he’s small enough that he might go unnoticed.