Velveteen (2 page)

strange

the only thing

wonderful

that works anymore.

He’s waiting for me behind the shed, where I made a nice bed for him in the leaves, hid him beneath the board so nobody will be able to take him this time.

First thing’s first, honey.

Ben Nicholas.

I didn’t want Mama to bury you again in the dirt. Twice is too many times to be put into the ground. To be dug up. Twice is enough.

I bump against the wall for what seems like the millionth time, not even aware I’ve taken a step. I keep forgetting where I am. I step back with a sigh that sounds like

breathing

leaves rattling in the gutters.

I’m patient. I’m not going anywhere, waiting for

the door to open

Ben Nicholas to finish becoming Real.

A part of me wishes I could sleep. But I know I can’t. If I do I’ll never wake up. So I listen to the roaring silence inside of me instead. Like music. It keeps me from ever growing tired. The sound of it carries me along as if I was a wind over the ocean in a painting on the wall. Time and silence eat at my insides. They tear apart my memories until I find myself clutching at them with my mind as tightly as I used to hug Ben Nicholas in my arms. I don’t want to lose a single one of them, but I know some may already be

dead

lost. Some are fading. It’s okay, as long as I don’t forget the most important things:

Mama and Daddy.

Shinji.

Myself.

But most of all:

My dear sweet Ben Nicholas.

My poor little baby brother.

So I allow the memories to scratch and claw inside my head until they are raw and bleeding inside of me again. That’s what keeps them fresh.

Are there really such things as vampire rabbits, Daddy?

Only in storybooks, honey.

What about zombies? Are there zombie rabbits?

Zombies? No, honey. Not rabbits, only people. Now, shhh. Go to sleep. Sweet dreams, my baby.

“I wish you wouldn’t read her that silly story, Rame. Not right before bed. She’ll have nightmares.”

“What story?”

“Seriously? You’re going to play that game?”

“Oh, come on, Lyssa. Cut me some slack, it’s just a silly little kid’s book.”

I turn onto my side and bury my head in the pillow, trying to drown out the sound of my parents arguing. They said they weren’t going to. Mama told Daddy he could stay with us as long as they didn’t fight, and Daddy promised to try not to. But now they’re at it again and that means he’ll have to leave, and I don’t like it when he’s not here.

Nothing has been the same, not since Mama returned from the hospital a couple months ago, when my little baby brother died. He wasn’t but just two days old.

I wrap the pillow tight around my ears, but then I discover that it works too well. I really can’t hear a thing except for my own rapid heartbeat and a few of the louder words coming through as muffled sounds with no meaning. I don’t want to listen, but I also don’t want to not hear.

I can’t help myself. I slip off the bed and tiptoe over to the door. Squatting down behind it in a tight little ball, I hug my knees to my chest and rest my chin on them. My toes wiggle in the harsh yellow light that washes through the crack underneath the door. I try not to feel naughty for spying.

The arguing stops for a moment. I freeze, every muscle in my body aching. Did they hear me?

I hope they don’t come in to check. If they do, I’ll run back to my bed and dive beneath the covers and pretend to be sleeping. I’ll probably be breathing too hard and fast, though, and then they’ll know I’m really awake and was listening.

Would it make them stop arguing?

My breath is quick and warm on my arm. It tickles the hairs, making me shiver even though the air in my room is too hot and thick and close about me that it makes it hard to fill my lungs. But I don’t open my window. I won’t let in the cool air. There are things out there in the night, frightening things. Not vampires, which I know aren’t real, but other things which are.

We live in a different world now, Lyssa. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re not helping Cassie.

I close my eyes and lean my head against the door. It rattles slightly, but they don’t hear it. I let out a deep breath. They’re arguing again. About

him, even when it’s not

me.

“All I’m saying is that she doesn’t need to hear stories about blood-sucking rabbits.”

Daddy laughs. “It’s not a
blood
-sucking rabbit, Lyss. It sucks the juice out of fruits and vegetables and turns them white. I mean, come on! Millions of kids have read it, and I doubt it ever caused a single one of them to have nightmares. Besides, it’s Cassie’s favorite. Where do you think she got her rabbit’s name from anyway? You never asked her about that.”

“I don’t know! I just assumed the stupid thing already came with a name.”

Nothing for a moment. Then:

“I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry, Ramon. But I still don’t like it, that story. In fact, I don’t like most of the stories you choose for her. They’re always so . . . so dark and violent. We don’t need that right now.”

“Name one.”

“What about that book with the rabbits who have to leave their home?”

“
Watership Down
? Really? Okay, it has its moments, but, Lyssa, you’re overreacting again. You need to stop worrying about every little tiny thing.”

“I’m not worried about every little thing. I’m worried about Cassie.”

“She’s fine, honey. She’s not going anywhere.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know what it’s like!”

“Lyssa, seriously. This is ridiculous. This week it’s make-believe vampire rabbits, next week it’s . . . what? Garden gnomes? You can’t protect her from every little thing.”

Silence floods the house, drowning me. I can sense their anger getting bigger, becoming an ocean. I can almost smell it, the saltiness of it. The walls soak it in. The bed in their bedroom smells of it.

Finally, Daddy: “Cassie’s not . . . . She’s not a baby anymore, honey. She’s strong and healthy. You need to let go of the idea that—”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

“She’s a big girl, Lyssa, six — almost seven. She’s old enough to know the difference between what’s real and what’s make-believe. Do you?”

“Don’t you dare pull that crap on me, Rame. I may not be able to control what’s real all the time, but I can sure as hell control what’s not!”

bad words, mama

Daddy doesn’t answer. Or, if he does, I can’t hear it.

“Please, Ramon, I’m just asking you to read her something else. Is that so hard? There are so many other books, better ones. And if she insists on a rabbit—”

“You know she will.”

“Then read her
Guess How Much I Love You
.”

“Oh, jeez. Cassie’s too old for that.”

“I don’t care, Rame. Just find something else. I’m sick of hearing about vampires, even if they are rabbits.”

It was Daddy who brought Ben Nicholas home. He didn’t have a name at first, not for a while, because Mom was still in the hospital and it just seemed wrong to name him until she was home and we were a family again. But when she finally did come home, she wouldn’t even look at him. She wouldn’t, and it was all on account of my little brother was dead.

He came from the place where they both work, Daddy and Mama, the place where they fix animals and make them better than when they started off. Not the animal hospital, but the other place. Laroda Island.

A lot of people say that what they do out there is wrong. They say they turn animals into monsters. But Mama and Daddy tell me to ignore them. They tell me it’s not true, they wouldn’t do those kinds of things. They want to help people, not hurt them. That’s what they say, even if they can’t figure out how not to hurt each other.

Ben Nicholas was a fat little furry fuzz ball, his hair all poufy white, except for a single brown splotch on his belly, like he’d gotten into some mud outside and it never washed off. Or someone spilled chocolate milk on him, which I never did, although once some of my mint ice cream got on his foot, though Shinji licked it off. He’s also pink on his nose and his eyes are red like bubble gum. I always forget about them because the rest of him’s so white. I always just imagine him as a cloud in the sky with a little bit of brown.

I only saw my baby brother alive the one time, right after he came out of Mama’s belly, and I was looking at him through the window with the wires making X shapes in the glass because I was too young to go inside where they took him out of Mama, too small to wear the blue mask that Daddy and all the nurses and doctors had to wear. But that was fine by me, because there was a lot of blood on the doctor’s hands when he came out, though Mama didn’t seem to notice it or even be in any pain, although her face was shiny from sweat and white like the bed sheet. She just looked tired. Like she wanted to take a nap.

Miss Ronica was holding my hand, squeezing it. I must’ve squeezed back too hard, because she shook it and said, “Okay, that’s enough, Cassie. My fingers are numb.”

His skin was all icky blue and bloody, and there were ucky bits of it peeling off like candle wax.

“He’s not crying,” I said. “Little babies are supposed to cry right after they’re being born. That’s how they learn to breathe.”

He was just looking straight up at the lights in the ceiling of the hospital room and I could hear Mama asking for him and Daddy crying and laughing at the same time. But Remy — that’s what they had decided they were going to call him, which is short for Remington, like Grampa’s name — was very quiet. He didn’t make a single sound.

I think maybe I knew right then that something was wrong with him, though I didn’t say anything about it at all to anybody. I didn’t want to upset Mama or Daddy or Miss Ronica. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful for having a little brother, which I knew they were afraid I was. All that mattered to me was if Remy could help put our family back together again, and not like all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t do for poor Mister Humpty Dumpty.

Maybe Mama also knew something was wrong with Remy. Maybe she could feel that God was coming to take him back, because after they got him all cleaned up and his skin wasn’t quite so blue anymore (he still hadn’t made a sound), I started seeing this new look on Mama’s face, which I’d never seen before, something besides exhaustion and relief. This new look was like she’d just woken up from a nightmare, except she wasn’t sure if she really was awake yet and the nightmare was still there, hiding just underneath her pillow.

He died the second night, after we had already started to fall in love with him. Even me, who knew that he was sick and was maybe a little jealous of him. I knew, although that time it wasn’t because I could smell it. This was all before I could smell the sickness on people. I don’t know how I knew about Remy, but I did.

Mama didn’t cry until after she came home a few days later, and then she cried a whole bunch for a couple of weeks, especially when we went to go visit Remy in the cemetery down the street. But finally she stopped crying, and when she did, Daddy brought her Shinji from the rescue because I already had Ben Nicholas, and he told her that he was already named — Shinji was — which made me feel bad for Mama because she wouldn’t get to pick a name like I had already secretly chosen for Ben Nicholas from the vampire bunny book, ‘a rabbit-tale of mystery,’ which was my favorite story for Daddy to read.

It turned out that she didn’t care about any of that. In fact, she barely cared anything at all about Shinji, just like she barely cared about Ben Nicholas. She was too busy being angry with Daddy all the time, like she blamed him for trying to fill in the hole Remy left in her heart when he died, and she wasn’t ready for it to be filled yet. I know Daddy didn’t want to go live in an apartment, but I also knew he couldn’t take the sadness in the house, neither. He told me it was smothering him, which means he couldn’t breathe.

Anyway, that’s how Shinji became mine, too, which was fine because he was a good dog anyway, even if he did poop sometimes on the rug. And once on the couch, which was my bed at Daddy’s, when on accident I didn’t let him out in time. You can still see the stain on the cushion if you lift it up to look underneath, even though Daddy tried to wash it a million times in the shower.