Dark Female is back. I hear her car before she comes in the house. It creaks and shudders when she turns it off. Not like my master’s car that hums soothingly or my mistress’s car that whispers, and I’m not sure it’s her until she slams the car door. Her car-door slam sounds hollow.
Dark Female is outside when my mistress starts to howl. I jump from my bed and run to the bottom of the stairs. I’m not allowed up there, but my mistress is in distress. I should go to her. But the front door opens, and Dark Female rushes in. She looks at me like she always looks at me, with angry eyes like I’ve been a Bad Boy, but not angry eyes like my master when I stole the bacon from the counter—his eyes were angry but also laughing a little at the edges. Dark Female looks at me like she wants to hurt me, but I don’t know what I did to make her want to hurt me.
Maybe I did a big Bad Boy thing. I must have. But I am good and faithful to my humans. I sometimes do small Bad Boy things like chew pillows and chair legs and Little Female’s stuffed animals and Little Male’s softballs, and sometimes I try to run out the front door when the cat across the street hisses at me. But I’m a Good Boy. “Good boy.” That’s what my humans always say to me. They did before. They don’t talk to me much now, but that’s okay because I know they are sad.
They are sad because Little Male got hurt. They think he is gone. He’s not gone, not completely. I still see him sometimes. He looks different, and I can’t smell him at all. But he’s here.
My mistress is still howling, but Dark Female gives me another angry look, and I lie down on my haunches and lower my head. Dark Female runs past me and up the stairs.
She smells like food and fear.
SEVEN
JONAH
I’m pretty sure Mommy saw me today.
She was talking about snacks. Or thinking about snacks. It’s kind of funny because I can hear the words in her head as if she was saying them out loud. But it made me happy that she was thinking about making me a snack, even though I can’t eat it. I wanted to make her smile and know that I was happy she was thinking a good thought about me.
I don’t like peanut butter. It sticks to the top of my mouth and makes me talk funny and Eden makes fun of me ’cause I sound like a baby. Almond butter is yummy and doesn’t stick to my mouth and make me talk like a baby. It goes down my throat better. Or it did before, when I had a throat.
So I went into Mommy’s room. I don’t know where I was before I heard her words. Sometimes I just am, but I’m not anywhere. It’s kind of like floating in a swimming pool when your eyes are closed and you don’t feel anything or think anything or do anything, but you just are. But then I heard Mommy talking about my snack and I thought of being where she was and then I was just there, kind of sitting on her bed, but not like I used to. I couldn’t feel the bed under me. And Mommy sat up and looked at me, right at me, not through me like when I sat next to Dad on the couch and his eyes saw the clock on the mantel instead of my chest, which was right in front of him.
She said my name and then her eyes got really big and she started to scream, and I didn’t like that sound so I just thought about my room and I went there. I could still hear Mommy screaming even though I was down the hall, and it was loud, not like she was in my room with me, but like her screams were inside me, and I didn’t like that at all, so I thought of floating and the pool and then I was nowhere, but somewhere away from the screaming.
And then, I don’t know how I could tell, but I knew everything was quiet again, so I thought about Mommy and I was back in her room. But not on the bed. I didn’t want her to see me and start screaming again, so I kind of slid into the corner of the shadows by the wall. I’m here now and I know she can’t see me ’cause she’s in the bathroom, sitting in the bathtub with water and lots of bubbles all around her.
I can’t smell now, but I remember Mommy’s baths always smelled really good. She said it was lavender, a kind of flower, and she had me repeat the word until I got it right, until I could say lavender. And I told my teacher that I could say lavender and that I knew what it was and she was really proud of me.
Auntie Ruth is in Mommy’s bedroom. She pulls the comforter off the bed and throws it on the floor, then pulls the blankets and sheets off, too. Her lips are white with frowning, and her nose scrunches up as she bundles up the sheets and tosses them outside the bedroom door. Every few seconds, she goes to the bathroom and looks in.
“You okay, Rach?” she asks.
Mommy sometimes doesn’t answer and sometimes she says, “Go away” or “Leave me alone” or “Can I have a pill?” Auntie Ruth’s frown gets bigger, but she keeps working, putting new sheets on the bed and tucking them under the mattress.
I always loved that, when I got into bed after Mommy made it fresh, with the sheets and blankets tucked in under the sides and pressing down on me. It felt nice and safe and cozy. Maybe Mommy will feel nice and safe and cozy when she gets back into bed. I liked the way the sheets smelled, too. That word Mommy taught me was easier. Tide, she said. I didn’t tell my teacher that one because even a baby can say Tide.
Auntie Ruth runs the vacuum and then she goes into the bathroom and washes Mommy’s hair. Mommy makes angry sounds when Auntie Ruth tries to brush through her hair, kind of like Eden does when Mommy brushes through her hair. Mommy and Eden have the same hair—that’s what Mommy always says. When Eden cries out, Mommy says, “I know, honey. You got your hair from me.”
Auntie Ruth has different hair from Mommy even though they’re sisters, just like Eden and me have different hair. Mine is dark brown like Daddy’s. Or it was. Auntie Ruth’s is darker than Mommy’s, at least on the bottom it is, but not on top ’cause the top of Auntie Ruth’s head looks kind of gray, like my nanny’s was. The bottom of Auntie Ruth’s hair is kind of like the color of the stuff Mommy drinks with dinner, or sometimes before dinner, too, or after dinner, the stuff in the tall green bottle. Sometimes Auntie Ruth drinks the stuff from the green bottle with Mommy, but I don’t think that’s why the bottom of her hair is that color, ’cause if it was, Mommy’s would be, too.