Some Kind of Animal

by Maria Romasco-Moore

  “I have to go,” I say quickly. Aggie is starting to say something else, but I hang up. Power the phone off, hands trembling, so she can’t call back. Adrenaline buzzes through me. Electric wires. I want to run and keep running until it isn’t true.

  “Who was that?” asks Brandon. His expression and tone are neutral.

  “My aunt Aggie. Sorry, I just—”

  “You told her you were in Needle.” It isn’t a question.

  Brandon is still, statue still. But there’s something under that stillness. Something threatening. It crackles through the space between us like the air before a thunderstorm. The birds must sense it, too. They’ve all suddenly gone quiet.

  “I—”

  “Why would you tell her that?”

  Before I can answer, the woman shouts for us from the other room. The birds all start up again, louder than before. Brandon turns abruptly and walks away. I follow, closing the door to the porch behind me, shutting out the shrieks.

  The woman is standing by the door holding a big leather purse. She’s got a sleepy, contented look, like a cat in the sun. I recognize that look. Aggie’s pointed it out to me on the faces of people we pass on the street. She’s high.

  “Heading to Mickey D’s,” she says. “You want anything?”

  “Fries,” says Brandon.

  “What about you?” she asks me.

  “That’s okay, thanks.”

  “You sure, honey? Not even a milkshake?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  The woman laughs. “I’ll get you a milkshake, honey. Don’t you worry about it. I been where you been.” She comes over and squeezes my shoulder. I hold very still, uncertain. She smiles at me, her foundation cracking around her eyes. “Sometimes you got no choice left but to run. Chocolate or vanilla?”

  “Uh, thanks. Chocolate.”

  She sweeps away in a jangle of keys. The door shuts. Brandon turns on me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I was trying to convince her to call off the search.”

  “Why would you tell her you were in Needle?”

  “I just thought—”

  “You weren’t thinking,” he says. That stillness is back. That dead-air eye-of-the-hurricane feeling. He’s angry, I think, furious, but he keeps it hidden, just under the surface.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” I say. “They’re not just searching for me. They’re searching for my sister, too.”

  That breaks through his brick wall. He wrinkles his brow. “Your sister?”

  I nod, miserable.

  “You told them about her?” He sounds more incredulous than anything, as if this was unthinkable.

  “No,” I say. “Of course not. I would never do that.”

  But I did. I told Savannah, told Henry, told Aggie, told the goddamn pastor of all people. I did it selfishly. To protect myself. I threw away every promise I’d ever made to my sister just so people wouldn’t think I was a monster.

  “She attacked a boy from town,” I tell him. “He was out in the woods. He saw her.”

  “When?”

  “Two nights ago. That’s why I ran away.”

  Brandon slumps down on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table, takes a slug of beer. I can’t tell if he’s still angry. I can’t read him as well as I can read my sister.

  “Aggie says they’ve got some kind of heat search thing,” I say.

  “Heat search thing?”

  “I don’t know. She says the state troopers are in on it.”

  “Did the kid die or something?”

  “No. He’s fine.”

  Brandon shrugs, returns his attention to his beer. “They’ll give up. She’ll hide. They won’t find her.”

  I would have thought the same thing, but Aggie said they saw her. I should have asked more. Who was it? When? Where? How many people? How close did they get?

  Close enough to realize she wasn’t me.

  They won’t give up.

  “I’ve got to go back,” I say.

  Brandon looks up sharply.

  “To Lester,” I say. “To my aunt.”

  “She’s got the truck,” he says, waving vaguely at the door.

  “It’s okay, I can walk from here.”

  “No,” he says bluntly.

  “No?” I recoil, scowling at him. I thought he’d be upset, but he has no right to order me around. He has no authority over me.

  “You don’t want to go back,” he says.

  “I do.”

  I’m not sure if that’s true, but I know that I need to go back. I need to undo this. I can tell them it was all a hoax. Convince them that I made the whole thing up. I had a wig, or something. It was me who the searchers spotted in the woods. It was me who attacked Henry. I can tell them that. Tell them I was lying, doing it for attention. They’ll believe it, won’t they? It’s what they believed all along.

  Brandon shakes his head slowly. “You can’t go back.”

  I’m getting angrier by the moment. He’s as bad as the rest of them. As bad as the pastor. He doesn’t really see me, just sees what he wants to see. Sees the role he’s written for me. I’m tired of it. Tired of everyone else trying to make choices for me.

  “Well, sorry,” I say. “And thanks for helping me, I guess. But I’m going back.”

  I turn away, hear the couch springs groan as he stands. The big blue parrot is off in another room or something, so the door is unguarded. I take a step toward it and Brandon’s hand closes around my arm, his thumb pressing too hard. I slap at his hand, anger rising. How dare he?

  “You can’t go back there,” he says. “You don’t belong there.”

  “You’re the one who took me there in the first place,” I point out, furious now. Everyone’s always telling me where I can and can’t go. Telling me who I’m supposed to be. I try to pull my arm away again. He tightens his grip.

  “I shouldn’t have,” he says. He isn’t shouting at me like Jack or Aggie, but that quiet anger, that electric air, is almost worse, and suddenly I’m afraid of him again. “It’s a bad place. Full of bad people. I should never have taken you there. I should never have separated you two.”

  “You’re hurting me,” I say, doing my best not to let any hint of fear into my voice. “Let go.” I wish the parrot were here, wish it would fly at his face.

  “No,” he says quietly. “I finally got you back. I can’t let you go.”

  It isn’t fair. It’s like the pastor and Lee. Or Jack looming over me outside Minnie’s. Brandon is older and taller and stronger and so he thinks he has all the power. Thinks he can tell me what to do, possess me. And it’s true, I don’t have much power in this world. I can’t even keep my sister safe. Can’t keep myself safe, either. But I’m sick of them, all of them, and their unearned authority.

  So I kick him in the shin. Hard as I can.

  Brandon stumbles back so fast that he loses his footing and falls onto his ass with a grunt. He’s swearing and cradling his shin and I’m backing up toward the door, and he’s all folded up, hunched over, eyes closed, teeth gritted against the pain, and I’m reaching out behind me for the doorknob, afraid to turn my back on him, but then suddenly he’s laughing.

  He’s laughing, the sound of it soaring up to the ceiling, beating against the window like wings.

  “You want me to tell you everything?” Brandon says. He looks up at me, defeated, all that swagger and intimidation melted away. “Well, you stay and I’ll tell you.”

  My hand slips off the doorknob.

  “Everything?” I ask. I knew he was leaving things out. Knew there was more to the story. Like the pastor before him, he’s found my true weakness.

  And just like that, I’m caught.

  * * *

  —

  Br
andon sits on the floor with his back against the couch and a slab of chilled venison held against his shin. There are two empty beer bottles and two full sitting on the floor beside him and he’s guzzling another.

  “I found her because of the blood,” he says.

  I’m sitting on a stuffed chair across from him. The blue parrot has returned and taken up a station on the bookcase by the door, staring down at us like a prison guard.

  “The blood?” I ask.

  Brandon swigs more beer, closes his eyes.

  “I was out with one of the hounds a few days after she went missing. The cops had already been around, asking questions. I saw the blood on the ground and I was afraid. Afraid she was dead. And there was this smell. But then the hound was nosing at something at the base of a tree and you started crying.”

  I’m digging my fingernails into my palms. My heart is beating fast as if I’m scared or something. But I’m not scared. I don’t know what I am. This is my story. This is me.

  “You were covered in leaves,” he goes on. “A little mound of them. Piled on top of you. I pulled you out of the leaves. All slimy. And crying. Screaming. There was this thing on your stomach and that scared me. I thought it was your insides coming out.”

  I know how this story ends, but I’m holding my breath. I know how it ends, but not how it begins.

  “Turns out it’s supposed to be there,” Brandon says. “Umbilical cord. I didn’t know that. Nobody ever told me. I didn’t know anything. But I picked you up. And you were disgusting.”

  I laugh. He looks at me, startled, as if he forgot I was there.

  “Sorry,” I say, “keep going.”

  He closes his eyes again.

  “You were bawling and I was even more sure then, that she was dead. The hound had gone off on a new scent and I followed it and once it stopped to sniff at a leaf and I looked and there was blood on that too. And you were bawling and I was holding on to you but I didn’t know what to do.”

  Was Mama hurt? Unconscious? I know she wasn’t dead, not yet. I’m scared for her anyway. I know how this ends, but I’m scared.

  “And then the hound stopped at a cave,” says Brandon. “Little cave. And she was inside. She was in there. She was bent over something with her back to me. I yelled at the hound to stay back and I set you down on the ground. Just down in the dirt. I don’t know why I did that. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He pauses.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  He takes a long drink, keeps going.

  “So she’s there and she’s sitting, bent over a little, and she’s not moving really or reacting and I don’t know what to think and I have to get on my knees because I can’t stand in the cave and I go to her and I am saying her name, I am saying are you okay, I am saying that it’s just me and I get close enough to put my hand on her shoulder and then she looks at me and she says—”

  He stops, like he’s listening, like he’s hearing the words again. I’m afraid to speak, afraid to break the spell.

  There’s nothing else. No birds. No house. Just the two of us.

  “She says none of them fuckers are getting their hands on her. And there was another baby. But you know that. She was holding it. It was so still lying there and its face was kind of gray and I knew it was dead. I was sure of it. My heart broke. For Jolene. For me, too, maybe, because I didn’t know what to do.

  “But then the baby moved its hands. Wiggled its fingers, small as maggots.”

  Brandon tilts the beer bottle up to his mouth, his eyes still closed, but it’s empty. I push myself up from the chair, close the distance between us, my legs seeming to move of their own accord, and I pick up one of the full bottles and I twist it open and I push it into his hand. He drinks.

  “The baby didn’t cry,” he says. “She didn’t cry. Didn’t make a sound. She was so quiet. And I realized then that you weren’t crying, either. You’d stopped. I ran back out of the cave. The hound was licking you all over and I thought it was eating you or something and I shouted at it and pushed it away, but that made you cry again and you were fine, just cleaner than you had been.”

  I’m standing over him, looking down. I’m frozen. I was there, I think. In that same cave. Just yesterday. I didn’t know.

  “I tried to hand you to her,” he says. “I pushed you at her but she wouldn’t even turn her head to look. And you were crying and I said something dumb, something like, Here, you dropped this, and she said, That’s not mine.”

  I draw in a sharp breath. It is loud in the small room, but if Brandon notices he doesn’t show it, just keeps talking.

  “And I said of course it was hers. Said I found it. And I think I hadn’t noticed you were a girl before that, but I noticed and said, Here, take her, she needs you.

  “But she said, No, that one is his.”

  I let out my breath in a rush. Like I’ve been hit in the stomach.

  “No,” I say. It comes out hoarse, barely a whisper.

  The bird rustles its wings. I think I hear a car door. “You were so different,” Brandon says, “the two of you. You crying and pink all over. And the other one so quiet.

  “I tried to put you her in arms and she jerked away and clutched the other one to her chest and she screamed at me so loud, she said, Don’t you touch her, don’t you fucking come near us, all of you goddamn devils just leave us alone.”

  He is talking very fast now, the words just pouring out.

  “And I did. I left her. I ran back through the woods. I took my jacket off to wrap you up, tried to hold you so you wouldn’t bounce too much, and I ran straight back to the trailer and all I wanted was to get rid of you.”

  He shoots me a look again. I don’t say it’s okay. Don’t say anything. Don’t think I could even if I’d wanted to.

  “I wasn’t thinking of anything but that, and Logan was gone with the good car, so I took the old truck, and I put you on the passenger seat, but you slid around and almost slid off as I was flooring it toward town, so I had to drive with one hand on the wheel and one reached over, holding you still, and I drove to Jolene’s mama’s house in town and I wasn’t thinking about how it would look yet. I wasn’t thinking about that. I thought about just leaving you on the porch, but when I carried you out of the truck, you hooked a little fist into my shirt and I thought something bad might happen if I just left you so I knocked and Jolene’s mama opened the door and I held you out and she took you and I was so relieved that I just turned and ran to the truck before she could change her mind and give you back.

  “When Logan got back it was dark and I had taken a shower and drank all the beer we had and he asked me what the fuck happened and I just told him I found a baby in the woods and that’s all I told him, and that’s all I told the police, too, because I knew she wouldn’t want me to tell them, to tell anybody, and Logan swore and kicked over the table and then went out to find Jolene, but it stormed that night and the rain washed the blood off the leaves and he didn’t find her as far as I know and neither did the police and the next day he beat the shit out of me for taking the baby into town and he broke my rib, I think, or maybe that was later, after the police came again, and they said we killed her, but they were wrong and then those men from town tried to kill us because they thought we had taken her away from them, but she had taken herself away, she didn’t want anything to do with them, because they had driven her away, driven her crazy. She saw the devil in their hearts. Their secret faces. They wouldn’t help her when she needed it. They didn’t give a shit about her, not a one of them. Not until they thought she was dead.”

  * * *

  —

  The woman comes back and fills the house with the salt-fat smell of french fries. She drops the truck keys and the paper bags, already translucent with oil, on the table in front of the couch.

  We watch The Price Is Rig
ht, with Brandon still slumped on the floor, and the woman sitting on the couch, playing with his hair, running her fingers through it. She gets up every now and then to get them both more beers. I suck up the sweet metallic milkshake, let it melt down the back of my throat, numbing it. The parrot sits on the television set. Brandon drinks his beers mechanically, eyes glassy. When The Price Is Right ends, the woman flips channels and we watch ten minutes of this and ten minutes of that, lingering just long enough to catch a single thread of plot before the whole thing is ripped away. The shows blur into one another and I can’t follow them.

  That’s not mine, she said. That one is his.

  She was wrong. She was wrong. It isn’t fair. She was crazy. Did she see the devil in my heart? Did I look more like Logan? Is that even who she meant? His.

  I was only a baby. So what did I do wrong? From the very first, I did something wrong. I cried while my sister was silent, and so Mama didn’t want me. Is that it?

  But what if she had kept me? What if I’d grown up like Lee? Hiding in holes beneath the ground. Trusting no one. Lean and tough and scared, always scared. What if it were the two of us out there now, terrified, pursued, afraid of everyone?

  I can see it. All of them out there tracking my sister. With dogs maybe. Chasing her. Snapping at her heels. One of them leaping onto her back, jaws open wide.

  Or not with dogs, but with some mysterious device, a radar screen showing the woods blotchy and dark, and in the middle of it a tiny blaze of red. Beating heart of the forest. Can their machine tell a girl from a deer? A girl from a wolf? They circle around her, closing in, closer and closer, locking their hands together in a ring, a chain, a cage.

  Until finally they are upon her, pulling her out of whatever dark hole she is cowering in. She’s fighting, kicking and scratching and biting, but there are too many of them, the devil in their hearts, and they hold her tight and she goes limp, tries to drop to the ground. But it won’t work this time. They’ll carry her back and she’ll play dead and some of them will think that she is.

  And then, where? To the hospital probably. They’ll push a needle into her arm. Sedate her. Strap her to the bed. Shave her head.