Chapter 19

19

When the girl's mother finally emerged from the bathroom she murmured, "It's gone," and moved as if in a daze toward the bed, leaving faint red footprints in her wake.

The girl ran into the bathroom. The floor was covered in towels soaked in blood. The girl understood. Her baby sister had died and was lying somewhere beneath one of the bloody towels. She gagged and quickly closed the door.

The heat in the basement was becoming unbearable. The air was heavy and wet and the hot sun killed the grass that tried to grow up around the window. Now it lay in limp, brown clumps. Once in a while, a bird with a bright yellow breast and black wings would land at the window to choose the perfect strand of dead grass for his nest. The girl and the bird would stare at each other through the filmy glass. The bird was always the first to look away. He had things to do, places to visit.

Her mother slept and cried. The girl had to go to the bathroom but couldn't bring herself to open the bathroom door. She tried to distract herself by looking at books, by looking out the window for the yellow bird, by watching television, but the urgency became too much to bear.

The girl pushed open the door in hopes that, in some kind of miracle, the bloody towels had disappeared. They hadn't. She tiptoed across the floor trying to avoid the red sticky spots to the toilet.

Her father would come soon, and what would he do when he saw the mess? He'd be angry. He'd swear and yell and then hurt her mother, who lay in the bed too weak to move, too sad to eat or drink. She wouldn't be able to take it.

The girl found a black garbage bag and began to stuff it with the soiled towels. "Don't think about it," she told herself.

The girl used paper towels to scrub away the remaining blood and added them to the garbage bag until it bulged. "Don't think about it," she said over and over. When she finished, and all remnants of the baby were gone, she climbed into bed next to her mother and slept.

When her father finally came, he was carrying a shake for her mother. The overflowing garbage bag sat in the middle of the room. "What happened?" he asked.

"It's gone," her mother said from beneath the covers.

"Are you going to be okay?" her father asked, but her mother didn't answer. "It was probably for the best," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting a hand on her mother's hip. She rolled away from him.

"You cleaned this up?" her father asked the girl.

The girl nodded.

"Huh," her father made the noise as if impressed. He went over to the garbage, peeked inside, tossed in the shake he brought for her mother to the mix, and carried the bloody bag from the room.