“Mommy, what do wolves eat?”
“Well honey, that depends on where they live. Those that live in the cold, they eat rabbits and other small animals.”
“Mommy, what do people eat?”
“Well honey, healthy people eat their vegetables at dinner time, they don’t hide them in their mashed potatoes or in their pockets. Then there are the non-healthy people, and they only eat junk food like potato chips and ice cream and McDonald’s.”
“Mommy, if wolves eat bunnies, and people eat wedge-tables and McDonald’s, what do werewolves eat?”
“They eat little girls who aren’t ticklish!”
Janie screamed as I roared and chased after her. Finally, she was caught and giggled so loudly as I tickled her soft smooth four-year-old belly, no werewolf would think of her as dinner.
When I was in college I rebelled. No more was I mommy’s little girl, future surgeon like my father, Chief-of-Staff at Big Name Memorial Hospital. I was going to be an artist and thought that road involved alcoholism, heroine, and men that hurt you. The idea was the pain would open up your imagination.
Jim “Call me Master” Santiago was my pain.
He took me to, of all places, Thailand to revel in the anarchic underground. I came back from that trip bruised with ‘tester’ slashes across my wrists and a book that saved my life, The Charlie Brown Mysteries. It was a complete rip off of the Peanuts Gang mixed with Scooby-Doo. I saw it, and knew I would read it to my future children every night.
Bedtime is not easy. Luckily, I have a loving “call us equals” husband, Frederick. Tonight is his turn with our infant, Jasper, and I get to read to Janie. She loves The Charlie Brown Mysteries.
The book is missing.
“Sweetie, where did you put it last?”
Janie whimpers.
“Sweetie, did you put it under your pillow again?”
Janie whimpers louder.
“Okay, it’s not there, how about your bookshelf?”
Janie’s face begins to contort into that pre-cry disfigurement. Her brow furrows. She is silent as she gathers strength.
“So it’s not on the bookshelf, maybe in your book bag? Did you take it to school again honey?”
The beginning of a wail makes its way out of her lips. Her nostrils are flaring; I see a tear ready to drop. I know what will happen when it lands on her cheek.
“Janie, sweetie, everything’s okay – we’ll find it, mommy promises!” I run through the house tearing up the couch cushions, pulling everything out of the freezer, the dishwasher. Frederick is walking down the stairs, a signal that the infant is asleep.
Then, the full force of Janie’s scream escapes. To say it was like a banshee would be cliché. To say like a fire engine – also cliché, and neither are quite the right description of her yell.
After our trip to Thailand, Master told me that the only time bunnies scream is when they die. I was to meet him behind the Johnson’s farm at midnight to see the truth.
“Come on, we’ll drown a bunny.”
I thought that was a euphemism for sex. I was late getting there, and didn’t see Master hold the rabbit under the water. As I walked toward the barn I heard a scream, high-pitched, mournful, and ghastly in its connection to the dead.
Janie’s scream, like a dying bunny, pours through the house filling everything with its ethereal despair.
Then, the baby. A wail not as powerful, but strong in its confusion, joins the cacophony.
The school. What if she left it at school? Oh my God, if she did. . .today is Friday, how will we survive the weekend?
Frederick stops aiding the frantic search to tend to the infant. I understand, but despise him at that moment. I want to run to Janie, hold her and tell her it will be okay. I also want to run away.
Where is that damn book?
Exhausted, I collapse to the floor of the living room, now strewn with the remains of the video cabinet. Its emptiness stares at me, mocking me because it did not hold the secret of the missing book.
Frederick descends the stairs holding Jasper in one arm, and the other arm is hidden behind his back. Jasper is suckling on my husband’s t-shirt. Janie’s wail is constant. She doesn't breathe- her grief is beyond such human needs.
“Mommy, what do baby Jasper’s eat?” asks Frederick, his soothing voice drifts to me on the waves of Janie’s sadness. It is barely audible.
He holds out The Charlie Brown Mysteries. Besides one damp and slightly chewed corner, it’s intact.
“Janie!” I yell running to the top of the stairs where she has made her vigil, “Wanna hear The Case of the Missing Security Blanket tonight?”