Bad Seed 5

They waited for hours in the hospital. The men who had come with the ambulances originally had tried to get Odie's mother to accompany them in her own car, but she knew better than to let her boy out of her sight for even one moment now that the authorities were involved. She had been straightforward and unbending in her advocacy, and they had been on the highway with the sirens on before even one policeman made it to the scene. She wouldn't be able to keep Odie completely away from them. She might lose him. She'd known that was a possibility ever since she'd found that dead cat at the base of the neighbor's garden. Odie was family though, and the notion of family, especially family unified against some outside authority, was something that had been driven so deep into her bones that she barely felt when it was working on her.

Odie was glad that they had left the zoo. He was glad that his mother was with him in the ambulance. He was not glad to be strapped to a table or to hear the sirens, and he wanted to be at the hospital quickly so that he could get this over with and go home to his spot behind the couch. He'd had a long day of being a snake, and he needed some alone time to mull it over. Maybe his mother would make him some hot chocolate. Maybe she would put some little marshmallows in it. Maybe he could show her his favorite spot behind the couch. She had handled things well today, and Odie took it as a good sign that she, and not his father or stupid brother, was there with him.

There was no escaping the light and noise though, not even after they got to the hospital.

Odie had spoken to a nurse when they arrived, and then Odie had been sat with her in a room with many other people. His mother hadn't wanted to talk to him about what happened, which was good. She looked upset, like when she'd found the stupid cat at the bottom of the garden. Odie told her that he didn't do it, but she knew that he was lying. That was when he knew that she could see him and that she wasn't like the others in the house. She wasn't exactly like Odie either though, because instead of calmly discussing the manner in which Odie had disembodied the various limbs of the creature, she had begun to have a very unpleasant conversation with him about why he'd done it and where he'd gotten the cat and how he should never do any such thing ever ever ever again. It had been awful, and he hadn't repeated the stunt. Other things he had done, yes, but not dismantling a cat. That was, for some reason, off limits.

Odie had begun to think that perhaps being a snake was also off limits. He didn't want to have another talk with his mother. He didn't want to look into her eyes and know that she was going to cry once he was gone. If she had yelled at him he could've tuned it all out, but her voice crept in under everything. It was Odie's least favorite thing about her but also what he respected most. He had stopped yelling once he realized that. He hadn't yelled anymore at all, like some others his age did. He was always quiet, even when he was angry. Even when he used his shouting words, he kept his voice soft. He didn't quite have the hang of it yet, but he thought he might.

His mother had finished a stack of paperwork that they had been asked to do. It was good. Odie didn't like this room. It wasn't as bad as the big room that they had sat in when Odie had broken his arm a year ago, just to see what it would feel like in case he ever wanted to do it to someone else. There were less people here. Still, it was bright and loud, and Odie wanted to go home.

The nurse went with Odie into a back room, and Odie remembered what his mother had told him that first time.

“Don't tell them what you're thinking,” she had whispered into his ear in her voice that was quiet but also firmer than usual, another thing he wanted to learn how to do. “Don't tell them where your brain goes. Don't tell them why you do these things. Don't tell them about the ways you scare people. If you tell them, they will take you away and won't let me see you anymore.”

Mrs. Wilson was thinking of that day too, and of those words that she had tried to impart to her nephew. She had hated saying those things. She sounded like one of her aunties had the first time she had been taken to be examined by child protective services. Of course, in that case the insanity that she had been meant to hide had been that of her parents, but the principle was the same. You keep it in the family. You settle things at home. We don't need someone taking the children away to a cleaner home and taking the grown-ups away to a penal facility.

“If they ask you what you did, what anyone did, just say that you don't remember,” she had told him. “If they find out what you did, don't deny it, just stick with not remembering anything about it. If they ask you why you did something, say that you don't know. If they ask you to give any answers for anything, to make any decisions, ask for your mommy. Say it like that. 'I want my mommy.'”

Mrs. Wilson felt heavy disgust in the pit of her stomach even as she hoped that Odie would remember his lines this go-around. They hadn't needed to do the whole song and dance last time, but there would undoubtedly be questions after an assault like this. She wouldn't be able to take him home and protect him and hope that he outgrew this sort of behavior like so many of her cousins had. She was going to have to trust in the instructions she'd tried to give him and to take the best she could get for him.

She'd done the best she could by both of her children. There was no escaping the creative cruelty that had nested inside of Odie, but she had accepted that as long as the boys didn't spend too much time together it was manageable. She had prepared to send David away to school somewhere else if need be, knowing that he would adjust on his own. It was what one did when there was a child who had more needs than others in the brood. David had initially gone away to camps and had many outdoor activities arranged for him over every school holiday, but when Odie had taken to spending his time wandering around on his own that had become less of an issue. She didn't know what she was going to do when they caught up to each other in high school. Things hadn't gotten out of hand until David was already in middle school, since she had opted to keep Odie in kindergarten a year longer than was strictly necessary. It had been her husband's idea, and at the time had seemed to be a good one. When Odie started growing so quickly, much faster than even others his own age, she'd wondered if it had been a bad choice. Putting him there, making him so much larger and more powerful than his classmates, had made him something of an apex predator in the end. There was no way of telling really, and in the meantime, David had a place where he could laugh easily without worrying about his “little brother” bothering him and his friends. After this time though, Mrs. Wilson didn't know how much safety there would be, even if Odie never attended school with David again. How could they keep him from being known as the boy with the psycho brother. How could he overcome his best friend being outright attacked on his birthday outing.

Mrs. Wilson didn't know.

The nurse was talking to Odie, who had asked if his 'mommy' could stay in the room with him. That was good. He was following the script. I don't know. I don't remember. I don't know. I don't remember. I want to stay with my mommy.

Over the course of the hospital ordeal they were going to wind up talking to three different nurses, all of whom would get nothing but the same. In addition they would draw blood, which Odie would fight until his mother held his arm still. They would talk to doctors, who would get nothing more out of Odie than the nurses and sometimes less considering Odie's distaste for most men. A chart would be passed from hand to hand, and it would be dark before they would see any resolution to their situation.

Mrs. Wilson's mother had once tried to outrun something like this. It had been a collector of some sort. Mrs. Wilson, then Penelope, had been too preoccupied with the day to day struggle of living to notice what the particulars were, at least until it was too late. The envelopes that had been sent to their house had been thick, white, and heavy, with her mother's name written in angry type over the front. They sported words like “urgent” that made her squirm. Her mother hadn't bothered much with collectors, but something about this had made her shake.

Penelope had tried to read one of the letters, and her mother had screamed at her then, slapping it out of her hands, in more agitation than Penelope had ever seen her in before or since. When she saw that sort of letter come to the door again, she grabbed Circe and left the room. They could learn enough about it outside of the range of fire.

At first they had tried to ignore it. Penelope's aunties had tried to have talks about whatever it was, but it had been to no avail. The best that came out of it was that Penelope, Circe, and their mother had gone to spend some time in their auntie's spare room.

The family had lots of other rooms in their houses, and mostly different families would live together , sometime with more than one family in a single room if times were tight but often letting them out to little cousins or nephews, brothers or sisters, elderly parents or new mothers who needed a place to hide away.

No matter where they went, everything was mostly broken. There were televisions and computers that were older even than the ones that Penelope used at school. There were toys, all dated and handled by many hands before they got to Penelope. There were even usually spare sets of clothes, in case someone had had to move quickly, and if there weren't any of those some could always be acquired. It was never nice, but Penelope had thought that none of them were nice enough to deserve nice things anyway.

This auntie's house had been rather similar, but she had also had something that many of the other houses didn't, books. They were worn and old but obviously cared for, and for a little while Penelope had been happy.

Circe had thrown a fit. She'd screamed and yelled and kicked their mother and their auntie. She'd begged for her daddy back, but after a while she'd worn herself down into a sullen sort of acceptance.

That had been just in time for another letter to arrive.

Her mother had cried. They had heard it in the spare bedroom. They had heard questions, and in turn they had had questions. Who had sent that letter? How had they known to find them at their auntie's house? What did they want?

They had moved around from house to house, and everywhere the letters found them. They sent them to every home. They sent them to her mother's work. They sent them to the girls' school, and her mother looked more and more sad and anxious and worn down each time, like Circe after a tantrum.

They had gone to stay with family out of town, and for a while it had gotten better, but it never lasted. By the time they moved into the smoky motel her mother seemed like she was only half alive. She'd stopped getting out of bed and generally refused to eat. It had been two years since the ordeal had started.

It was going to be their birthday soon, Penelope and Circe, born on the same day two years apart, They had sat together in the dark, dirty motel room while their mother slept, and Penelope had stroked Circe's hair, and watched the clock turn from 11:59 to midnight, listened as a heavy hand fell upon the door. Penelope was 15 then and Circe 13 years old.