Authors: Mae McCall
She lay back on Achillea’s bed and watched two spiders
carefully constructing webs on the ceiling (Helen would not allow spiders or
insects to be killed, as it may disrupt the ecological balance). There were
three options: 1. Tell them everything, and take the consequences; 2. Tell them
nothing, and find something to do with her time after she was dropped off at
school every morning; or 3. Lie.
Cleo mentally ran through the meeting with Mrs. Heinz. The
woman was really out of line. The memory of her slowly tearing each page in
half was infuriating. But, as Cleo remembered the stapler flying through the
air, the thunk of metal meeting flesh and bone, the stapler arcing sideways to
shatter the aquarium, the look of surprise on Mrs. Heinz’s face as the blood
ran down, the three goldfish flopping helplessly on the floor, their gills
pumping—there was a real chance that Helen and Darwin would not be supportive.
She scowled again. Everybody always sided with the person who bled. Nobody ever
cared about the invisible injuries of intellectual repression. It was abuse!
If she continued to go to school, there was a chance of
someone seeing her while Vera was still around. So, Cleo decided that the only
recourse was to lie.
That evening, when Cleo went downstairs for dinner, she had
a crisp, sealed envelope with the school’s logo on the outside. Her parents
were surprised, as they had both managed to forget that Cleo was enrolled in a
public school.
Dear Dr. St. James,
Your daughter is one of the finest students
we have ever had at New Bridge. She continues to grow intellectually, and has
now reached an even higher level of the state curriculum. Her thirst for
knowledge is an inspiration to all who know her, and her most recent
dissertation on human reproduction is a stellar example of the work we have
come to expect from her.
Therefore, we have decided to extend the
opportunity of a two week sabbatical in which Cleo can work on an independent
study project for her tutor. We feel that this time outside of the school
environment will prove invaluable to her research. There is no need for her to
return to our campus until the 29
th
of this month.
Cleo’s brilliance illuminates us all, and we
are certain that her project, which we ask her not to discuss at this early
stage, will have a profound effect on both the local and scientific
communities.
Sincerely,
Pamela Heinz
Principal
New Bridge Elementary School
She bit her lip and tried not to squirm as her mother, and
then her father, read the letter. It had taken her all afternoon to
painstakingly duplicate the logo on the outside of the envelope, but she felt
that the effort was worth it to achieve that extra bit of authenticity.
There was a moment of silence when her parents looked at one
another, and Cleo thought her heart would stop. She almost blurted out the
truth, but then her father smiled. They congratulated her, wished her the best
of luck, and then started eating. Cleo let her breath out slowly, and felt the
tension drift away. That had been easier than she expected. She smiled, and
began to eat her peas.
4
Some might call it trust. Others might call it neglect. Cleo
didn’t care what it was. Her parents believed the letter, didn’t ask questions,
and quickly returned to their own interests. The only problem was Vera. If Cleo
stayed in the house, Vera popped in to check on her. To bring her snacks. To
bring her a sweater. To frown and ask if this big project really had anything
to do with trying to put clothes on the taxidermy wildebeest in the foyer. It
was annoying. So, Cleo ventured out of the house in search of something to fill
her days.
She packed a backpack with the following:
-2 notebooks
-2 pens
-magnifying glass
-binoculars
-orange juice
-2 apples
-pocketknife (stolen from her father’s desk)
At the last minute, she also dropped in a necklace made of
human teeth (because you never knew when you might have to barter with the
natives) and a shrunken human head. The head was just a conversation starter,
really. (Hi! Would you like to look at my shrivelly head?) Also, Cleo
occasionally talked to it, because Vera found this less weird than when she
talked to her dead sister. His name was Waldorf (after a matchbook that she
found in her mother’s underwear drawer). It seemed to suit him better than Big
Dick’s (from a matchbook found in her father’s underwear drawer).
She let herself out the back door and decided to go left.
Her own backyard was pretty familiar to her by this point, so she headed
straight for the fence and squeezed through a space where two boards had fallen
down. For two beats, she stood still. In her entire life, she had never
ventured past her own yard. She had no idea what was in this forest, or beyond.
Cleo was thrilled.
By late morning, she had observed birds, followed a garter
snake to its hole, counted ants, sketched twelve varieties of tree bark, and
attempted to document a day in the life of a crayfish in the stream. She then
spent fifteen minutes describing the surprising strength and grip of a crayfish
claw, and speculating on the evolutionary purpose of pain receptors in the
human toes. Deciding that her duty as nature observer had been fulfilled for the
time being, Cleo then spent two exhausting hours playing hide and seek with
Waldorf. That sneaky little bastard was a world-class hider.
It was while she was comparing the flavor profiles of apples
and oranges that she heard the voices. Cleo tossed the apple cores over her
head, grabbed Waldorf by the hair, and followed the sound.
It was a small back yard behind a single story brick house.
A boy and a girl were jumping on a trampoline and eating popsicles. Cleo
watched from the tree line as they sat cross-legged in the center of the
trampoline to eat the last few bites of their rapidly melting ice. With the
aura of red stain around their mouths and chins, Cleo thought they looked like
cannibals. She boldly ventured forth, extended Waldorf in their general
direction, and exclaimed, “Hi! Would you like to look at my shrivelly head?”
Both children screamed.
Cleo beat a fast retreat into the woods. After all, her
father always said, “Always extend a hand in friendship, but be prepared to run
when the war cries start. There’s no negotiating with cannibals once you’re in
the pot.”
Once again safely ensconced in her forest retreat, Cleo sat
on a fallen tree to write down everything that had happened. Her heart was
still racing. She lay back on the log and looked up through the canopy at the
sky. She had so many questions. Who were those children? Why had they screamed?
Where could she get a cherry popsicle?
The next morning, she once again let herself out through the
back door. She briefly considered turning right this time, but the hole in the
fence called to her. Back into the woods she went.
This time, she was prepared. She pulled out the list she had
made during breakfast.
1.
Drop
a rock on that crayfish.
(Her toe was still swollen and throbbing.)
2.
Look
for animals other than birds, ants, garter snakes, and crayfish. Write down
interesting stuff.
3.
Figure
out a way to beat Waldorf at hide and seek.
4.
Avoid
people, especially cannibals and children.
5.
Maybe
go back to the cannibal house.
(She couldn’t help but think of it that
way.)
Sadly, boredom set in thirty minutes later. For the first
time, she had no interest in writing in her observation journal. She tried not
to think about the children while she pretended to be Lewis and Clark (well,
Waldorf had to fill in as Clark), blazing a new trail to the Pacific. She tried
to convince herself that it was purely coincidental that, just as she found
herself in need of some Lakota Indians, she heard voices nearby. It wasn’t like
she was
trying
to find them again. Well, maybe a little bit.
This time, Cleo approached with caution, darting from tree
to tree and crouching down behind bushes. She smeared some dirt on her face for
camouflage, pulled aside a rhododendron branch, and watched them. They were
playing hide and seek. When the boy, clearly the older of the two, found the
little girl on the first try for the third time in a row, Cleo scowled at
Waldorf. “I know exactly how she feels,” she said.
She watched them for about an hour before they noticed her.
Really, when a rhododendron sneezes, anyone would notice. Cleo blamed Waldorf.
He didn’t deny it.
She saw them slowly heading toward her. About six feet away
from the bush, they stopped for a whispered conference. Cleo considered her
options and decided to make the first move again. Deciding that a different
approach from yesterday’s meeting might be beneficial, she shoved Waldorf into
her backpack, stepped from behind the bush, and said, “Hi! I’m Lewis and Clark.
Would you like to be my Sacagawea?” It probably would have gone over better if
a). The children had known what the hell she was talking about, and b). She
hadn’t gone over the top with a really creepy eyebrow wiggle at the end. Once
again, Cleo found herself alone in the woods.
***
For the next two mornings, she waited just beyond the tree
line, but the children did not come outside. On the third day, she watched
through her binoculars as they tentatively opened the back door of the house,
squinted at the rhododendron, and slowly walked out into the yard. Cleo was
desperate to know how to communicate with this tribe, so when the children were
called inside for lunch, Cleo went straight home and ran up the stairs to the
first library. The rest of her day was spent poring over articles and books
related to anthropology. Frustrated, she sought out her father’s advice.
Darwin was in his office, painstakingly measuring designs on
a wrinkled, leathery stick. Cleo crept closer, until she was right at his elbow
before he even noticed her.
“What is that?” she asked.
“An arm,” he said, as he made a notation in his book.
Cleo squinted at the thing and leaned closer. “From what?”
she asked.
“A person,” said Darwin. She raised an eyebrow and looked so
much like her mother that he didn’t know whether to laugh or roll his eyes.
“This is a preserved human arm, found in a bog, which is what makes it look
like this.”
Cleo reached out and lightly ran her fingers over the deep
brown surface. “It feels just like a leather chair, only harder,” she said.
“That’s what the bog environment does to human skin. A body
can be a thousand years old and still look like this when someone digs it out,”
he said. He carefully flipped the arm and began looking at the other surface
with a magnifying glass. “I’m looking for tattoos still visible on the skin.”
She watched him for a few minutes, and then remembered that
she had her own inquiry to pursue. “Dad, what do you do if you can’t communicate
with a tribe that you want to study?”
Darwin didn’t look up from the magnifying glass, but said,
“Well, there is always the old ‘conversation starter’ routine, where you show
them something really interesting.”
“Doesn’t work,” she said.
He frowned. “Well, you could try observing them for a few
days to see what parts of their routine you could participate in.”
“Nope,” said Cleo.
For two minutes, he didn’t speak. He just continued to study
the bog arm. Cleo was getting ready to poke him when he said, “Well, the
nuances of human culture can be infinitely varied, but there are always certain
unifying themes. But, our capacity for culture, and for interacting with
ourselves and our environments, is determined in part by the functional
capabilities of our brains. And, at the end of the day, our brains work the
same, physiologically speaking.”
Cleo just looked at him.
“Try the psychology journals,” he said.
She watched him with the arm for another minute, not
realizing that years from now, whenever she would think about her father, it
was this moment that would materialize in her brain.
Cleo spent all night in the library reading about the human
psyche. It was a little after 4:00am when she had her breakthrough. “Eureka!” she whispered, and fell asleep smiling.
When the sun was up and her bag was packed, Cleo tiptoed to
the closet by the back door. The hinges groaned mercilessly, but a quick glance
over her shoulder confirmed that Vera hadn’t heard the sound. Cleo reached up
into the darkness and smiled when her fingers met the rough canvas dog leash.
She lifted the metal ring off of the hook and went in search of Juniper.
Because they had a fenced in yard, Juniper wasn’t used to
the leash. He thought it was more fun to play tug of war with it, shaking his
head so hard that Cleo almost fell down twice. She finally got it hooked to his
collar, and then spent the next twenty minutes trying to pull him through the
hole in the fence. She finally threw half of her peanut butter sandwich through
the hole, and then had to pick leaves out of her hair and retrieve one shoe
from the muddy trenches where Juniper had dragged her enthusiastically through
the fence in pursuit of peanut buttery goodness.
Her heart was pounding with excitement. She was sure that
this would be the trick. After hours of reviewing the psychology references,
Cleo had discovered a universal truth: there is not a more powerful force in
the world than a cheerful golden retriever. These children would be putty in
her hands.
Juniper promptly sniffed the air, grinned over his shoulder,
and took off through the trees, his leash flapping in the wind. Cleo shouted, “Juniper,
get back here!” But, this was Juniper’s first time out of his own yard, and he
was not about to have it cut short.
She chased him, and he liked it. So, every time she lunged
for the leash, he would zig or zag just out of reach and then wag his tail. He
found the stream, and the mud at the bottom of it. He collected burrs in his
now-matted hair. He found something disgustingly dead, rolled in it, and then
brought her a piece. Then, his whole body tense, he sniffed the air, barked
once, and then ran at high speed until he disappeared from sight.
Cleo picked the leaves out of her hair and considered
leaving him to the wolves, or whatever it was that prowled this forest at
night. But then she heard it—the voices of children. Heaving a sigh, she walked
in the direction that the dog had taken, calling his name periodically.
She heard a small scream and picked up the pace, running
into the yard to find her dirty golden retriever on the ground with the legs of
a child sticking out from under his belly. “Damn it, Juniper! You can’t eat my
cannibal before I’ve finished my research!”
She looked around for a good throwing rock, scowling because
the dumb dog was just grinning at her. From behind her came a question.
“Ummm…did you just say a bad word?” asked the boy. Cleo turned to look at him,
and then from under the dog came a girl’s voice saying, “Is this your dog? I
think he likes me.”
The boy helped Cleo pull Juniper off of the little girl. Her
clothes were filthy, but she was smiling, so Cleo figured that was a good sign.
They spent the rest of the afternoon together, talking,
playing, and eating popsicles. Cleo really loved the trampoline, especially the
fact that a really high bounce gave her a clear view into the master bedroom of
the house. Afterwards, they took turns removing burrs from Juniper’s fur and
throwing them at each other. It was the only playful interaction that Cleo had
experienced in years, and it made her miss her sister.
***
The next morning, Juniper was AWOL. Cleo searched for a
quarter of an hour and then decided that he had served his purpose with the
children. She went through the fence on her own.
Returning home hours later, enthusiastically humming a song
that the boy had taught her, she approached the fence at the usual spot and
encountered solid wood where the hole had been. It was fresh—she could still
smell the sawdust. It also wouldn’t move. To the left and right was nothing but
perfect fence as far as she could see. It was also too high for her to climb
over. As it turns out, Juniper’s state of dishabille, and more importantly, his
incredibly pungent odor, had prompted Darwin to investigate its cause. Upon
discovering the hole in the fence, and sniffing the dog one last time, he
ordered the gardeners to repair it. Juniper’s absence that morning had been due
to a thorough bath he was receiving behind one of the greenhouses. Cleo had
left, and the gardeners had dried themselves off (golden retrievers are not
good bath-takers) and fixed the fence while she was gone. And now Cleo was
trapped outside of a 112-acre, fully fenced estate.