The Cave Dwellers

by Christina McDowell

  “I don’t want to miss this house. It’s supposed to be one of the more exotic homes of Georgetown. New to the list this year. Phyllis is on her way. They just had the last group at her home, she’s going to stop at the gorgeous Federal on N Street, one of the Kennedys’. Divine—they really ramped up the patriotic feel to it. Anyway, she’ll meet us in a bit.”

  Meredith’s excitement feels nauseating to Bunny. “Mom, I need to tell you something—”

  “Aren’t you excited? It’s our first year doing this together!” Meredith is not listening, her own anxiety about the family business escalating her enthusiasm into an artificial and forced elation. “Remember when you were a little girl and you would sit on the floor in my study and flip through my Architectural Digest pointing at which designs you loved—you loved kitchens. You were only seven! But you had a good eye.”

  Bunny shivers on the brick sidewalk, greeted by the home tour sponsors and hosts: THE KENNEDY CENTER, WASHINGTON FINE PROPERTIES, THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

  “Mom…” Bunny tries again to get her attention. “I got a call from the bank, my money didn’t go through.…”

  Meredith ignores her, adjusting her bootee around her black boot in front of a steel plaque reading: NATIONAL COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA: ONE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON’S FAVORITE PLACES TO GET DRUNK.

  “Mom…” Bunny’s blood feels hot, a tantrum forming inside of her as Meredith walks ahead, stepping into the foyer. Behind her, Bunny hops on one foot, placing the bootees over each Doc Marten.

  Hot tea simmers in fine silver displayed on an antique console as Bunny follows her mother inside. The house smells of cinnamon and vanilla potpourri, poinsettias clumped by the foot of the grand staircase.

  “Welcome to number Fifteen Fifty-Two on Thirty-Third Street. This is one of the more unique homes of Washington’s Georgetown, as it is not a Federal but is built of wooden planks. Rumor was they were from an old ship back when Georgetown was the largest tobacco shipping port in the country,” says the real estate agent, who looks like the Monopoly man.

  Bunny can’t help but notice the wooden beams, the racks of white dishware for decoration. Who’s so boring they put plates on the wall? She knows it will never be her.

  They continue into the double-height living room, nearly twenty-foot ceilings, the walls full of Salvador Dalí prints of elongated animal heads. “How modern,” one woman says.

  Bunny raises her hand in angst. “When was the home built?” she prods.

  “Wonderful question,” the real estate agent replies. “It was built in the eighteen-fifties and used to be a neighborhood chapel for African Americans.”

  “Oh. So you mean slaves,” Bunny corrects him.

  “Well, perhaps—but remember, slave trading was banned in Washington City by 1850… so, many were free men and women,” he says.

  “Well, actually,” Bunny rebukes him, “slaves weren’t emancipated until 1863, and just because it was banned doesn’t mean it wasn’t still happening. So this was a church for people who were most likely once enslaved.”

  Meredith, embarrassed, nudges Bunny: Be quiet.

  “Well, yes, it was a neighborhood church primarily for the African American community. I do believe some were free and others perhaps had not been, but it was where they congregated.”

  Women’s heads tilt up at the high ceilings. “Fascinating,” says one, ignoring Bunny, viewing her as nothing more than a rude teenager. They move toward the kitchen.

  “Fascinating,” Bunny mocks under her breath, following them.

  “As you can see”—the agent thrusts his arms forward—“they blew out what was once the back of the church and extended the walls in order to create this stunning white kitchen.”

  “Oh, feel this marble counter, Marianne,” a gray-haired woman says, placing the palm of her hand on the kitchen island, “to die for.”

  “Ah, yes, I believe the owners had that shipped from Rome,” their guide says.

  Bunny squints her eyes, rage building as the real estate agent shepherds everyone back into the living room. He stops in front of the enormous arched window overlooking the back garden, which holds an ivy-covered brick wall. Enclosed by the wall are four headstones. HEADSTONES.

  “As you can see, there are still grave markers from the former burial grounds, adding some wonderful historical texture to the home,” he says. A blow-up white Santa Claus sits on top of where the bodies were buried.

  “Extra texture??” Bunny says, nearly exploding in continued shock.

  “Elizabeth,” Meredith says. Other white women in their bootees and sprayed hair under bonnets turn their heads, look at the art, the new French molding, the limestone fireplace, ignore what’s happening. Pretend it’s not happening.

  “Oh, it’s quite all right,” the real estate agent says, composed.

  “What did they do with the Black bodies?” Bunny asks. She has always heard rumors that thousands of bodies are still buried beneath Volta Park across the street, where she learned to climb the monkey bars and ride her bike.

  “Elizabeth Bartholomew.” Meredith grabs her by the arm. Bunny whips her arm away.

  “We get asked certain questions occasionally,” the agent says, as more women squirm in their bootees with nowhere else to look. “Once the chapel was bought, I think around 1925, the new property owners were able—through the church—to contact the families and have the bodies returned to them after they turned it into a private residence.”

  “They returned the bodies?” Bunny says, beside herself.

  Meredith clutches her arm again, digging her nails into Bunny’s jacket. “Enough.”

  Bunny yanks her arm away and walks around the real estate agent.

  “Yes, but they kept the tombstones as part of the historical legacy,” he says with righteous indignation.

  Bunny laughs at him, enraged. “Historical legacy? Why don’t I repeat the HISTORICAL LEGACY for you: we enslaved you, beat you, killed you, raped you, now we’re going to take your place of WORSHIP and buy you AGAIN so we can turn it into a mansion and hang these STUPID fucking plates!” Bunny storms the wall of decorative plates. She plucks one from the hook and slams it to the ground, shattering it. “Ugly”—she takes another plate, slams it on the floor—“fucking”—she grabs another, chucks it as hard as she can against the wall—“PLATES”—backing up now, breathing hard—“with little fucking—what the fuck are these?—cockatoos on them! And pat ourselves on the back for how rich and white we are. Lock ourselves inside of our ivory castles like nothing else fucking exists!” She stands, a boxer in the middle of a ring. Possessed.

  “Oh my God,” Meredith says, covering her mouth, shell-shocked. She runs over to the plates and gets on her hands and knees, collecting jagged pieces of porcelain. “I’m so sorry,” she keeps repeating over and over.

  Bunny’s entire body trembles with rage and personal legacy when Meredith approaches her. “Get away from me.” She charges through the foyer; slipping in her bootees, she tips over a china bowl, then runs out the front door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Meredith sprints down Thirty-Third Street in her blue bootees calling after Bunny, “ELIZABETH BARTHOLOMEW!” following her toward Halcyon House on the corner of Prospect where Richard Ewell once lived, a Confederate general under Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, a colonial redbrick mansion with proud Doric columns and a view of the Lincoln Memorial, now used as a hub for young entrepreneurs who want to change the world.

  Bunny stops to remove the bootees from her Docs, chucking them into the trash can on the corner. She sees Meredith sprinting after her. A pang of guilt and shame strikes her gut, the kind that hits when you think maybe you’ve taken things too far—enough to keep her from running away.

  “Stop right there… please,” Meredith gasps, uncomfortable, sweating in the cold. “I’m not going to yell at you, please just stop running.”

  Bunny faces her, her eyes blue and translucent; the veins in her temples tra
vel down the sides of her head like lightning strikes.

  “The check bounced,” Bunny says, “the bank called me. It bounced.”

  “That’s not a reason to have a meltdown, goddamn it, you will get the money!” Meredith shouts, as if Bunny should be punished for asking about it—the shame behind the family name tumbling from mother to daughter.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Bunny yells.

  “Do what?” Meredith asks, softening a little.

  “I don’t want to be here anymore.” Bunny bites her lip to keep from crying.

  “Sweetheart,” Meredith says, catching Bunny in this perfect moment of vulnerability. “It’s been a… crummy end of the year, I know that.” She pulls Bunny in for a hug and rocks her. “But what do you mean, you don’t want to be here? You mean home? In Georgetown?”

  Bunny unwraps herself from Meredith’s arms. “I mean this, this lot that Great-Grandma had and Grandma had and you had and—I’m tired—I’m not going to wear a fucking white sash and white gloves like it’s the fucking nineteen-fifties! Don’t you see how fucked up this is? Those people removed enslaved bodies from their graves so they could build a mansion for themselves, and Audrey is dead, and hundreds of people from the chemical dumping are dead, and it’s all our fault!” Bunny breaks down in hysterical tears.

  Meredith’s heart skips a beat. “What did you just say?”

  Bunny sniffles, wipes her tears, inhales. “Chemical dumping, the Bankses’ family business killing innocent poor people… that’s why they were murdered, isn’t it?”

  Relieved that Bunny is talking about the Banks family and not her own, unsure of how she’s obtained this information, troubled about where this conversation is leading, Meredith pulls Bunny into her, but Bunny pushes her away, a dance in the snow flurries. “It is not your fault, Bunny.”

  “But why isn’t anyone talking about it?”

  “Who did you hear that from?” Meredith asks, paranoid, unsure how she’s going to get out of this, a crack of truth revealing itself under the foundation of her entire life.

  Bunny searches for something to say, afraid to tell her mother about Anthony because she knows she’ll be punished for it. “I… read it online somewhere.”

  “Those are rumors—stop reading garbage online written by websites with zero credibility,” Meredith scoffs. “Conspiracy theories—Jesus, Bunny, you know better than that, and we know the truth. That man who murdered the Banks family is a sick, sick man who is severely mentally ill! And unfortunately, this is a reality we are living in today, and, and…” Meredith flounders, desperate to prevent her world from being cracked wide open. “I’m just so sorry that you’re privy to so many shootings and so much horror at such a young age,” she says, shoving the truth toward mainstream tragedies and away from her complicity. “But there is nothing we can do to change it. Let’s go home now, okay? It’s starting to snow.”

  “That’s not true!” Bunny says, shivering and blinking and furrowing her brow, the flat light making her eyes hurt, a migraine coming.

  “Bunny, you can keep pushing against the grain, but it won’t bring Audrey back. It won’t fix this. Accept it. Accept it, Bunny. Come on. Let’s go home.”

  “I’m not talking about bringing Audrey back!” Bunny yells, wiping her eyes. “I’m talking about entering the twenty-first century. HELLO. Look around you, everything is available, any information we want about anyone: their history, their possessions, their properties, their family members, names and addresses and cell phone numbers.… Did you know Audrey used to brag about her clothes and jewelry and post photos of herself on her family’s private jet? People—strangers can see it, poor people can see it, people who WE WHITE RICH PEOPLE have been oppressing for centuries! And people are starting to talk about it, because people are dying—even the people running for president are talking about it! WAKE UP.”

  Bunny has knocked the wind out of Meredith, thrusting her own deepest fears into light; connected by blood though alien in ideology, the two women share a history, and Bunny is rapidly pushing Meredith to confront it, unraveling their legacy before her very eyes without truly knowing the depths of it, the horror of it, their own family’s part in it.

  “… And maybe that’s why some people think they deserved it,” Bunny finishes.

  There’s a look of terror in Meredith’s eyes, her nose red from the cold, her cheeks rosy. “I don’t even know who you are right now. How dare you insinuate something like that? No one on this earth deserves to die.”

  “That’s right, Mom. No one. Including those they killed.”

  “This conversation is over, I’m going home.” Meredith begins to cross the street.

  “What do you know about the Bankses’ business? Did they pay families off? Billionaires just buying everyone off!” Bunny shouts.

  Meredith turns around, stunned; she actually wonders if her daughter has bugged the house, is she listening to her conversations with Phyllis? “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a question I’m wondering whether you know the answer to? Did they pay off families that they killed from their chemical dumping?” Bunny crosses her arms.

  Meredith, frozen from fear, bewilderment, literally laughs. “Bunny, sweetheart, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you need to go home and get some sleep, it’s been a very tough few months,” she says, gaslighting, condescendingly brushing off Bunny’s accusations.

  “Are we going to be next?” Bunny asks. “Because I’m not interested in being on the wrong side of history.”

  “You stop it, stop it right now.” Meredith points her finger at her. “Your father and I have given you a spectacular life, don’t you dare insult the hard work of your ancestors, your great-grandfather, a World War II hero.”

  “If killing thousands upon thousands of innocent children and mothers and fathers means he’s a war hero, sure!” Bunny yells, refraining from more tears. Everything is unwinding within her, her sense of history, her pride, her family values, her moral compass swaying with each assumption that’s been proven wrong. She doesn’t know who to turn to when she doesn’t want her future and she doesn’t want her past.

  “Are you insane?” Meredith says. “No more news for you. No more Internet, I’m going to take that phone away from you if you keep this up. Is this how you want to remember a lifelong friend? Is this how you want to honor her legacy? By trampling all over it with resentments from strangers and false, ridiculous conspiracy theories? Is this how you’d want us to be remembered? Your father is going to be so disappointed when he finds out about this.” Meredith reaches for the weapon she’s always had: “Start insulting your grandfather and he’ll start deducting your inheritance.”

  “If there even is one,” Bunny shouts.

  Meredith turns her back on Bunny, crosses the street. She feels an overwhelming sensation—jamais vu—descending through her consciousness, a sudden eeriness where nothing looks familiar: the gargoyles on stone towers, the rats scurrying behind trash cans, the plaques memorializing faded American history. Meredith has walked these streets every day of her entire life, but she doesn’t recognize a thing.

  * * *

  The next morning, Meredith stands at the kitchen stove fingering her cigarette, exhaling into the electric fan. Cate sips coffee out of a white Santa mug in the red-toile-lined kitchen nook.

  “How is she?” Cate asks, referring to Bunny. When Bunny finally got home after the fight on Thirty-Third Street, she and her mother hadn’t spoken a word to each other, except when Bunny asked for a sleeping aid.

  “I sedated her,” Meredith says. She takes another drag, her eyes squinting in the smoke. Ice thaws outside the kitchen window into the crunchy boxwood bushes. They hear footsteps coming down the back staircase, creaking.

  “Mom?” Bunny appears with disheveled hair and swollen eyes, her voice raspy, wearing an extra-large Everytown for Gun Safety T-shirt. One eye is open. “Can I borrow your sleeping mask? The sunli
ght is too bright in my room. My eyes hurt.”

  “There’s an extra one in the bottom drawer of my vanity,” Meredith says.

  An electric saw rages through dead limbs of the poplar tree in the front yard. “Jesus… what is that noise?” Bunny asks, pressing her palms against her ears as tree limbs fall to the cold grass.

  “The arborist is here, he’s trying to save our tree.” Meredith ashes her cigarette, looking out the window. “Go back to bed, he’ll be done soon.”

  “Ugh,” Bunny groans. She walks back upstairs, slamming her door, shaking the frame of the kitchen.

  “Well, I think the benzos are working, but anything beyond that is…” Meredith blows smoke into the vent above the stove. “Cate, I’m worried about her. Ever since we lost the Bankses—Audrey, and my mother—and Billy—all of it. She hasn’t been herself.… Do you think she should see a shrink?” Meredith ashes her cigarette on a porcelain spatula plate with some presidential inauguration date on it.

  “I’m so sorry, you all have been through so much. You know, I wasn’t sure if I should mention this or not, but the senator said his daughter Mackenzie has been spending some time with Bunny and her friends and seemed a little worried about her too. Sounds like they’re just going through a lot, and the pressure with school…”

  “Oh well, that’s taken care of, we don’t need to worry about college.” Meredith shoos away the thought like a fly. “Maybe… if you don’t mind checking on her for me in a little while, maybe give her a little pep talk? She’s always wanted a sister. Maybe you can show her how…” Meredith searches for the right word. “… grateful you are, you know, for where you are now after what you and your sister and mother went through with your father. I don’t think she knows how lucky she is. And she’s never been through any kind of adversity—I mean, not that… maybe adversity isn’t the right word, but tragedy. And to be taking it out on her community?” Meredith is flabbergasted! “For her to be insinuating that this—the Bankses’ murders—has anything to do with race, or you know, money, or—their entire family was killed, for Christ’s sake! Nothing justifies that.”