Huey didn’t move from the flower bed when I walked outside, except to lift his head and maa softly. I led him over to the flagpole and tied him up there. I sat with him for a little while — talking to him, rubbing his head, scratching under his chin, trying not to think about what would happen next — until one of the office assistants came out to tell me I had to go back inside.
The principal, Mr. Fenstermaker, said he’d already called Aunt Sue, and my heart sank. I was out of ideas. I didn’t know how to save Huey. I didn’t know how to save myself.
I was sitting alone on a bench outside Mr. Fenstermaker’s office when Aunt Sue pulled up in the red Tundra.
She walked past me without speaking. Mr. Fenstermaker closed the door and they talked for a while; then they came back out, and she signed me out of school.
“Come on,” she said to me in a voice I recognized — trying to sound nice, the way she’d sounded when she tricked me about not killing the kids.
I helped her tie Huey down in the back of the truck, then I climbed into the passenger seat. We didn’t speak while Aunt Sue drove out of the school parking lot. When we got onto the highway, she backhanded me across my face, but she didn’t say anything then, either. Neither did I.
It hurt, but I barely flinched. I’d been expecting it. I pressed my hand against my cheek, just for a second, then opened the window and spat out blood.
Once we got home, Aunt Sue told me to put Huey in the field and to muck out the barn. I knew I wouldn’t be getting off that easy, though, with just a slap and some chores. Part of me dreaded what I knew was coming. Another part of me, the part that had broken when I buried Dewey, didn’t care.
Louie had wandered back home on his own, and he danced around Huey as soon as they saw each other, as if Huey had been gone for days. I did what Aunt Sue said, and stayed with the goats for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.
I was doing the second milking, late in the day, when I heard Tiny’s truck pulling into the backyard, bringing Book home after football practice. The anxiety I’d managed to keep at bay flooded over me, and I trembled as I patted Tammy’s udder to release the last of her milk. She lifted her head from the grain trough, as if sensing something was wrong, and maaed nervously. I hugged her side until she calmed down and until I did, too — long enough to finish.
As soon as Tiny left, Aunt Sue dragged Book out to the barn to find me. She was carrying a dark towel and the first-aid kit.
“Come on,” she said in an icy voice. “We’re going for a drive over to the lake. I don’t want the neighbors hearing any of this.”
I saw the newspaper article two days later. That was how long they kept me in the hospital after the beating. They left out my name, but I knew that wouldn’t matter. Everyone in Craven County — everyone who knew Aunt Sue and Book — would know it was me.
There were a lot of other things that didn’t make it into the article: How I almost didn’t feel anything after the first time Book hit me. How it was as if I was outside my own body, watching as he picked me up and threw me to the ground. How Aunt Sue had to keep yelling at Book to make him do it, and how he cried and cried the whole time. How Aunt Sue might have cried, too, when she sat me down afterward and opened up the first-aid kit. But I was having too hard a time seeing through my swollen eyes to be sure.
Another detail that didn’t make it into the paper was how nice Aunt Sue acted afterward — nicer than she’d ever acted toward me. She put clean sheets on my bed and brought aspirin up to my room. She brought me soup, too — Campbell’s vegetarian vegetable — which she heated in a mixing bowl, with the empty can next to it on the tray, to prove it was what she said it was.
She must have known they’d gone too far.
They said the reason I was in the hospital was for observation, which just meant that they didn’t know what else to do with me now that Aunt Sue and Book were in jail. I was in a semiprivate room — just me and one other girl. The girl in the other bed had been in a car accident and was in a coma. Her parents took turns staying with her in the room. They sat next to her bed and cried a lot. I was jealous of that girl.
A social worker named Mindy came each day and asked me a lot of questions. She said my name every time she spoke: “How are you feeling today, Iris?” “You’re looking better, Iris.” “I’m here to help you, Iris.”
The first thing I did after she introduced herself was ask about the goats. “Are they OK? Do you know if anyone’s taking care of them?”
Mindy said she didn’t know, but she’d be sure to follow up on that. She asked me if there was anyone I knew in the area who might be willing to take me in, or if there was any family left other than Aunt Sue. I told her I wanted to move back to Maine and live with Beatrice and her family. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but I didn’t know what else to say. Mindy took down the information, but all she would tell me was, “We’ll see, Iris.”
My head still hurt from the assault, and I worried that my hair wouldn’t ever grow in again in the back where Book had grabbed it in his fist and torn it away. My face was cut and bruised, with my left eye still swollen shut. I couldn’t lift my left arm above my shoulder; I worried that the pain would make it hard to milk the goats, once I got out of the hospital. Every part of me felt too heavy to move, and even going to the bathroom was a struggle, so mostly I just lay in bed and watched Animal Planet and tried not to think about anything. When I did go to the bathroom, I stared, horrified, at the mirror, hardly able to recognize myself. I had always been a small person, but now I looked even smaller, the angles of my face sharper, my skin translucent, the bones visible underneath. My hair hung dull and limp to my shoulders.
Sometimes I caught myself crying, without realizing I’d even started. The television screen would turn blurry, and I’d feel tears on my face. The front of my hospital gown would hang low, damp, the fabric clinging to my skin. But the crying didn’t end when I finally noticed. It kept on, and the sadness of everything — the awfulness — swept over me so deep, the current so strong, that I thought I might actually drown. At times I even thought I wouldn’t mind drowning. It scared me to think that way, though, so I kept turning up the sound on the TV.
Mindy came and got me on my third day in the hospital. “No word yet from your friend in Maine, Iris,” she said. “No one has answered at the phone number that you gave me, and they haven’t returned calls. But we found a very nice couple for you to stay with while we sort things out.”
I was sitting in a chair by the window, though the window was too high to see out of. I’d been watching the coma girl instead. Every now and then her hand trembled. The nurses left it out on top of her sheets, so her parents could see.
“I do have some news about your goats, though,” Mindy said. “I spoke with Animal Control, and they’ll be going out to your aunt’s farm periodically to check on them.”
“How often is ‘periodically’?” I asked doubtfully.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Let me see what I can find out.”
A nurse rolled in a wheelchair for me. I lifted myself in, mostly numb to the pain in my shoulder and my face. Mostly numb to everything.
Mindy gave me a copy of the newspaper just before we left the hospital. “I’m sorry, Iris,” she said. “I thought you should know.”
At first it seemed as if I was reading about someone else, but by the time I got halfway through the article, I was almost too nauseated to continue. I felt Book’s fists all over again. Heard Aunt Sue screaming curses at me, egging Book on.
I pulled myself out of the wheelchair, staggered into the bathroom, and threw up over and over until I had nothing left but bile.
It took us ten minutes to get to the foster family’s house, which was in the town of Craven. Mindy chattered away about what nice people they were, and how safe and comfortable I would be. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care. But just the thought of speaking made me tired, so I stayed quiet.
The family’s name
was on the mailbox — the Tutens. There was a shiny brown leather reclining chair by the road next to their trash. Everything else looked the same as every other home on the street: square yard, brown grass, no trees, brick house, black shutters, minivan.
Mindy knocked for a full minute before Mrs. Tuten finally answered the door. She was a heavy woman with graying hair, maybe in her late forties, and had an odd face, with more of a snout than a nose. A couple of white puffs hung in her limp brown hair. I looked closer and saw that they were the Styrofoam peanuts you use for packing.
Mindy smiled and said hello to Mrs. Tuten, then gestured toward me. “This is Iris, who we spoke about on the phone. Iris Wight.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Goodness. Hello, hello,” Mrs. Tuten said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get the door. It’s been an awful day. I just got back from the animal hospital.” She sniffed when she talked, quick and shallow, like animals do when they see strangers.
Mindy put her hand against the small of my back and nudged me inside the house, or tried to. But I balked. Mrs. Tuten noticed.
“It’s the smell, isn’t it?” she said. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. It’s not as bad as it seems. It’s just our ferrets.”
I recoiled. Mindy hadn’t mentioned any ferrets. I hated ferrets. Dad had, too. He said they were in the same family as polecats and weren’t made to be pets.
“How cute,” Mindy said. “Did you know Iris’s father was a veterinarian?” she asked Mrs. Tuten. “And Iris tells me she just loves animals.”
Mrs. Tuten beamed. I dragged my backpack inside past her and plopped down on the couch in the living room, exhausted. The pain meds were wearing off. My shoulder and ankle throbbed. My scalp ached. And I smelled the acrid odor.
Something furry swam around my legs, which I assumed was one of the ferrets. I didn’t look down, though. If you ignore an animal, it usually goes away. The same with people. Mindy sat next to me. She was kind of heavy, and we sank so deep that our faces were almost at the level of our knees. I felt as if I was sitting in the school office, waiting to see the principal.
“That’s Hob, our little boy,” said Mrs. Tuten, pointing. She hovered over me and Mindy with a couple of glasses of ice water. I wanted to dump mine on the ferret, but I set it down on the end table instead. Mrs. Tuten scooted over with a quilted coaster. Everything in the house seemed quilted. It was very neat and homey, except for that ferret smell, and the Styrofoam peanuts. There were more peanuts stuffed between the couch cushions.
Hob kept swimming around our legs, with the occasional detour under the couch and behind the curtains. That’s where he was when the second ferret hobbled into the living room, one leg encased in a splint.
“There she is,” said Mrs. Tuten. “That’s Jill. Her leg got caught in the springs of Mr. Tuten’s recliner.”
“The chair out by the street?” Mindy asked. There was an empty space in the room next to the couch, and four small indentations in the carpet where the chair legs must have been.
Mrs. Tuten nodded. “I’ve told Mr. Tuten and told him and told him, ‘Check the springs before you lean back in your chair.’ Poor Jill got a hairline fracture of the femur this morning. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”
Jill studied us intently from her spot on the rug. She had a Styrofoam peanut clinging to her fur to match the ones in Mrs. Tuten’s hair. Hob left the curtains and went over to sniff the splint. It was almost tender, but it didn’t last long. All of a sudden Hob jumped back, arched his spine, flared his nostrils, and strained his eyes so wide you could see white all the way around his little black irises. Then he started thrashing his head from side to side as if he was possessed.
This went on for about a minute, until I thought his head would fly off. Then he stopped, rose up on his toes, arched his back even higher — so high he practically folded himself in half — and started hopping wildly, sideways, over and over, a foot in the air each time. Jill tried to do the same thing — the arched back, the flared nostrils, the crazy eyes, the thrashing head — but fell down because of her splint. Hob kept going, crashing into a chair leg, then into a wall, then tripping over his own feet. He panted, hissed, and clucked like a chicken.
Mindy drew her legs up onto the couch, shoes and all. Hob slammed into mine, but it didn’t hurt, so I didn’t move. Mrs. Tuten pulled out her cell phone and aimed it at him. “Oh, this is wonderful! I have to get this. Mr. Tuten will love see ing this.”
“What is it?” Mindy asked.
“It’s called a weasel war dance,” Mrs. Tuten said.
“But these are ferrets,” Mindy said.
Mrs. Tuten kept filming. “It’s just what people call it. The thing that they’re doing with their backs — that’s known as a piloerection. And the noise — that clucking — that’s dooking.”
Mindy had her legs pulled so far up on the couch that it looked as if she was trying to bite her own ankles. “Dooking?” she said.
Mrs. Tuten smiled. “They do it all the time. Well, not all the time. Mostly they sleep. This is just a special thing, because we have visitors and they’re excited. We don’t ordinarily have visitors. They’re usually the most active at dawn and dusk.”
“At dawn?” I said, finally breaking my silence. “When people are still sleeping?” Mindy looked at me sympathetically.
Mrs. Tuten said, “Yes, that’s right. And at dusk. They’re what you call crepuscular.”
“What does that mean?” Mindy asked.
Mrs. Tuten shrugged and smiled again. “It means they’re the kind of animal that sleeps most of the day but are most active at dawn and dusk.”
I turned the word over in my mind: crepuscular. It sounded like an oozing infection. And that other word, piloerection, sounded creepy and perverted.
Hob finally stopped. He might have knocked himself out. Jill had exhausted herself as well trying to keep up on her bad leg.
Mrs. Tuten shut off her phone and picked them up. She draped Jill over her shoulder and let Hob hang limp over her arm.
She smiled at me. “Wasn’t that something?” She reached for my backpack. “Well, now that the show is over, how about we take you back to see your new bedroom and get you all settled?”
The bedroom smelled like potpourri — there was a bowl of it on a little pink desk — which was even worse than the stink of the ferrets. Mindy took a quick look around, then gave me a side hug. “Don’t worry, Iris,” she said. “Everything is going to be fine.”
Mrs. Tuten pointed out the closet, a dresser, the desk. “These are all for you, Iris. You can put your things wherever you’d like. Hanging clothes here in the closet. Folding clothes in the dresser, of course. Your school things on the desk.”
Then she went into the kitchen to sign some papers.
“I had an aunt who used to keep ferrets,” Mindy said. “They really are supposed to be very nice and cuddly.”
“They’re illegal in New Zealand,” I said. Dad had told me that. “The government brought them there to kill rabbits, but since they don’t have any natural predators, now they’re killing off all the wild birds.”
Mindy patted me on the back. I hated when people did that, and I decided if she told me to “Hang in there,” I was going to do something violent.
“Hang in there, Iris,” Mindy said.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek.
Mrs. Tuten came back in the bedroom and handed over the papers to Mindy. She patted me on the back, too. “I’ll have to show you where we keep the ferrets’ food. It’s right out through the kitchen in the laundry room. Their litter box, too. And it’s just about time for their laxative. We need to give them that. They ingest a lot of their own fur and have a hard time expelling it.”
Mindy made a face behind Mrs. Tuten’s back as we walked her to the front of the house. She said she would call me the next day to check on things. The door made a dull, solid sound as it closed behind her. My heart sank, and I felt heavy again,
the same way I’d felt in the hospital.
Mrs. Tuten led me to the laundry room. My feet moved themselves. The rest of me wanted to crawl into bed. I usually held animals close to me when I helped Dad give them medicine or if they needed shots. I couldn’t bring myself to do that with the ferrets, though, with their crusty fur and their stench, so I held them out to Mrs. Tuten at arm’s length as she rolled their laxatives in peanut butter and poked the pills into their weirdly grinning mouths.
I stepped in poop twice, because even though ferrets can be trained to use a litter box, they don’t always remember it’s there. Mrs. Tuten pulled two identical ferret leashes off a nail by the door — little H-shaped harnesses that buckled over their front shoulders and around their front legs.
She handed them to me, and I slipped them easily onto Jill and Hob, even though they wouldn’t stop squirming.
“You’re a natural,” Mrs. Tuten said. “I can see you grew up around animals. It really shows. I think we’ll make this one of your jobs in the afternoons.”
“Putting on their leashes?”
“Well, yes.” Mrs. Tuten scratched Hob and Jill behind their ears. “And taking them for their walks around the neighborhood. But we do have to keep them on their leashes because they’re so friendly. They’re so trusting. Almost foolishly so. We have to watch out for them constantly, to be sure they’re safe out there in the world.”
I couldn’t help thinking about the goats back at Aunt Sue’s farm while she talked, especially the wethers.
They had trusted me to take care of them. I had let them down.
I met Mr. Tuten when he came home from work — a small, round man in a white shirt and striped tie. Mr. Tuten worked at the Department of Transportation; he talked a lot about problem intersections. We had dinner — beef Stroganoff with cooked carrots on the side — but I had a hard time focusing, and they kept having to repeat everything they said to me until eventually they just gave up. I didn’t bother mentioning that I was a vegetarian. I couldn’t eat, anyway.
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