Contaminated

by Em Garner

  “Mom.” I force myself to move forward and take her by the shoulders. “C’mon. It’s really late.”

  I turn off the TV and lead her to her bed. I tuck her back in. She closes her eyes. I watch her for a minute or two, but she doesn’t move.

  In my own bed, I can’t sleep. Memories of the movie are racing through my brain. I expect to hear the boom of thunder and the tap-tap of crazy scary tree fingers against the glass of my window, even though we have no trees outside and it’s not raining.

  I hear her get up again. The creak of the floorboards. I think if I put my feet out of bed, or even look underneath it first, there will be a scary clown doll there waiting to wrap me in its freakishly long arms. That the closet door will fling open and suck me and Opal into some other dimension as we scream. Yeah, I know it’s just scenes from a horror movie, but hadn’t we all learned horror movies can become real?

  “Please go back to bed,” I whisper into the darkness.

  I’m ready to just let her wander until morning, until I hear the locks on the front door being unlatched. Then I jump out of bed, cringing in anticipation of being yanked down under the bed by Mr. Jingles. I leap like the floor is lava, out of the bedroom to catch her by the back of the nightgown just before she escapes. A burst of freezing air swirls into the apartment, blowing off a stack of bills from the table. I close the door.

  “Mom!”

  She turns at that, but I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve shouted in anger or she recognizes her name. I realize something terrible, so awful, it makes me want to throw up. I’m afraid of my mom in that moment, when I’m not sure what she’s going to do.

  I have never been afraid of my mother. Even as a little kid. She never spanked us. She yelled sometimes, sure, but she was a good mom. She laughed a lot. She played games with us, even when I know she’d rather have been reading or doing something else. I could always go to my mom whenever I needed anything and never be afraid to ask her any question, even the embarrassing ones, like about periods or sex or drugs and alcohol. Just now, I’m afraid of my mom. “You should go back to bed,” I say in a small voice. During the worst of the Contamination, with the riots and looting, Connies attacking everyone, people getting shot for the tiniest reason, things were scary. A lot of people think those were the worst times because everything was falling apart and nobody knew what was going on. Every day we woke up to the sound of sirens or the smell of smoke. If we were lucky, nobody was slamming themselves into a sliding glass door trying to get us. It felt like the end of the world.

  Then the reports changed. Lots more information about how the military restrictions, the curfews, and evacuations were going to bring about the return of normality to everyone. Accounts of the Contamination spreading to Europe and Australia were exaggerated to give us the false sensation that we weren’t alone.

  Only after it had all been figured out did we in America learn that not only was it not the entire world—just us—but that it wasn’t even the entire population. There were and are huge areas in the U.S. where the Contamination never reached. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense that it’s taking so long for things to return to the way they were before. Why resources like electricity and cable television continue to be restricted. Why the military and police keep patrolling the streets and enforcing rules for a “safety” that shouldn’t be necessary anymore.

  Those were a bad few months. The ones that came afterward, when it had died down a little but there were still people getting sick and nobody knew exactly what was going on, those were bad, too. And after that, when they’d finally figured out what was causing the breakdowns but nobody could be sure if that one bottle of ThinPro they’d drunk the year before would turn them into a monster… yeah, that was bad. All of that was bad.

  This is so, so much worse.

  Because everything’s supposed to be all right now. The collars are supposed to keep the Contaminated calm. The police and the army and the game wardens are supposed to be hunting down and neutralizing the last of the wild ones. People are supposed to be getting regular checkups to make sure they’re not going to come down with Frank’s syndrome. Everything’s supposed to be going back to normal, if you can ignore the fact we still have the curfews, and the TV shows only reruns because most of the actors and actresses are dead or insane. If you can look past the schools’ being half empty, and the buildings with glass broken out and smoke damage that just haven’t been repaired, or the ruts in the road from where the tanks came through. If you can forget about all that stuff, sure, it seems like we’re going back to normal, except I think this is now the normal.

  Being afraid has become normal.

  “Mom,” I whisper. “Please. Go back to bed. Okay?”

  She doesn’t move. It’s not too bright in here, though there’s light coming from the bedroom and from the front windows that look out onto the landing. She’s mostly shadow. I can’t see her face.

  I reached for her hand, tense. “C’mon. You need to sleep.”

  She lets me take it. She lets me lead her back to bed this one more time. She gets under the covers as placidly and easily as she did the other times. She closes her eyes.

  The video says that we’re supposed to restrain them when they’re alone, or when they’re in public, but it didn’t say anything about when they’re sleeping. Are we supposed to tie them to their beds so they don’t go wandering? How else can I make sure she stays here, for her own safety and my peace of mind?

  I look in the tote bag, and, yes, there is a set of long elastic cords that loop through the wrist restraints and are meant to be hooked to something. Not quite a leash meant to attach to the collar. They didn’t go that far. But there’s no question this is meant to keep someone from going too far.

  She doesn’t move or protest as I hook her wrists together and run the loop through the wooden slats of the headboard and secure them. I try to make sure they’re not too tight, but there’s not much I can do. They fit how they fit.

  My mother doesn’t balk at any of this. There’s enough room that she can move around in bed, but if she tries to get out of it, she won’t get more than a few steps. Unless she breaks the headboard. That would require a big, aggressive effort, something the collar’s supposed to prevent. I’ll just have to hope she doesn’t decide she needs to get free. Or that nothing catches on fire while we’re sleeping. Or nobody breaks in…

  I shake myself. My eyes are drooping and I’m so tired, I can’t see straight. All of my muscles ache. I feel… old.

  Standing in her doorway, I turn out the light. I hear her sigh. She shifts a little in the sheets, and they rustle. I hesitate, thinking about sleep.

  But I go to her, anyway, to check on her one last time. To make sure the restraints aren’t too tight, that she has room, that the blankets haven’t fallen away. This room, with the damage to the ceiling and the windows, can get cold.

  I look down at her. This is my mom. I’ve tied my mother to the bed with something only a little better than handcuffs because I’m afraid of what she might do if she’s left loose. She wears a collar on her neck that shocks her if she so much as tries to defend herself against someone lifting her nightgown when she doesn’t want them to, she can’t speak, she can’t even be sure she’ll make it to a toilet on time.

  And this is all too much for me. When I was looking for her, all I could think of was how much I wanted her home. How I needed to find her, and that it didn’t matter what else happened, because she’d be here with us. I thought I’d take care of her the way I take care of the patients in the assisted-living home, that it would be maybe a little hard, but not impossible. But I can’t take care of her like she’s them, because she isn’t. She’s not old, and I’m too young for this. I haven’t had her home here for even one day, and already I’m stressing out about what might happen.

  I can’t do this.

  “I can’t do this,” I say aloud.

  Then I’m on my knees next to the bed. My forehead d
ents the mattress as I press my face into sheets I made sure were clean for her because I couldn’t make sure they were new. The floor’s hard and cold under my knees. I’m chilly in this room without blankets to cover me or a sweater or anything. And I cry.

  I cry and cry, letting it all out. Everything I’ve been saving up all these months. Every time I wanted to cry and didn’t, it all comes out now. Big, nasty, ripping sobs tear at my chest and throat. Tears boil out of me. Snot spouts from my nose. I swallow my tears and the thick paste of snot makes me shiver. Gross. I cry in sharp, hitching sobs that hurt my throat and chest. I pound the floor with my fist, and it hurts.

  I’m crying so hard, I don’t feel the bed shake or move, don’t notice my mom as she sits. Not until her hand is on my head. Her fingers tangle for a moment in my hair, and I look up, shocked. Her fist pulls, hurting me a little, but it’s an accident, the pulling.

  She strokes my hair with a clumsy fist. She croons. It’s a wordless hum, no tune to it. It lasts only a moment or two before her hand falls away and she’s still again.

  But she did it. My mom reacted to me. I’m frozen, tasting salt, unable to see in the dark with swollen eyes. I can’t tell if she’s looking at me, but I think she is.

  I don’t want to move. I can’t move. And the next thing I know, I’m asleep.

  TEN

  OF COURSE I’VE OVERSLEPT, AND OF COURSE Opal doesn’t care. She used to be a good student, never getting into trouble or needing reminders about her homework. This, like everything else, has changed.

  I wake on the floor of my mom’s bedroom. I’m covered by a blanket, but I don’t have a pillow and the floor is hard, cold, and pretty dirty. I’m stiff when I get up, blinking and disoriented. I’m not sure what time it is, just that it’s not the right time.

  My mom’s not in her bed. The restraints are still attached to the headboard, though. For one scary moment I wonder if she got herself loose, but then I hear the bubble of Opal’s laughter and I know she’s the one who let Mom free. Scrubbing my face with my hand, I go into the kitchen, where Opal’s demonstrating some sort of dance that she learned on TV to my mom, who’s sitting at the table with a plate of uneaten toast in front of her.

  “See? Like this! Around the world and up and down, to the side, to the side…” Opal breaks off when she sees me. She has the decency to look guilty. “You didn’t wake me up on time. I missed the bus.”

  “You still have to go to school, Opal. Even if it’s late.”

  “Can’t I please stay home with Mama today?” Opal’s lower lip quivers. “Velvet, it’s Mama. I haven’t seen her in so long.”

  I can’t blame her for wanting to stay home. We haven’t been with our mom for a long time. I took the day off to stay home. Opal’s just a kid who can barely wait long enough to eat dinner before dessert. How can I ask her to go back to school the first day our mom’s home with us?

  As if on cue, the phone rings. We all look at it, but my mom’s the one who gets out of the chair. She swings at the old-fashioned phone, attached to the wall by a long cord, and knocks it to the floor, where I scoop it up before she can do anything else.

  Opal and I are staring at her. Opal’s eyes are wide, and I can feel wariness in my own expression. My mom turns, hands out, and knocks the plate of toast off the table. It breaks on the floor.

  “Opal! Get the plate!” I scoop up the phone and put it to my ear. “Hello?”

  It’s the school, wanting to know where Opal is. I tell them she’s not feeling well, and Opal, in the background, begins to make loud, disgusting barfing noises. She even takes the rest of her orange juice and tosses it into the sink for effect. I try not to laugh. Besides, I need her to be picking up the pieces of plate before my mom steps in them with her bare feet and cuts herself.

  Too late, my mom moves. Her foot comes down on a piece of broken plate. I tell the school secretary I’m sure Opal will be feeling fine soon and hang up, then grab my mom by the arm to keep her from moving again.

  “Sit, Mom.” I push her into the chair and lift up her foot, which is cut, but not too bad.

  “Is she okay?” Opal bends to look, too. “Mama, does that hurt?”

  “Go get the Band-Aids and first-aid cream. Hurry up, c’mon! If you’re not going to school, you’d better make yourself useful!”

  Opal scampers off to do as I say. I take a dishcloth from the sink to wipe away the bright red blood from my mom’s foot. She sits still and silent, even when I dab at a piece of ragged skin that has to hurt.

  “Sorry.” My apology is automatic, even though I’m not really sure she understands me.

  Everyone knows how they figured out Connies do feel pain. Experiments. The ones they didn’t kill and dump in ditches, they took into labs and attached to machines. They cut them open, injected them, whatever they felt necessary. Scientists figured out what was causing the Contamination and eventually the source of it through those experiments, and nobody protested until afterward. I like to think someone would’ve even during the height of the panic, but it wasn’t until we knew what they were and what was going on that anyone started shouting about rights. By that time, of course, the government had taken control of the media and the only place you’ll find those stories now is on the Internet—if you’re lucky enough to have service, or can actually access anything through all the government roadblocks they put up in the name of homeland security.

  My mom shows no reaction when Opal brings back the first-aid supplies. I smooth the cream over the cut and cover it with a bandage. She needs socks. Her feet are cold.

  “Mama, are you okay?”

  “She’s okay, Opal, she just got a little cut. We should clean up the rest of this mess. Why don’t you go help Mom get dressed and I’ll do that?”

  “So… you’re letting me stay home today? Really?” She’s already squeezing me around the gut so hard, I let out an “oof!”

  “Yes, Bratty McBratterson.”

  “Hooray!” Opal tosses up both arms to make a giant V.

  I wish I could be made happy so easily. But then again, I’m glad I’m not a kid like Opal anymore. At least my childhood wasn’t ruined. At least when all this started, I was old enough to take care of myself and her. At least we had that.

  Opal and my mom go into the bedroom while I sweep up the shattered plate and get rid of the toast. That was the last of the bread. I have money in the checking account, but it would be stupid to use that on food when we can wait another few days and use the food stamps we’re entitled to. The assistance checks usually come on Fridays, and today is only Wednesday. Even when they come, they’re not much. They should get a little bigger now, once the paperwork goes through from the shelter saying we took Mom home.

  Instead of toast, I make us all bowls of thick, sweet oatmeal flavored with sugar and milk. I have to make it on the stove, in a pot, rather than using the microwave kind that was all I’d ever known growing up. We’re not allotted microwave oatmeal, but every week we can get enough of the cookable kind to last us for months.

  I figure they should be finished dressing by the time the oatmeal’s ready, so I go toward the bedroom to find out what’s taking so long. There, I find my mom dressed in an outfit I know for a fact she’d never have picked out on her own—purple leggings with pink fuzzy socks that came from my drawer, and a long-sleeved top patterned with red flowers. She’s sitting on a chair with Opal behind her.

  “I hate my teacher,” Opal’s saying as she runs the brush through my mom’s dark hair. “She makes me sit next to that girl Courtney, the one who eats her scabs.”

  Hearing that makes me want to hurl. “Gross! Don’t tell her that!”

  “Well, she does,” Opal says defensively. “And her boogers!”

  “Grossssss!” I shudder at the thought of it. “Why don’t you tell your teacher you want to move? You shouldn’t have to sit next to someone like that!”

  Opal shrugs, then gathers my mom’s hair into a twisted bun and secures it loosely
with a scrunchie. “She won’t listen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” Opal hesitates, then says without looking at me, “My teacher puts all the kids she doesn’t like in the same row.”

  I frown. “That’s not right.”

  Opal shrugs. “Whatever. There, doesn’t Mama look pretty?”

  She looks pale and thin, but I nod. “Sure. Let’s all have something to eat. Then we need to clean this place.”

  Opal groans, but she’s smart enough not to argue. She doesn’t want to get sent to school. We take our mom into the kitchen and sit her at the table. Opal and I start eating. My mom holds the spoon and looks at her plate. Opal pauses, chewing and swallowing.

  “Velvet?”

  “She needs help, I guess.” Some of the Connies are so bad off, they need to have their food prechopped, be fed like babies. Jean had said Mom wasn’t that bad. Watching her, I’m not so sure.

  “See, Mama? Like this.” Opal demonstrates, and when my mom doesn’t follow her lead, she lifts the spoon to my mom’s mouth for her. She scrapes the spoon under her mouth just like you do when you’re feeding a baby. My mom’s mouth moves as she swallows the oatmeal.

  I wish I could be as accepting of this as Opal. She doesn’t seem to mind at all that our mom is a dummy, a doll. Patiently, Opal helps her eat while I sit across the table from them and force myself to eat my own oatmeal, even though I don’t have any appetite for it.

  We finish breakfast and take my mom to the living room to put her in front of the TV while we sweep the floor and do the dishes. The daytime’s only a little better for shows than the night, but we find her a home-improvement show to watch. They’re demonstrating how to replace glass in windows and putty around nail holes from places where the boards were nailed. The host and hostess are both heavier than the people who used to host this show; they obviously didn’t drink the ThinPro. They’re not ugly, they’re just… average. Average people now get on TV.