My mom is here, but my dad is home with Poppy and Sequoia. The thought of my sister and brother getting sick like this makes me feel even worse.
Guilty.
I lay on the bed like a scoop of mashed potatoes. I don’t even have the energy to turn on the TV. We don’t have one at home because my dad thinks TV is a “box full of garbage,” so I usually gorge on anything and everything whenever I end up in a room with one. Like this past summer when Mimi and I cruised through five seasons of her favorite reality show over the three weeks I visited. Sometimes Bumpa brought us artisanal doughnuts, which are seemingly all the rage in places that aren’t my kitchen. The irony isn’t lost on me that most of my knowledge of pop culture comes from my dad’s sixty-nine-year-old parents. But then again, Mimi and Bumpa are nothing like my dad. For one, they think homeschooling is “hogwash.” And two, they believe their son’s time could be better spent moving up the corporate ladder in some high-rise building with a corner office. This is probably exactly why my dad is the way he is. Kids never want to be like their parents. Because they’re so different, my mom and dad were wary of letting me visit Mimi and Bumpa alone, but Mimi’s hip surgery meant they needed the extra help I could provide, preparing meals and walking their Maltipoo, Duke. And even though I was finally away from my parents, I didn’t have a ton of freedom, since Mimi needed my round-the-clock help.
My mom’s voice is distant and garbled as she talks to the doctor. The words are swimming. Not loud and clear like the ones Dr. Soap Opera said to her at the urgent care clinic.
“There’s a reason you didn’t know what the measles looked like when you saw them,” he told her. “It’s because you grew up in a generation when parents got their kids vaccinated, because they did know. They knew the dangers. But now we have people like you, thinking your kids are protected because every other parent out there does it for you. But that’s not how it works. Not everyone is protected. Not everyone can actually have the vaccine. By not vaccinating, you don’t just put your own child at risk, you put people you don’t even know at risk.”
“Well, I’m concerned about my child and my child only,” my mom said.
“Of course you are,” said Dr. Soap Opera sarcastically.
The doctors and nurses at the hospital are nicer than the doctor at the urgent care clinic, even though they wear gloves and masks whenever they come into my room. Their protective gear only drives home how serious this is and how contagious I am.
They come in a lot. Taking my temperature. Checking my pulse. Listening to my lungs. And peeking at the monitors.
I try to sleep in between the visits.
The next morning, my dad shows up, and I have a new doctor with gray hair and gray eyes. He talks to my dad about all the immunizations I don’t have and makes earnest pleas to try to convince him to consider getting them for my siblings and me. He throws out words, saying they can be complications from the measles. Words like encephalitis. Blindness. Deafness.
None of it matters to my dad. “I’m looking at her getting better right in front of me. She’s going to be fine. Maybe we should talk about the possible complications from vaccines instead.”
“We’re certainly willing to help you work through your concerns,” the doctor says. “There are immunization makeup schedules.”
“I’m not pumping a bunch of carcinogens into my kids’ bodies. No, thank you. Aluminum. Formaldehyde. Thimerosal, better known as mercury.” He ticks them off on his fingers like he’s making a grocery list for the ingredients of Death Soup. “Not to mention links to autism, as I’m sure you know but don’t divulge.”
“First of all, the MMR vaccine doesn’t actually contain thimerosal. Secondly, the autism link is a fallacy,” the doctor says firmly. “And the risks of not having vaccines far outweigh the very small chance of a reaction. To be clear, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends—”
“Don’t give me your Big Pharma bullshit. All you doctors have some kind of agreement with them, I just know it. It’s a conspiracy so you can all make money. I’ve done my research.”
I get the feeling the doctor wants to shake some sense into my dad, that he wants to point at me in the bed as exhibit A, but he stays calm. My dad eventually leaves. The doctor tries all over again with my mom when she shows up with clean underwear for me.
I see a flicker in her when he mentions Poppy and Sequoia and how it’s basically inevitable that they’ll get sick, too. Will they get as sick as me? Sicker? What if they develop encephalitis and long-term complications?
My parents are most likely immune because they had the measles shot in the mid-1970s, but the doctor warns my mom that immunity can fade over time. There’s a blood test they can do to be sure. And there’s always a booster shot.
“If those shots aren’t good enough for my kids, they’re not good enough for me,” she says, and ends it at that.
Easy for her to say when her chance of getting the measles is relatively low.
In the afternoon, someone from the Centers for Disease Control visits. She sits down with my mom and me to trace my movements, taking note of everywhere I’ve been over the last few weeks. She tells us the CDC is trying to figure out where I might’ve gotten the measles in the first place and who else I could’ve exposed.
“Because there are reported cases up and down the state, our best bet is that you came into contact with the virus on the train coming home from Sacramento.”
“How many cases have there been?” I ask.
“We know of five so far. But it’s early days. It’s important we get the word out because the measles is highly contagious, which is why we need your family to self-quarantine for at least twenty-one days,” she explains. “A nonimmune individual has a ninety percent chance of contracting the virus if they come into contact with it. Plus, it can live for up to two hours on surfaces and in an airspace where an infected person coughed or sneezed.” She writes down a note. “We’ll put out public notifications on the local news and in the newspapers, so anyone at risk will be able to determine whether or not they were in the same places as you.”
“Does the whole town really have to know this?” my mom asks. “It seems like a violation of our privacy.”
“It’s a public safety issue, so yes. But don’t worry. The name of the patient is never identified.”
My mom crosses her arms. “Yeah, well, people have a way of finding out such things when they’re determined. Our town isn’t exactly a metropolis. It’s only a matter of time before they know who we are. And what happens then?”
“We’ll do everything we can to keep you anonymous. Your safety and protection are priorities for us.”
My mom doesn’t seem convinced.
SIX
Two days later, I’m home from the hospital. Poppy comes down with a fever at dinnertime a few days later. It hits Sequoia the day after. I’m still too weak to get out of bed. I feel only slightly guilty that I can’t help more. Not because I owe it to my parents, but because I know how awful my sister and brother are feeling. It’s my fault they’re sick. They got this from me. I’m the worst big sister ever.
My mom and dad have managed to convince themselves my siblings won’t get as sick as I did, because they know what they’re dealing with this time. My mom douses them in essential oils, while my dad keeps them on a steady diet of shiitake mushrooms and elderberry tea and whatever else he found in his natural healing book.
I bet that makes them feel like barfing, I want to say. You don’t know anything. But I keep my mouth shut.
While my parents go back and forth, up and down the stairs, I try to read a novel my dad assigned for school, but the pages blur and I forget the words by the time I get to the end of each paragraph. I want a TV. Or a laptop. I bet when the kids at the high school across the street get sick, they get to eat Popsicles and watch frothy movies about people going to prom and falling in love.
Sigh.
I close my eyes to make up my own movie in my
head. It’s been playing on an endless loop for weeks, actually. It’s about this past summer and the boy who lived next door to Mimi and Bumpa. His name was Noah, and even though I never met him officially, I felt like I knew him. He was tall and tan and graceful, with a tattoo on his arm that I’d see when he was mowing the lawn with his shirt off. I wanted to run my fingers across that tattoo, and I’d think about it when I passed him whenever I was out walking Duke. Mimi told me Noah’s whole story because I asked her. He was home from his first year of college and had an internship at some financial office downtown. His job sounded like a total snoozefest, but he wore a button-down shirt and tie to go there, which I liked because I knew he had that tattoo hidden underneath it all.
I finally dredge up enough energy to go downstairs for a glass of water and settle in the living room for a change of scenery.
There’s a dusty bookshelf in the corner. It’s filled with my grandparents’ books. There are classics and westerns and a whole encyclopedia collection from 1989, two years before my mom graduated from high school. I’m sure she used these for research in the days before the internet. Even though I know the information will be outdated, I pull volume Ma–Me from the shelf and thumb past Maps and Maui until I land on Measles. There are photos of rashes and vivid descriptions of symptoms and risk factors. There are details of death. And then a lifesaving vaccine introduced in 1963.
I put that volume back. Grab volume Po–Pu. I flip to the section about polio. There are pictures of little kids in leg braces. People trapped in iron lungs that look like space-age torture devices. Death rate statistics. And then a lifesaving vaccine introduced in 1955.
I pick at my arm. At the peeling spots of red.
The measles could’ve killed me.
Polio still can.
I’d never thought about it before because I’d never gotten sick. But after this, if it were up to me, I’d choose the shot.
Why can’t it be up to me?
I’m sixteen. I’m the one who has to live in this body for the rest of my life. Why do my parents get to decide what happens to it?
I hear Poppy calling from upstairs. “Mom!” Her voice is ragged and hoarse. “It hurts to touch my skin.”
And then Sequoia: “Mom! My throat!” His words get swallowed by a coughing fit.
They sound miserable and they want my mom to comfort them, even though, when you really think about it, it’s kind of her fault all her kids got sick in the first place.
SEVEN
The first two weeks of my twenty-one-day quarantine pass, and I feel better each day. Poppy and Sequoia still have at least two weeks to go. On Saturday, I venture from my room to the kitchen for breakfast, where my mom and dad sit at the table, passing sections of the newspaper back and forth. They don’t read news online like everyone else. And they pat themselves on the back for supporting small businesses by subscribing to the local paper. In addition to national news, it has sports coverage of all the nearby high school teams and PTA fundraisers and monthly photos from Coffee with a Cop meetings at Java Jim’s by the pier. We live in a town where nothing much happens, so you have to go to the front page for the important stuff.
I sit at the table, take a sip of my orange juice, and riffle through the newspaper sections to find the front page. As soon as I get ahold of it, my dad tries to pull it away from me. We wrestle back and forth across the table, and the thin pages almost rip in half.
My mom grips my wrist. Tries to get me to let go.
“Nothing you need to see, June,” my dad says.
“Don’t bubble-wrap me. I already know bad things happen in the world,” I tell him.
My mom watches us, nervously biting her bottom lip. “Maybe not today,” she says.
“Why? Is it going to be different tomorrow? Whatever happened, happened. Me not reading it won’t make it go away.”
I give the paper one more yank and look down at the front page, and my stomach instantly drops. The sip of orange juice I swallowed makes its way back up my throat. There, splattered in black ink, is the cover story about a local baby, six weeks old, who has died from complications from the measles. Her name was Katherine St. Pierre.
Mouth agape, I look at my parents. I turn back to the paper. Study the baby in the photo more closely. The white bow attached to her bald head. The pull quote from her mother: I’ve gone back over every step I took, every doorknob I touched, every ounce of air she breathed. She was a newborn, so we were cautious about leaving the house.
I drop the paper. My heart pummels against my rib cage. I know her.
“I killed this baby.”
“Junebug,” my dad says.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” says my mom.
“Mom, who else could it be? Seriously. That’s why you didn’t want me to see this.”
“We didn’t want to upset you.” My mom grips her coffee mug. “We didn’t want you to worry the same thing could happen to Poppy and Sequoia. They’re recovering fine, as you can see. Same as you did.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call my recovery fine. I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. You’re lucky the same thing didn’t happen to Poppy and Sequoia.”
“But you’re better now. Look at you!” It’s like she’s trying to convince herself. To tell herself the measles isn’t much worse than the common cold. Stay home. Rest. Drink lots of fluids. You’ll be fine.
But it wasn’t like that for Baby Kat.
“Well, good for me. And good for Poppy and Sequoia, too. Because we all could’ve ended up like this baby. You do realize that, don’t you? We could’ve died.”
“It’s very sad, but this baby was six weeks old,” my dad says. “We don’t know anything about her health. There could be circumstances that led to complications. Immunity disorders. Other things. For all we know, she got you sick, not the other way around.”
“Her mother shouldn’t have had a baby that new out in the first place,” my mom mutters.
“Her complication was that she was six weeks old and too young to be vaccinated.” I point at the photo. “And you’re talking about her like she doesn’t even matter. This baby was named Katherine. Her parents called her Kat with a K as a nickname because she reminded them of a cat when she stretched. I met this baby. I helped her mom with her farmers market bags. That baby grabbed my hair and I touched her hand to get her to let go. I was sick then. Contagious. I gave her the measles. Not the other way around.” I suck in a breath. I remember that baby’s mom and how nervous she was to be outside. She wrapped her baby in a sling, kept her close to her heart, doing everything she could to protect her from people like me. She didn’t deserve to get sick. “This baby was innocent. Don’t I have to go turn myself in to the police or something? I should be punished.”
“It’s not like that,” my dad says.
My mom talks on top of his words. “Maybe you’re confusing her with another baby.”
“I’m not confused.” I pound my fist on the table. “Come on, Mom, it’s the measles. People aren’t walking around with it all over the place. It’s rare because people are vaccinated. And that right there”—I point at the paper again—“is the reason why. Because babies like Katherine St. Pierre can’t defend themselves. They’re counting on people like me and Poppy and Sequoia to protect them. They’re counting on parents like you and Dad to know better.”
“Well”—my mom tsks—“if anyone should’ve known better, it’s that baby’s mother. She should’ve known you don’t bring a newborn out like that. You keep infants safe and healthy by staying at home and letting them naturally build up their immunities through breastfeeding before taking them out in public.”
“She just went to the farmers market. It’s not like she flew across the country with her.” I choke on a sob. “She was so little. She didn’t deserve this,” I say again.
My dad sighs like he’s exhausted. “June—”
“The reality is that you guys are as dependent as the parents of newborns, b
ecause you have to rely on other people being vaccinated to keep your kids from getting sick. Except you had a choice and the parents of newborns don’t have a choice. Still, you knew it was almost impossible for us to get the measles because hardly anybody makes the choice you made. Do you know how selfish that is? How privileged? What makes us so special? What makes us better than any other kid? What makes us better than Katherine St. Pierre?”
“Call it what you want, but my responsibility is to my own children, not anyone else’s. I refuse to live in a police state. Every parent should have the right to make the choice that feels best for them,” my dad says.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Best for them meaning the parent, not the kid. Of course, you’ve never asked me how I feel. Or Poppy or Sequoia.”
“Poppy and Sequoia are too young. They don’t know.”
“How can they not know? They had the measles just like me. Because of that, we should all have a say.”
“Juniper,” my mom says calmly, “we understand your frustration.”
“This isn’t frustration. This is…” Tears fall down my cheeks. “A baby died! Don’t you care at all?”
“Yes, we care,” my mom says, her eyes misting. “It’s tragic.”
“I want to send flowers. I want to tell her mom I’m sorry.”
“That’s not a good idea,” my dad says. “It’s better if they don’t know who you are.”
“Why?”
“It’s just safer for everyone,” my mom says.
“Oh, now you care about safety?” I let out a sarcastic snort. “Maybe you should’ve worried more about safety when you chose not to vaccinate your kids. I can’t believe the way you walk around here like you can survive anything with some herbs and some hippie-dippie remedy. You can’t. And thinking you can makes you look stupid.”
“June!” my dad yells. “That is enough.”
But I will not stop.
“You know I’m right! And you can’t stand that I’m right. And you know what? I would’ve gotten the shot if I’d had the choice. But you took that choice away from me.”
A Shot at Normal Page 3