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Later on, I go to the Browns’ and ask to use their computer. I bring some home-made cookies that I had in the freezer. They were saved for the girls’ lunches, but I don’t ever go empty-handed to ask for anything. We’re not charity cases. And this is research.
• • • •
The summer after the volcano, when the scientific reports of weird chemicals in the ash first came out, the theories started.
Some people said the volcano was a conspiracy, that it had been deliberately set off by white nations to poison the Asians. But nobody who wasn’t already dead from the explosion seemed to be dying of any poison, and anyway how can you deliberately set off a volcano?
Some people said that the volcano was the start of the End Times, and pretty soon the Four Horsemen were going to come riding through, and then Armageddon and the New Earth. But no horsemen appeared.
Some people said that the weird chemicals didn’t come from Earth, so they must’ve been put deep inside by aliens. I wouldn’t of paid no more attention to this idea than to the others, except it was on the news that some scientists agreed that the chemicals weren’t like any we had on Earth. They were brand new here. They blew all over the world and got into everything. Everybody breathed them in. They were found in breast milk.
• • • •
The kindergarten class is going on a field trip to Pumpkin Patch Farm, and I’m one of the room mothers going with them. I never done this before. It means taking the day off from work without pay, and riding on a school bus, and seeing the other two room mothers in their bright ski jackets and leather boots give me sideways glances, but I go. I have to look at a whole bunch of kids Carrie’s age, not just her and the twins.
I know I’m not some detective like in the mysteries from the BookMobile, but I
have
to do this.
The kids are excited. They each get a sip of cider from a tiny paper cup, see horses and kittens in the barn, and pick out a pumpkin to take home. The rule is that the pumpkin is supposed to be small enough for the child to carry by himself, but that don’t always work out. Two little boys want the same pumpkin, and I watch them fight over it, pushing and hitting until Ms. Steffens breaks it up. On the bus two girls get into a tussle over who gets to sit next to who. Carrie and four others, two boys and two girls, walk in a little group around the pumpkin field, discussing the choices like they was choosing diamonds, and helping each other pick up and carry their pumpkins to the bus.
My theory is shot to hell. Some of these kindergartners are passive and some aren’t.
On the bus one pumpkin rolls off the seat and smashes, and we get wailing and accusations.
• • • •
The volcano was supposed to blow up 10,000 years ago. That’s what some scientists are saying now, from tracing all the things that go on under the Earth’s crust. Only something shifted unexpectedly next to something else, and the volcano got delayed.
I found that out on the Browns’ computer, along with a lot of other stuff I never knew. Big explosions like this happened before. One was in 1816, but even bigger ones happened thousands and even millions of years ago.
• • • •
The weekend after Halloween is Sophie’s birthday. I almost cancel her party because on Halloween, against my orders, she took off with her friends to trick-and-treat at houses without me, where anybody could of given her apples with razor blades in them or poisoned candy. They didn’t, but I had to go over each one of the million pieces of candy she brought home, and then I made her give some to Carrie, who only went to three houses with me beside her.
“But it’s my birthday party!” Sophie rages, and I give in because it isn’t much of a party anyway, only four girls coming over for pizza and cake. I can’t afford more than that, and even the pizza is a stretch.
The girls bring presents. Two are expensive—who gives a ten-year-old a cashmere sweater? Two are cheap gimcracks, and I see that these two girls are embarrassed. After that, the party feels a little strained, and soon the girls all leave. Sophie, scowling, goes to her room, where Carrie had stayed throughout the whole thing.
I clean up, sorry that Sophie is disappointed in her party. But I’m not thinking about Sophie, or about the gifts, as much as about the girls. Two of them, one with a cheap present and one with the cashmere sweater, looked like teenagers. Already. They had on bras, the straps visible, and their faces were slimmer and sharper. The other two looked like Sophie: little girls still. But Sophie told me that they’re all in her fourth-grade class. Did some get held back a year? They didn’t sound any dumber than the others. (Most of the party conversation was pretty dumb.) I try to remember when I was in the fourth grade. I started out nine years old and then turned ten in November, like Sophie, and some of my friends didn’t get their birthdays until spring…
Older. Two of those girls were maybe six months older than the others. So—
Through the bedroom door, Carrie calls out something.
I race to the door, but something stops me. Carrie didn’t sound hurt or mad. I pick up a dirty glass from the party (“Just milk?” the cashmere-sweater girl said, making a face. “No Coke?”) and hold it between my ear and the closed door.
Sophie says, “You’re a baby and a wimp and nobody likes you!”
Carrie says something I don’t catch.
“It is so true! Kezia told me yesterday that she only pretends to like you so she can play with your toys! She really hates you!”
Carrie starts to cry.
“Stop that! Stop it right now, you little bitch!”
Whap
.
I shove open the door just as Sophie cries, “I’m sorry, Carrie! I didn’t mean to!” By the time I pick up Carrie, Sophie is crying, too. I look at her face and I know she means it—she is sorry she tormented Carrie. She don’t know why she did it.
But I do.
• • • •
Punctuated equilibrium. Say that ten times. It’s when evolution takes a big skip forward. It’s on Wikipedia. There’s a long, long time when human beings don’t change much, and then all at once something happens—scientists say they don’t know what—and big changes happen. Ten million years ago, or twenty million depending on who you look up, there was a sudden bunch of big changes in human genes. Forty thousand years ago, all at once and mostly all over the world, cavemen started making bone tools and painted beads and drawings on cave walls. Nobody knows why. Something affected their brains.
Ten thousand years ago, when our volcano should of blown up, people invented farming and started living in cities. Then, instead of just having little skirmishes between roving bands of hunter-gatherers, they geared up for real wars. All the wars in the Bible started, and the wars never stopped, right up until where we are now. All the wars that never would of happened if human brains weren’t so violent and angry.
• • • •
I cuddle Carrie, who don’t cry as long as Sophie does. Carrie, my baby, one of the oldest fetuses affected by whatever stuff the volcano threw into her fetus brain. Most of the others aren’t even in school yet. Kids don’t get studied much until they’re in school.
But two days ago I was talking on my work break with Lisa Hanreddy. She told me she went to a pre-school parent-teacher conference for her son Brandon. Lisa said he’s doing good except in counting, but his teacher also praised him for being nice. “She said he’s the only boy in the class that doesn’t take toys away from other kids or hit them,” Lisa told me, “and my heart sank. He’s go
Yes. But it isn’t the bullies that Lisa should worry about. That I should worry about, for Carrie. You can find the bad guys and stop them—some of the time anyway.