changed.
Josie:
Me: Sure, I could bring over a new one. No problem. I’ll bring over the baby wipes, too. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t worried about you. You know you haven’t said a single word since the bus…
Josie:
Me: Well, I’m here, if you need anything. Just say the word. Any word, actually…
Stuff like that.
Dessert was impossible to screw up: Popsicles.
“Niko,” Alex said, with his mouth dyed purple. “I’m going to take a survey of the utilities in the store tomorrow. Dean and I think we should clean up the Grocery section right away. We should be eating the fresh produce—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Brayden interrupted. “Jake is on it. He’s got a plan for all that.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, “tomorrow we’re going to break into teams and start getting this place in shape.”
Niko nodded at Alex. “Sounds like a good plan,” Niko said.
“We can help clean,” said little Henry. “Me and Caroline are good helpers.”
“I’m a good cleaner, too,” volunteered Max. “I’m good at mopping. I’ve mopped up stuff you wouldn’t believe if I told you!”
I could only imagine.
“Sure.” Jake nodded. “Tomorrow we clean up.”
The problem of toilets came up just after we all laid down in our sleeping bags for the night.
“Ulysses has to go pee,” Max said.
“How do you know?” Jake asked.
“He’s my friend. I understand him,” Max answered.
“Tell him to pee in the corner,” Jake mumbled. “That’s what I did.”
I couldn’t judge. I’d done the same.
“That’s unsanitary,” Alex said.
“He’s scared. He’s not going out there alone. And neither am I.”
“And I need to make,” Chloe added.
“Awesome,” Jake groaned.
This was a moment Astrid would have probably handled, but since she had gone AWOL, we had to figure it out.
Henry and Caroline started whispering to each other furiously. After a moment’s debate, Henry raised his hand.
Jake didn’t see him. But I did, so I said, “What is it, Henry?”
“Well, sometimes me and Caroline, like, if we’re going to a sleepover, we wear pull-ups. So since this was like a sleepover, we got some pull-ups.”
And he pulled out an opened package of size 6 pull-ups.
“So you think we should crap in a diaper?” Brayden asked.
Henry shrunk a bit.
Niko spoke up. “It’s not a bad idea. We could lay a pull-ups or a diaper on the ground and do what we need to do. Then we just close it up and put it in a trash bag. It could work.”
So that’s what we did.
The little kids put them on outright. They didn’t want to be getting up in the night, alone. I’m sure they didn’t even want to think about the bathrooms, given what had happened the last time they went there.
They just started wearing pull-ups.
A little bit of regression, anyone?
(The next day, Niko set up latrines for us in the baby stroller aisle. They were weird things made of a toilet seat on top of a heavy-duty plastic basin, the kind they use at construction sites, which was lined with a plastic bag. Every so often, the bag got knotted up and thrown in a plastic storage tub. Just so you know.)
Around ten, the lights in the store dimmed automatically. This made it feel like night. The sleeping bag didn’t do much cushioning against the hard floor. I made up my mind to drag over a lawn chair or something in the morning.
I ached and ached until I fell asleep.
I woke up to a little voice.
It was one of the kids sleep-talking. I couldn’t tell which kid.
It was a one-word conversation.
One word repeated over and over, with different intonations, with different meanings.
The word was
Pleading, entreating. Calling, demanding. Beseeching, begging.
I thought maybe I was dreaming until Brayden said, “Shut up. SHUT UP!”
And the calls for mommy stopped.
DAY 3
CHAPTER NINE
AIR HORN
The next morning the little kids woke up first. They then tried to wake Jake up, but he was deep in his snores, so they got me up. Niko was already up and probably off doing something industrious.
Alex was sleeping, too. I didn’t want to wake him up.
So it was up to me to get breakfast.
I really, really did not want to become the cook of this operation, but that’s what seemed to be happening.
I was beating eggs by hand when Batiste came over.
“Why don’t you do that in a blender?” he asked.
“We don’t have one,” I answered. “That’s part of what’s so hard about cooking here. I only have these two industrial ovens and this big microwave.”
“Why don’t you just get one?” Batiste said, looking at me with his head cocked to the side like a little poodle.
I guess I looked as slow as I felt because he added, “From the shelves.”
I started to laugh. We had been in the store for three days and it had not occurred to me that we had every single appliance right here. Just two aisles over.
“Of course,” I said. “You want to help me?”
“Sure!” he said.
“Let’s go.”
Batiste and I outfitted the kitchen with the aforementioned blender, an electric griddle, a family-size George Foreman grill, a six-slice toaster, a toaster oven, an electric teakettle, a rice maker, a KitchenAid mixer, and every kind of pan, mixing bowl, whisk, spatula, cheese grater. Basically one of everything from the Kitchen aisle.
While we “shopped,” Batiste told me about his parents and his church group and their preacher Reverend Grand and his dog, Blackie.
It made me feel like he was starting to recover from his experience with Astrid.
When we got back with all the supplies, the kids helped us unpack everything and they were pretty content
