Matt gagged harder.
“What?” she screamed. “What is it?”
Despite the smell, I forced myself to bend over to try to shut the bag before the disgusting fluids ran out onto the carpet.
Matt’s voice croaked as he gagged again, but he managed to say, “We think it’s a foot.”
There was absolutely no doubt that it was a foot. One might debate the age and the sex of the previous owner, but to doubt the nature of the body part was silly. We had found a severed foot, marinated in blood and brown goo, in a plastic bag. Matt had said “we think” because that was easier than being definitive. To admit that we knew for sure what it was, we had to admit the terrible circumstances that must have led to it being in a plastic bag.
“Get rid of it,” my mom yelled.
“Mom, we have to call the police.”
“GETRIDOFIT!” she screamed in one ragged burst of sound.
I sealed the top again. We used the same kind of bags sometimes when we picked strawberries and my mom wanted to freeze a bunch. The smell was already in the air though. Sealing the bag didn’t magically make it go away.
“Get. It. OUTOFHERE!”
I backed up with the bag pinched between my fingers. I almost dropped the thing again, but recovered and took it to the bathroom where I gently lowered it into the sink. The bone protruding from the skin and muscle didn’t look like it had been broken. It looked cut.
My mom’s adrenaline must have overpowered the wine and pills. She pounded into the hall while wrapping herself in her robe.
“Explain that thing,” she said. Her accusing finger pointed at me, not the bag.
“We found it in one of those cans behind the neighbor’s house. Remember how I said that he wasn’t using those cans for trash? How he uses plastic ones for the trash? We looked in the metal ones, and this was there. He has eight cans now. There’s probably more in them.”
“Why would you… What is it doing here? In my house?”
“Because we have to call the cops. They need evidence,” I said.
This time, she didn’t yell. She didn’t point or scream. Her voice sounded low and calm. With my mom, that’s when you really had to worry. Her deepest anger didn’t glow red, it turned absolutely black, absorbing heat and light like a black hole.
“Go to your room.”
(Life is unfair.)
Life is unfair.
Our monumental discovery was treated like a terrible, shameful secret.
My mother plowed us into my room and shut the door. A minute later, she pulled us out and took us into the kitchen. The bathroom door was shut. Some of the smell had leaked into the hall. She put my hands under scalding water and scrubbed my fingers for me until I was squirming and pulling, trying to get away. To my mortification, she did the same thing to poor Matt. He didn’t complain, but his face was wrinkled up like he could still smell the awful bag.
Then, with our hands washed and dried, we were banished to my room again.
Even with my head stuck out the window, I couldn’t see the front of the house. Matt saw the headlights sweep across the garage door.
“Somebody is here,” he said. He pressed his ear against the door and I did too. My mother’s voice came in rapid bursts. The police were calm and condescending. I could imagine the smug look on her face when she opened the bathroom door. After that, the police didn’t sound so calm.
Waiting was pure torture.
I wanted to open the door so badly.
“He’s going to know it was us,” I whispered to Matt.
Matt shook his head.
“Yeah. He’s gonna. When the cops go over there and look in the cans, who is he going to think turned him in?”
“So what?” Matt asked. “He’ll be in jail.”
“That’s not how it works though. Innocent until proven guilty, you know? They have to have a trial and that takes months or years. Until then, he’s going to be after us. He’ll get revenge on us for ratting him out.”
“You watch too much TV,” Matt said. I could tell he was nervous too. Then I really started to get scared. Usually, I was the alarmist and he was the one to tell me to settle down. When he was nervous, bad stuff was coming.
The door opened and we both screamed.
The officer pointed to Matt and then curled his finger, telling Matt to go along. I had to go to the bathroom really bad at that point, but what was I going to do? The bathroom was probably roped off as a crime scene. Besides, I hadn’t been granted permission to leave. I figured it all out in a flash—the cops were going to separate us, get us to turn on each other, and then pin a crime on one of us. The first one to confess would probably get off light.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I opened my window and let the fall wind roll in. It was the only way I could stop the feeling that I was about to suffocate. If they had made me wait another couple of minutes, I might have run for it. I pictured it as I stood there, drinking in the chilly air. I pictured slipping through the window, dropping to the ground, and sneaking between the police cars that were stacked in the driveway. I could be off and hitchhiking before they even raided the neighbor’s house. I would be like the Incredible Hulk, wandering from place to place, always in fear that someone would learn my secret.
I was about to try it when the door opened.
Matt came in, head down and shuffling. They called me three times before I eased my grip on the windowsill and went with them.
The questioning felt like it took hours. In retrospect, they were being incredibly kind and gentle, asking what happened without
