Bird box

“Do not ask questions that have nothing to do with the river. You’ll be sitting up front,” she says, tapping the Boy. Then she taps the Girl. “And you’ll be sitting in the back. When we get to the boat, I’ll guide you to those places. I’ll be in the middle, rowing. I don’t want you two talking across the boat to one another unless it’s about something you hear in the woods. Or the river. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“We are not stopping for any reason. Not until we get to where we’re going. I’ll let you know when that is. If you get hungry, eat from this pouch.”

Malorie brings the pouch to the back of their small hands.

“Don’t fall asleep. Do not fall asleep. I need your ears more now today than I’ve ever needed them.”

“Will we bring the microphones?” the Girl asks.

“No.”

As Malorie speaks, she looks from one blindfolded face to the other.

“When we leave this house, we’ll hold hands and walk along the path to the well. We’ll go through the small clearing in the woods behind our house. The path to the river is overgrown. We may have to drop hands for a step, and if we do, I want you both to hold on to my coat or each other’s. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Do they sound scared?

“Listen to me. We’re going somewhere neither of you has ever been. We’re going farther from the house than you’ve gone before. There are things out there that will hurt you, that will hurt Mommy, if you do not listen to me, now, this morning.”

The children are silent.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Malorie has trained them well.

“All right,” she says, her voice revealing a hint of hysteria. “We’re going. We’re going right now. We’re going.”

She presses their heads against her forehead.

Then she takes each child by the hand. They cross the house quickly. In the kitchen, Malorie, trembling, wipes her eyes and pulls her own blindfold from her pocket. She ties it tight around her head and dark long hair. She pauses, her hand on the doorknob, the door that opens to the path she has taken for countless buckets of water.

She is about to leave the house behind. The reality of this moment overwhelms her.

When she opens the door, the cool air rushes in and Malorie steps forward, her mind’s eye blurry with terror and scenarios too ghastly to speak of in front of the children. She stammers as she speaks, nearly yelling as she does.

“Hold my hands. Both of you.”

The Boy takes Malorie’s left hand. The Girl slips her tiny fingers into her right.

Blindfolded, they step from the house.

The well is twenty yards away. Small pieces of wood, once part of picture frames, outline the path, placed there for direction. Both children have touched the wood with the tip of their shoes countless times. Malorie once told them that the water in the well was the only medicine they’d ever need. Because of this, Malorie knows, the children have always respected the well. They never complained about fetching water with her.

At the well now, the ground is bumpy beneath their feet. It feels unnatural, soft.

“Here’s the clearing,” Malorie calls.

She leads the children carefully. A second path begins ten yards from the well. The entrance to this path is narrow, and it splits the woods. The river is less than a hundred yards from here. At the woods, Malorie momentarily lets go of the children’s hands so she can feel for the scant entry.

“Hold on to my coat!”

She feels along the branches until she finds a tank top, tied to a tree at the path’s entrance. She tied it here herself more than three years ago.

The Boy grabs hold of her pocket and she senses the Girl take hold of his. Malorie calls to them as she walks, constantly asking them if they are holding on to one another. Tree branches poke her in the face. She does not cry out.

Soon, they arrive at the marker Malorie has stuck in the dirt. The splintered leg of a kitchen chair, stuck in the center of the path, there for her to trip on, to stumble over, to recognize.

She discovered the rowboat four years ago, docked only five houses from their own. It has been more than a month since she last checked on it, but she believes it is still there. Still, it’s difficult not to imagine the worst. What if someone else got to it first? Another woman, not unlike herself, living five houses in the other direction, using every day of four years to gather enough courage to flee. A woman who once stumbled down this same slippery bank and felt the same point of salvation, the pointed steel tip of the rowboat.

The air nips at the scratches on Malorie’s face. The children do not complain.

This is not childhood, Malorie thinks, leading them toward the river.

Then she hears it. Before reaching the dock, she hears the rowboat rocking in the water. She stops and checks the children’s blindfolds, tightening both. She leads them onto the wood planks.

Yes, she thinks, it’s still here. Just like the cars are still parked in the street outside their house. Just like the homes on the street are still empty.