I grew up in a small town, so I was never afraid of playing outside, even alone. Once I had a child, I felt comfortable with her playing outside as well. Our lawn was partially fenced and opened into a small expanse of woods. Sammy was a smart, independent 5-year-old, and knew not to stray too far. Maybe it was wrong, but I let her play in the backyard alone. I checked on her frequently, and there had never been a problem. It was a sunny Saturday, warm for Spring, and she asked to go out just as soon as she was done with breakfast. As a freelance artist, I had a lot to do, and welcomed a break. She bounded upstairs to get dressed.
She played on the porch for a bit, and each time I checked out the window, her Barbies and toy dog and cat were having deep conversations about their favorite desserts. Once the dew was dry, I saw she had scampered farther out to her swing set, and seemed content to lean back, fly high, and look at the clouds.
I admit I got a little lost in my sketch, and it was at least half an hour before I checked again. I stopped quickly, nearly tripping on the threshold of the back door, when I saw her making her way slowly from the nearest tree line, toward where I stood. My mouth wasn’t hanging open. It was sealed shut.
She was dragging something that I thought at first was a small dead deer, but as she drew closer it was more the size and shape of an emaciated chimp. It was obviously an effort for her, progressing forward with slow lurching steps, as long yellow claws dragged a jagged track in the dirt patches. She was talking to it, like you talk to a baby. My brain tried and failed to tie a name to the thing. Its patchy fur covered red raw skin that looked burned in places. Its jaw was ajar and nearly torn off at one side. I could see the parts of many creatures, like a nightmarish stew concocted in animal hell. This monkey-cat-deer-dog-possum appeared to be dead, and I held back a scream to see my sweet girl touching it. To say rooted to the spot seems cliché, until it happens to you. She stopped when she looked up and saw me. I realized then that she had taken the big cartoon Band-Aid off her thumb, cut two days before while playing, and had stuck the garish pink and yellow bandage onto the horrible fur of the dead thing.
“Kitty has a boo-boo, Mommy. You make it all better like you do for me?”
I could see tears in her pretty green eyes. Then she reached down and – oh God –planted a kiss on its head. Its raw, red, diseased head. I tried to scream and not scream, a small sound escaping my throat. “You be all better soon silly,” she said, patting its back. Was that movement I started to see, a small twitch of its leg, eyes rolling behind swollen lids?
I did move then, fast and much too forcefully. I was scared, deeply frightened, and I scared Sammy too I’m sure. I was always gentle, quiet, but not now.
I grabbed her free hand, pulling her quickly, stumbling backwards as the thing moved again. We fell into the house, and I slammed the door with my foot, and lay clutching her with tears running down my face. Sammy began to cry too, and asked questions through her tears, sobbing out the whys of the situation. I couldn’t answer right away.
When I felt a bit less unsteady, I got up and locked the door, peeking out the window, then went to the front of the house and closed and locked that door. I took her straight upstairs, into a bath, and scrubbed until she was pink. I kept thinking of her touching that thing, and what could have happened. I made her rinse her mouth with medicinal mouthwash, which she hated. She would start to cry a little again, then stop, then start again. I soothed her as best I could.
As we sat down to a lunch I couldn’t eat, I tried to give her some excuses that I thought she would believe. “That kitty was sick, and you could get sick from it. That kitty was really a mean one and would bite”, on and on, inanely babbling. She seemed to buy it and didn’t ask to go out again that day. I kept a close eye on her, and on the windows. It hasn’t come back, not yet.
What she doesn’t know is what I saw when I looked out that window after I locked the door. The strange, raw creature, looking back at me with uneven eyes, opening its mouth in a silent hiss, before dragging its broken body back toward the woods. My daughter will never play outside alone again.