When I jimmied the lock and tried to enter, I encountered the organic weight of a lifeless human body. She wasn’t large, but I didn’t know her condition and I was afraid of hurting her more, so it took me some time to open the door. The feral stench of shit and imminent decay pummeled my nose upon entry. It was the only thing alive in that room.
I spent two hours in a tomb with my mama.
I tried to call her from death to open a bathroom door.
So now I dream sometimes of an endless hallway of identical doors. I try to open them for some reason. Behind each is that awful slack weight of death. I try to scream in frustration but manage only a hoarse dreamcroak. I awake from that nightmare, cold with sweat, warm tears drying on my face, my jaw muscles sore from grinding my teeth.
I glance at my phone: 3:36 a.m. There won’t be any more sleep for a while. Not until my brain has temporarily purged itself of whatever poison causes this particular nightmare.
I put on a T-shirt and some pants and creep past my grandparents’ bedroom. Papaw’s CPAP machine hums behind his door. Punkin patters behind me. I sit in one of the rockers. Punkin curls up beside me, nose to tail, and immediately dozes off. The moonlight is so radiant it looks like daylight’s ghost. The cool and damp air is asleep, with no breeze, and smells like dew and the faint musk of skunk. It’s one of my favorite smell combinations. Delaney thinks if you could dilute down the smell of skunk by about a million, it would be the best-selling perfume on the planet. She thinks humans are secretly attracted to everything that repulses us.
I would miss her if she left. Terribly.
I would miss Mamaw and Papaw if I left. Terribly.
After I found my mama, the next memory I have is the police bringing me here, nearly catatonic. Papaw held me on his lap. I was too big for it but I fit somehow. He wept into my hair and I sobbed into his chest.
This porch, with them, is the only place in my life I’ve ever felt truly safe.
I try to envision not having this. My life is small and simple, but it’s a better one than I ever thought I’d have. I have what I love: my grandparents, the satisfaction of working with my hands to bring a lawn into perfect order, the rhythm of paddling my canoe. I’m not keen to trade it in for some vague promise of the unknown.
Then I envision Delaney, dressed in a plaid skirt and a white blouse, walking timidly up to the imposing wrought-iron gates of an ivy-covered school. Her thumbs are ragged and bleeding. The end of her ponytail is frayed like a busted rope from her worrying at it. No one tries to befriend her. They resent what comes so easily to her, what their family’s money couldn’t buy them.
She folds in on herself, looking for some refuge. Maybe she surrenders and returns, goes back to work at Dairy Queen. Doesn’t realize the potential of her great mind, at best. At worst, she follows her mama’s path and looks for things to numb the pain of seeing the world in a way no one else understands.
I think about the time Jaydon Barnett started a rumor that Delaney’s mama was pimping her out for drug money and he knew because his cousin had banged her. I found him in the school parking lot. Told him to apologize. He told me to stick it up my ass. Something in me flashed and went dark, the way a light bulb sometimes blows out in a bright burst when you turn it on.
I swung on Jaydon reflexively, as someone flinches from a flame. Caught him hard on the side of the head and dazed him, sending him staggering sideways. Before he could mount any punch-drunk counterassault, and before a crowd could even form, I’d thrown him down and rained blows on his face, blacking his eyes and bloodying his nose.
I was a good fighter. I was strong from working, and I had honed my skills in elementary school, where I took a lot of shit. I often showed up for school unbathed, in filthy clothes or clothes washed haphazardly in a sink with whatever we had at hand—dish soap sometimes. I had bad home haircuts with clippers. Strange bruises. I would fall asleep in class. I learned to take only the beatings I couldn’t prevent.
The principal told me I could avoid a longer suspension if I apologized. I refused. Jaydon was popular and I wasn’t, even before our fight. My social standing sank even lower as a result.
I couldn’t say exactly when Delaney became the sort of friend for whom I’d go to battle. It just happened.
Inside, I hear Papaw hacking and struggling for breath. If I leave, what will be left of him when I get back? Every inhalation of his is like the tick of a clock counting down. That I got to experience a seminormal childhood for the last few years, with something like parents, seems like enough good fortune for one lifetime. It feels greedy to desire more.
I thought the predawn tranquility would help me find some peace. But the quiet is just another clamor in my head, calling me in every direction I can’t choose between.
Lydia Blankenship: You’re listening to Morning Edition from NPR, National Public Radio. I’m Lydia Blankenship, special youth and culture correspondent to Morning Edition and, for today…special small-town Tennessee correspondent.
Earlier this week, Vanderbilt University microbiologist Dr. Bidisha Srinavasan announced the results of her six-month-long study into the antibiotic properties of a new strain of penicillin mold discovered in a cave outside of Sawyer, Tennessee. Her findings are astounding. It kills every known antibiotic-resistant “superbug,” and does so with a ferocity that makes it almost impossible for the bacteria to evolve to withstand it, at least for now. It’s a momentous discovery in the war against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which scientists are calling as important as the original discovery of penicillin.
But Dr. Srinavasan, whom we heard from yesterday, had help discovering the mold and its properties: a high school sophomore named Delaney Doyle from Sawyer, Tennessee. We have her on the line with us. Good morning, Delaney.
Delaney Doyle: Hi.
Lydia Blankenship: Now, many of our listeners might not have heard of Sawyer, Tennessee. Can you tell us where it is?
Delaney Doyle: Um. Yeah. It’s just east of Knoxville. Near the Smoky Mountains.
Lydia Blankenship: Let’s talk about this discovery. How did you come to find this mold?
Delaney Doyle: Well. Um. Sorry, I’m super nervous.
Lydia Blankenship: You’re doing great.
Delaney Doyle: So my friend Cash Pruitt and I like to go canoeing on the Pigeon River. And there are all these caves along the river, and I asked Cash if he could take me inside them, because I figured that one of the only natural threats to mold in a cave would be bacteria, so I thought it’s probably evolved to meet that threat. Cash’s grandfather used to be a volunteer firefighter and would rescue people from caves, and he had some gear that we used to explore. I guess Cash’s grandfather taught him a lot about caves and stuff. So we found the mold in one of the caves, growing on the wall. This was summer between ninth and tenth grade.