Hungry

Alter loved giant plastic turkeys. He always said it in plural because he was certain that someone other than his grandmother would get one out on their front lawn for Thanksgiving.1

His mother thought it was one more sign that something was wrong with him.2

“Oh come on, so the kid loves turkeys. So he adores Thanksgiving,” was his father’s exasperated response.3

“Most kids like Christmas. Want to go out looking at Christmas lights, not giant turkeys. And he doesn’t even like to eat! Just picks at his food—I swear Roman, that boy wants to starve himself. He’s like—anorexic or something.”4

“Oh for the love of—he’s five, Jacoba!” The shouting startled Alter’s gaze from the car window.5

Roman continued, “Kids have quirks. It’s what makes them kids. He’ll grow out of it.”6

Alter’s gaze turned back to the window, straining to peer over the car door and out the window. The houses marched past him. They rounded a corner and Alter’s bright eyes widened with excitement, “Mommy, Mommy!” he cried. “It’s the turkey!! It’s Grandma’s house!!”7

“Yes, I know,” Jacoba responded, her voice like the dry sound of aged paper.8

“It is the turkey!” his father said, his excitement overcompensation for his wife’s attitude. His expression angrily admonished her.9

An open smile stretched across Alter’s face; his gaze enraptured by the turkey that seemed to approach him as they drove closer.10

“And what’s the turkey’s name, Alter?” his father asked, smiling at his child’s exuberance.11

“Turkey,” Alter said confidently.12

“What a perfect name!” His father laughed, and Alter bent over in giggles, though the reason for the laughter was beyond him.13

The moment that the car crunched into the loose graveled driveway, and Alter was out, his chubby, short legs carried him to the giant turkey standing silently in the yard, its unseeing gaze fixed straight ahead. Alter smiled up at it, and patted his cool, slightly coarse side. “Hey there turkey,” he said, like it was his old friend. He leaned in closer, and though he wasn’t quite tall enough to reach the turkey’s head, he whispered to it like he was telling it a secret. “Are you going to die tonight?”14

His mother called him over; he patted the turkey one last time before trotting to the front door where they stood waiting.15

Jacoba’s mother opened the door, and immediately held out her arms for Alter. “Grandma!” Alter exclaimed, rushing into them. She pulled him up into a hug. “My little grandson,” she said, holding him close, and kissing his temple. “I don’t need any Thanksgiving turkey. I could just eat you up!”16

“Really?” Alter asked, his eyes wide.17

“No, not really,” she told him. “But you’re cute enough for it.”18

“Oh.” The word was short and flat.19

“Guess what?” His grandmother continued with renewed excitement.20

“What?” Alter asked, matching that emotion.21

“Adam’s here.”22

If his grin could have grown wider, it would have. He squirmed out of his grandmother’s arms and ran inside, almost colliding with his five year-old cousin as he gave him a hug.23

His aunt and uncle sat on the couch nearby. When his aunt saw him, she smiled. “Be gentle with Adam,” she told him kindly. He nodded.24

“When do we carve the turkey?” Alter asked her.25

“Not for a few hours now. Why? Are you hungry?”26

Alter shook his head, getting on his knees to play with the toy cars Adam had scattered on the floor. “I just want to see the turkey carved.”27

Jacoba gave Roman a pointed look. He mirrored her expression. “C’mon, Jacoba. He’s a little kid. Everything fascinates him.”28

Jacoba whispered back to Roman, “You don’t think his fascinations with—with—you don’t think they’re weird? A five-year-old boy shouldn’t think the way he thinks.”29

Roman didn’t respond. Uncomfortable with standing, they stiffly sat on chairs on opposing sides of the room, their gaze averted from one another. Jacoba looked down at her son, and he met her gaze, smiling. He dropped the car that was in his hand. “Mommy, tell me the story of my name.”30

She laughed tensely. “Sweetie, now is not the time for that. Besides, you know that story already. I’ve told you before.”31

“I know. But I want to hear it again.”32

Trying to be helpful, his aunt gestured him over to her and pulled him up into her lap. “Let me tell you the story, okay?”33

“Esther—“34

But Alter nodded silently, his expression serious, bordering on reverence, and Esther hugged him close, whispering the story in his ear.35

“So, you were a very sick little baby. And the doctor’s didn’t think you’d make it. But your mama, she wasn’t ready to give up on you yet. So she named you Alter, hoping that the Angel of Death wouldn’t choose you.”36

“Why?” Alter asked.37

“It means ‘other one’. It’s to confuse the Angel, so that he would take someone else away instead of you.”38

“He didn’t want me?”39

“No, no, Alter,” she laughed, hugging him. “We just wanted you. We wanted you so much.”40

Alter’s gaze was far away, lost in the story. Esther continued. “So you lived. You stayed right with us. The doctors were so surprised.”41

“I remember,” Alter said, his voice faint.42

“You don’t remember, sweetie,” his mother told him. “You were just a baby.”43

“I remember,” Alter insisted.44

Jacoba shook her head tiredly and didn’t respond. Adam, bored with his cars, left them scattered on the floor and flitted outside. Alter slid from his aunt’s lap, frustrated that his mother never believed him. He did remember. He remembered…people and shapes, strange murmurings, and something cold, but not cold. Like a wind that’s inside you and blowing out. Remembered its departure. And the need for its return.45

Outside, he killed Adam, his fingers twisted in the shape of a gun, bullets in the form of his voice. He ran toward a bush, ducking behind a plant to hide from his enemy’s bullets. Adam had found something new to distract him, though, and Alter waited, his legs aching, for the attack that would never come.46

Motion in the bushes. He cocked his head in different ways, trying to see where it was, and what it was. A rat. Alter grinned and picked it up before it could escape. He held it in his hands, feeling the pulsations of its breath and heartbeat and fear. His small hands stroked its fragile body, feeling as though at any moment he could crush it. Alter gazed toward the stone wall that surrounded the background. It was a few feet from him. Transferring the rat to one hand, his dominate hand, he threw it as hard as he could, satisfied at the slapping sound of skin against the hard material. It fell to the ground, still alive, managing to gather itself up on its legs, struggling as if it had aged, and attempted to get away.47

“No!” cried Alter, running toward it and scooping up the injured rodent up. Now closer to the wall, he threw it again, harder, and continued this a trance-like rhythm, until it was cold with slick blood. When he was certain it was dead, he left it on the ground and looked upward. Wasn’t that the typical place that the Angel would descend from? The smallest breeze brushed his face; he looked around but saw nothing. Was that it? Or was it just the wind? He sat next to the rat. Maybe if he was right up next to it, if he was a good boy, sitting quietly, if he looked real cute, then maybe….48

He waited as long as a little boy could wait before tears of loss and frustration welled in his eyes. He wasn’t coming. He never came. Not for him. Alter leaned his head against the cold stone of the wall, and let the tears fall, beating his bloody fists against his forehead. He hit his head against the wall, envisioning the way the rat died. He hit his head again. Again. Over and over, matching the rhythm he produced with the rat, thinking, “Come here,” “Come here” to its beat.49

At the sound of his crying, his mother rushed out of the house and screamed, pulling him from the wall and into her arms. Alter sobbed into her shoulder, heartbroken.50

“You’re bleeding,” she practically shouted, feeling his head to locate the origin of the wound. Alter shook his head as she picked him up and brought him inside.51

“N—no Mommy.” The tears made it difficult to speak. “That was the rat’s.”52

His mother took him to the tub, and with a blank expression, his mother cleaned him. A bump was on the back of his head, but none of the blood had been his own. No one spoke of this, but let it slip into the back of the mind with a forced forgetfulness.53

The conversation was light when they all sat down for Thanksgiving dinner. Rain had begun to fall and its sound drowned out the outside world. Alter crowded next to his father who held the knife to carve the turkey. Roman smiled down at him. “Hungry?” he asked.54

Alter shook his head. “Is that turkey?” he inquired.55

“Yup,” his father told him. Then, realizing what his son might be thinking, hastily spoke, “Oh, but it’s not Turkey. Not the turkey outside.”56

“It’s not Turkey?” Alter asked, disappointment draped over his face.57

“Alter, honey, come sit down and eat,” his mother called in an attempt to distract him.58

“I’m not hungry,” he whined, still staring as his father dug the knife into the flesh of the turkey.59

“Alter.” There was a warning in her voice that he heeded. He obediently sat down next to her, but his eyes were glassy and expressionless as he looked down at his food.60

“Eat.” A tired command.61

Alter moved the food around. “I don’t want to.”62

“If you don’t eat, you’ll starve! That’s what you want isn’t it?”63

Alter was silent; his gaze still concentrated on his food.64

“Jacoba!” Roman spewed the name at her angrily.65

She pulled back from the table, striding toward the bedrooms, but Roman caught her and cut off her path.66

“Not here,” she flung the words at him.67

“You’re the one who’s making it be here, Jacoba. Now can’t we just enjoy the holiday without any of this?”68

“A normal kid doesn’t hit his head against the wall,” she insisted to him. “A normal kid doesn’t kill a rat.”69

“I told you, no kid is normal. It’s a phase. Stop making such a big deal out of it!”70

“A normal kid doesn’t starve himself,” she continued.71

“Hey, if you hadn’t have told him that not eating would starve him to death, he wouldn’t be doing it!” Roman’s eyes widened with what he had just said. He threw his hands up in front of his chest, as if attempting to stop the world with his gesture. “Now you’re making me crazy,” he informed his wife angrily, tramping toward the door.72

“Daddy? Where are you going?” Alter asked from the table.73

“Out for a drive.”74

Alter ran from the table and to his father, excited. “I want to go? Can I?”75

“You need to stay and eat,” his mother told him.76

“Yes, you can come,” Roman said forcefully.77

“Can Adam come too?”78

“Awi woono goo!” Adam spoke around the mouthful of food.79

“I think Adam’s parents would want him to stay. But c’mon. Let’s go.”80

Outside, the rain blurred their vision, and they rushed to the car to escape its downfall. “Can you drown in the rain?” Alter asked, once they were settled in the car. He touched his fingers to the drops that hit the window.81

“I don’t think so,” his father said distractedly as he pulled from the driveway.82

Alter closed his eyes against the bright lights of the road that refracted off the raindrops, as he settled into the seat comfortably. His head ached with hunger, and he shut his eyes tightly, hoping sleep would ward off the pain.83

He opened them again when the world felt off balance; everything was normal and yet not normal. And then he felt as if something had thrown him; the seatbelt dug its unyielding embrace into his stomach, and his head hit something harder than the wall. He waited for the familiar cold, and despite the pain, he sucked in his breath with excitement when it passed him. Alter smiled as he breathed it in and then collapsed against the seat.84

“It doesn’t make sense,” Jacoba said.85

“Would you want it the other way?” her mother’s voice was clipped with pain.86

“No—I just don’t—I—he should be dead. It stuns the doctors that he’s alive.”87

“Just like it stunned the doctors when he was a baby.”88

“Why Roman? Why Roman and not Alter?” Jacoba’s voice was flat. Numb.89

“Who knows why one is picked and one isn’t? But we shouldn’t talk about this in here.”90

Alter heard their voices, his mind easing into wakefulness, his thoughts confused. The Angel of Death had been there. He knew it. And yet…he was still here. Disappointment lodged in his throat.91

“Death?” he managed to say past the emotion, unable to form his full thought.92

His mother took a slow breath, assuming Alter had overheard their conversation. She closed her eyes for strength, and then replied, “Yes. Um…your father, sweetie…” she smoothed back his hair, trying to find a way to finish.93

Alter threw his scuffed, scrapped hands over his face. “Not—not—“ was the only word he could produce past his sobs.94

“Oh sweetie,” his mother said, but there was still a flatness to her voice. She moved her head toward her mother and muttered, “Well, at least we know he’s capable of emotion.”95

“Why?” he called to the ceiling, his voice a whisper through his hands. He threw them off of his face, but his voice remained quiet. “Why Daddy? It was s’posed to be me. I was never s’posed to live. Why don’t you want me?” He took in a noisy breath through his tears.96

Jacoba gripped the railing of the bed, and burst out in a harsh whisper, “What are you even talking about, you psycho little kid? There is no Angel of Death, okay? It’s fake—it’s made up. So just shut up!”97

Alter’s eyes were still on the ceiling. “Who was the kid the Angel took instead of me?”98

“What?” Jacoba’s hands were twisting around the cold metal.99

“Who was the kid the Angel took instead of me?”100

“I don’t know. I told you, it’s all fake. There’s no such thing.” She wrenched her hands from the railing; they trembled now that they were gripping nothing, and stepping a few feet back, she sat shakily down on the chair.101

“Next thing he’s going to tell me is that he needs to live the life of the kid who died in his place,” she muttered, a bitter laugh escaping breathily from her.102

Alter closed his eyes with her words and said nothing.