17.

Audrey gummed her first ball of Play-Doh under big sister McK-enna’s supervision. It was purple. McKenna didn’t try to stop her as she stuffed it into her mouth. Audrey was delighted, squealing. The Play-Doh softened, and baby Audrey drooled some of it onto the carpet. She swallowed the rest. Her gums turned the color of an eggplant. McKenna saw the joy it brought Audrey and began sliding pea-sized bites between Audrey’s lips when no one else was around.

Their mother had given instructions on this exact topic. She’d sat down with McKenna and Toby after Audrey was born and said, “Babies like to put things in their mouths. That’s how they discover the world. But she shouldn’t eat things that aren’t food. She could choke. You need to be big for Momma and tell me if you ever see her putting something bad in her mouth.”

At eight months, Audrey was crawling with confidence, a military-style dragging of her lower body, using her forearms. She investigated all corners, her yawning hole leading the way. Nothing bad in her mouth nothing bad in her mouth. This phrase spun like the hamster’s wheel in McKenna’s head.

Audrey grabs one of Murray’s mechanical pencils: “No, Audrey.”

Audrey grabs a candle: “Yucky, Audrey.”

An Army man: “Not for babies, Audrey.”

A spool of thread: “No, Audrey.”

She would feed Audrey a couple of nibbles of Play-Doh to tide her over. Then the phrase returned: Nothing bad in her mouth nothing bad in her mouth.

By the time Audrey was one year old, McKenna was tired of saying “no.” Audrey had been eating Play-Doh for months with no ill effects. One afternoon, McKenna found her baby sister on the floor of McKenna and Toby’s room. Audrey’s hair was a mass of tight yellow coils that reached her shoulders. Her oral cavity was packed with black goo that had once been a Crayola. Rather than prying open her jaws, reaching in to pull out the foreign material, calling for help, watching Audrey’s face collapse into a confused jumble of sadness and betrayal, hearing the paroxysm of wailing that blamed McKenna and begged her for a return to pleasure—rather than performing any of these actions, McKenna decided to sit on the carpet and see what happened.

Audrey swallowed the goo. Then she crawled to a nearby book (one of the Choo-Choo Charlie series, if memory serves—which it does, again and again) and tried to eat a page. McKenna wrapped her arms around Audrey’s gut and repositioned her so she faced the open door. Audrey crawled out of the room, slapping her hands on the wooden floor, joyous, wanting McKenna to chase. She did.

The rest of the day, McKenna waited anxiously, expecting her sister to die. Bites of Play-Doh were one thing, but a crayon, paper and all, was frightening. And what awful timing. Dad was almost finished with the top secret feet that he never discussed but that he spent every night in the basement perfecting, the new feet for Audrey, an entire year’s labor, an entire year of neglecting his twins. This would be the worst time for Audrey to die, before she could even try the feet, before she could walk upright and make Daddy smile. McKenna’s stomach kicked like an angry kangaroo. She watched Audrey crawl around the house. She held Audrey’s hands and helped her do a wobbly stump-walk into the living room.

After six hours passed and Audrey continued to breathe, McKenna decided that she wouldn’t die. No, she would become a vegetable. McKenna had seen a TV movie titled Who’s Killing the Stuntmen? in which a mustachioed guy with a gentle demeanor and seaweed-green eyes not unlike McKenna’s, jumped from the top of a skyscraper. But somebody had tampered with his air cushion. It didn’t properly break his fall. The stuntman became a “vegetable” in a hospital bed. His face was expressionless. Tubes snaked out of his arms and throat. His wife, despondent, held his hand. She talked to him, but he wasn’t there.

A person could be alive in body while dead in mind—a hor-rific revelation. During McKenna’s intense mental probing of the subject, she could think of no reason that eating a crayon couldn’t also turn a person—especially a baby, so vulnerable—into a pale, lifeless thing that only stared, blinked, and breathed.

Four hours later, Audrey lay asleep in her crib. Misty scuffled into the living room to watch Dallas, easing into the recliner without a word about Audrey’s black gums. Hadn’t she noticed? Did she even care? McKenna was finally able to relax . . . sort of.

From that day on, she spent a portion of her allowance at the corner drug store. Packs of forty-eight crayons cost $1.99. When she caught a moment alone with Audrey, McKenna would pull one from her sock and hand it to her sister, her stomach aching with nerves and another sensation, unfamiliar but not unpleasant, located in the same area of her gut. Audrey’s hand, attached to a wild, jerky arm, reached for the crayon. Her brow scrunched in concentration. When at last the waxy stick was in her grip, she would “AHHHH AHHHH,” showing all five of her teeth and punching herself in the legs with excitement. McKenna wanted to know what Audrey was experiencing, so she once took a few nibbles. It tasted similar to the overcooked carrots Misty served. McKenna doubted there was any difference in color-flavor, but for some reason, Audrey had an affinity for black. McKenna became skilled at cleaning the evidence during baths, and Audrey never complained about the soap in her mouth.