Gwendy's Button Box

11

Gwendy wakes up the next morning running a fever. She stays home from school and spends most of the day sleeping. She emerges from her bedroom later that evening, feeling as good as new, and discovers her parents watching the news in silence. She can tell from the expressions on their faces that something is wrong. She eases down on the sofa next to her mother and watches in horror as Charles Gibson takes them to Guyana—a faraway country of which she recently learned a few salient details. There a cult leader by the name of Jim Jones has committed suicide and ordered over nine hundred of his followers to do the same.

Grainy photographs flash on the television screen. Bodies laid out in rows, thick jungle looming in the background. Couples in a lovers’ embrace. Mothers clutching babies to still chests. So many children. Faces distorted in agony. Flies crawling all over everything. According to Charles Gibson, nurses squirted the poison down the kiddies’ throats before taking their own doses.

Gwendy returns to her bedroom without comment and slips on tennis shoes and a sweatshirt. She thinks about running Suicide Stairs but decides against it, vaguely afraid of an impulse to throw herself off. Instead, she travels a three-mile loop around the neighborhood, her footsteps slapping a staccato rhythm on the cold pavement, crisp autumn air blushing her cheeks. I did that, she thinks, picturing flies swarming over dead babies. I didn’t mean to, but I did.