Do Not Become Alarmed(27)

The man with the white horse—Raúl—came upstairs. “Ah, you are already friends,” he said. “His name is Sancho. He is very stupid.”

“Hi, Sancho,” Marcus said. “Hi, Sancho.” The dog rolled its eyes with happiness, tongue out. “I love him,” Marcus said passionately.

“He loves you, too, I think,” Raúl said.

“Will he eat the bunny?” June asked, still standing on the chair.

“Maybe,” Raúl said. “Maybe no.”

Isabel was acting weird. With the duvet around her shoulders like a robe, still in her bikini, she sat with cold composure and began to eat her cereal, as if Raúl and the dog didn’t exist. She wasn’t trembling or cowering anymore.

George came back down from the third floor, and the two brothers talked quietly together in Spanish. They didn’t look much alike. Raúl wore cowboy boots, his buttoned shirt tucked into tight jeans, his black hair swept back. George, in his khaki shorts and baseball cap, could have been one of her parents’ friends.

Penny tried to follow what they said, but they spoke too fast. The only thing she could say that fast in Spanish was a song that her friend Sasha’s nanny had taught them. It went with a hand-clapping game: Una vieja-ja

mató un gato-to

con la punta-ta

del zapato-to

Pobre vieja-ja

pobre gato-to

pobre punta-ta

del zapato-to

It didn’t really make any sense. An old lady killed a cat with the point of her shoe. Poor old lady, poor cat, poor point of the shoe. The cat was the one who was killed, so why feel sorry for the point of the old lady’s shoe?

The conversation between the brothers had become an argument. Raúl smacked the wall with his open palm. Then he went downstairs, his boot heels striking hard. He shouted to the dog, who chased after him. The lock scraped and he went out. The lock scraped again.

“Fuck me,” George said, leaning his head against the wall.

“He said the F-word,” June whispered.

George went back up to the third floor.

Things got quiet again, with Raúl gone. The wind picked up outside the big windows, whipping the treetops. The living room had a high ceiling, and sometimes a big gust would shake the windows. The children all looked at the ceiling and waited.

The morning passed, and Penny taught June the clapping game and the song. Maria smiled at Penny and said, “No parece gringa.” Then she taught them another clapping song, but it was more babyish: “Tortillitas para Mama, Tortillitas para Papa.”

June dropped her hands to her lap. “I want my mom and dad.”

Later, Maria brought them grass and carrot tops and sweet peas for the bunny, and more fruit and cheese. Marcus said the cubes of mango were like the Turkish delight the White Queen gives Edmund in Narnia: a trick to win them over. But Penny thought Maria really felt sorry for them, stuck here like this.

They played tic-tac-toe with the wooden pieces until that got boring. Marcus fixed June’s braids that were coming undone. Penny offered to help.

“I can do it,” Marcus said. He frowned with concentration over the tiny, wavy strands.

The TV in the kitchen had been turned off ever since they saw their parents on the news. Penny wished she’d brought a book. There weren’t any in this whole house.

Sebastian whispered into the bunny’s white fur.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“I’m talking to the bunny,” her brother said.

“About what?”

“None of your business.”

In the afternoon, the drug-addict doctor returned. George let her in downstairs, and she sat on one of the red couches with Penny and Sebastian, her bony knees sticking out from her skirt. She gave Penny a small box to open. The writing on the box was in Spanish, and inside was something that looked like a fat pen. The doctor showed them how to use it. It was electronic and had a cartridge of insulin inside, instead of ink.

There was also a little solar calculator, and the doctor showed Penny how to do the math based on Sebastian’s blood sugar, his weight, and how many carbs he was eating.

“A piece of bread or fruit is fifteen grams,” she said. “A glass of juice is thirty. A cup of rice is forty-five.”

“This is too hard,” Penny said.

“You need to learn,” the doctor said.

Penny watched, miserable, as she gave Sebastian the finger-stick test. Then together they did the math on the calculator, and the doctor showed her how to use the pen to give Sebastian the injection. She’d brought another little box with extra insulin cartridges, in a paper bag.

Penny tried to concentrate on the math, so she could remember how to do it, but she felt scared and overwhelmed. “I don’t know if we can do this,” she said.

“I think you can,” the doctor said.

Sebastian put the finger-stick monitor and the insulin pen in the pocket of his red shorts. “You keep the calculator,” he said. “I don’t know how to do the math.”

“I don’t either!” Penny grabbed the doctor’s skinny hand. “You have to call our parents. I can give you their number.”

The doctor looked embarrassed and shook her head.

“You’re supposed to help people,” Penny said. “You took an oath.”