Well, this isn’t what I was expecting, my mom joked. She was holding the framed photo of me, her, and my grandma. It was steadying to have her here, to have someone else confirm yes, this is happening and yes, this is not normal. I tried to make a joke. Something dumb about the year’s biggest decorating trend is flee-the-country chic. She didn’t laugh. Instead, she looked around at the walls, the white cabinets, and said that she was getting major déjà vu.
I texted Charlie what felt like a million times. He didn’t respond. I tried to call him. Nothing, not even a voicemail box. Maybe he got a new phone, my mom said. Neither of us felt convinced by what she said.
Online, more and more outlets were covering the hospitals’ admissions to performing studies on African Americans. There were concise reports. Somehow, people had already cranked out op-ed style posts about how experiments like these were a reminder about the United States’ history of racism. Seeing the discussions gave me hope. People cared! And this was about studies done close to 50 years ago. People would keep digging, keep paying attention, and they would find out it wasn’t just hospitals, it was the government. They would find out this wasn’t just once, this wasn’t just in the past, but it had happened over and over.
People were talking about what an outrage this was. But they were already creating dumb jokes and memes. There were already several accounts saying this was all faked. It was just more lies by the blacks. It’s what they do. People asked what they can do to help. There was genuine rage. I knew nothing could be solved in a day or a week or a month, but I hoped, I hoped.
We took a risk and drove to Great Lakes Shipping Company. The gate was wide open, so was the front door. There were no cars in the parking lot. Inside, everything was gone—cubicles, vending machines, computers, the blinds off the windows. There were echoes as we spoke. I held my mom’s hand as we went into the warehouse. It smelled like someone had recently dropped and cracked open several large jars of pickles. But the only things in the space were sparrows flying around and hopping on the ceiling beams. They were ordinary birds.
This happened, I said.
We went up to the second floor, the third. Everything was empty. Every step I took, I expected someone to jump out or round a corner and I would see someone I knew holding a gun. But it was quiet. Clean. Where else have you been, my mother asked me when we were out in the car. I told her about the cabin in the woods, but really, I didn’t know if those were the woods behind Great Lakes Shipping Company or the woods in the state park north of town. We drove to Charlie’s house. In the yard was a FOR RENT sign. I knocked several times. I called his name. Then we peeked in the front window. Nothing was inside.
We drove to Tom’s. A different family was living there. A woman and a man who were watering a garden using jugs of water. A little boy with bright red hair who was chasing a dog around. I wanted to go to Mariah’s house, but I had never been.
Do you still believe me? I asked my mom.
She squeezed my shoulder. I will always believe you.
You have to, though, I said, you’re my mom. Deziree shook her head, reminded me that a lot of parents are not like that. People feel more loyalty to how they think things should be than to other people, including their family. I thought maybe she was talking about Grandma, but I didn’t understand the context. There was so much between them that I didn’t know, don’t want to know. But now, I think maybe Deziree was already seeing things clearer than I was.
Is there anywhere else, anyone else you can think of who could give us proof? my mom finally asked.
I shook my head.
While we went back to my old apartment, started gathering up my things, my phone was blowing up with texts about Lakewood. You, Kelly, Stacy, people who hadn’t spoken to me since April. It was all about the water. Was I okay? What are you going to do? How do you feel? Are you scared? I sent the three of you a picture of the lake. The foam, the people in hazmat suits. How can I help? you all asked.
When I used to go to service, the preacher loved to talk about how to be good in today’s world. He would use generic, often corny, situations. When you’re in the club. When someone sweet from your past sends you an email, but you booed up. He didn’t usually speak like that and I always thought it was condescending when he said things like booed up, lit, wildin—but with the “g” pronounced. The way a cop would say it. Gambling, sex, violent movies, violent video games, opportunities to do violence. He steered all these situations toward the dads in the room. You will blow up your family if you make the wrong decision. Your kids will never look at you the same. Do you want to be another ain’t-crap dad in this world? Mothers, you are angels. Kids, listen to your mothers.
Everywhere taught me to think about things in the simplest ways. School told me that anything could be summed up and have conclusions drawn from it in five paragraphs. This = good. That = bad. But now I think a lot about context. I think about what I owe the people in my life and what I owe people I will never see, never speak to. Can I make anything better? And if I did break my NDA, would anyone listen?
It’s been six weeks since I’ve been in Lakewood. Deziree refuses to let me talk to any reporters. She says that I have done enough. Every time this comes up, it’s the closest we come to fighting. She says if one of us has to take risks, giving things up, going to jail, it will be her. She says I have somehow forgotten—and the way she says it is so passive-aggressive it makes my teeth clench—that she is the mother. That she is the person who makes decisions for herself, our family.
What we know and don’t say is that reporters might have an easier time thinking I’m more credible than her. She’s reached out and talked to a few. Each one made scans of her invitation letter. They told her what she has to say is interesting. But she’s come back grumpy and defeated from each meeting. There’s no hard evidence. And Deziree says there are so many red flags that she doubts they take her seriously. Her health problems including her unreliable memory, her limp, her high-school-level education, her dark skin. She thinks they see her as someone trying to cash in. Or worse, someone who has read the papers and tricked herself into thinking this was the answer to why she was sick. I went to a good college, I speak confidently, but the times my mother has told me not to do something I can count on one hand. For now, the right thing feels like listening to her.
I think a lot about everyone else in the experiments, especially Charlie. Where was he? Was he okay? Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if there was ever a Charlie. Maybe he was just an actor pretending to be my friend, taking notes to report back to them. There’s now no proof on the internet that a Charlie Graham from Lakewood ever existed.
Deziree says it takes time, but one day, you’ll get used to living without certainty. You’ll accept here are times you’ll never get a clear answer to. Instead of it being the center of your life, eventually it’ll be something you rarely think about. It’ll be in the margins of your life. I want to believe her. I watch as she sips her tea, as she makes soft kind-mom eyes at me, a gaze that makes her look the most like Grandma, and hope she’s right.
I want to tell Mariah’s family what happened to her, that she was trying to repay them when she died, but I never knew her last name.
The other day, you asked me why I hadn’t re-enrolled for winter semester. I said maybe I will and tried to change the subject. Here’s the real answer. My mom and I haven’t been sleeping well. Every sound could be them coming to take one or both of us back. Coming—and I wish this felt melodramatic to me, that I was able to laugh—to kill us. Miss Cassandra’s nephew is staying with her. She broke her hip a few weeks ago and he’s helping out. When I see his shadow at night, when I smell his cigarettes but don’t see him, all my organs feel like they’re congealing, becoming a heavy mass inside of me. My feet are desperate to run. My mom’s new nickname for me is Squirrel. She is trying to tease me back into feeling okay.