THIRTEEN
1962: That’s the earliest record of Renfield’s syndrome that Mary Beth has come across. A group of kindergarteners in Columbus, Ohio, smiling together in a black-and-white school portrait. Bibbed dresses, tapered trousers, plaid sweater-vests documented in a head-scratching yearbook entry for the district’s elementary school, the picture captioned: “Ms. Linda’s Little Leeches.” Did they think it was funny back then? The true start of the sixties, anything goes?
In 1975, two pediatricians from Oklahoma collaborated on a joint article when a group of parents in a suburban neighborhood outside of Ardmore began complaining about a series of violent biting incidents. The ages of the affected children ranged from three to seven and some of the parents reported that if the children were allowed to drink small quantities of blood, they would no longer bite. The doctors hypothesized it might have something to do with the high iron levels that gave the dirt on which the neighborhood was built a red appearance. But no conclusion was reached and the study devolved into quackery when one doctor insisted the number thirteen—the number of children afflicted—bore significance. No photos were taken of the group.
Mary Beth hasn’t been sleeping well. She’s been walking around since the day of Miss Ollie’s murder feeling hopped up on caffeine, though she doesn’t even drink coffee. She’s always excelled in times of adversity. What she lacks in book smarts, she makes up for in life skills. That’s why she’s Room Mom. That’s why she chairs countless galas. She tackles projects like a linebacker. Mary Beth Brandt gets stuff done.
She reviews the neat lines of handwritten notes in her journal.
By the eighties, a few medical schools included “pediatric Renfield’s syndrome,” or the urge to ingest blood, in their list of novelty case studies. Though by 1988, a preschool class was the subject of a nasty bout of angry protests during the height of Satanic Panic, and the tiny bloodsuckers were shortly thereafter expelled. Parents were advised to refuse all urges and to instead employ the use of palatable substitutes such as ketchup. A short newspaper article mentioned behavioral issues amongst the children, but no evidence of anything serious.
After that, a gentler, more clinical approach was adopted in some psychology circles, though there does still seem to be room for plenty of debate about whether pediatric Renfield’s syndrome is even real, and this includes the opinions of doctors who have cared for some of the young patients.
Toddlers in Ontario. A playdate group in Fresno. Eight second graders—the oldest children on record—in Washington, D.C. A day care in Atlanta. And now Little Academy, now Mary Beth’s daughter.
Ten documented cases in the last fifty years. The odds are astronomical.
She recalls a group of students in upstate New York in the early 2000s. Dozens of high school girls developed an odd tic, almost simultaneously. They were on the Today show. Last night, she checked back on those long-forgotten girls. What had become of them? Who were they? Experts never discovered what prompted the tic. They never even agreed whether or not the girls were faking it. And yet twenty years later, plenty of those girls still have tics.
It doesn’t matter. Noelle is four. Four-year-olds can’t fake it.
She keeps snatching glances of Noelle as though she’s stealing them and stuffing them under her mattress. Noelle with her tongue out as she tries to color inside the lines of an Encanto coloring book. Noelle practicing beginner ballet. Noelle pumping her knobby knees on the swing set. Noelle as she bows her curly head to pray before bed; she always comes up with the funniest, most earnest little prayers. Dear God, please make Daddy not allergic to cats or, if that’s too much to ask, find him a new home to live in next door. Dear God, I’m sorry I don’t like carrots. Did you ever have to put Jesus in time-out when he was my age?
She will see her daughter through this crisis. That’s what mothers do. They protect their young. They lift cars off children with their bare hands. They push through the pain. Mary Beth will power through, which, after all, is basically her whole vibe. Whether it’s a family vacation, a terrible head cold, a sleepless night, packing for summer camps, making homemade Valentines at 9:00 P.M. on February 13, pay no mind, she will power through.
She inventories the three Amazon boxes she’s collected from her porch, setting the contents out on the kitchen countertop. Twenty-pack of syringes. Catheter tips. Fluid bags. Tubes. Vials. Biohazard disposal container. Spring-loaded lancets. Cotton wool. Alcohol pads.
This morning, she found Noelle licking a used Band-Aid Angeline had left in the girls’ wastebasket after she scraped her knee riding her scooter, and would anyone believe Mary Beth didn’t vomit?
The first few steps of the process are easy. She washes her hands and gathers her supplies. After cleaning the pale part of her inner arm with one of the alcohol swabs, she straightens it and studies the blue lines running beneath the surface. She could have used help tying the tourniquet above her elbow, but with a few tries she’s able to use her teeth to squeeze it tightly enough. Now she threads the needle into the holder. It takes a few tries, too. And she taps the tube. No explanation as to why, but that’s what the instructions say, so probably best to follow it to the letter.
Her mouth tastes sour. She hesitates with the needle hovering over her skin. It can’t be anything compared to childbirth, which she’s always known she would do a thousand times over if it meant getting her two girls. However, she would prefer not to do it a thousand times over, if she has a choice.
When Mary Beth first became a mother, she used to tear up watching the terrible sacrifices mothers in developing nations made for their babies and thought with her hand over her heart in solidarity: I would do the same thing.
And now, she hesitates with a sterile needle poised over her arm. She bites her tongue as she sinks the needle into the skin—ouch—it stings. She doesn’t know if it’s worse or better for being self-inflicted. The first time she pushes too deep, the next too shallow, and the third she misses a vein entirely. It takes six tries to get a good line, one where the blood begins to flow into the big tube. Oh! And boy does it flow. She watches with sick fascination. There’s a current to it. Is there supposed to be a current? The tube fills and she remembers at the last moment that she’s supposed to switch to a new one.
There. Better.
It fills and fills. The crimson rivulets feel completely separate from Mary Beth.
Oh wow, that’s a lot of blood. It’s like a very well-organized murder scene. She chuckles at her own sick sense of humor as she pulls the last tube and plugs the stopper over it, careful not to spill a single drop. Finally, she slides the needle catheter from her vein—not as carefully as she intended. Four full vials are lined neatly on her white marble countertop. Where were all these gizmos on her baby registry, huh?
In another year or so, she imagines a line of blood containers marked up to three times the price, but with cute little lions and sloths printed on the cylinders. How adorable.
She labels three with a black sharpie and pours the fourth into a plastic cup. She is a good mother, she thinks as she makes her way, stumbling ever so slightly sideways, back to a daughter who is waiting for her. A good mother, but also—oh—a dizzy one.