I didn’t get into Ben Folds until midway through college, so I had to come up with other ways to drown out the darkness in tenth grade. So, like every other babysitter in the history of the world, I watched TV after the kids went to bed. If I had ever seen a horror movie, I would have known that killings of babysitters spike in the hour after the kids go to bed, especially if the babysitter has secretly invited a boyfriend over and/or if the babysitter has just put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. I had never even heard the word “gay,” so a boyfriend was out of the question at this point, and I had late-in-life braces, so popcorn was a no-go. Instead, I entertained myself and kept my fear at bay by watching whatever Disney movies the kids had lying around. I was the picture of innocence, wandering around a sprawling McMansion with all the lights turned on, waiting to be slaughtered.
One night, I found the newly released videotape of Hercules, the retelling of the Greek myth with a chorus of gospel-singing muses and music by Alan Menken, who also wrote the music for Little Shop of Horrors. Clearly I, not the kids I was babysitting, was the target demographic for this movie. I took it downstairs and set myself up on a couch. The family I was babysitting for had one of those houses out of a Nancy Meyers film: the gleaming kitchen with a marble-top kitchen island next to a plush TV room and breakfast nook with three walls of windows; the doorbell that played a full concerto; the rooms that weren’t decorated, but curated. I understand the allure of this kind of space. Everything was new in this place, even the things that weren’t new. The antiques were polished to a shine; the books in the library were like set decorations from a box labeled “Intelligent, Wealthy Person.” When I was growing up, my mother used to joke that our interior design style was “Deceased,” meaning someone has died and left us their furniture, whether we wanted it or not. So the pristine order of a suburban house was like an alien spaceship to me: attractive but deeply foreign; potentially home to something sinister.
I didn’t understand how a house came to be like this. I didn’t understand the lack of mess, the pile on the counter with exactly three pieces of mail and one catalog, the dust-free floors, the litter-free street, the noise-free air. It was clear that people lived here, but I didn’t know how.
Their house was so big that I didn’t even wander around it for fear of getting lost. They didn’t have a pantry; they had a dry-goods room. I spent twenty minutes standing inside it, smelling spices. There were so many rooms on the ground floor, I worried that I would stumble into a secret passageway and never return.
Midway through the movie, I paused and went to the Sub-Zero fridge to help myself to one of the thirteen juices they had inside. I’m exaggerating the number of juices, but you believed me and that’s the point. Coming back, glass in hand, I stepped in a puddle next to the kitchen island. I assumed that I had somehow spilled the juice that I was pretty sure I was allowed to have but not so sure that I would ever actually admit to having drunk the juice.
It was true that I had just poured the juice and therefore couldn’t have spilled it on the other side of the room, but I assumed that the suburbs had different rules and they extended to include space and time. I got a paper towel and knelt down to wipe up the juice that I was convincing myself I’d preemptively spilled. As I got close I noticed its aroma. It didn’t have the same smell as what was in my glass—fresh-squeezed money—in fact, it smelled like pee. I drew back and scanned the room. Who was peeing on the floor? Had I peed on the floor? Maybe one of the kids was sleepwalking? Or maybe this was a passive-aggressive act of defiance. What had I done to deserve this? Hadn’t I thrown enough games of Chutes and Ladders to avoid this?
I crept upstairs and checked on the kids; they were both sleeping peacefully as far as I could tell. I whispered, “Is this some sort of class-based hazing?” but they didn’t respond.