My mother texts me a link to a local news story: “8-year-old boy dies after eating strawberries from school fundraiser.” I sit on the toilet, bleeding, as I read this headline. I am 6 weeks postpartum, and my period has already returned. Not just some spotting – a full, heavy period. My body, ready to go.
My almost-8-year-old boy just had a strawberry sale at his school. Pick up was on Friday, but I didn’t buy any, so I had nothing to pick up. I’d meant to place an order, but I got distracted. My baby had been quite distracting.
I click to learn the boy was not the only victim. Others were hospitalized after eating the strawberries — but only the boy had died.
While I bleed and read, my daughter sleeps in her crib. She has a full head of hair, ruddy skin, and a few teeth already poking through her gums. She is ready to go.
I wash my hands and walk downstairs to tell my husband, a doctor, about the tragedy. I caution him not to buy strawberries, just in case. “It sounds like an allergic reaction,” my husband responds. “It doesn’t sound like it was the strawberry’s fault.”
According to the article, the parents of the strawberry school fundraiser boy took him to the ER when he developed a strange rash. After a few hours of monitoring, the medical personnel sent him home. The next morning, his parents found him dead in his bed.
“I never would have allowed my son to be sent home,” my husband says. “I would have insisted that they keep him all night.” I nod my head, comforted by his authority. I know, though, that I would have listened to the medical personnel. I would have listened, and then my boy would be dead.
In the kitchen, I cross strawberries off the grocery list — the only fruit my eight-year-old really likes. I buy them in bulk, no matter how much they cost.
“Strawberries are on the dirty dozen,” my mom messages me, a follow up to the local news article. “Maybe you can talk George into eating blueberries instead?”
As my daughter continues to sleep, I sit on the couch and scroll my Instagram profile to look at pictures of my beautiful family. I wonder if it makes people hate us, these pictures of my beautiful family.
I click on a photo of my newborn daughter posed on our sunny front lawn. She is resting against my pale, wintered thighs wearing a onesie with tiny strawberries decorating the bodice in nice, neat rows. Her eyes are closed, though she is not asleep — a gesture, as if to say, this is all a bit too much. This world is all a bit too much.
Not visible in the photo is the back of my daughter’s outfit. Five minutes into our time outdoors, she pooped. Streaks of orange smeared up her back and soaked into her onesie, into my pasty thighs. A bunch of hidden strawberries, covered in shit.
