The worst thing I saw

When I was a kid my family would often visit the zoo, and it was a great joy in life. It was an obvious place to take children, and my parents were great at picking places to visit that were fun. I’m not sure which year it was or how old I was. It might have been the middle of spring, with fresh cut grass and the cherry blossoms just beginning to bloom. It might have been the height of summer. The weather wasn’t of much consequence and I barely remember it when I look back on that day. I was awed by the incredible sights that the zoo had in store for me, amazed by the greatness of the animals we huddled together to see. My parents had bought me a bunch of stickers meant for a sticker book, but I loved them so much I’d pulled them off of their backing and just put them in the front pocket of my shorts so I could easily admire them at my leisure. They were all different colors and animals, and I loved them more than anything else in the world at that moment. I pressed the fabric of my shorts with one hand and held onto my mother’s hand with the other as I looked at the animal enclosures. I sometimes lost sight of my parents, but I was never afraid. I always knew that I had to stay close to them, and I had never strayed from their side before. On this day, though, that changed forever.<br><br>We’d just walked through a small tunnel and into a large central area of the zoo, which was teeming with life. There were hundreds of people-maybe even thousands-and a skyscraper-sized treehouse. Men and women in zookeeper dresses were walking around talking and directing people and selling things and doing their hardest to make that day delightful. It was. I remember the soft sound of the birds chirping in a large aviary to the side. It was a small enclosure, but the ceiling was far far up, and there were a hundred birds perched on branches all around, or flying through the air. I wanted to see that first, and I tugged on my mother’s hand. <br><br>Before she could lead me over, a man walking in the other direction turned his head to try to get into a picture with his thumbs up, and he bumped into me. The force of it was just enough to break my grip on my mother’s hand. I looked up at him and he was apologetic; he said “Oh my gosh I’m so sorry!” I looked back where I had last seen my parents, but they were nowhere. I took a few steps forward with the intention of finding them, but I still didn’t see them. My heart sank and I started to feel cold, and I called out to my mom in a trembling voice. She didn’t respond. I started to cry as I walked around the open area, scanning the faces for my mother or my father. I was a little kid, and they were always there. One time I left my teddy bear on the car seat, and my dad drove all the way back to the parking space to get it for me. When I got scared in the middle of the night, my mother held me in her warm arms in bed and read me a story until I fell back asleep. I’d never been away from my parents before, and I had no idea how I was going to find them. I took a few more steps in the direction I thought they’d gone, tears streaming down my eyes, and called for my father. I had never been separated from my parents before, and I had no idea where to go or what to do. <br><br>I’d been walking for probably only about five minutes, but it felt like hours. I decided I’d ask for help, but I knew that the zookeepers were really busy and I didn’t want to be a bother. I walked up to one, trying to hold back tears, and tugged on the hem of his pants. He looked down in annoyance, and his expression softened as he saw a crying, lost child in front of him. <br><br>“Hey there, little man,” he said, trying to sound as nice as he possibly could while keeping his fed-up tone out of his voice. “Are you lost? Where’s your mom and dad?” I tried my best to explain, but I’m not sure if he understood more than half of what I said as I sniffled and choked on the words. He turned me around and started to lead me in the direction that I came from. <br><br>“I’m going to call [someone] up and see if your parents have been looking for you. What’s your mom and dad’s name?”<br><br>I couldn’t remember, so I shook my head. The zookeeper let out a sigh. “Okay,” he said, “well we’re going to have to find another way to find them. Is there a toy or a book or anything that they had? Anything I can use to find them?”<br><br>I reached into my pocket, and my fingers felt the series of jagged edges that my stickers formed. <br><br>“They might remember these,” I said, trying to hold back tears as I pulled them out of my pocket to show the zookeeper. The zookeeper’s expression softened into something that was like a mix of sorrow and pity, and he looked at the stickers with a mixture of disbelief and understanding of how I could think that would help find my parents. <br><br>He was silent for a moment, looking at the stickers. “Okay, we can use this,” he said, and he put the radio on his shoulder up to his mouth. He called for someone to come, to help him with a lost child. While we waited he asked me more questions like the color of my parents’ shirts and if we had ridden any of the rides. He put his hand on my back, but it didn’t help me stop crying. He was nice, but there was a type of niceness that came with it. It was the niceness you give to something broken that you don’t know how to fix. I felt like I’d done something wrong, like this was all my fault because I didn’t hold onto my mom’s hand strongly enough. The hypnotic sound of the bird’s chirping was still there, but it didn’t bring me peace.<br><br>A few minutes later a woman in a yellow shirt with a name tag came up. The zookeeper explained the situation to her, and she turned to me. “Okay, little guy,” she said. “I’m going to go find your mommy. Can you stay here for just a minute?” <br><br>I sniffled and nodded. This woman left, and the zookeeper had to continue on his way, so I was left alone. I thought about walking around and trying to find my parents myself, but I felt that even if I did find them, they’d be mad at me for leaving the spot I agreed to wait at. I sat down in the dirt beneath a small bush and cried. I pulled out the stickers and examined each of them, the colors running together as the tears blurred my eyes. I had always loved those stickers, but at that moment I would have happily thrown them in the trash if it meant that I could see my parents again. I was alone in the world, separated from the people I trusted and loved most. I felt that I’d never see them again. As I sat there it occurred to me that my parents might have been kidnapped or murdered in the tunnel, and that’s why they’d never come looking for me.<br><br>I sat and cried there for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, the nice zookeeper with the radio on his shoulder came back, with another zoo employee, a zoo manager, and my mother. They’d found her by where the baggage claims were, looking frantically in every direction. When she saw me she embraced me. I’d never been so glad to see someone in my life as I was to see her at that moment. I held onto her, and she held me back. I tried my best to explain what happened, but she didn’t need to hear it. She knew that the zoo was a bad place, and that it had almost taken me from her. When we left the zoo, she never let go of me. I walked right next her, never more than an inch from her side, and she held onto me with a grip that would shatter steel as we walked to the parking lot, as we got in the car, as we drove home, and as I went to check on my father, who had been shot when we were in the tunnel. <br><br>I learned that from the police officer talking to my mom, outside of earshot. With my father in the hospital for the next few weeks, life became strange and scary. The world wasn’t a happy place, and I couldn’t trust anybody. But I could trust my mother, and she would never let anything happen to me again. She watched over me, and I knew that she’d protect me from anything. <br><br>As she watched me play in the backyard, she took the stickers from my pocket, and with a look of pain on her face, she tossed them into the garbage disposal. The sound of the jagged edges being torn to pieces as the whir of the blades shredded them was a sweet symphony. When it was done she ran water through it, and I heard the sound of the remains being flushed away.