Burn, Baby, Burn

Image credit: Photo by alecani on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

When Austen was a baby, a friend of my husband's gave him a stuffed camel, which she brought for him all the way from Israel. However, Austen never showed much interest in toys without wheels or numbers. The sole exception was a stuffed rabbit my friend Kelly sent him for his first Easter, which he dragged around everywhere by its ears. The rabbit played "Easter Parade" when you pressed its belly, and Austen would crawl with it, each movement of his left hand marked by a soft thud followed by the electronic tinkle of music. Somehow that rabbit set a standard for music, and all songs since have been met with screaming; Austen hasn't liked music since the batteries (that were the soul of his first love) died.

Austen ignored the camel. But it had come from far away, carried over the wide sea just for him, so I put it up in a place of honor on a shelf next to his crib. When Mark and I opened the door to his room, the camel was one of the first objects to greet our eyes each day: sitting on that shelf, gathering dust and watching over our son as he slept curled next to his rabbit.

When Austen was two, Mark admitted that he had had sex with the woman who had so kindly given our baby boy the stuffed camel that sat by his crib nearly all his life. And suddenly my son's room felt poisoned and oppressive: tainted by the presence of that toy. As angry as I was at Mark for anything, I was perhaps most furious at him for letting the blood money of his addiction touch the life of his infant son. But Mark didn't need the sharp prod of my anger to hurt him. Each day, when he entered that room, he had seen the camel there, a reminder of his shame, and he'd been washed in self-loathing that would make him feel physically sick. He tried to avoid looking at it. He tried to think of how to get rid of it, but he couldn't think of how to manage it without arousing suspicion. And he thought it best, at the time, that Austen and I never know what had happened. He would keep this secret, because surely, now, finally, (he said to himself) he'd be able to stop, and this would really, truly (this time he meant it) never happen again. Until at last, something inside him shattered, and he had to admit he needed help.

I took the camel out of Austen's room, and intended to get rid of it. But I couldn't bear to give it to charity, to throw that shadow of betrayal over some other innocent life. And throwing it in the trash seemed too casual an action for a symbol of such hurt. So one night, after we put Austen to bed, Mark and I put the camel in our old charcoal barbecue grill, doused it in lighter fluid and set it on fire. It flared up; flames licked the night air, as it curled and dissolved into a plume of black smoke. Mark and I put our arms around each other and watched it burn, and I felt cleaner and closer to him than I had since I'd learned of his addiction.

We scrubbed the grill and sold it at a yard sale: every bit of the camel gone from our lives. But the simple emptiness and lack were not enough. Like a symbol for our marriage, from the ashes of that shame and pain, I wanted something new and beautiful to arise. So we went to a toy store, and picked out a stuffed bunny (since Austen was partial to them) and took it to a women and children's shelter along with some old clothes and baby gear, hoping some other child would love dragging this new toy around by the ears.