THE BEGINNING OF THE END

My mother lost her baby and my father lost his leg. So I tried to be her baby and I tried to be his leg. On both counts, I failed. 

“You’re not a very good baby,” my mother said suspiciously. “You’re practically dead, you’re so old.”

“You’re not a very good leg either,” my father said. “On account of the fact that you’re an entire person, and not a leg.”

Still I tried. I let my mother spoon-feed me. I let her buy me Bibles and nightgowns. But I could not make the whole “baby” thing work. Babies are little dummies, and I am no dummy. I could not be a little dummy if I tried, and I did try. My mother would tell me where babies came from and I said “I know better than that.” She told me what would happen after I close my eyes for the final time, which I couldn’t disprove, but didn’t wholly believe and couldn’t fake it. She told me what sort of man to trust and which ones not to—“Never trust a man with dark hair and light eyes,” she said. I said “OK,” but she could tell I already had had some experience with men. She tried to tell me who to vote for, and that’s where I lost it. “Babies don’t vote,” I said. “Don’t try to make your baby vote. It’s not allowed.” “Why,” she said, “oh, why do you fight with your poor mother? Why can’t you be a real baby who never ever fights?”

I decided to put all my energies into being the leg, then. I held my father up while he pointed his gun at things. But I was too tall, much taller than a leg had any right to be. And, once again, I was no dummy. “Don’t point your gun at that,” I said. “You’re not the boss of me, Leg,” my father said. “Crouch a little so you’re level with the other leg.” I crouched and tucked my head. Now I couldn’t see what he pointed his gun at. But I heard someone crying. “Are you pointing your gun at a baby?” I said, not looking. “Not a real one,” he said. “Not real as in an animal or not real as in me pretending?” I said. “Not real as in, don’t look up, and you’ll never see it.” There was a blast, but the blast could have been the gun, or it could have been anything else that might make a blast sound. It could have been a typewriter. Or a firework. Or the beginning of the end of something. 

CHICKEN WIRE

When ladies used to come to me in dreams, I said, 

‘Pretty mother, pretty mother.’ 

But when at last she really came, 

I shot her.

—Tootles, Peter and Wendy

Driving home in the dark, after being away for a long long time, I stopped at a store on a mountain by the highway. It was the only place for miles and it was lit up like it knew it. Lit up, but it was a soft light, like murmuring. I drove my car in circles around the mountain to get to the top. In the parking lot men practiced shooting things into a wooden board propped against an evergreen. One man wrote the word “MOTHER” in bullet holes. 

None of them looked at me while I parked and got out of my car. I went into the store and the man at the counter said “Will you try my newest concoction?” I said “Yes” because I wanted him to like me. Have you ever wanted someone, anyone, to like you this much? I said yes and the man handed me a glass of blood and I drank it. The man asked for five dollars for the blood. Then he wet himself. 

“Don’t look,” he said, soft as driftwood. “I won’t,” I said, but I was secretly looking, soft as nuns. The urine pooled around him. He reminded me of a castle fortified by a moat, with no drawbridge. 

Another man was waiting in line behind me. He kept tapping me on the shoulder. “Yes?” I said. “Do you know what chicken wire is, little girl?” he asked. “Of course,” I said. “Chicken wire,” he said, “is like an afghan, but hard.” “I know what it is,” I said. “You can wrap yourself in it,” he went on, “but it will never warm you up.” 

I paid the five dollars. “No tip?” the man behind the counter asked. I added an extra dollar. 

“Chicken wire may make you feel you are safe but it won’t actually keep you safe,” the man behind me said. He paused. “And in that way I suppose it really is like an afghan.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” I turned and asked.

“Because you’re soft as a mourning dove.” 

“A mourning dove isn’t a chicken,” I said. 

“You’re soft as eggs. No, soft as chalk. No, soft as driftwood: you’re playing-dead soft.” 

I love men, I am enchanted by men, and then they get in my way. 

“How do you build a drawbridge without getting wet?” I asked.

“Aha,” he said, raising a finger and tapping his temple with it. “You tackle it from the air, like something with wings.” 

“Just because something has wings doesn’t mean it flies,” the man behind the counter chimed in.

“That,” said the man behind me, “is why we need to build a drawbridge.” He looked at me. “Little girl, chickens mourn. They whisper and they huddle. They hold visitations, like when your grandma was dying and everybody knew it. Chickens can be very formal. They are capable of missing.”

“Capable of going missing?” the man behind the counter asked. 

“Capable of longing,” the other man said, “and of being longed for. And of telling themselves that wire thin as spittle will deliver them, and all they love, from evil.” 

“Is it formal to mourn?” One of the men who had been outside shooting had come in and was standing on the mat in front of the motion-sensing door. The door kept closing and opening, closing and opening. 

“Mourning takes no form; mourning threatens formlessness,” the man in line behind me explained. “All we have to receive and control the chaos of grief is the container of ritual. Otherwise, we would go insane.”

“We would be running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” said the man behind the counter. 

The rest of the men who had been outside shooting came to stand behind the man on the doormat. They looked at me with their hats and guns in their hands. “Little girl,” one of them said, “you look just exactly like a mother. I mean, just exactly like a white bird.” Then he wet himself.

The man beside him said, “Little girl, you’re soft as lamb’s ear. No, soft as violets. No, soft as baby teeth. I don’t have to go, but I would if I could.” 

“Sing us a song,” the man behind the counter said to me. “Sing us the song of a chicken in mourning.”

“Make the noise,” said the man behind me, “that means, ‘Where did you go? Where did you go without me?’” 

“But I’m not a chicken,” I said. 

“But surely you know the words,” he said.

I opened my mouth and discovered I did know the words, they came to me from the air: 

Coo, coo, why did you leave me behind?

Why did you leave me behind?

My heart is soft like mold.

Coo, coo, where did you go without me?

Where did you go without me?

My memory is soft like—

I stopped. I didn’t know. “Soft like what?” I asked. 

All of the men, the men in the doorway, the man in line behind me, and the man behind the counter, threw out guesses: “Soft as mist.” “Soft as homes.” “Soft as a decolletage.” “Soft as a smooth soft rock.” “Soft as whipped-cream.” “Soft as habits.” “Soft as a bedtime.” “Soft as knitting.” “Soft as snuffles.” “Soft as truffles.” “Soft as a stiff upper lip that is no longer stiff.” “Soft as snow.” “Soft as Bibles.” “Soft as paws.” “Soft as rice.” “Soft as mice.” “Soft as mushrooms.” “Soft as must.” “Soft as dust.” “Soft as sourdough.” “Soft as love.” “Soft as a wrist.” “Soft as rot.”

I listened to all of their guesses, but I knew they would never get it exactly right. Together, though, they would get close enough.

THE DAUGHTER

I am no leg dangler, but this doesn’t really keep me safe. Though all of me was perched dry on the rock, the shark lunged and grabbed at my calf. Maybe he thought I was a seal, or that I deserved violence. I brought forth my knife from where it was hidden in my bikini and gouged out the shark’s eye, slicing off my own right breast in the process. The shark reeled back and fled. The breast sank. The sheer spandex of my bra floated away on the surf like a jellyfish head. As the breast sifted lazily into the dark fog of the ocean the nipple looked like an eye of its own, gazing into the trenches. The eye of the shark began to sink as well until my family, coming too late to prevent anything, caught it. “We can probably reattach it,” they said. “What about my breast?” I asked. “But, the shark’s eye—” they said, “we need to give it back.” I cut the left breast off to even things out, reluctantly. I cast the left breast into the water. Then I dropped the knife into the sea as well, and it sank fast with its weight, tip down, stabbing both breasts through the nipples—like an arrow through wise matching apples.

BIG BUSH

The older girl from down the street shook hands with a yew bush branch in my backyard and seeds and berries atmosphered in all directions as she said: “T H E  M O T H E R L O A D !”

I grasped a bush branch, shook it, showered seeds and berries, and said: “T H E  M O T H E R L O A D !”

The older girl climbed to the top of the slide, stood up straight, arms out like Jesus, and sang, “HAAAA-LLELUJAH! HAAAA-LLELUJAH!” And slid down. 

I climbed to the top of the slide, stood up, held out my arms, and sang, “HAAAA-LLELUJAH! HAAAA-LLELUJAH!” And slid down. 

The older girl told me “If you look in the mirror when you are all alone and say ‘Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,’ Mary will come for you.” I said I’d try it later. We played for a while longer and I kept thinking about Bloody Mary. I thought about it so much I started to believe it was something I came up with myself. 

Eventually the older girl told me to stop copying everything she did. “I’m not!” I said and then told her if that’s how she felt I would walk home, even though we were already at my house. 

I left her beside the big bush that is a story high. As if it was hers. I walked down the street a bit and applied some of the shimmery blue lipstick I had in my pocket. It was cold enough to see my breath so I held two fingers up to my mouth, pulled them away, and breathed out, thinking maybe from a distance people would believe I was smoking. 

I walked to the end of the street, the farthest away I could be and still see my house, but instead of turning around like always I went left down a street I’d never gone down. The houses on my street are far apart and surrounded by corn but the houses on this street were close together and all covered in vines, with flowers that looked like carpets and octopuses. The tree roots spilling out of the devil strips looked like octopuses, too—like octopuses squeezing themselves into peanut butter jars. 

As I passed a yellow house a black dog rushed to greet me but she was stuck behind a picket fence. I let her lick my hand through the rails and she told me not to play with the older girl down the street anymore. “She’s going to shake ALL the berries and seeds from the big bush,” the dog said. 

“From far away did it look like I was smoking?” I asked. 

She might have shrugged (it’s hard to tell with dogs).

Next I passed an old purple house with a tower. Sitting on the front porch was a baby being held by two moms who were both speaking in another language. They smiled and waved at me because the baby was smiling and waving at me. “Lips,” the baby said. 

“What?” I said. 

“She says,” one of the mothers said in a wavy sort of English, “don’t talk to yourself in the mirror.”

I turned back around now because I suddenly got worried the older girl from down the street would tell my mom I had run away. When I got home it was almost dark and it had begun to snow. The older girl was gone and the big yew bush was missing most of its berries and seeds. My family was going to eat dinner soon and nobody had noticed I was missing. I got a bad feeling like the older girl was somewhere in the house and that if I hadn’t come back she would try to take my place at dinner, but I didn’t see her anywhere. The kitchen smelled like chicken and bread. The TV was on. 

I crept up the stairs to my room and looked for the older girl some more. I looked in the little closet and behind the fake kitchen. I looked behind the bin of the Barbies with the chewed hands. The girl wasn’t there. 

I stood in front of my mirror in the dark and put more of the blue lipstick on and thought about Bloody Mary. I rubbed my lips together and then said, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary,” and waited. I got the feeling that maybe there was something behind me that I didn’t see in the mirror but when I turned around nothing was there. Then I thought maybe when I turned back around Bloody Mary would be in the mirror and I started crying, but when I finally turned back around there was nobody in the mirror but me. I was scared but I also felt somehow like I had said the wrong name, and if I got the name right it would work. 

I tried again and this time I said, “God, God, God,” and would you believe, God appeared in the mirror, and his face looked just like the face of the older girl down the street! When I raised an eyebrow the older girl down the street raised one eyebrow back at me. “HAAAA-LLELUJAH!” I sang. Then I smiled and waved, but she didn’t smile and wave back. She just said, “[Author], you’re lazy as sin. You are so lazy I could kill you to death.” Then she opened her mouth, and out from it stretched a branch like one of the branches from the big bush, and the branch was covered in more berries and seeds than I had ever seen. It came through the mirror and brushed against my face so I grasped it in my palm and I shook it, until it sprayed berries and seeds all over the room: they landed on the green matted carpet and inside the bin with the Barbies and their chewed hands and inside the fake stove. I shook it so much the older girl’s face went back and forth. I shook it so fast her face got all blurry. When the branch was at last naked, it coiled up again, back into the mirror, inside the girl’s mouth. 

I thought maybe if I said what the opposite of God was three times, the older girl would go away and I would just see myself again, but I didn’t know what the opposite of God was. I thought maybe I could say, “Satan, Satan, Satan,” but I was afraid to do that in case the devil himself showed up. But then I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he did—maybe if God turned out to look like the older girl up the street then maybe Satan would turn out looking like somebody much nicer, like the baby I met or the black dog. 

So I said, “Satan, Satan, Satan,” and the older girl’s face began to melt away like wax under the sun, and when it finally stopped melting there was just my face there, blankly gazing, as if nothing had ever happened at all. 

THE CHILDREN

I am trying to keep the children alive. I am tending to their every need. I am bringing them broth and dolls. They have been dying since the beginning of time. They lie on squat bunks, they are burgundy breathing things. Their chests rise and fall. One child is called Dormouse. Without her, I will never be small enough to be private. One child is called Cloister. Without her, I will never be happy alone. One child is called You at an Easter Egg Hunt, Age Five, and You Lost Your Father in the Crowd, and You Thought You Were All Alone Forever, Until You Saw His Green Coat by the Trees, and You Had Never Been So Happy to See a Green Coat. Without her I will never miss my father (but I will miss missing him). One child is called Snooze. Without her I will never be able to rest. Another child is called Sometimes I Think You Think I’m Really Stupid and looks like my mother crying. I wouldn’t mind so much if this child didn’t exist. Though I don’t want to watch it happen. 

GOATBOY

The little goatboy with his goatface and white arms is spraying me with water, his hoofknuckles, furry fingers abut a green plastic trigger. I am spraying him back, the little womanwoman, with knucklesknuckles and hairless fingers upon a purple trigger. We’re mooing and braying with laughter, moving in slo-mo, such fun. His little jeans, his striped t-shirt over his drumlike child’s tummy. And then a vision comes to me, mid-shot—the future elucidated by rain: little goatboy a little older, with his face in bandages, he has tried to cut off his face, he has grown older now, and tried to remove it. He stares at us through a slit in the gauze. You are only hearing about this now but I’ve had time to dwell on it and I am beyond anguish. I am now at impatience. What does he think will happen next? Does he think it will solve his problems? Does he believe he will fit in with all of us now, with our faces not missing? He will only be facelessboy then. But right now he is still young, and he is chasing me through purifying dew, and I cherish him while he lets me.