Mother and Child Read online

  If the mother were not a shooter before this, certainly what the hunter does next would be the tipping point. The hunter is now making doe bleats. Most useful in the hunter’s repertoire is the doe bleat. For a deer, the doe’s bleat is the origin of song, the origin of well-being, the most important sound of all. A doe’s bleat is the first real sound any deer hears. When the doe or buck rushes to the bleat, they are really rushing toward their mothers again.

  Also in the repertoire, there is a maternal grunt the hunters know will call fawns, were it not for the child, holding them back, out in the Fawning Habitat.

  How foolish and giddy the men are. Today the mother is not surprised at their mass disappearance from the planet. She takes their rattles and tells them it is time now to put away childish things.

  Oh, if only the mother had the fortitude to shoot a hunter in his lover’s bed when he is at his most vulnerable and distracted during the rut. She pictures a pile of camouflage clothes, drenched in blood, on the floor. How easy it would be to stop them, these men marked by shameful rattling or grunting or making Mother Sounds. Better to lure them into ecstatic union, and at that heightened moment shoot them, she thought; it would not be hard; she could eliminate them from the Valley and there would be nothing anymore to fear.

  Let them leap and fall and disappear, leap and fall and disappear.

  BABY SKELETONS HAVE three hundred parts. They have more cartilage than bone. So when you are carrying a baby, you are really carrying a package of cartilage or gristle. Over time, most of this cartilage turns to bone in a process called ossification.

  Later, when the baby became a child and was doing some long bone growth in a field, she looked up: Uncle Ingmar! In Italy there were cookies shaped like bones called Ossi di Morto. Uncle Ingmar had put one in the child’s mouth once. Each long bone had its own growth center. There was something frightening in this. She had a lot to do before the growth plates closed. Day turned to night and fall became winter. She looked to the sky where the wolf resided, waiting to escort her across the velvet divide. Soon she would be grown. Stars and dark brambles formed a crown above her head, and the wolf bent down and nuzzled her.

  THE CHILDREN FRIGHTENED the mother every day and every night of the year, so she was better prepared than some for the marauding legions that came to her door on All Hallows Eve.

  The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended on Halloween, allowing the spirits world to intermingle with the world of the living. At this time, the spirits would come in search of living bodies to possess, but the still-living did not care to be possessed and so would dress up in all manner of ghoulish costume and noisily parade around being destructive and rowdy so as to scare away the spirits looking for bodies. In the ninth century, early Christians walked from village to village begging for soul cakes—square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes you got, the more prayers were promised to be said on behalf of the dead, hovering relatives, so as to speed their passage to heaven.

  Not even her friend Jack could have survived the catastrophe, the mother thinks. Not even Jack. But because of his nefarious schemes, Ponzi and otherwise, and his contributions to the Great Malaise, Jack had been denied access into Heaven. Having outsmarted the very devil itself in the end, Jack was also denied access into Hell, and so Jack roamed. The devil gave him a single ember to light his way across the darkness. The candle was placed in a hollow turnip to keep it glowing longer. This was Jack’s lantern.

  A pumpkin is as good as a turnip when carrying a light through the infinite dark. They stand now at the mother’s door, the little urchins holding, like Jack, turnips and pumpkins lit by embers, and carrying loot bags. Apparently the spirits will wait for as long as it takes to find a body to enter.

  The mother thought she had remembered something—something the spirits had brought up in her, on this night of roaming souls—but now with the dawn she had begun to forget again. The next day, November came with its beautiful erased sky. She felt an uncommon gratitude, for she had lived to see November again. She was taken aback by the thought. Fallen leaves crackled under her feet. Death pulled at her, and in the glen, many plant species had vanished. Oblivion was above her head and all around, but it had not entered her yet.

  21

  vision

  THE CHILD SAID that her eyes were hurting her from looking at everything so hard all the time, so the mother took her to the eye doctor, and the child’s eyes were projected onto a screen. At first they were almond-shaped and looked like a cat’s eyes, obsidian, glittering, but after a few moments, the cat’s eyes vanished and what was behind the eyes was revealed. First the mother saw the retina, and then past the retina, and then to the veins which branched in every direction and then beyond that.

  Suddenly the mother was a child again in her backyard in winter at night holding the hand of her own mother, the Grandmother from the North Pole. Who could have imagined that her own child’s eye was lined with the exact trees of her childhood? How strange is the very world we inhabit and call home.

  Standing now, on the orb of the child’s eye, the full moon shone brightly and she looked more closely at those bare branches. There were the trees, each one of them: two maples, four birch, then an ash, then another maple, an oak. The mother put her hand to the screen—yes, as a girl she had memorized those trees, and in an instant she was young again and all the brothers were there and baby Inga. Snow covered the ground and the stars were beginning to come out.

  The child, off the screen now, tells the eye doctor that more and more, the mother’s eyes turn watery and soft, and the doctor says that it is a natural occurrence at a certain age. One thing naturally begins to blur into the next.

  The North Pole Grandmother took her small daughter’s hand and pointed to the Big Dipper and then to the Little Dipper. We orbit the sun, and the moon in turn orbits us. She loved the winter sky: Orion, the North Star, and Cassiopeia’s Chair, and the branches of the trees.

  She remembered standing there, looking at the sky the night the Grandmother from the North Pole, who was young and supple, told the mother, that even though she was just a girl, she already held an infinitesimal speck of her own child inside her.

  The mother blinked and the Grandmother from the North Pole blinked, and the trees seemed dipped in liquid silver.

  THEY HAD TO pass Nine Partners, and Tick Tock Way, and Deer Run, and travel under the Seven Stars Underpass before they got to him—the Boy in the Glen. The boy played a glinting horn and the child thought the boy played exceedingly well. The boy played, and the child danced, and they did not notice that the fox was in the snowy field behind them looking for the chicken. They existed in a magical circle beyond harm. There is something so charmed about a boy in a glen playing a horn while the red fox passes and the child dances.

  After a while, it grew dark and the children filled the horn with oil, lit it, and made their way back. When they were together they were protected and had immunity from all the fruitless works of darkness. Making their way to the cottage in the glen, even the boy’s father, touched by the charms of the children and the night, was made powerful and knowing, and without the least hesitation, snatched the chicken at the last minute from the jaws of the fox.

  In the distance their alluring music could be heard: a panpipe, bells. Give us the courage to enter the song, the mother thought, looking at the path from which the children would soon materialize.

  A CROWN OF winterberry adorned the concrete rabbit’s head. Beside it was an identical rabbit made entirely of snow.

  Someone had brought the rabbit a Divinity Basket. Someone else had brought a pair of Hare-Sticks, an auspicious gift, to celebrate the beginning of winter. The child was delighted to find the Hare-Sticks, each about five inches long. She placed them end-to-end so that they looked like a single wand. She then wrapped them in sprigs of wild thyme, club moss, and mountain sage dug from beneath the early snow. She waved the festive hare wands above her head. Winter had f
inally come.

  AT THE WINTER Solstice service, the snow- and fire-lights flickered, and the lost shadows of animals looked monstrous before her on the cave wall. The mother remembered now making a rabbit of snow. A rabbit of snow and ice in winter is more precious than any other kind of rabbit—that is obvious—its long ears shadowed against the firewall. In the flicker, there was a glimpse of something ancient and in motion, and she felt herself to be a part of something elusive and more beautiful than she could understand. Now that winter had arrived, the mother longed to see the wolf again, though in the Valley it was forbidden to even utter the word wolf during the twelve darkest days.

  She thought of the bats in the nearby caverns hibernating. Before you knew it, it would be spring, and she would see them again, though she knew that it did not really matter what guise the bat came in. Whether the bat came as a bird, or an angel, or a wolf, or a rabbit made of snow, it scarcely mattered—she would always recognize it.

  EVERY YEAR UNCLE Ingmar arrived with the snow, and this year was no exception. He had come from Minnesota and, as usual, would stay for what seemed a very long time, and the mother, as usual, put him up at the local inn. There is no room for you here, Uncle Ingmar, the mother said. While Uncle Ingmar was jolly and gregarious, the mother was non-negotiable and austere. Side by side it would seem impossible that the two were in any way related.

  To the child, Uncle Ingmar was all sweetness and folly and light. The only time he ever exhibited his other side was when he first saw the Grandmother from the North Pole’s grandfather clock in the mother’s kitchen. Why should the mother have it? Was he not, by birth, entitled to the clock?

  Don’t stay up late at night with Uncle Ingmar, the mother said, and the child nodded. The obedience of the child frightened the mother, but it also consoled her to know that the she would not stay up with the man who is her brother and covets the clock. The mother thinks of love’s unnerving proximity to hate.

  If it were up to Uncle Ingmar, they would stay up half the night drinking vodka and hot chocolate and writing poems about the magnificent Swedish clock with its curvaceous body and starry crown.

  As it was, Uncle Ingmar and the child had already composed one. They read it aloud:

  There was a fancy Swedish clock

  It had no tick it had no tock

  The brother loved the sister a lot

  The sister loved the Swedish clock

  And what is foul, looks somehow fair

  And what is fair is not tock tock tock.

  The mother grimaced looking at the two of them at the early dinner, lit by candles: these were the dark days.

  She looked suddenly to the ceiling and remembered during one of Uncle Ingmar’s extended visits at Christmas the child, just a baby at the time, pointing at the hanging circle of holly and candles aflame. It was before she could speak. And Uncle Ingmar there with the silver basin of water. The child never forgot the burning wreath.

  UNCLE INGMAR WOULD talk about the “Hour of the Wolf” as he assembled his shadow theater. A flashlight and cutouts. A magic lantern. And there in the night, the wolf towered on the child’s wall.

  Where is your mother? Uncle Ingmar has the wolf ask. And the shadow girl whispers in Uncle Ingmar’s girl’s voice: she’s asleep in the snow under a stone.

  THE GRANDMOTHER FROM the North Pole was acquiring extra vision in her left eye. It came from years and years of looking at snow and white light, the Grandmother surmised. To her ancestors it had happened, and now it was happening to her, and maybe one day to the child, it would happen again. The doctor agreed that people of Nordic Origin seemed at a certain age predisposed to this darkly illuminated sight, which was sometimes confused with blindness.

  The child could not imagine what the sparkling eyes of the Grandmother saw now as the snowflakes fell into their cereal bowls, but before very long, the grandmother said simply, I see white roses. Sometimes, though not often, she said, you see a thing as it really is.

  After a few moments the Grandmother looked up and said, Dark matter really exists, but so does Luminous matter. And above the grandmother and child, the flying reindeer passed.

  THE MOTHER WOKE early to bake the Epiphany Cake. As always, it was to be plain with a little bit of spice to commemorate the Magi’s gifts to the Christ child, and inside a little trinket or treasure was to be placed.

  The mother plucked a fancy almond from the cupboard to place in the batter. She assumed the trinket was meant to be the Christ child. Whoever found it would be designated Queen of the Evening and be allowed to preside over the Night’s most exquisite mysteries. The mother and child thought that this sounded wonderful, to be Queen of the Mysterious Evening.

  The mother made the drink called Lamb’s Wool, and she unwrapped the chalk from its purple vestment. The mother knew that, as usual, the child would find the treasure and she thought, yes, that is as it should be, and as usual, the child would get to write in chalk on the door as a welcome C M B, which stood for Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, who were the kings.

  The mother now regretted that she hadn’t at the last minute, drawn a little face on the almond, or if not a face then at least a smile. There would be golden paper crowns, and candles. The Queen of the Mysterious Evening would wear a robe and carry a glittering staff and genuflect under the cold night sky.

  All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the mother was overtaken by a desire so pressing she leapt from her chair. I should love to see the Snowy Owl, she said aloud, and she ran to the window which already framed the darkness though it was still afternoon. Its white feathers filled her sight. The dormouse took refuge. She thought of the single star slung above the house.

  Meanwhile, the silent almond slept deep in the cake, and waited.

  IN THIS COLD circle of stones, in the infinite darkness, a grieving mother walks barefoot through the snow. There are roses between her toes and she carries a lantern. It’s Mary, poor thing, the Virgin, holding her unending vigil. She’s waiting for her son to return.

  The mother wishes that the Virgin might stop, and put down her lantern, and rest somewhere awhile—anywhere but here, any night but tonight.

  THE WORLD IN its present form was passing away. So said Saint Paul to the Corinthians, and the mother had to agree.

  The child and the Grandmother float by, clicking and whirring all aglow in the light of three laptops, five enormous fluorescent force fields, a stack of illuminated discs, headphones, iPod shuffles, glitter wands, shining pendants, voice mails, remnants of music and time, fragments of the world’s information trailing them.

  A GALAXY IS a massive interstellar phenomenon with gasses and dust and stars and dark matter. One trillion stars might orbit a common center. The child thought of star clusters, star clouds, stellar oceans, and interstellar clouds. The word galaxy is from the Greek word that means milky. The child liked the idea of a storm of milk or a storm of stars.

  It is said that Zeus placed his infant son Hercules, born of a mortal woman, on the sleeping goddess Hera’s breast so that the baby would drink her divine milk and become immortal. When Hera awoke and realized she was nursing an unknown baby, she pushed the baby away, and a jet of milk sprayed the night sky and became the Milky Way.

  THE CHILD CLOSED her eyes and pictured the galaxy’s curving, dusty arm. There are probably 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. They drift through the elliptical cosmos. The child thinks of the Grandmother, fixes her in the moment so that she can never forget her. I feel in my body that you are due, the child says on the phone, trying to coax the Grandmother to them. And with that, the Grandmother from the North Pole fills the sky. She is 100,000 light-years in diameter, 1,000 light-years thick. She contains three hundred billion stars.

  THE CHILD’S AUNT remembered the curving staircase and the winding corridors of the house in which she was born. The ventricle, like a shell, floods with seawater. The aunt enters a pre-human slumber. How beautiful is the heart!

  NEURAL ACTIVITY SWE
EPS across the fetal retinas as if the nervous system is rehearsing for vision by running test patterns across them. Rehearsing for life. You’ve got to hand it to babies, the Grandmother says with wonder.

  There are death rehearsals as well, the Grandmother from the North Pole says, as the eye accustoms itself to the darkening, and the blur.

  SOME COMETS HAVE long thin orbits. They may spend centuries away from the sun, frozen solid. When they at last come back, they come as strangers and in a new form. They have no memory of where they have come from, though they have been there for centuries, and they have no idea what is before them, or that it will last millennia. There is a pull and that is all.

  SHE LOOKS OUT onto the white field and the word Sneemanden comes to her, and she sees in the distance a man made of snow with his back to her, wearing a sad hat. She has gone back to school, the mother reminds herself. It is the reasonable explanation. At three o’clock she will reappear.

  THE BOY, UNCLE Ingmar says, is no longer held together by screws; he is held together by newly knitted bone. The long winter nights had been filled with bone knitting, and now the bone knitting was complete. When he takes out the screws, the doctor will give them to the boy in a jar, Uncle Ingmar says. When the boy returns home with his jar, he will dig a hole and he will place the jar in the snow.

  Even though the bones had knitted themselves back together, still the winter had not passed.

  QUIETLY, THE MOTHER paddles out to the Isle of the Dead while the child sleeps. There’s a little man there she sometimes visits in the night, and he tells her of the vaulted world.