Mother and Child Page 18

  For now the child was attached to the wall because the mother had grown tired of paying the bill for the walk-around phone. Soon the child will be older, and the child will still be attached to the wall and she will feel as if she cannot move around and speak in confidence.

  Once, the mother will say, when she was a child and living in a house with the North Pole Grandmother and Ingmar, Lars, Anders, Sven, and baby Inga, everyone was attached to the wall, and if you wanted to talk in confidence, you had to invent a private language. There was a secret yodel she was fond of when she was a growing child on the wall trying to leave her mother. A keening sound had come out of her as she tried to leave. On these days she would stand high up on a mountain yodeling, waving, gasping for breath.

  THE SNOW WAS slowly melting, which meant that things that could not be seen before would soon be seen in the Valley again. The mother and child looked out at the Valley they loved, but also hated a little. Out the car window: two goats, free vegetables, a pink toilet, the signs that said Mabbetville and Pulvers Corners.

  Sometimes the child wondered what it would be like to live in any other place.

  MANY OF THE People of the Valley wanted a white person to live in the White House. There was a simplicity to it that appealed to them. They were not interested in having a person of any other color or stripe sullying things up.

  The People of the Valley knew enough to know what they liked, and there was a simplicity to that as well. They also knew what they feared—and all around them was darkness.

  About four million years ago, the wolf, the coyote, and the golden jackal diverged from one another. All three have seventy-eight chromosomes. This allows them to hybridize freely and produce fertile offspring. First-crossed wolf/dog hybrids are popular in the US, but the dog retains many wolf-like traits. This the mother remembers from her Wolf Studies long ago.

  A coydog is the hybrid offspring of a male coyote and a female dog.

  The dogyote is the result of breeding a male domestic dog with a female coyote.

  Coyotes also breed with wolves, resulting in coywolves. Other breeds to have hybridized with foxes are huskies and hounds: this animal is known as a dox. The neighbor has a wonderful dox is not an unheard-of thing to hear in parts of the Valley.

  Let us not forget that the wolf and the jackal can interbreed and produce fertile hybrid offspring. What is a dingo, the mother does not know, but she knows what a coy-dingo must be. If you cross a coyote with a dog, you get the ferocity of the coyote with the friendliness and fearlessness of a dog—an unfortunate mix. What if you tried to pet it?

  It is thought that the Ancient Egyptians crossbred domestic dogs with jackals, producing a jackal-dog that resembled the god Anubis.

  If the blacks stay black and the whites stay white, it still remains possible to think clearly. There is something to be said for clarity, there is something to be said for understanding the lines. If the Jews were meant to breed with the Gentiles, God would have written it down through the prophets, the People of the Valley like to say. What if you cross a jackal with a child?

  On a death barge a mongrel in robes might float by. What if without permission, the dog-child wore a crown and began to decree?

  If you interbreed the races you are in for trouble, the People of the Valley are saying. Murky children rise up out of their dreams and walk the not-so-distant hills. You are left with the question when you bump into them picking flowers of what exactly they are. If you misguidedly vote one of these mixed-flower people, these freaks, into public office, you will only add to the National Nightmare.

  But like it or not, fluidity and connections and dualities define the world now. Like it or not, forging hybrid identities is where it’s at. It does not help that the Morbidity Table indicates the kind of White People who live in the Valley right now will be dying off sooner rather than not.

  The question in the Valley more and more becomes how to disable permanently the mongrel so he will not be able to run, but only hobble.

  There is a lot to consider when pondering mongrels and men. The child should hurry and graft horse-running legs onto the mongrel candidate’s body. She should hurry and graft enormous white eagle wings to his back; a surgical expertise born of necessity will move into her hands. Among the species there is an aptitude for survival one can only call admirable. Winged, horse-legged, felled candidate, how are you feeling? Fine, he says. I feel great. The child and the mother and the candidate’s aptitude for bouncing back are unmatched.

  If you cross a mother with a bat, then what have you got? Something shining and night-loving with a sonar intelligence of the first order.

  Some things once brought into being can never be killed. Some things brought into light refuse to retreat back into the darkness. Not only that, but they obtain a lightness unlike any other thing in the world. There is a luminosity not to be believed.

  If you cross the mother on the Equinox with the Night and introduce a Glove, a miracle will occur.

  A BLUE MULTITUDE of children huddle around the mother. They’ve just come in from the blueberry patch. See them now as they doze off with their full blue buckets—Lars, Bibi, Ingmar, Anders, Sven. Baby Inga is not yet born.

  INGMAR TUGS AT his mother’s blue dress and whispers, it is rumored that the Cold Lab is making its way to the Spiegelpalais.

  Yes, she smiles. There are great hopes that the Grandfather from the North Pole at last will be on display.

  FATHER TED HAD disappeared, and so someone ran to prop up the one-hundred-year-old Father Finch to say the Sunday Mass. The mother loved Father Finch best, for he seemed always furious, and he spoke with a slight stutter, and there was something in his fury that steeled her to his side. When he arrived at last, he started immediately telling the congregants that there was a word in Hebrew, and that the word meant when you save one person, you save the world. Plainly he spoke of the suffering of the children, and the mother imagined God’s infinite indifference in all matters big and small. Pity, Father Finch said, the children for whose suffering we are directly responsible. The child, sitting next to the mother in the front pew, could not understand how this could be.

  When he was not giving the sermon, Father Finch was prone to stutter, particularly at the letter B. The latter part of the Mass was especially difficult for him with all the body and blood and breaking bread. At these times, a loud baritone voice would come out of the mother’s chest, and she would bellow bread, or blood, and it gave Father Finch the momentum to go on. The child stared at the mother as if she could not believe the mother was capable of producing such a sound.

  The God Father Finch spoke of directed the leper to plunge himself seven times in the river, and with that, the leper’s flesh became the flesh of a child, and he was clean of his leprosy. Next, the God cast seven demons from the Magdalene. The mother put up her umbrella. There was no telling what the God might do next.

  DOWN THE ROAD, the artist groped in the dark for her brushes and shouted to those who passed by, on this Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, that she had been blinded in the Spiegelpalais. She said not to go in there: all had transpired or would transpire, and all that was promised was nothing but a mirage.

  FROM THE FOG the soldiers came now, singing their crooked songs. First a few and then a few more and then a cast of thousands. They are just over this last dune—Grave Alice and Laughing Allegra and Margarete with the Auburn Hair—you’re nearly there.

  SHE PINNED THE Obligation Doily to her head. Once it was forbidden to walk into a church with the head uncovered. In those days, hatmakers’ shops flourished in the Valley. The ladies went to great lengths seeking out hats that might please Him. If not a beautiful hat or an intricate lace Obligation Doily, then what, the mother wondered, was the offering He was waiting for?

  THE MOTHER THOUGHT while the child slept she might go out and confront the God, head on. Go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord, the faltering bat whispered; the Lord will be passing by. A strong
and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before her—but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake—but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire. After the fire there was a tiny phishing sound. When she heard this, she put her face in her cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.

  THE VIRGIN STANDS with her lantern at the mouth of the cave and gestures for the mother to come forward.

  Yes, the mother says, but I’m not ready yet. I need a little more time. The Virgin smiles and puts down her lantern and rests awhile.

  SOMETIMES, WHEN THEY were gray traces on a page, and the hand loomed and hovered and pressed down on them, when they were glyphs across the divide from one another, she despaired. In those times she was aware of the ampersand—the thin squiggled figure that both joined and separated them. The notion that someone had created them filled her with sadness; she did not know quite why. While the inventor slept, she slipped from under the great hand and went out untethered into the silence.

  The mother wishes for the place where they are not already decided, not already made, the place they are autonomous, unmediated, free. She looks out a small window in the text. The hand asleep atop the manuscript. In the pre-dawn, she makes her way back home from the cave to the child and she runs into the members of the parish making their way to the sunrise service. She does not look up, but they see her anyway. When they greet her on the path carrying a torch, she sidesteps them. They are on their way to morning Mass, but she has had enough of the Creators, all of them, even the child, asleep, dreaming her, venturing out into the forest, seeking her once more, dragging the little ampersand.

  HE HAD PULLED a fishbone from the throat of a choking boy, he had talked a wolf into releasing a pig for a starving old woman, he had visions of the risen Christ everywhere he looked—for his trouble, his skin was shredded and he was beheaded and named the patron saint of animals. And once a year, the mother and child were blessed with candles at the throat in his honor.

  IN THE CAVES of Allah, the soldiers, sheltered, grateful to be out of the monstrous heat, crouch and talk a kind of baby talk: Tora Bora, Lahore, and then just gibberish. Before the youngest among them closes his eyes, he says, look! By the light of the last match: a lion, a deer, a running man drawn 24,000 years earlier. How filled with joy they are at this last moment, and how unexpectedly—at the very end.

  THE CHILD WAS learning French in school and studying ancient Egypt. After Egypt would be the Greeks. And next year there would be Latin. The ancient world was alive and well.

  The child thought she might like to try to embalm one of the bunnies and put it in a mummy suit. Now that the snow was melting, certain things seemed clearer. That was not a coyote they saw in the driveway—she opened her book and showed her mother—that was the god Anubis.

  The mother remembers now Anubis, one dark night, caught in the car’s headlights, stared at her as she pulled into the drive. She was afraid, and she and the child waited, until it passed.

  26

  THE FIRST WOMAN to be inducted into the National Society of Thatchers had come to the Valley and proceeded to thatch roofs for the stone houses that were being built. She was a small woman, the people thought, to be balancing such heavy bundles of straw on her shoulder and wielding that legget while going up and down to and from her perch on a biddle. She was always smiling, for she loved the green hazel smell and the rustle of the reed and straw and the connection she felt with all the other thatchers who had ever lived.

  What a peculiar sight, the few remaining men in the Valley remarked.

  THE MOTHER THOUGHT that when thinking about the lamb or the vanishing men or the bees and the bats, it was best to keep the larger picture in mind and to take the long view. In the furnace of the stars much had happened, and in everyday carbon molecules, there was stardust from the time the asteroids crashed on the planet millions of years ago. Best to think of all five of the earth’s Great Extinctions, or at the very least, the extinction paleontologists call the Great Dying. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, 90 percent of all living species perished.

  Someone is finding an unusual chemical signal in an ancient layer of an Italian city. Irradium. So much has happened, and is happening, under the earth and in the oceans and above the earth and all around. The mother takes the child’s hand, and they make their descent. What are space and time to them?

  At the K-T Boundary they pause.

  At the Boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods they pause. They marvel at the tortoise. When the asteroid came, it killed everything within hundreds of miles. The animals that weren’t incinerated or gassed by fumes either froze or starved to death soon after when the dust stirred up by the impact blotted out the sun for more than a year.

  They stand in a trance at the P-T Boundary. The place where the Permian and the Triassic meet. When thinking about extinction, it is best to have some context. History, the mother believes, even at its worst, always consoles. Today, mastodons and mammoths and giant sloths have no living counterpart remaining on earth, though some plants and animals that disappear, stay gone for millions of years and then return.

  FOSSILS EXTRACTED FROM the fine-grained mudstone and limestone rocks near the Green River in Wyoming were said to be forty-seven million years old. She made a note to herself to place the Grandmother there, when the time comes.

  A WOMAN WHO built stone walls had moved to the Valley. There she was, shifting, sorting, and shaping rocks. How does she manage it? the people remarked. She gathered rocks for the face of the wall, rocks for the heart of the wall, sand, and some stoppers that break up the pattern and create character. She loved doing this ancient work outside to birdsong, she said, as she watched the seasons day by day unfold. On her coffee breaks, she chatted with the passersby.

  What an edifying sight, the few remaining men remarked to one another.

  THE MOTHER WAS dreaming. If the heart of the deceased outweighs the feather, then the person has a heart made heavy by evil deeds. In that event, Ammit, the god with the croc head and hippo legs, will devour the heart, condemning the subject to oblivion for an eternity.

  The Grandmother from the North Pole is certain that the heart of the President, soon to be the former president and a significant contributor to the vanishing world, would be gobbled up, though for the thousands and thousands of dead, this is little consolation.

  The Grandmother adjusts her Doghead and walks with the child to the pageant, dragging the President’s heart. Anubis weighs the heart while the Ibis-Headed Thoth, the god of wisdom, records the verdict.

  The child, having taken off her Ibis head, reveals malachite eyes.

  WHEN THE GREAT Wind came and the electricity went out, and the tree fell on the house and bats poured from the tree and entered the house while the child bathed, the transformation had already begun. What the mother had neglected to say was that the bat had brought clairvoyance, and that she saw in an instant what she had not been able to see before: all that had happened and now all that was to come.

  FROM HER PERCH atop the world, she sees a blue horse in the distance. It was a troubling vista, and it exhausted her. She thought of all the things that might appear out of nowhere, unbidden. Seen from afar, but utterly out of reach—its great forelegs rising into the air. It was not approachable; there was no way you could ever get to it, so that when travellers passed it as their plane accelerated, they caught a glimpse of an ominous blue blur as they rose, the last thing they would see. The boy with the toy jet reached for it nonetheless.

  The September sky was so blue it hurt her to look at it. Something of the shape of the horse, flickering, fleeting, unable to be grasped entirely, remained in her for a moment and then was gone.

  THE MOTHER DID not know why everything had to change—she just knew that it did. Things were changing even though they seemed not to be, and they would continue to change now at a faster and faster rate.

  SHE HA
D MADE the sparkling snow rabbit a crown of winterberry, which the catbird came to sup on. She put an orange in its paw and thought of the day the Baltimore Orioles would return. That migratory corridor of birds the mother and child were lucky enough to live along. The French called those birds les passereaux. Everything is passing, Saint Paul said.

  EVERYTHING WAS CHANGING: the child, the Grandmother. Everything was melting. The child hoped more than anything that before too much longer they could play their Santa game again. She hoped that her grandmother would still remember it. The Book of Wonder, the child thought, would reveal what the reindeer did in the off season, or the stitch Mrs. Claus used to sew the large brown wooden buttons to Santa’s jacket, and what games the elves excelled at during the Winter Olympics. She looked at her twinkling grandmother. Her village at the top of the world seemed to come forward in the mist as the stories unfolded and then to recede again, back into white.

  Do you remember when you were a baby and I took you to the top of the lighthouse in Maine? the Grandmother asks. No, the child shakes her head. I don’t remember that.

  You were very small.

  A BODY AT rest is still accelerating, the Grandmother from the North Pole tells the child. Isn’t that amazing? And she whooshes by on her dogsled. Wait up! the child calls. The child remembered how the mother had shaped the snow into a sparkling rabbit, hoping to call the Grandmother back to her side. Just a minute.

  EVERYTHING WAS SPEEDING up now. Soon the child herself would be growing at Girls’ Peak Growth Velocity. They would have to hold on tighter than they had ever held on to anything before. Only the Virgin with her Infinite Patience was in no hurry.

  SLOW DOWN, THE Grandmother says, when the child goes too quickly. Press Enter, the child says, and then she puts her hand over the hand that holds the cursor, and everything slows.