Mother and Child Page 4

There! Over there! a woman said in a hush—a momentary silhouette on a dark branch—there! It was the Ovenbird. You could tell by its song, teacher, teacher, teacher, it said.

  Where? Where?

  So little so drab so gray—or green, impossible to see.

  Later when they were out of the forest, she would hear about the enclosed nest that the little bird would build. I should like to see the covered nest of the Ovenbird, the child said. Someone else spoke of the courtship rituals of the Woodcock.

  In a great and mysterious turn, one of the elders took the child’s head and pointed it upward and to the left. The mother gasped, remembering how round and perfect the child’s head had been when she was born. It had seemed to her like a planet. One of the elders spoke of the Sphinx Moth. It was very quiet, and when someone spoke, it was always in a whisper, and what was said sounded like a secret. Another bird flew by. There! someone said. But she could not rescue the bird from the distance.

  One of the elders, a woman without binoculars who led the way for a while, had fallen behind.

  I can’t see a thing anymore, she whispered to the child, but I like to come nevertheless.

  She took the child’s hand so as not to stumble, and they walked a little further, into a place of improbable darkness. The woman who could not see anymore phished and phoshed. Her eyes were the same watery blue color as the Grandmother’s from the North Pole.

  THE MOTHER RECALLED the Arctic Cloudberry—rare, brief of season, difficult to pick, unlike anything else. And how the Grandmother from the North Pole would make a Cloudberry Cake. Cloudberries were always the Grandfather from the North Pole’s favorite. Grandfather was said to have made Arctic Cloudberry cordials back home. The mother recalls currents and lingonberries and elderberry saft.

  She would like the child to write the names of the berries in the atlas. She would like the child to keep track for her. Cloudberries grow in the remote fir and silver birch forests in the north or in the far bogs. They can also be found in the mountains of Lapland. In late July they appear on the forest floor, and by early August they are gone.

  THE HONEYBEES HAD disappeared three years ago now, but to celebrate the child’s birth, Aunt Eloise made funnel cakes shaped like beehives nonetheless. Happy Birthday, she sang to the child, and while she sang Uncle Lars did a sprightly dance. The cakes were curved, and all agreed they were most splendid in all the Valley. She made tiers of hives, replete with little marzipan bees. Everyone sighed. They were the most beautiful cakes anyone had ever seen, and Aunt Eloise and the child closed their eyes and pictured the bees.

  After the candles were lit and the song was sung and the child had made her wish, it was not long before a single bee—regal, gilded—landed on her birthday crown. And then another came. And then another.

  Word spread quickly as Aunt Eloise had a talkative streak, and before long, beekeepers all across the country came leaving their offerings for the child.

  The beekeepers traveled a glowing corridor to the child’s door, holding cakes they themselves had baked. They moved as if through a golden tunnel, or a honey lozenge, to the child.

  The mother, drowned in amber, accepted the offerings on behalf of the child and quickly closed the door.

  Bees use the sun as a compass. They search for the place of continuous nectar flow, and all season beekeepers from across the world left their farms and made their way to the Valley.

  A wooden aqueduct holding aloft a fleet of six beeswax boats floated by.

  A golden halo of pollen appeared to hover above the child’s head.

  THE VIRGIN SMILES at the mother and child. She wants them to come to the clearing in the forest, to her shrine near the hive. She is holding a honey cake. There will be three schoolchildren there to play with, she promises. She is wearing a beekeeper’s suit. Gloves and a hood. With a smoker she puts the bees to sleep. Come to me.

  WHEN THE MOON was full and the weather was right, she would invite the child out to the night garden. The garden at night scared the child who was afraid of the dark, so she would always stay inside. It was time again for applying the fish emulsion, the ritual feeding of the roses with the bodies of liquidated bass and trout and sunfish. It was quite a sight—the mother working through the night.

  When the child looked out the nursery window, she saw fireflies plastered to the outline of her mother, and she watched her like that for a long time. Small things of all sorts seemed to attach themselves to her and cling. When the raccoons came, as they always did with their awful tiny human hands pressing, the child would be jealous and she would try to force herself out the door.

  Come see the Luna Moth, the mother cried with delight, but not even that enchanting, silk-producing creature with its huge pale green wings could entice the child. Instead she held vigil at the screen door and waited for day to come. From the door, she could hear the mother singing, “Tomorrow will be my dancing day,” and it soothed her.

  And in the morning, resplendent and smelling of fish and roses, and wiping away bits of fur and fin, she would bring the child out into the daylight to live their daylight lives, and the men and the boys would follow them, and hum and trip and fall around the mother, and touch the child’s hair, and this alarmed the child for they lived in a household without men or boys.

  How sad are the men, the mother thought, in love with fish and figment and oblivion and the night.

  THE MOTHER WAS drawn to the glow of the votives and she would kneel before them, and the child too loved the small flickering flames in their cups.

  Once after Midnight Mass, the mother told the child a story of when she was a girl. She had never forgotten, though it had happened long ago now. She was out late, when all of a sudden the dazzling body of a wolf appeared on the path. The silver fur. The sleek head. She motioned to it, ablaze on the trail, and slowly neared it, and her hand slid beneath its head. How to describe such velocity? How to describe this passage in the night? This transit? This portal? He had carried her across the threshold and introduced her to the other world. Never had there been such an initiation as that. Thinking about it, even now, she shuddered. She had never told a soul.

  For a long time she forbade herself from even uttering the word “wolf.”

  That night they put a candle in every window and waited.

  5

  oracle

  BUNNY BOY, THE cat who had smuggled a tiny rabbit into the house without being noticed, now munched on it in the corner. When the mother saw it, there were rabbit pieces still in view, but the next time she checked, they were far and few, and then finally it was as if no rabbit had been there at all. Where did you put that rabbit, Bunny Boy? the mother hissed, as she lifted a rug and peered under chairs, but if it was there, even a whisker, she never found it.

  Somewhere in the house what is left of that rabbit is stashed away and hidden. Somewhere, while the mother and child sleep, its carcass is turning to stone.

  THE CONCRETE RABBIT appeared to the mother the next morning. See what you’ve done Bunny Boy, the mother scolded—now we have to live with this hare, standing erect, holding a basket, guarding his kind forever, in all seasons, in all weather, night and day.

  But despite her dismay, after a while she and the child found themselves going to the rabbit with their troubles, their thoughts, their ideas, their dreams. They brought him water and they washed his feet and they moved him when it was sunny and put him under a tree. They brought him lettuces and carrots. In April or March, they set before him little Easter chocolates. But no matter what they did, the rabbit’s expression did not seem to change.

  After a time, when the neighbors got wind of the rabbit’s existence, they began to sneak over to visit him with their petitions. Soon, word of the rabbit traveled through the Valley, though what he signified, no one could be sure. An old woman who visited the rabbit wished to conceive a child though she was a hundred years old. A man, who loved a woman who did not love him back, became a regular visitor. A mother whose child had
disappeared rubbed the rabbit’s paw. Widows, in increasing numbers, sat by his side. All day a steady stream of Valley folks made their way to the place. The Concrete Rabbit listened. They called him Sir. The pilgrims thought that indeed Sir did love them—how could he not?—they who came with every problem the flesh posed. They felt great tenderness and pity coming from him, and because he never closed his eyes, he always appeared attentive and empathetic. Who ate the chocolates they brought him, no one knew.

  The child danced and played near the rabbit, though her feelings were decidedly mixed. In the back of her mind, she feared the rabbit might take the mother away somehow. Weren’t rabbits known to be wily? Weren’t rabbits the sort that would want to share the mother—something about those silky places on a rabbit’s underbelly made her wary. What if the mother just walked to it of her own accord and forgot to look back and joined it in the concrete world? The child might be forced to perform a Concrete-Rescue, which was never easy.

  In the night, when the moonlight illuminated the rabbit, the child worried—but in the day, the worry left her.

  The Rabbit Oracle stood silently in the now green grass, and the child danced and marveled at all the garden deities: the Turtle, the Frog, the Mantis. In many ways it was an extreme life. From the tree, an idolatry of birds. A charm of finches and meadowlarks passed, a bevy of deer, but unmoving at the center was the silence of the Sir. Fearful is how the mother felt standing on the spongy warm earth next to him.

  THERE WAS A knock at the door. Who’s there? Before them stood a man defanged. He wore no sandals; he carried no moneybag, no sack, only a small box of teeth, which he rattled. It was the Toothless Wonder.

  Can you direct me to the Rabbit Oracle? I have heard he can be found under a woodbine, shaded from the sun where gentle breezes blow and there is a most pleasant fragrance.

  Where are your teeth? the child asked. He laughed and she saw the cavernous black at the center of the human. Teeth! he said, amused. What kind of Toothless Wonder would I be then?

  THE MOTHER PUT the Concrete Rabbit in her yellow wagon. She was going to wheel it in the night while the rabbit’s disciples slept. It was high time for the rabbit to dispense its wisdom elsewhere. She walked as far as she could possibly go while the child counted alligators and waited for her mother to return. At 3,745 alligators, the mother peeked her head in and announced she was back. She had found a lovely grotto for the rabbit, she said, in the nearby town of Warren. They could visit it, the mother promised, it wasn’t far, though she had no intention of ever visiting the Sir again. Enough was enough. They drifted off together in the child’s bed that night and had a peaceful and dreamless sleep. No one was watching them with concrete eyes, or listening with unnaturally long, erect ears, or holding a basket. It was a long time since either of them had slept like that—the sleep of the dead, as the mother called it.

  In the morning, a few people gathered under the child’s window. Someone was tossing Bunny Boy into the air like a ball. The mother was prepared to accept condolences. Yes, so sad, quite sad, perhaps he’ll turn up. But when she looked out the window, the rabbit was back.

  THERE EXISTS IN the human world a Child-Mother Proximity that must always be maintained no matter what, and the mother and child adhere to this equation.

  The Vortex Man pulls down the blackboard. Observe, he says, the increasing proximity of the child to the attachment figure even now as they casually make their way to the lake. Note the investment in keeping the proximity within an acceptable and bearable distance. See how if the child gets too near, the mother demurs and retreats slightly. A marvelous thing!

  The white fox is drawn to the tundra, and the mother to the river, and the father is drawn to the fog. In the Child-Mother Proximity Equation, one is always calibrating the Greater and Lesser Proximities like the Antilles. My Aunt Tilly was always leaving, and luckily she was childless, the Vortex Man roars.

  As the Researchers have noted, the Vortex Man continues, whether a child moves toward a mother by running, walking, crawling, shuffling, or in the case of the Thalidomide Child, rolling, is thus of very little consequence compared to the set goal of its locomotion and namely its Proximity to the Mother.

  One has to call up the Science in these matters, the Vortex Man says. Infants are biologically predisposed to stay close to their mothers, or be killed by predators. The survival of the genes the child is carrying is paramount.

  Behold the Child-Mother Proximity—a precious measurement, unlike any other.

  As for the Mother-Rabbit Proximity—that was altogether another matter.

  THE NEXT DAY, Bunny Boy deposited a full-length hare on the porch directly in front of the door. If the mother had not looked down, she would have been raised several inches above the ground when she stepped out, borne aloft on its body. The hare was perfect in every way—brown, long-limbed—except for its face, which was not there. The mother screamed and the child ran to her, and elbowing her mother aside, she looked down and then pointed to the meadow where its ghost had already arrived. There beside the Concrete Rabbit stood another rabbit, nearly identical, only whiter. It stood straight up and its ears stood straight up and it seemed to be listening. The mother noticed it carried what appeared to be a little basket. Look, the child said. No, I don’t see it, said the mother. Multiplying Concrete Rabbits in the field frightened her.

  The mother looked down at her dress, which was gleaming white, and washed in the Blood of the Hare. The rabbit’s blood was poised to relinquish liquidity, assume a solid shape, and never leave her side. Hard bits of rabbit attached to her. Look, said the child, but the mother refused.

  THE SOLDIER, SHOCK-HEADED with locks of white, having seen appalling things, atrocious things really, he whispered, weeps on the bridge.

  May I help you off with your shock head? the mother said, and he turned his gentle face to her. His face was mild, but his eyes were wild. The mother thought she had never seen such a strange person in all her life. And in the glade the mild soldier multiplied.

  A DEPRAVED GROUP of moneylenders and other high rollers had made for themselves a bronze bull and a molten calf and were worshipping them. Their golden hoofs, their gleaming haunches. Just another day in the Valley, the mother quipped as she ushered the child by. Everyone wanted everyone else to love its little molten figure best.

  Meanwhile, the war droned on. Attempts were made to measure the mothers’ tears as they fell to the earth and drenched it. The Concrete Rabbit shunned the molten calf, who in turn shunned the cricket. In every village there were living sacrifices and the great sadnesses of rabbits, calves, crickets, and mothers. Death bells sounded from every mountaintop.

  IN THE GREEN glade, soldiers were tumbling and falling off their horses and getting back on again, and falling again, and the mother and child wondered how they ever got anywhere or won anything, until they considered that perhaps the rules of battle included falling on their heads, or walking on their hands upside down, or any number of topsy-turvy actions, and that the battle always ended with everyone falling off their horses and laying side by side. The victors indistinguishable from the vanquished, and all of them lying in the green glade.

  IT WAS SPRING and the Risen-Again children were descending en masse from the hills. When the mother had fair warning, she would dive into the bushes and hide, but sometimes there was just not enough time. Ambushed again, the mother thought, damn. She’d like to live in a Risen-Again-Free Zone. It was her goal.

  The child, who was ordinarily mild-mannered, grew fierce. Do not wish the Risens away! Eight children were coming to play. There was Ezekiel, Nathan, Rebecca, Hannah, Jeremiah, and so on. These could be friends for her. Friends, the mother said. Friends? The mother began to laugh, and once she began she could not stop. Sometimes the child hated the mother so much, it frightened her. Some days the feelings were so explicit that she had to cuddle up with the mother a long time to find her way back to her.

  Good morning Nathan, Ezekiel, and Jeremia
h! Good morning Simon, Grace, Prudence, Elizabeth! What astounding feats have you accomplished today? Though it was only eight in the morning, the boys reeled off an impressive list from the homeschooled wee hours.

  Wouldn’t it be nice, the mother thought to herself, to live somewhere without fear of looking out the window and seeing Risen Agains waving, pontificating, and spelling everything? Matheletes, Champions of the Spelling Bee, Latin scholars. So what, she said to the child, if you can’t spell profligate or nematode or marsupial?

  The mother never understood why they were always quoting Scripture out of context. The use of that, she could not see. What the little Risen-Again brood could not know was that the mother, of course, could quote Scripture with the best of them, if that was what she chose to do. Then the mother got an idea.

  O deliver soon to me, the mother prays, the likes of Rebecca and Ezekiel, Simon, Jeremiah, for a Bible-bee! Bring them soon to this bloodstained door.

  The Rabbit seemed not to approve.

  THE SHEEP KILLERS were her friends, and so the mother refrained from saying things she might have said otherwise. Being friends with someone, the child would learn, had as much to do with not saying things as saying them, and it made the world seem even more lonely when she thought of that.

  The Sheep Killers had come from the city, and they had thought killing sheep was the right thing to do. It’s only right, they said, if you are going to eat meat that you should be responsible for where that sheep meat has come from and what that meat has gone through in its life. This was considered acceptable dinner conversation. Uncle Lars could not agree. He looked sheepish and he piped up, I most certainly do not need to know, and it left a bit of a pall over the proceedings. Out the window, a bucolic scene unfolded before them. Sheep punctuated the pasture, and it was pleasant to watch the various patterns they made throughout the evening.