Excerpt from Wolf Baby
SPRING.
The wind howls against the trailer’s tin walls.
“You’re not special,” he says. “You’re not the main character.”
Then who is? But he doesn’t read fiction.
I picture all the other women who must love him, walking down Sixth Avenue or the road up from the cemetery. I imagine I’m the oldest. Once I told him he was a real man. I wanted him to say, You’re a real woman, but he didn’t. He only does what I want in the most specific of circumstances. Then he brushes my damp stringy hair from my face and says, “Good girl. You are a very good girl. You are so, so good.”
I am the main character.
Looks like rain. They call this kind of sky a bruised one. Pretty soon the wounds will open. Gideon doesn’t sleep in. I don’t let him, or he doesn’t let me. It’s hard to tell who’s in charge here.
“Roll over,” he says. I roll.
“Shake,” he says. I shake.
“Speak,” he says. I say his name.
“You still have that IUD, right?” he says.
So tell me what’s going on, the gyno said.
I’d gone way across the border to see her. Spent a night in Santa Fe. I told her what I told the nurse who reminded me of a cop.
I have an IUD, but I’ve been getting my period, I said.
That’s normal, she said. When was your last period?
I said, The 17th. But the one before that was the 5th.
She tapped the information into the computer.
Yeah. That’s a short cycle. So, you want a new one? Or should we just take it out for good?
Now I should bleed at regular intervals. When I bleed, the dog stuffs his snout in my lap. I used to push him away. Down, Clyde! I would say, hot and embarrassed. Now I don’t mind. I let him sniff all he wants.
I put out buckets to catch leaks. I put out barrels to catch clouds. He paces. Has places he has to be. But nobody’s going anywhere. Not with rain like this. Rain you can’t see through five inches from your face.
I am lucky. This is to my advantage. Must be the main character. Why would things work out so well for me if I wasn’t?
“Do you want to hear a poem?” I ask.
He sits. Keeps from tapping his knuckles on the table for the duration of my recitation.
“Why,” he asks, “is the poet so sad?”
The poet doesn’t answer. The poet turns on the radio. The radio says the rain stopped. The radio says the town’s a flood. The radio doesn’t mention that this is what happens when you build a town in the basin of a playa lake.
Gideon gets up.
“When will I see you again?” I say.
It’s so easy to see who’s in charge here.
“Maybe when it rains again,” he says.
He mocks me. But I am the main character, so I know it will not rain again for a very long time.
***
Clyde is very beautiful, in the conventional sense. His long, straight hair waves in the wind when he runs. He runs very fast, and with purpose. The purpose being to keep the lambs in line.
But I distract Clyde. I claim him. He still runs with the lambs, but when he is not running, he is with me.
Unless I am with Gideon.
Gideon is very beautiful, in the conventional sense. Have I told you about his face, how it is both broad and sharp? Or about his hair, how it is greying, gradually, at the widow’s peak, even though he’s five years younger than me.
When I’m with Gideon, I don’t know where Clyde goes.
Clyde has been by my side for three months straight, not counting his runs with the lambs or the Sundays when Abigail picks me up at eight o’clock sharp and we sing hymns and consume the crumbling body of our Lord with Welcher’s. Then Meemaw’s for brunch.
Bloody steak, runny eggs, spiked sweet tea.
Lately I haven’t been spiking mine. I haven’t told them why. Haven’t announced that I’m officially part of their family now. It’s best to keep the news to oneself for the first three months, when so much could go wrong.
SUMMER.
I name my daughter Cloud. Like a bruise.
Spend a week in the hot, still Airstream. Naked. Suckling. Ordering takeout on Barbara’s credit card, the one she gave me for her internet orders, her party decorations, her caterers we never book. I eat tacos and nachos, gyros and baklava, diner-style breakfasts with sausage and bacon. Clyde goes on paternity leave. Stays home with me to make sure I know what I’m doing.
There’s not a lot to it. Just lie there and let her velvet mouth pull. Later, lick her tiny body ’til she poops or pees. The rest of the time she sleeps on my chest. I let one hand rest over her to keep her warm. The other hand scrolls social media. Or I catch up on my reading. I send poems to lit mags and journals. Mostly poems about Gideon.
Any progress? Chloe asks. I say, Definitely.
Clara sends me pictures. Shelving options, flooring options, faucet options. I say, Whatever you think is best. None of the options look right to me.
None of the options look real.
None of the options include the twitching, whining creature on my chest, nuzzling her way over to my nipple.
But we have to go back to work eventually.
Not like I can pull out my tit in front of Barbara and feed Cloud from it. I find a used breast pump on Craigslist. The wilted man whose wife took the toddler to Aruba and never came back wants to stay and talk. Wants to meet my baby. Clyde growls until he leaves with my last twenty in his pocket.
So I go back to work. Bring Cloud with me. Feed her from bottles when she’s hungry. When it’s time for her to use the bathroom, that’s where we go. I shut the door and lick her. When she’s done, I flush the toilet paper and wash my hands and rinse out my mouth so her curly hairs don’t get stuck between my teeth.
***
Clara calls.
At first she doesn’t say anything. I wonder if she called accidentally.
“Kay, gonna hang up now, ‘cause I don’t think you meant to call, so, bye,” I say.
“Do you know how much debt you’re in?” she says before I hit End Call.
“A lot, I think,” I say.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I pay $400 on my student loans every month. Think they should be paid off in twenty years?”
I told Clara I was bad with money when she asked to marry. She said, Well, I’m not, so we’ll be fine.
“Okay,” she says. “Bye.”
***
Cloud’s eyes open. One blue. One brown.
Her squeaks turn yips, little barks, little growls.
She gains a pound. Two pounds. Four pounds. Jumps over Clyde’s tail. Jumps over Clyde’s nose.
No longer needs my licks.
No longer satisfied with my milk.
I give my email address to a chain pet store, in exchange for free shipping. Order a 15-pound bag of kibble. Use Barbara’s credit card to pay for it.
Cloud gains ten pounds.
I try to break my delivery habit. Ask Sam to bring me some things from the farmers market.
“Typically,” he says, “you gotta work the market to get the goods.”
I tell Cloud to give him puppy-dog eyes.
“Come on, man,” I say. “You’ve got a kid. You know how it is.”
He frowns.
Later, a box on my porch: pork and veggies, a few loaves of bread. A Post-it note says it’s For the new mom…
I make a salad and a ham sandwich. Split the sandwich with Clyde. Cloud sucks up her bowl of kibble and stretches in front of the oscillating fan. Her curls wave in oscillating air.
Study her for some sign that she belongs to Gideon, too. Does she have his widow's peak? His jawline?
She stands, starts to sniff. I open the door and call her name. She comes. Already housebroken.
Does she get that from him?
FALL.
The secret to a good performance is to convince even yourself that you believe it.
This is fairly common knowledge among sinners.
Do the saints in the congregation, teary-eyed at my demonstration of faith, know that they are performing? Never sure if the believers have convinced themselves beyond the point of self-awareness.
The man in the water with me is not the man I’ve seen perform other baptisms. That man is old, milky-eyed, unthreatening. A mushy welcome into God’s eternal love.
This man is young, in his gaudy red robe and gold-stitched stole. I would call him my contemporary. When he stepped into the pool of water with me, it rose. Splashed over the edge onto the ceramic tile. His open mouth blackholes between greasy, meaty lips and little teeth. I train my eyes on the tiny dots of pus poking out from under his orange beard and his gelled hairline. Imagine scraping them off with my fingernails or pinching them so they squirm out of his pores like little white worms.
The man has youth pastor vibes.
Why is he the one adding his spit to the holy water I’m in waist deep? I’m not a youth anymore. I’m just a regular old sinner.
He won’t let me forget it.
“Lord, take the soul of this sinner!” he shout sings.
The congregation amens along with him.
“Take her heart into your heart, Lord, save this poor soul from herself, Lord, from the demons and delusions that overtake her.”
Look down at my dusty dress. Skirt all spread out over the water like a dry, dead lily pad. The holy water soaks into it, makes it heavy. So much weight in this wet dress.
Water speeds up my torso, to my chest. Up the collar.
“Lord, this sinner has made mistakes,” the youth pastor says.
Look into the congregation for Abigail and Andrea’s familiar faces, but they’ve transformed into blank masks of praise.
“Terrible, terrible mistakes, Lord. This sinner has done wrong by herself and by us, Lord. This sinner has done wrong by you.”
Catch someone’s eyes. The only eyes in any pew that see me through the ritual.
Julia’s lips are wrapped around her teeth.
Her face is candlelight.
My wet neck constricts. I gasp. Cry out.
“Yes, Lord!” the pastor shouts. “Compel her demons to leave her, Lord!”
My skirt starts to sink under the water. I claw at the surface, thrash for a grip.
It sparks up in my face.
“Save her, Lord, from the dogs that surround her!”
The pastor’s hands on my lower back and chest squeeze me, squeeze something out of me. Is that my soul, escaping from my sinner’s body for sweet relief? Eternity with the Lord.
“Yes, Lord!”
Was that his voice or mine?
My dress is so heavy. It’s pulling me down.
Or maybe that’s just the water, pulling me under.
Or it’s the youth pastor’s hands. Pushing me. Guiding me.
“Take her into your heart, Lord, take her with you into eternity!”
Eternity.
Such a long time.
I’m submerged.
WINTER.
”Oh, it's Texas,” they’ll say. “So you won’t be cold.”
Your skin will crack, especially around the knuckles. Ravines form when water rushes the same rocks for centuries. But they also form when water leaves. The fecund soil seizes into dry slabs, separates from itself. A dry gulf forms; a crack. You will see this on your skin, red under the ashy dead cells clinging to what once was. The man you love who lives here all the time wears gloves of dry skin, his fingers swollen and hard with the cracked death. You bring lotion and rub, but the death goes too deep. When he touches your clit over the pink lingerie with a rickrack rose you wear special for him, you squirm and thrust, yearning for direct contact. But when he slips his dry fingers under the cotton and lace, you flinch.
Winter in the desert is harsh.
The wind will slip inside of you and steal your breath. The skies will turn brown, that same once-fecund soil unweighted without water. The gusts will slam against the thin walls of your trailer, shaking the structure and making sounds like angry dogs and gods. Some days it will be 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Some nights it will be 20. Your nose will turn raw. The same lotion you rubbed into your lover's hands you will rub around your nostrils. It makes you sneeze, same as the dust does. You blow your nose. You rub again.
At sunset there will be stillness. You will walk the dog to the graveyard. You walk eastward, into the growing-darker purples, the dry and naked trees glowing orange like the fire that is always a threat on these hot and dry windy days. When you pass them, you will turn around to see them lined nightclub pink. The dog will pull at her leash. In the graveyard you will let her off of it, let her run around the resting places of the people you've never known. Her dark curls will fade into the approaching night. You will fight the darkness with light from your phone. Her eyes flash green. The wind picks up.
All photos were taken by Leann Lamb-Vines in the mid- to late-nineties.
