Animals

         And what would things have been like if we just hadn’t of gone? I never wanted to go, he wanted to, he always loved the country so much, loved to drive through the back roads to “take a break from the sardine can!” where I could never stand it because it was endless, you’d just go on and on everything looked the same until it all blurs together and if you made a wrong turn anywhere you might not ever get out and so ironically it was really suffocating, always threatening to cave-in on me, but he wanted to go out so badly with the whole family on his vacation day and so we went, and as we kept going and going the snow kept falling and falling until our poor little Toyota just couldn’t take it anymore, and then he left us, the baby and I, went “to go get help” and was never found again.

         How long were we there? A week? A month maybe? I remember sitting there in the passenger seat with the baby, watching as the earth slowly ate us alive. Looking at that face, that face that looked nothing like mine with those startlingly steady gray eyes and reddened jowls, I could tell she knew exactly what was happening. Poor baby, she was never the attractive kind, the kind with those comically large, round, wandering eyes and sweet little moon-faces that mothers force into pageants and cereal commercials, but rather, with her large square head and flat drooling mouth that sadly likened her to a vegetative morbidly obese man, the sort of baby that friends and grandmothers gracefully coo at in a pitiful attempt to humor the mother. She was smart, though. It was unsettling how alert she appeared, and as she witnessed our fights from her crib I sometimes feared that she understood the names he called me.

          I know I did nothing wrong, whatever they say about me I don't care, because what was I supposed to do? As the cold turned our breath to steam, she kept demanding to be fed, feeding and feeding until it was so cold, I was so hungry, I had nothing left to give and she was so heavy, I never remembered her being that heavy before and as the excruciating burn of frostbite started creeping up my legs I remembered when she was born, how she was so large even then, so large and full of complications that I needed a c-section, how the doctor said she would have killed me if they allowed a natural birth, how afterward he grinned and sneered, “Aw, that’s our little fighter!”, how upset his family was when I didn't want to hold her, just wanted to roll over and sleep, and now this whole time she just stares at me, with those rough fat features and those calm gray eyes.

         When I was still in school, I thought that I had learned somewhere in anatomy that babies were born with a special type of fat designed to keep them sustained without food longer than the average adult can, but apparently this was not true for her,for that obese face of hers began to sink and shrivel, but never cried much, just stared, stared and grabbed at my limp, beaten breasts to try to feed again. Remembered other times, how she hated the "mommy-and-me" days at daycare when all the other toddlers loved it and no matter how hard I tried with the arts and crafts and the classes and all the other glowing moms with their Baby Genius flashcards she just seemed so repulsed by me, and the time she got into some of my makeup and when I pulled her away she kicked and shoved so hard for just a toddler that I fell down the stairs and cracked my sacrum, crumpled on the floor and looking up the stairs at those steely eyes gazing straight down at me .

         And there we both were, skin and bones and frostbite, and of course later they'd exploit me, turn me into just another passing piece of disposable entertainment, something people read in the paper, shake their heads at and quickly forget as they begin their days, but they had no idea what it was like- to be so hungry, to be trapped with that . . . thing that was once my daughter, those little feet and hands and flabby cheeks and nose all dead and blackened now, frozen mucus and spittle lining the outside of her blue slackened mouth, watching me with pure hatred, and oh my god it was trying to cry! Whatever life was left in it emerged as a thin, raspy grunt which had to have lasted for hours and hours and there was nothing I could do but turn my head away leave it slumped there in the driver's seat, praying for it to just leave me alone, for its agony to cease, imagining it staring at the back of my head with contempt, asking demanding something that I never understood, until eventually, finally, there was quiet.

         She saved me, though, I'll always be indebted to her, for as her fats and proteins and marrow became one with mine once again she gave me the strength to remain until they found me, and they were horrified, of course they were horrified, but they didn't understand the nature of the situation, the trade-off, and I guess I can understand. But as I sit here now and watch my son on the playground as I write this with the remnants of my fingers in a different town amongst different moms, I know that I alone truly have an understanding of what it means to be human, and as lovely and fond of him as I am, I'll always be aware of just how thin that line is and how easily it is crossed- I mean after all, we really are just animals.