Matt Bell - How They Were Found

Her baby is a bird, mottled with gray and brown feathers that will last only as long as its infancy, when it will molt into splendor. Its mouth is open wide, waiting expectantly. Sometimes when she lies still in her quiet apartment, she can hear cawing from her round belly. She has cravings, contemplates eating quarters, little bits of tin foil, even a pair of silver earrings. She hopes her baby is building a beautiful nest inside of her. She wants to give it everything it needs so that it might never leave. Nest as lie, as false hope. Her baby is a bird of prey, something she has never been this close to before. All those talons. All that beak. It hooks her, devours her. They’re both so hungry. She eats and eats. Before this, she never knew birds had tongues.

Her baby is a knife. A dagger. A broadsword, sharp and terrible. Her baby is a dangerous thing and she knows that if she isn’t careful then one day it will hurt her, hurt others. When it kicks, she feels its edges pressed against the walls of its sheath, drawing more blood in a sea of blood. She is careful when she walks not to bump into things, not to put herself in harm’s way. She wonders how it will hurt to push it from her body, to have the doctor tug her baby out of her as from a stone.

Her baby is a furred thing, alternately bristled and then soft. She hopes it isn’t shedding, wonders how she’ll ever get all that hair out of her if it is. She searches online for images of badgers and then wolverines, looking for something to recognize in their faces. She types the words creatures that burrow , then adds a question mark and tries again. The baby is so warm inside her, curled in on itself, waiting for winter to end, for a day to come when all the breath it’s been holding can finally be expelled, like heat fogging the air of a still cold morning. Sometimes, when the baby rolls over and makes itself known, she can almost smell it.

Now the water breaking. Now the dilation of the cervix. Now the first real contraction, more potent than any of the false warnings she experienced before. Now the worry that this is too early, that she hasn’t learned yet what her baby is supposed to be. Now the lack of thought and the loss of discernible time. Now the pain, which is sharp and dull and fast and slow, which is both waves and particles at the same time. Now the hurry, the burst into motion after the near year of waiting. Now the push, the pushing, the rushing stretch of her suddenly elastic body expanding to do this thing, to give birth to this baby. Now the joke, the seed, the stone, the storm, the bird, the sword. Now the tiny mammal, warm-blooded and hot and yes, now the head covered in wet hair. Now the shoulders, now the torso and the arms. Now the hipbones and the thighs and the knees and the feet. Now the first breath. Now the eyes opening. Now the cry, calling out to her like déjà vu, like the recognition of someone from a dream.

Now the baby.

Now the baby.

Now the baby, an event repeating for the rest of her life.

Her baby is a boy. Her baby is a girl. Her baby is potential energy changing to kinetic, is a person gaining momentum. Her baby is a possibility, or, rather, a string of possibilities and potentialities stretching forward from her toward something still unknowable. With the baby in her arms, she smiles. She coos. She tells her baby that it can be whatever it wants to be. She tells her baby that no matter what it turns out to be, she will always recognize it when it comes back to her. There is no shape that could hide her baby from her, no form that would make her turn her back on it. She says this like a promise, swears it like she can make it true, like it’s just that easy. Some days, no matter what she says, her baby cries and cries and cries.

ACCORDING TO TEACHER, THERE IS ONLY ONE RULE, AND IT IS THIS: No matter what happens, hold on to your vacuum. We have each been given one, each a different shape and size according to our needs. My own vacuum is bright red and bulky, as heavy as a ten-year-old, its worn cord slipping through my fingers like the tail of a rodent, thick and rubbery and repugnant. I start to complain, but Teacher holds up a hand and silences me.

Teacher says, This is the vacuum that was assigned to you, and the only one you’ll be allowed to play with.

I don’t know this man’s actual name or title, whether he’s referee or judge or umpire, but he reminds me of the man who taught my eighth-grade science class. He has the same balding hair pulled into a ponytail, the same small gold crucifix earring, and when he smiles he shows the same small yellow teeth pocked by smoke and sweets. I only know he’s in charge because he’s the one standing on the stage of the auditorium while the rest of us wait in the front row below. Because he’s the only one of us without a vacuum of his own.

After my complaint, there are no other questions, and so Teacher says, I promise to count to at least one hundred before I come looking for you.

He says, I promise to look for you as long as you need me to, and then he says, Go.

As soon as Teacher finishes talking, the other players reach for their own vacuum cleaners and lug them up the aisle stairs, then out of the auditorium and into the lobby. From there, some move further into the building and some through the double glass doors into the world waiting outside, but why each person chooses one or the other is unclear to me. One girl is tall and thin and agile, her tiny hand vac fitting perfectly into her grip as she bounds out the door and across the parking lot. I follow her as far as the sidewalk, my hand resting on top of my own vacuum. Watching her run, I don’t know where I should go or what I should do. This is only the first turn, and although Teacher has explained that the game is like hide and seek, I don’t yet understand. I don’t know what the rewards are for success, or what the punishment for failure might be.

I blink once and then Teacher is behind me. Before I can move, his arm shoots around my neck and pulls me into a wrestler’s headlock, his grip strong and sure. His lips are beside my ear, the hairs of his moustache and beard tickling my face as he says, I thought I told you to run.

As he says, You’re too stupid to be brave, so why didn’t you run?

When his other hand comes into view, there is a cordless drill in its grip. The drill is matte black and dull yellow, loaded with a foot-long bit spinning at full speed. Teacher cocks my head and angles the drill downward into the crown of my skull. He pushes it in, past skin and bone, and then I scream and then I can’t remember why I’m screaming and then I’m gone.

I’m carrying the vacuum again, trudging across a farm field full of snow toward the other side, where several rows of dark trees clumped between the snow and the cloudy sky might hide my red vacuum from the exposure of the open field. My lungs burn and my arms ache but I never question the necessity of lugging the vacuum everywhere I go. It is the only rule and so I follow it.

Once beneath the trees, I drag the vacuum over the blanketing floor of pine needles. Heading deeper into the woods, I find a tight bunch of pines whose boughs create a natural shelter into which I tuck myself and my vacuum. I expect to be hidden, to be safe, but I am not alone.

On the ground at my feet is a wounded deer, surrounded by a bloody halo of snow originating from the bullet hole tunneled through its chest. Rather than let go of the vacuum, I transfer its handle to my right hand as I kneel beside the deer. There is a knife in the snow, and because I don’t know what else to do, I pick it up and hold it, looking over at the deer’s still form, at the steam still rising from its blood. I think I know what I am supposed to do, but I don’t know if I can do it.