Alex Adams: White Horse

I can’t cry. The pain is so fresh, it’s still steaming. All I can do is sit here like a soulless puppet and rip these photographs to shreds. Ruin them like the world is ruined. Steal the Swiss’s memories like he’s stealing mine.

And suddenly, even though my face is dry, I’m sitting in a lake my own body has created. I know what it means: my baby is coming.

Hard and fast, labor comes. Too fast, maybe. I can’t gauge. I’m choking on sweat and tears, panting, try to get air and some relief from the pain. But with every sweet, sweet breath my body tears another inch.

Stay inside a little longer , I think.

But I’m ready .

It’s not safe out here .

I want to see the world .

Oh, baby, there’s no world left to see. Only death .

What’s death?

I pray you never know .

I came for nothing. For a dead man. To deliver my child alone in a boat.

My daughter arrives in my darkest moment. We cry in tandem.

In the middle of mydelirium, Nick comes.

She’s perfect , he says.

Her tiny hand curls around my finger. All her pieces are where they belong. Nothing missing. No extras.

Not an abomination? I ask of him.

No. She’s beautiful like her mother .

I look like hell .

He laughs. Women. You carried our child; you’ve never been more beautiful to me .

Are you sure she’s perfect?

Yes .

He wants to take her .

You won’t let him. I know you .

But I’m tired. So tired. Can I sleep now?

Not yet, baby. Soon .

I read your letter. I love you, too, you know .

This would all be easier if you didn’t .

There’s no such thing as easy anymore .

A kiss pressed on her forehead and on mine. His lips are warm. How can imaginary lips be warm?

This is love , he says. This is all love should be .

Ether. That’s what woo-woo people call it. Nick fades from sight, and maybe he goes into that ether or maybe my brain’s just flipped a gear, switching me back to sanity. Doesn’t matter. Nick is gone and the Swiss is back and he’s filling up the space that used to hold a locked door. Now I don’t know which is worse, because he’s looking at my baby— my baby—with a covetous expression on his hard-planed face. Thou shalt not covet . I want to kill him where he stands.

He inches toward me. Us.

“Give me my baby,” he croons.

Visceral loathing. Hot, bubbling, seething. I’m a lioness primed to tear the pulse from his throat if he dares to touch what’s mine.

“What the fuck are you?”

“Please be calm. You’re crazy.”

“Because you’re trying to steal my baby,” I spit.

“ My baby.”

Now he notices that something is different. I’ve redecorated while he was busy hunting and gathering. The things he held dear to him were used as confetti and ticker tape in my rage parade. His gaze travels from piece to piece to the empty box to the newspaper clipping I purposely placed just so on the small table.

“What did you do?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re related to George Pope’s wife?”

“Those… are… my… things. What gives you the right?”

“What gives you the right to hold me hostage and steal my baby? What gave you the right to use Lisa like some sexual spittoon, to cut her open and murder her? She was just a girl. And the soldier. And the Russian. And Irini. Who died and made you God?”

“I am God!” he screams. “I am the only God you will ever know.”

I’m too tired for this fight. “I don’t believe in God anymore. Why should I?”

My baby lets out a thin cry. Poor girl. Just born and already she’s in the middle of a primitive custody battle. But this one will be different. This one will be to the death.

“Just let us go,” I say. Quiet. Calm. Alpha female protecting what’s hers.

He crouches beside us. Holds out his hands. I recoil as much as the handcuffs will allow, but it’s not nearly enough.

“Give me my baby.”

“Why? I don’t understand why you even care. Why us?”

His laugh chills me. “I want your child because it’s born of two parents with immunity to the disease. Your child will survive untouched.”

The puzzle pieces shift and turn. “You’re looking for a cure.”

“Don’t be stupid: there is no cure.” He bites each word, spits it in my face. “The dead are gone and they will stay that way. I engineered the disease to endure. I made it. I. Not George. I designed the changes so they would last. Nobody could guess which chromosomes would evolve and turn the host into something completely new. We are all of us abominations. We should be dead.”

I want to beat him, pound him with my fists, but what strength I have left is all in my mind.

“You and Pope. You did this to all of us.”

“You don’t know anything, America. You are a stupid woman. You cleaned floors and the shit from mouse cages. I am a scientist. A doctor. I want a child. Me, who will never have my own. Me, who gave up my womanhood to the disease. I became a man against my will . George took everything from me. My work. My chance for children. He owes me this!”

The laughter explodes from my mouth, fire and ice in the same breath. Pain slices through me but I don’t care. If this whole thing wasn’t a tragedy, I’d wager I was in a soap opera. The mustache-twirling villain is a real girl. The Blue Fairy was a trickster.

“You’re the woman in the photographs?”

It all makes sense now, what Lisa said about the Swiss not being like other men, his constant misogyny, the overtly masculine movements that often seemed rehearsed in front of a cheval mirror. Somehow the genetic lottery machine dug around in the barrel until it pulled out an X chromosome and gnawed off one of its legs.

“I was before I became sick. I was George Preston Pope’s wife for fifteen years! He was a cold, cruel man, something I never fully comprehended until he made me sick against my will. We needed to test on humans, so he injected me. Not himself—me. I knew then he cared nothing for me— only business, money, his reputation as a great man. He owes me a child.”

I laugh like this is the best joke ever told. Stand-up comedians would have killed for this kind of comedy black gold. I throw Nick’s letter in his face like it’s a brick. “Read it.”

“Do not laugh at me. Give me my baby.”

“Read it!” I scream, until my lungs ache from the word rush. “Read the letter.”

He scans the page. A transformation happens. A devolution of rock to sagging flesh. A hopeless body sublimating. He sits for a time amidst the wreckage of his past and future.

“I do not understand.”

Who’s a stupid woman now? I want to say, but can’t. I’m still human, still a person. I still have compassion, however misguided. No matter what happens, my humanity stands. Even if I don’t live through the night. Kill him? Oh yes, I can, but I can’t mock him— her —for what he’s become.

“Nick died. He got sick with your disease and he died. So you see, she could still get White Horse, could still get sick, die, or turn into some awful thing. As you keep saying: an abomination.”

“No.” Disbelieving.

“Yes.”

“No. This cannot be.”

“It is.”

Nothing.

“And now we both have to deal with it. You made this bed, you and your husband. Now we all have to sleep in it. Even you.”

“Shut up,” he says. “Listen.”