x Tx: Billie the Bull

“I will always be small? Please mama, I want to be like you. Please, mama.”

She fingers the curls that halo his head, and he raises into it, a feline rubbing against. Her eyes release then relax. The smaller one begins to cry. Billie looks away.

The larger son rolls a cumbersome scream into the space between the walls, his muscles, or perhaps his bones shifting once more.

The reclusive moment takes its attention back and the finger in his hair is gone. He retreats and folds again, hurting with truth.

In their corner, his mother holds his large brother fast, his strength not yet a match for hers. She quiets the unintentional battle his body wages in, his third growing.

“Let it go, son,” she tells him. “Do not hold back. I can take it. I am your strong mother.”

She is with them, between them, saving them from each other, she thinks. As their mother she believes this is her purpose. Saving them from the taking. A memory of once before, where she took and took from those who swam alongside her. A straw of a cord she wrapped around their necks and sucked from until they became inside her, a chimera. Defenseless and stupid she absorbed them one by one by one; their strength forming into her parts; arms, legs, heart, brain, bones, hands, blood, bile. All of this made evident later when she becomes. More. So she swims, a shield, between them both and in this darkness they shudder. And in this darkness she waits. The swelling begins and then the fight, a bashing of forms wet and warm with menacing intentions she rides between them, a wedge. Severing the cords they whip and the straws they send. She knows and anticipates. They crowd around her and she is smothering in their swells. Now big and outside they are held underneath her hands and she can feel their battle. Her belly expands and bubbles and she is helpless to stop it. Her head rolls back with her screams that echo off the walls of the church. Voices try to calm her but it’s an underwater ear she hears with the pain now the water and her stomach is tripling in size and the ripping begins and there they are; the boys, in a tussle, red and wrestling as they emerge. The crowd falls to its knees and makes the sign of the cross.

The boys erupt over the edge and slide down her side on a slow river of blood, she sees their hands fighting for necks and as she slides deeper into the black she whispers, angels, my angels but this is a thought her mouth cannot make and the boys hear nothing. The fight continues.

(The picadors are the men on horseback whose job it is to exhaust the bull. They cut into his neck muscles with a pica, a short knife, and the bull begins to bleed to death.)

See the freak that killed my mother! Sometimes he used the words ‘thing’ or ‘monster’; never the word ‘sister’. The cost was five dollars. If one wanted to participate, an additional five was required. The walk into the woods usually took no more than 15–20 minutes, the punishings not more than ten. The walk back was always longer; the crowd lethargic with their expense, or perhaps heavy with conscience.

Paul, Billie’s brother, probably made a good $100-$150 a week for what amounted to about an hour’s worth of “work”.

Billie knew when to go and where to go. Billie knew when and where to go. And there she’d endure. Withstanding the fury for what she took away from her brother. Bearing the assault for what she took away from her father.

From herself.

Penance.

A big woman; a maternal flesh he could get lost in. Drown in. Be subdued by. Stare at. Own. He wanted, he needed this. More than anything. Any other. It wasn’t the same as everything else. This was before the needing became. This was from before. In his smallest body in his smallest dreams a vision of the biggest women, throws of them, picking him up and making him helpless. Out of control with their lust of his weakness. Catching, throwing, laughing. And him, helpless but relishing. He was theirs. Happily. Belonging to their reckless strength. As he grew, the dreams continued, changed. None of them weak, all strong; his neck craning they’d take him, holding him helpless up to their faces. Blowing, licking, spitting, he took it all, whatever they gave. No choice given, no choice desired. He was their toy. Dangling, spinning, passed around, thumbed, mouthed, all theirs. Placed down and allowed to crawl along the mountains of flesh, sheets of skin, ropes of hair. Warm, slick crevasses, an explorer, so much to explore. Lazily they’d lie, watching him make his way, a pet. A bug. A fancy. A tickle. Hours and days for him. This. This was his biggest need. A want for forever. An itch in a place impossible to scratch. Never-ending. An endless goal.

“It’s a male.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Collector crosses and uncrosses his arms, staring at the boy, large behind the glass.

“Age?”

“He tells me he is nine, sir.”

“Was he measured?”

“Yes, sir, and weighed.”

“Well?”

“Seven foot six, 293, sir.”

The Collector nods and stares at the boy.

“And only nine, you say?”

“That’s what he told me, sir.”

“Yes, and what about his parents?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

The target of The Collector’s stare changes from the boy to his Finderman.

“Well, he must have parents and you must make him tell you.” Firm.

The Finderman visibly crumples. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

“You can go now.”

“But, the boy…”

“What?”

“Shall I move him to the quarters?” He glances at the boy behind the glass, large and very small in the cold space.

“Of course not. That is only for my most wanted. He can stay where he is.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

The Collector walks to the glass. The boy is sitting in the corner, legs tucked, arms lost. He is large, yes, but within the realm of normal, he thinks. Disappointed. Maybe in a few years, upon hitting puberty, he would continue to grow, but would he truly be gigantic?

“A mother. He’s got to have a mother,” he says aloud, in a voice full of conviction.

He stares.

(After the picadors are finished bleeding the beast, the assistant matadors take their banderillas, which are sharp, harpoon-like barbed instruments, and plunge them into the bull’s body. Up to six banderillas might be used in one fight.)

In the church, they are both small now. There is a silence. For once her lap is bare, and the boy stares at his mother now lone with only one head, two arms and two legs. She faces the wall, now half. Now alone.

Save for him.

Time passes and silence stays.

Food rots.

Cold seeps.

Hunger grows.

Sadness swells.

The corners stretch further apart.

In the absence of the larger one, the smaller one is further forgotten, blamed.

You could’ve stopped him .

You let your brother be taken .

You are glad he is gone .

Why didn’t you stop him?

This lap of mine will always be his. Your plan did not work .

Oh, where is my son?

Billie does not recognize her father’s voice.

The smaller one wraps himself up, falls, stays while more nothing continues to happen.

(During the final act the matador severs the artery near the heart with his sword.)