Carole Maso - Mother and Child - A Novel

I know, the Grandmother whispers, that we are losing biodiversity every day. . She is talking in a sweet and swaddling voice to the little dreaming seedlings.

The Grandmother from the North Pole has been consumed by a lifelong mission that is only now revealed to the child. All her life she has scoured the earth collecting seeds from every plant in the world to be stored in the great vault beneath the snow, singing to them as she goes. One by one, she cradles and then drops them into liquid nitrogen where they are preserved in frozen, suspended animation. The seed crib strapped to her back.

Legions of grandmothers carrying sacks of seeds from every position on the globe can now be seen. They nod and wave to one another as they pass.

Having traversed once more the entire world, the Grandmother from the North Pole arrives again at the Global Seed Vault, only six hundred miles from her home at the North Pole. She waits for admittance. No one person knows all the codes. At last the door opens, and she unstraps the seed crib from her back. With this the Grandmother’s head grows pointy, and she bores through the hard, smooth ice and deposits the seeds inside the earth. Over and over she does this in silence, until she is finished. The crib is light now, and she will stop home for a moment before resuming her toil.

Once the Egyptians saw her pass on a papyrus raft. Once the people in GinGin asked her what she was looking for. Once when her children wandered down for breakfast, she was not there. Things begin to make more sense to the child. Open your eyes, she says, tugging at her grandmother’s sleeve, and she puts her hand to the Grandmother’s glassy forehead.

The seeds will sleep in the climate control far beneath the permafreeze for something like an eternity. With each deposit now, the Grandmother lingers longer and longer under the earth. She is more and more exhausted now. Luckily, the child has finally gotten a picture phone. Luckily, the picture phone has been vastly improved so it can still reach the Grandmother who is now surrounded by a fog of dry ice, five hundred feet beneath the surface.

She smiles for the child and waves, even though she is so tired. Luckily the child can recognize her even when she has assumed the shape of a barge, or a lozenge, or a seedpod, or a toboggan. Luckily, the child can picture her even when the picture phone clouds and the reception is bad and the fog of ice does not lift. When the Grandmother, surrounded by seeds, falls asleep, no one can blame her. Eventually an automated voice will say to please hold. The child doesn’t mind. The child can hold on for a long time.

SUDDENLY THE ATRIUM is flooded with sea light and we are helpless before it — at the mercy of it — its perfection, its splendor.

Come out. It’s safe now, she whispers to the Girl with the Matted Hair, you don’t have to hide any longer.

THE GIRL WITH the Matted Hair stands naked before the gilded mirror. This is the evening she has been waiting a lifetime for — the night of the Hamster Ball.

She tiptoes over to the ancient pine tree armoire where she begins to select her adornments. Never has any choice seemed so grave before. Never has so much been at stake. She selects her undergarments first, made of silk from the most precious silkworms in Persia. She steps into them and already she has begun to transform. Next she takes out the sea otter skirt, heavy with salt, then a corset of crane, and the wolverine bodice.

In the drawing room, her white-maned father in elegant foxtails waits, checking his golden pocket watch every few minutes. At last, he walks down the dark hall and knocks on the Girl’s door. She reaches for the swan wing cape, puts on her cloven-footed shoes, grabs her pony purse, and opens the door.

Father!

She has never seen her father look like this — so elegant, so handsome, so at ease. He offers his arm, and she takes it, and he escorts her to the next station of the evening. One more minute, the Girl whispers, and she puts on, at last, the final crucial garment — her gleaming ermine head. How resplendent the Girl with the Matted Hair is now! She takes her father’s arm.

The mother understood that after having a mother, the next best thing to have is a Sacred Animal Totem, and she has to admit that the Girl with the Matted Hair has chosen beautifully. Slowly, she walks in her ceremonial garb down the palace path and into the ballroom. She feels a little topply; thank goodness her father is there.

The band begins to play. Dall Sheep take the floor along with Snow Geese. In the rafters there are owls. It is a charmed night. A night of extravagance and consequence, and she knows not what to expect, but for once, among the beautiful creatures of the night, the world seems entirely open to her.

She nods to the snow bear and the Arctic Cat on the dance floor, and the Red Fox, and the Egret, and the herd of Caribou, and suddenly her dance card is filled. No one comments on, though everyone notices, the conspicuous absence of bats. It is nighttime, after all, and the vessel for bats.

Shining from the corner are fragments of Rabbit, and Whooping Crane fledglings, and also in the gleam, one can see a soldier licking its hind leg. Sorrow is iridescent and the whole room is glistening. Human troops in turtle shells make their way to the fore. Their mothers accompany them wearing kidskin dresses — the softest dresses in the world — more soft than anything anyone has ever touched.

The Armadillo escorts some children across a floor festooned with exploding things. Above them flies the Gray Goose. The Grandmother appears and rubs her lucky rabbit’s foot, courtesy of the cat. Maybe the Girl with the Matted Hair will never see day again — she could live like this forever, she thinks, with the night creatures, protected. Love floods the room. A Reindeer nuzzles her; lichen silently grows on its hoofs.

The Bat is a gentle creature, it is true, and everyone casually scans the rafters. Inside the body of a mother, a small creature is lepping.

In the great swells of music, the Girl might be carried anywhere next. The Mantis, Archivist of Lost Mothers, takes the Girl’s hand and leads her to a clearing in the music.

In the clearing, the Grandmother from the North Pole in sealskin now stands. She bows deeply and says to the Girl in the Ermine Head that she has, as recently as yesterday, seen her mother. The girl peers at the Grandmother through her shining, ferocious Ermine eyes. It is a night of fear and awe, but also a night of unspeakable splendor, and it unfolds quickly now. First the Grandmother gives the Girl a living sled dog to hold. When the child is settled, the Grandmother continues. Your mother, she says, calmly and directly, is an Arctic Tern, who flies from Pole to Pole and back again, traveling the entire globe every year, twice. She sees now on her flights all there is to see. The Girl thinks her mother must be very tired by now. On the contrary, the Grandmother smiles. The Grandmother from the North Pole touches the Girl’s shoulder blades and feels the first inkling of wings. She has been watching you all this time.

With this news, a very deep sleep-like state overcomes the Girl, and her heartbeat slows to almost nothing. Because it is winter, her ermine head is thick and white.

Mother, she says, and she reaches her hand up toward the tern, who had materialized, and sure enough, the tern comes to her. How easy it all is. Though she is afraid, she knows, if invited, she would not hesitate to fly away with her. But before the Girl can give it another thought, the mother has swooped down and taken her child high, high up into the sky. From on high, she scans the floor for her white-maned father, who is little more than a speck. There he is in the distance, foxtrotting, nonetheless. His horse hoofs gleam in the moonlight.