Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

Chick talked to me more all the time because he had no one else.

“Arty doesn’t like the hometown surgeons getting in on the Arturans. He doesn’t like the rest-home doctors setting up. But I do. I can’t do it all. They can’t all travel with us. Arty wants it all where he can see it but it’s too big now. There are too many.”

Arty got a new folder of clippings every morning. The office novices would comb papers and magazines from all over the country for any mention of Arturism and for anything that might affect Arty. He subscribed to a broadcast-monitoring outfit that provided video or sound tapes of any news item, comment, discussion, or joke that mentioned Arturism on television or the radio.

“Here’s another imitator in California, the Reverend Raunch! That’s three in one state!” he snarled as I brought in his breakfast tray. “And there’s that brain-slice scam in Detroit, a takeoff on Doc P.’s trip. The silly cocksuckers are getting hauled in front of a grand jury. Ass lickers will screw us all!”

Arty didn’t need to worry about the tadpole competition but he did. His tent was the biggest ever made on this continent, and it was always full, with a crowd as live as a hurricane wailing for him. But Arty sulked over every ten-cent Baptist, sneered at the plastic surgeons, turned green at ads for weight-loss clinics and alcoholism programs.

He’d gloat sometimes. “I have the best tools. I talk to Doc P.’s keeper every week, you know. And my little brother did a much tidier job on Doc P. than Doc P. ever did in her life. Smartest thing I ever did was tuck Chick in her pocket.”

I didn’t pay much attention. I was caught up in the amazing contents of my belly. Everything else was insignificant. As the time got close, though, I got scared. I wasn’t afraid of dying. Chick wouldn’t let me die. I wasn’t afraid of the baby dying. Chick would make sure it stayed alive. Still, a sick grey fear sat in my chest, nameless. Chick kept offering to put me to sleep.

“Hey, it’s good. Doc P. is happy. I’d like it myself. I’d put myself to sleep only there’s nobody to do my job.”

When my labor started Mama gave me tea and Chick put me into one of the Arturan wheelchairs and took me to his surgery. It was late in the afternoon. The Ferris wheel lights were bright against the dusk and I could smell popcorn and hear the talkers hollering, “Show the little lady what you’re made of!”

It didn’t hurt. I sat up against pillows and slept for a minute at a time between squeezes. There was no pain but it was exhausting work. I remember looking at Chick and Mama and trying to tell them why it was called “labor.”

I remember seeing Miranda’s head for the first time between my legs. She looked so silly, like a red turtle’s head stretching on its spindly neck and turning, blinking, wobbling, I nearly laughed. And I remember Chick’s smile as he reached for her. She slid out onto the white cloth he held for her, and he lifted her dripping, squirming little carcass and put it on my collapsing belly. “I like this!” he said. This was his second delivery, of course, and he told me later that Miranda was easy compared to Mumpo, that he’d worked much harder to suppress the twins’ pain.

Mama and I examined her amazing body and found only that ridiculous tail. My heart died. Arty would despise her. But Mama told me to go on hoping. “Go ahead and love her,” Mama said. I’ve wondered since whether those were Mama’s last sane words, the final sizzle of her synapses.

Then the real fear began. With the baby outside me and vulnerable, I suddenly saw the world as hostile and dangerous. Anything, including my own ignorance, could hurt her, kill her, snatch her from me. I wanted to cram her back inside where she’d be safe. I was too weak to protect her. I needed the family. Arty had to care about her. Iphy had to help me. Papa had to be sober and brave, and Mama had to lay off the pills and be wise. But there was really only Chick, and I was terrified whenever he was out of sight. I scared him with my clinging but I couldn’t trust the baby to anyone else.

She had Arty’s face and I named her Miranda because Miranda’s father loved her.

Arty did not love my baby. He never asked to see her. When I finally went to see him — took him his breakfast a few days after she was born — I left her with Chick. I was testing the water and I found it cold.

“How kind of you to call,” Arty sneered. “Good of you to take the time. I suppose you won’t be working anymore. Gone into retirement like Iphy.”

I felt my lungs ice over. I couldn’t snap back at him. I went back and hid in the cupboard, holding Miranda, careful not to press her bottom the wrong way for fear her tail would be twisted or pinched.

I always slept curled around her in my cupboard. It made Mama nervous but there was no room for me to turn over so I thought there was no danger that I’d crush or smother her. I didn’t dare put her in a box or drawer separate from me.

• • •

“He doesn’t hate her,” Chick said. “How could he?” Chick was holding Miranda in the sink as I bathed her. His arm looped behind her flat little back so she wouldn’t topple over and crack her perfect skull. I was afraid to trust myself bathing her. Her five-month-old fingers grabbed at his moving lips and he kissed them, making slurpy noises. “Mama and the redheads say you should be getting better now, Oly. Not so afraid.”

My arms disappeared below the elbows, covered by the warm grey water in the sink. Across the lot, Leona the Lizard Girl was floating, still and silent, in the green murk of her jar. Miranda could chortle and hurl a spoonful of pablum at the wall but she would be as helpless as Leona against Arty. I wanted Chick to believe me, to be as frightened and watchful as I was.

“Baby’s no threat to him.” Chick spoke as though he were answering my thoughts. A bubble of light swelled in me. He was right. That puny tail of hers was no threat to the Aqua Man.

“Besides,” Chick protested, “he keeps after me to bring Elly back. He says it would be good if she could help with Mumpo. I’ve been working on it but it’s tricky in there. In her head.”

My bubble fantasy sank into a chilly puddle. So that’s why Chick was so sure of Arty’s benevolence. “Guilty,” I said.

Chick nodded agreeably, his shiny head bobbing on his scrawny neck above Miranda’s unfathomable curls. “He feels bad.”

I sponged her puffing cheeks and she opened her gums and clamped down on the sponge, squeezing it happily. “I thought she was coming back.”

“It’s slow,” he nodded. “It was starting anyway. But I’m trying, a little bit every time. You should go over more. They’re lonely, the twins. It helps if things are busy, exciting around them. Elly notices more.”

“I help Iphy with the cleaning.”

“You don’t like Mumpo. You think he’s bad, but he’s not. Take Miranda to play with him.”

“He doesn’t play. He just lies there and eats.”

Chick’s golden face fell into a shadow of hurt. “He’s a wonderful baby. He’s different from Miranda.” His face drooped down to rub against her damp hair. “But he’s wonderful.”

I reached for a towel. “Let’s get her out now.”

She rose, dripping, straight up from the water and swooped into my arms, crowing.

“She likes to fly.” I smiled up at Chick, ashamed of insulting his other child.

“I have to go to surgery now.” He wouldn’t look at me. His face was flushed.

“We’ll come with you.” I started dressing her quickly.

“No, Oly. Don’t. It’s hard for me to concentrate when I have to take care of you. I have hard things to do.” I watched him through the window as he walked away. The ragged straps of his coveralls rode his bare bony shoulders as though nobody loved him.