Marianne Jay Erhardt
"When she reached the top of the hill, she saw a wood in the distance. She thought that it looked a safe quiet spot." – Jemima Puddleduck by Beatrix Potter
If I take any heed from Beatrix, I will bring you to life only after boiling your bones and sleeping with them, half-articulated, under my pillow. That was her idea of childhood. Mine might have looked similar had I not felt so brittle next to death. And water. And heat. And sleep. Mine was a pink room stuffed with two sisters. Mine held hampers full of dirty costumes that lay untouched for several years. The clothes we wore we heaped on top between washings. At times of boredom, I would push those to the floor and root. Find the crushed tulle that once held the shape of a skirt. Find the new flesh-pink Capezio tights that I'd torn in the first few minutes of wear, then buried in the hamper to age them, to give them a story of ruin that made sense.
You, dumb duck, were on my shelf. Porcelain, made from bone ash, a trinket. I didn't know your story then, but I recall your beak and bonnet. Your improbable shawl. You were not to be played with, and honestly we didn't want to. My grandmother had been gifting us these figurines for years. It was my mother who loved them, who loved their containers. Glossy little boxes, flawless tissue paper, refolded, stowed away for use in some vague future.
Sixteen. I got the part. You. I was new to modern dance. The bare feet and low squats were a relief to me after the years of tiptoe ballet, which my body, swelling into its new shape, was tired of faking. I had no helium. No longer a skinny-limbed, pot-bellied girl, I became a woman full of eggs, promise of bone.
I danced with the fox, and my delectability went beyond the sage, thyme, mint, parsley, and pair of onions. I felt safe. And I was safe. And that was something. After rehearsal one day he gave me a bag of sugar snap peas from his garden. I have never tried them before and I ate every single one as I drove myself home.
Still I thought the point was to be fattened up and swallowed whole. It was different for you, Jemima. You had no interest in disappearing into any story.
The one you longed to out-tell is the one that says ducks are bad mothers. Bad sitters. Laying eggs willy-nilly, allowing them to go cold, to be stolen by a fox or a farmer's wife. So it was for your own good, she would say, carrying you by your hindquarters away from another nest. She'd line up your eggs in a long-handled basket and carry it back to the farmhouse. There, she would candle them. Hold them just close enough to the flame to see inside. The fertile ones seemed to hold a spider or a vein-webbed eye. These she would give the hen to incubate and raise. The rest she would crack into omelets, feed to the farmer.
So you flew off to have your own babies. To see if you could. Isn't that the reason most of us become mothers? And the fox gave you the hiding place. The obvious but luxurious bed of feathers. The fox planned a feast, handed you the list of ingredients to gather. And you gathered them. Beatrix said you were a simpleton. But doesn't it make sense that you would trust the animal that treats you as tenderly as an egg?
Lucky duck, they said. You were spared the violence that befell so many ducks before you. That is luck now. Not being torn apart. Not being taken. Not digging your own fragrant grave, mistaking it for love. Luck.
But the eggs. Well. Dogs will be dogs. You should be grateful that the foxhounds chased away the fox. You should know those eggs were too perfect to protect. And, let's face it, they were unattended. In a sense, they were right about you. You weren't hungry enough. You were already floating away.
One afternoon, in the woods, I found a skull and a hoof, and I carried them home. Thumb through an eye socket. Inner wrist awake to the scraps of tawny fur left on the femur. To me these pieces were neither specimens nor treasures. I held them at a normal distance from my body, like you might hold a friend's pet or a participation trophy. It wasn't until my mother said, Rabies! that they mean anything to me. Who knows what licked it, she said. It can take a year to get sick, she said. So for twelve months, I didn't sleep, didn't know how to hold anything alive or recently alive. I carried books into bed, laid them on my belly, crushed my lungs with them, slid them under my pillow. They were simple, predictable shapes to finger in the dark. They didn't have the knobs or handles or sockets that Beatrix held all night.
Another night, years and lucky bodies later, I wake up to the sound of something metallic. A cooking pot shifting in the dish drainer downstairs? A neighbor's pup at the chain link or a thief at the storm door? A coin dropped, somehow, into the drum of our washing machine? I don't wake my husband. I consider the possibilities as I move to share his pillow, and I just drift off.
In the morning there is snow just like they said there would be snow. It was bound, like a book, to happen. But my boys are taking all the credit. They followed the nonsense rules they learned from their friends. Last night they flushed ice cubes down the toilet. They wore their pajamas inside-out. They slept with spoons under their pillows. Alone upstairs, half-making their beds, I find the one that fell. That sang through our house, moved me towards the warm body beside me.
I carry the spoon downstairs to the kitchen, deem it clean. Put it in my mouth.