Mammother

Pr.

If you felt ready to die, wanted death bad enough, and had little enough to live for, The Reckoner would grant your wish and fall on you. It would crush your skeleton deep into the ground. No one in Pie Time would hear it fall, and no one would know when it stood itself back up. But it would always stand itself back up. The blood on its bark would wash away in the rain.

In the early morning hours, after the worst day and night of his life, Mano trudged the long path through the woods toward The Reckoner from where he woke up, near the banks of The Cure. The Reckoner creaked like it was about to fall. Mano’s face was in his hands. His toes moved in his shoes. He anticipated its full weight on the back of his head. His skeleton creaked inside his body waiting. He moved his hands to his sides, and lifted his head. Please, I’m ready to die, too.

He knew though that he would have to be patient. Sometimes it could take days for The Reckoner to make its decision. He picked up a stick and chewed it like a horse. With half of his stick still unchewed, he wrote his name in the mud.

Mano Medium.

Mano was cloaked in his mother’s bed sheet. Half of a black cloud hovered above him, a piece of its end missing. The poodle at his feet was like his shadow.

Mano was a good boy. Mano tried to speak in his mother’s voice. He tightened his throat and loosened his lips a little. But it didn’t sound right. He couldn’t remember exactly what her voice sounded like. He tried it again. Pepe Let was a good boy. That sounded a little closer, emphasizing the ooo in good. Pepe Let was a good boy, he said again, this time hitting the was.

Mano was not ready to go back into town. He closed his eyes, and said Pepe’s name out loud again. He slowed it way down so it sounded like a creak.

PART ONE

1.

Are you ready?

Ready for what?

Sisi Medium took a drag of her cigarette, and exhaled above the bathtub into the cloud. On your birthday, you will become a man.

Yes, ma’am. Mano was afraid to become anything at all, much less a man.

So, are you ready?

No, ma’am. I’m not ready.

She looked out the window. What do you want?

What do you mean, what do I want?

For your birthday.

Sisi had never given her son a birthday gift before. She had no money. And she lived in her bathtub.

Mano didn’t know how to answer his mother’s question. He had so few things that he didn’t know what things there were to want. You mean...like a thing?

Yeah, a thing. Don’t you like things?

I love things. Mano didn’t know if he did love things, but now for the first time, he thought that he might. He was sitting on the toilet. The toilet was a thing. But did he love it? He looked at the toilet like he loved it, and then it became true. Like this toilet, ma’am. I love this toilet.

I’m sure you do. But you know so few toilets.

Mano counted the toilets that he knew, but could only get to four.

Do you want another toilet for your birthday?

No.

Well, what is it you want?

Mano thought about all the things in the world and which of those things that he might want. Sisi waited, looking out the window at the top of the bare tree in the white sky. She always put her cigarette out by dipping it in her bathwater, making a quick sizzle. Then she’d pile it up like a dead body among the other butts in her glass ashtray.

It’s High Time for a Pie Time.

Grab me a beer while you think.

Mano always made sure to keep the small refrigerator in the bathroom fully stocked with cold Pie Times. Every day he brought home a twelve pack and a pack of cigarettes from the Pie Time Factory, where it was his job on some days to help brew the beer, and on other days to help roll the cigarettes.

He had his timing down just right for Sisi’s two breakfast beers. He’d retrieve the first one from her refrigerator, although she could reach it just fine on her own, and crack it open for her on the lip of the bathtub. He waited until she asked for it, like a good son. If he got it for her too soon, she’d say something like, I don’t want a beer so early—are you crazy? But when he waited for her to ask for it, she’d thank him, and then he’d go get ready for work. When he was done getting ready for work, he’d retrieve her second breakfast beer without waiting for her to ask for it. This was the key for her second beer. If he waited for her to ask for the second one, she’d say something like, What does a lady have to do around here to get another beer? But if he got her second one without asking, she’d say something like, You’re such a good boy. You know your mama.

Outside Sisi’s bathroom window, Mano imagined a bird falling out of the tree and bouncing on the ground. Things that fly, he thought, must often die by falling. He cupped his hands like he wanted to feel the feeling of saving it.

How about a bird?

You can’t have a bird, Sisi said without turning her head from the window.

Why not?

There are no such things as birds here.

The first thing Mano thought of to want was a thing that did not exist in Pie Time.

But is it a thing?

I suppose it is a thing, his mother said more quietly to herself now, but it is nothing here. Sisi lifted the chain of the drain with her good toe. Then she turned the hot water faucet with it. She had this way of resting her elbow on the lip of the bathtub and holding her can of beer in the air, letting it hang down between her ring finger and thumb, while she held her cigarette in the same hand between her middle finger and her index finger.

The two of them lived together, alone, in a perfectly square house on the west edge of Pie Time. It had four square rooms. Each room had two doors so you could circle through the house continuously, room to room, without having to alter course. The house’s front door opened into the living room, where the furniture was green. Moving forward, like a clock, the next room was the bathroom, where his mother had been continuously soaking in the bathtub for nearly a decade. A little steam slipped out over the living room ceiling each time this door was opened. In the bathroom, the red wallpaper was buckling and dripping from the walls. It had a pattern of red ranunculuses on it. The room beyond the bathroom was the bedroom, where Mano slept alone in a bed beside a wooden chair and a brass lamp, always on call for his mother during the night, in case she woke up while soaking and called for him. Through the bedroom door was the kitchen: a white stove, a white sink in which he washed his body and face, and cold white tile floors. The only refrigerator was in the bathroom. When he walked a complete circle through the square of their house, it was like walking through the seasons of a whole year—the green spring of the living room, the hot red summer of the bathroom, the golden autumn where he slept, and the white cold winter of the kitchen. To be in a room was to be somewhere in a year. Like a clock, the only choice was to move forward, never backward, in time.

So Mano always moved forward in time through the house. To get from his bedroom to his mother’s bathtub, he took the path through the kitchen, then the living room, which had a creaky wood floor. Each step sounded like the word eat. Eeeeeeeat, eeeat, eeeeeeeeat, eeeat. Walking through the living room made Mano feel incredibly heavy, despite how small he was. Feeling heavy made the house feel smaller, and faker, as if he was walking through the inside of a fake house.

Mano could remember very few days from before his mother got in the bathtub. Mostly, he could only remember her in the bathtub, smoking Pie Time cigarettes, drinking Pie Time beers, about four times a day lifting the metal chain with her good toe to drain the water, and opening the valve on the faucet with the same toe to replace the old water with new water. The bathtub was her body. The tub was red like the ranunculus of the wallpaper, the kind of red that organs are. The bathtub was his mother’s lung.

There must have been a very first lowering of her body when he was very young, like an initial offering, a giving up of something hard and sugary into the hot and limpid bath water, only then to dissolve into what is now a body saturated and quaggy. His mother’s skin was pulpy, bits of its flesh floating beneath the still grey surface like boiled pork. Had she known upon that first lowering how long she’d be soaking? If she did know then, he thought, then he’d feel even more abandoned, the burden of being orphaned somehow more unshakable than the burden of being left to feed and care for a sick mother. All those days that he could have had with a mother who lived on the outside of her bathtub.

One of those very few first memories of Mano’s, before his mother lowered herself into the tub, was of walking along the banks of The Cure together until they came upon a launching dock for the dead. He remembered her sitting down to hang her feet into the water and telling him about his father. She talked about Mano’s father uneasily, as if it was her duty.

Your father was a hunter, she said.

How do you know? young Mano asked.

He always wore a red plaid hunter’s cap, even indoors, even when he slept. Sisi’s answer satisfied Mano. He never took it off.

What did he hunt? asked Mano.

Mammoths, she said. He called himself The Mammother.

Mano liked the sound of that. But I thought you said mammoths don’t exist.

Mammoths don’t exist, you’re right.

Like birds?

Yes, like birds. But birds exist somewhere. Just not here. No one here knows about birds, but that doesn’t mean that birds don’t exist. Mammoths, on the other hand, exist nowhere.

Then why didn’t my father just hunt birds?

Sisi laughed at Mano’s question, but really she was laughing at what she knew was his father’s answer to that question. Well, because all great hunters can find birds. But only the greatest hunter can find something that doesn’t exist. Why bother spending your time looking for something that can be found? What remains once you’ve found it? Besides, what he wanted to find was a mammoth, not a bird. Sisi took a drag of her cigarette, holding her warming can of Pie Time in the same hand. She moved her legs around in the water off the launching dock. She tried to think of a broader way of explaining such a silly concept. It didn’t matter to your father what he could find, it only mattered to him what he wanted to find.

Mano nodded as if he understood. There are no mammoths. But there was my father, The Mammother.

Yes, indeed, there was The Mammother, repeated Sisi with a sigh.

Outside of Sisi’s bathtub was her radio, which sat on the top of the back of the toilet. At the top of every hour, the news report would come on, and she would light up another Pie Time. If Mano was there, of course, like a good son, he would light it for her. She liked to time it just right, lighting it up just as the announcer would say, It’s High Time for a Pie Time. And at that they’d both laugh. She’d crack open another can with a picture of a beautiful woman named June Good on it holding a pie that had been baked in an upside down golden crown. The radio seemed alive to Mano because the music came out of its silver speaker-mouth and silver knob-eyes. Looking out of the window above her bathtub, Sisi always remained so still, even when the music played. Mano sometimes thought about pushing the radio into the water, not because he wanted his mother to die, but because he was the only thing in his world that ever really moved.

Despite the threat of manhood drawing very near, Mano still liked to wear dresses every day to work. He liked being a girl at home, too. One of the games that he and his mother liked to play with each other was called Mother and Daughter. Mano always had long hair, and when they’d play Mother and Daughter, Sisi would braid his hair for him while he sat on the toilet. He liked to go to work in braids so that his hair wouldn’t dip into the tobacco.

How’s my daughter this morning? she’d ask some mornings. When he retrieved her beer, she’d thank him by saying, What a good daughter you are.

Thank you, he’d tilt his head.

Are you excited to see your boyfriend today?

But on other mornings, like on this day, when he asked her to play Mother and Daughter, she was too tired. She said, What are you today? She turned her head toward him from the window, and looked at him as if he had come to her for the late rent. The cloud of smoke was hanging low, not steam, so he knew that the news report had just ended. They both knew he would be late for work. Look, little girl, you’re going to be late for work. She cracked open another beer, a beer she had to lean over to get from the refrigerator on her own. He watched the gears in her jaw work as she drank it.

Sorry. He apologized into the bathroom from the living room.

It’s ok. I just don’t want you being late for work.

He waited for a few minutes before saying goodbye, so his apology would feel sincere enough. Goodbye! he yelled while stepping out of the front door into a world she knew almost nothing about.

Wait! she yelled.

He ran around to the back of the house. Sisi opened the window above her bathtub. Mano stuck his head in through that window.

Have you thought about the thing you’d want?

Yes, ma’am.

Well, what is it?

A bird.

2.

Years before he died strangely and horribly in his sleep, Father Mothers built Our Lady of the Blood with his own hands. It was a church that soon became known to everyone in Pie Time as simply Lady Blood. He built it in a field where he was met by a bear with no legs. It growled at him, fierce and loud like all bears, but of course it just stayed put. It was a bear in every way, capable of killing Father Mothers if it would have somehow been able to get his leg in its jaws. But Father Mothers didn’t fear it. He just built the church right over the top of it, while it snarled and snapped and cried at night. Eventually, it stopped making noise altogether, and just watched Father Mothers build the church around it. It was a bear in a church. It got used to the first people of Pie Time. They liked to pet it and feed it, but then it died.

A bear with no legs had been an omen to Father Mothers that this would be a very special land to build his church, and to build the town of Pie Time around it. Pie Time would be particularly safe from its enemies, if the first of its most-feared natural enemies, a bear, had none of its four legs.

Lady Blood was the first structure to be built in Pie Time and he built it with only a few dozen parishioners in mind. At first, Pie Time was just a tiny village with Lady Blood at its center, built upon the banks of The Cure, the river which circled the village. The woods were to the west, on the other side of The Cure, and the valley was to the east. In the distance beyond the valley were the mountains where Father Mothers had come from.

Father Mothers was far from being an architect or a carpenter. Lady Blood was the only building he had ever built, and after a few months of construction, it became clear that the church looked like no other church anyone had ever seen before. It looked nothing like anything except a drafty and lopsided white barn. But not a barn exactly either. A little like the Pope’s hat, if the Pope’s hat were flat, but with a sharp ridge down its center. Or a paper airplane. It was strange to see something so new look so old. None of his early parishioners had the heart to complain.

Lady Blood was built in the days before the plague known as God’s Finger penetrated the town, gripping it with anxiety and fear, and sending it down into a terrible spiral of grief and depression. The cross at Lady Blood’s apex was much too modest of a cross in the face of God’s Finger. It was only the size of one man.

That is why Father Mothers’ son, Father Mothers II, climbed up onto its roof, toiling well into a late spring evening with a hammer and nails and two planks of wormy wood salvaged from the woods in the west hills. The new cross was much needed for these modern days riddled with sin. He planned a cross that would be twice the size of the original cross built by his late father so that more sinners could see it from further away.

Mothers II straddled Lady Blood’s roof, unrolled his drafted plans, complete with the proper measurements for the new cross, and nailed the plans to the old cross, which was to stay put until the new one was constructed. While studying his plans, he was struck with the thought of hammering the new cross’s horizontal plank first, nailing it to the air before erecting the cross’s vertical plank. He became obsessed with this idea—convinced it was delivered to him directly by his lord. So, he considered the logistics of simply constructing the cross in reverse.

Lady Blood was the tallest structure in the valley. From where Mothers II was standing, he could see all of Pie Time, every house, and all of the fields. He could be sure that no one was watching him, except maybe some of the sheep. With the horizontal plank heavy in the grip of his large left hand, and the hammer in his right, he climbed the old cross that his father had built. With as much strength as his old-aged left arm could muster, he lifted the horizontal plank above his head, and hammered it into the air. He hammered and hammered while he held it, until the nail passed through the wood. And to his astonishment, he could feel the nail take hold in the air behind the plank. He could feel the heavy plank begin to lighten in his grip.

It can’t be true!

The plank felt so light in his hand, he let go of it entirely, and it stayed there, on the air. It is true! A miracle has happened. Oh, lord, I must tell the others.

Mothers II was in such a fever to climb down and show the others the horizontal plank of the new cross nailed on its own into the air—his heart racing at twice the normal speed—that he turned around too quickly on the old cross, and his collar caught around a bent old nail.

His feet slipped.

The sheep were baaaaing in the distance.

Little yellow flowers blossomed all over the valley.

3.

In his haste to think of a thing, a particular thing out of all things, and to leave home in time for his work at the Pie Time Factory, Mano had forgotten his glasses. His glasses were a thing, cracked along the top and the prescription outdated. Also, they were a little girl’s glasses, and Mano was just beginning to feel as though he was ready for a pair of adult’s glasses, whatever that meant. A serious thing to look through. The kind of glasses that he could make adult decisions through. Still, he needed something, at least for now. The world in front of him was the same as always, but the edges of all of its shapes were soft. Those soft shapes made glasses into a thing he wanted.

On most mornings, on his way to the factory, Mano would walk past the butcher shop where Pepe Let apprenticed for his father, The Butcher. They would sit on the back steps of the butcher shop for a few minutes and talk. Sometimes they would touch hands while they talked, and that was Mano’s favorite part. But Pepe didn’t come out of the back of the butcher shop on this morning. Mano figured he was too late, and that Pepe was already busy with his morning shop routines. The idea of missing any chance to talk with Pepe made Mano’s stomach feel empty. Still, Mano waited there behind the butcher shop for a few moments, just in case. He wasn’t quite ready to wade through the world with its soft shapes.

As he stood there behind the butcher shop, paralyzed for a moment by his indecision, he could see Inez Roar a few houses away across Last Street, on her front lawn, beneath a tree, holding her baby, Zuzu, in her arms. Inez was crying, but her baby wasn’t. Baby Zuzu had been in the world for almost a month, but had yet to cry, not even on the day that she was born. She slipped outside of Inez’s body, and blinked a few times into the light and at her father, The Barber. Sometimes, Inez and The Barber would poke her in the leg with a pin, or scratch her on the bottom of her foot, because they wanted to hear her cry and know what her full voice sounded like. But when they did, she’d only grimace, or grunt, or even growl.

Mano squinted to be sure who it was that he was walking toward, then he walked toward them. Are you ok? he asked the soft green shape that was Inez.

No, no, not at all, the soft green shape cried. It’s terrible.

What’s terrible?

My husband, she said. He’s dead.

Inez was twice the size of Mano. To Mano, she looked like a wedding cake. Her hair was big, curled around like frosting, and cascading down to her shoulders. Her legs were long and the size of Mano’s head at the top. Her voice was smoky, and it sounded like she was always making an announcement when she spoke.

Oh no, that is terrible, said Mano.

He went...to bed... she tried to catch up to her own smoky breath, and didn’t wake up...he had...a hole...it was...

He had a hole? Mano clarified.

I think it was God’s Finger.

God’s Finger? What’s God’s Finger?

Mothers says God’s finger is starting to come down to poke through the living who aren’t living right.

Mano knew enough not to laugh. Is that so? Do you believe him? Do you think that’s what happened?

Well, I don’t know. But I can’t see how he wasn’t living right. Inez looked exhausted. She wanted to say no more.

A few weeks earlier, Inez married The Barber in a private ceremony that only four people attended—themselves, Baby Zuzu, and Mothers II, who preferred that no one else was invited on account that Zuzu was born before their matrimony, which was in the wrong order for a proper wedding.

The Barber wasn’t much of a talker, just a smoker. Mano visited The Barber to deliver him a box of Pie Times each week, and to say hello, but never for a haircut. In fact, Mano had never had his hair cut. The Barber had every reason to think that Mano was a girl—he had long hair, and wore a dress. Once, The Barber suggested a bob cut, something perfect for girls. Each time, Mano refused. He didn’t quite see the point of cutting it any shorter. But the real reason was, like with anything else, he was just scared of anything that he had never done before. On this last visit, The Barber, convinced that Mano would never cut his hair, resigned to tell him, When you grow up, you’ll have to at least trim your own pubic hair. This was troubling to Mano, who didn’t quite yet have pubic hair, so hadn’t yet thought about having to trim it. He imagined the pubic hair growing wild, and overtaking his whole body. He’d have to walk around at all times, trimming the hairs down, to be sure that he wasn’t mistaken for a large mammal.

Mano squinted at the soft yellow shape that was Baby Zuzu, and then back at Inez. Mano was no good in these situations. He didn’t know what to ask, or where to look, or if he should touch her. He touched her upper arm with his whole palm, and then just his fingertips, and then he let go. He thought about his long hair, and if she’d notice it, if she’d wonder why her dead husband had never cut it. But mostly he wanted to hear more about the hole left in her husband, without having to pry into the details.

Inez, where did the hole come from?

I don’t know, she said. Baby Zuzu smiled and clapped once. It was just there, in his chest, she said, like a hole. It went all the way through. I could see the bed through it.

How big was it?

She tucked Baby Zuzu down into her elbow to be able to touch her middle fingers together and her thumbs together to make a circle while she cried.

Did you see anything in it? Mano meant to ask about his organs, his heart, that sort of thing. The top button on Inez’s blouse looked like it was about to pop off. Mano wanted to see just how her body would settle out into the open air if it did.

Oh! She was suddenly awake to the world again. These were in it. She held up a pair of men’s glasses.

Mano squinted at them, and then he could see that she was holding up glasses. They were plastic and black along the top, just the kind of glasses that Mano had always wanted. They were in it?

Yes, she said between half-breaths, readjusting Baby Zuzu in her arms.

Inside of it?

Yes, inside the hole.

Are they his?

The Barber doesn’t even wear glasses, she said.

How...

I don’t...

Can I see? Mano held out his hand.

Inez handed Mano the glasses, and he tried them on. She watched him try them on, and tilted her head to the side so she could see if they fit him properly. They’re for men, she said.

I am a man, he said overconfidently. It sounded strange coming out of his mouth, and Inez cracked a curious smile.

The lenses in the glasses were the perfect prescription for Mano. The world’s shapes had perfect yellow and green edges again. Mano looked up into Inez’s red, half-smiling face. He counted all of her eyelashes from below. They were so long, he thought. He wanted to blow on them to see if they would move.

You have a beautiful baby, he said.

4.

As soon as Mano closed the heavy iron front door of the Pie Time Factory behind him, it became apparent that it was not a good day to be so late to work. He considered, for a moment, avoiding it all, running away from the factory, and returning to Inez. If he went back to her, he could hold Zuzu while Inez washed her face. She would need to take a shower, he thought. He was a man now, he thought, someone who could be needed to stand nearby while Inez did the miserable work of preparing The Barber’s dead body for its trip down The Cure. But in the factory, he still felt like a girl.

With his new glasses, The Foreman’s terrible mood became visible. The Foreman was in the tobacco steaming room stretching his arms. He was a large and austere man, with a personality as dark grey as the shirt and tie that